Short video about current floods in Libya and how they are so much worse due to the deliberate sabotage of the NATO campaign.

Just came across this channel. Looks like one to keep an eye on for African news.

They insist on controlling the media, the publishing, the schools, the teachers, the curriculum, the judiciary, the museums, and the curators. But they only use their power for good. They hold themselves to the highest standards in the search of the truth and the presentation of the truth. Honest! Their independent watchdogs confirmed it. And why would they lie, anyway?

Looking back through my cursive handwritten notes, I noticed my past self was very concerned with hummus society. What could this mean?

It's not a Marxist list but that's perhaps to be expected from a list curated from other lists across the internet. I thought it was useful, still, as there are 200 entries, including lots of fiction, which could be a good way to engage with the topic or for recommendations to people who don't/won't read theory.

In 2018, Delta airlines unveiled new uniforms made of a synthetic-blend fabric. Soon after, flight attendants began to get sick. Alden Wicker explains how toxic chemicals get in clothes in To Dye For.

Employers caring more about image that health. Iconic duo.

Hello Comrades,

Thanks for all your advice about setting up Linux. It was a success. The problem is that I’m now I’m intrigued and I’d like to play around a bit more.

I’m thinking of building a cheap-ish computer but I have a few questions. I’ll split them into separate posts to make things easier. Note: I won’t be installing anything that I can’t get to work on Linux.

Do I need a dedicated graphics card? I'd like to run an HD display as a minimum. (I don't have a 4k monitor at but I wouldn't mind upgrading later if I can save up for one.) Mostly, I'll be streaming or playing videos.

I wouldn't mind playing some games but is a dedicated GPU needed?

If I should look into a GPU (I can always add it in later), what should I look for? (I'm not really interested in the latest AAA games). I wouldn't mind playing HOI4 or Victoria 3 as I hear so much about them.

What are your thoughts on second-hand GPUs? This will obviously cut costs but is there anything to watch out for?

Hello Comrades,

Thanks for all your advice about setting up Linux. It was a success. The problem is that I’m now I’m intrigued and I’d like to play around a bit more.

I’m thinking of building a cheap-ish computer but I have a few questions. I’ll split them into separate posts to make things easier. Note: I won’t be installing anything that I can’t get to work on Linux.

Should I prioritise RAM or the processor? My budget is limited so I will have to make a choice between RAM and the processor. Would it be better to go for e.g. 32GB RAM and a slower processor, or 8GB RAM and a faster processor? Or is balance better? Say, 16GB RAM and a 'medium' processor (that's 'medium' between the 'slower' and the 'faster' option within my budget, not 'medium' for the market).

Intel or AMD?

Hello Comrades,

Thanks for all your advice about setting up Linux. It was a success. The problem is that I'm now I'm intrigued and I'd like to play around a bit more.

I'm thinking of building a cheap-ish computer but I have a few questions. I'll split them into separate posts to make things easier. Note: I won't be installing anything that I can't get to work on Linux.

Question about storage and swap memory.

I plan to install an SSD of maybe 128–256GB for the system files and a larger HDD for storage. I would partition the SSD so that I could install a few different distros without losing any installation. This way I can commit to some longer experiments before deciding which distro to use.

The question is: should I have the swap partition on the SSD (with the OS partition) or (separately) on the HDD?

And if I install multiple distros, do I need a different swap partition for each one? For example, if I install 16GB RAM, do I need a 16GB partition for, say, Mint, Debian, and Ubuntu? Or can I let them 'share' the swap partition?

Are there any additional security/privacy risks of installing more than one distro on the same SSD card?

You may have noticed that I don't post pictures. If not, now you know.

One of the reasons is that I'm worried about sharing meta data.

Does anyone know:

1. Does the Lemmy software strip / hide meta data from photos when they're uploaded?
2. Is there a way of stripping meta data from photos?
3. Does downloading an image from the internet and uploading it from my hard drive add any meta data?
4. If I create a digital image, does it have meta data that could reveal my location, etc? (And then questions 1 and 2 for this option.)
5. How should/could I keep my data/location safe if I choose to post either my photos, my scans, or pictures (either created by me or downloaded from the internet)?

Hello Comrades,

Where do you think is the best place to post educational/theory posts?

I've been writing some longer posts lately and posting them too !genzhou@lemmygrad.ml because the sidebar calls it, 'GenZedong’s educational hub'. Shall I keep doing that or is there a better community? e.g.:

• https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1022436 and
• https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1007901

I was going to use !communism@lemmygrad.ml but as I'm linking to my posts in the wider Lemmyverse, I didn't want libs coming over to an explicitly Marxists-only community.

One of the reasons for these longer posts is to provide an opportunity for us to talk about some issues and to answer questions that others ask in the wider Lemmyverse without (a) coming off as hostile/confrontational or (b) wasting hours writing things that people might not read or appreciate.

(No obligation for us to talk through my posts! But at least there's always a possibility of a constructive and critical discussion, which doesn't exist elsewhere.)

Edit: These aren't necessarily 101 questions, either, but I suppose they could go in !communism101@lemmygrad.ml, depending on what you all think.

I won't hold my breath for more but it's good to see Marxist ideas appearing in the mainstream press:

Liberal antiracists have succeeded over the last half-century in reducing racial prejudices in interpersonal relationships. And they have transformed popular culture: people of colour are now represented in Hollywood movies at levels proportionate to their presence in the US population. But advances in reducing prejudice and improving representation have not lessened the racism that exists in law, policy and broader economic and institutional practices.

Take, for instance, the expulsion of more than a million, mainly Mexican, people from the US in 2021. This policy behind this is driven by the need to maintain a worldwide racial division of labour. It makes no difference if the immigration officer who carries it out and the employer who profits from it have worked really hard at their diversity awareness training. And it is at the structural level where, since the 1970s, racism has reproduced itself, as ruling classes in the US and Europe mobilised a neoliberal conception of market forces to defeat mass movements for the redistribution of wealth. With those defeats, new ways of dominating Black people and the global south became possible.

It was not simply that racism became more subtle or unconscious after its overt forms had been defeated. It was more that there was no longer a need to routinely make explicit assertions of racial superiority. Racial inequalities were reproduced through market systems, alongside newly intensifying infrastructures of governmental violence, carried out in the name of seemingly race-neutral concerns about crime, migration and terrorism. …

The many millions of people around the world judged surplus to the requirements of neoliberal capitalism, and framed as bearers of cultural values antagonistic to market systems, are the targets of this form of violence. …

Liberal antiracists are powerless against this new structural racism. They demand we use the correct racial vocabulary, shaming Conservative MPs or sports commentators when they use derogatory terms; but abolishing a word does not abolish the social forces it expresses. They implement diversity training programmes, but these fail, owing to the mistaken premise that racism now resides primarily in the unconscious mind. … By relocating racism to the unconscious mind, to the use of inappropriate words and to the extremist fringes, liberal antiracists end up absolving the institutions most responsible for racist practices. They are effective at getting more people of colour into senior jobs in police forces, border agencies and the military, but unable to get fewer people of colour killed by those same agencies.

For these reasons, to look to liberal antiracism as the solution – with whatever good intentions – is to help sustain structural racism. White liberals can heroically confront their own unconscious biases all they want, yet these structures will remain. To be antiracist today means working collectively with organisations to dismantle racist border, policing, carceral and military infrastructures. It means organising in the community to get the police out of our schools; taking direct action against deportations; and confronting corporations that trade in violence. It means understanding that the poor of the global south are as equally entitled to the world’s resources as the wealthy residents of the north. In the end, it requires us to build an economy of care, not killing – uplifting all working classes of whatever colour. The radical tradition, with its anticapitalist impetus, might once have seemed impractical. Now it is the only viable antiracist politics.

cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/971805

Sources for all claims in link.

I wrote in December that to call China the "world leader in renewable energy" was a colossal understatement.

Even the Western press considers the PRC's climate target to be all-important to preventing complete global disaster. It was estimated to reduce projected temperature by 0.3 degrees Celsius, the largest drop ever calculated by climate models.

Anyone doubting that the PRC is willing and capable of not just fulfilling, but exceeding, its goals is not paying attention.

Each year from 2020 to 2022, China installed about 140GW of new renewable electricity capacity, more than the US, the EU, and India put together. (A gigawatt is enough to power 750,000 homes.)

In December, ground was broken on the world's largest desert renewable energy project in Inner Mongolia.

The IEA estimated China would add 80GW of new solar capacity in 2023; in February, the China Photovoltaic Industry Association said between 95 and 120

Both are already wrong. In the first four months of 2023, nearly THREE TIMES as much new solar capacity had been installed than in the same period in 2022. China's NEW solar capacity installed this year will exceed the entire TOTAL in the US.

In May, the chairman of Tongwei Solar predicted that new installations might fall between 200 and 300 gigawatts in 2024—almost TWICE the current US total.

It's not just solar energy that China does well. In 2021, China installed more offshore wind capacity in one year than the rest of the world combined had in the past five. As of January 2022, China operated half of all the world’s offshore wind turbines.

According a report by Global Energy Monitor in June, China is currently on track to DOUBLE its entire renewable energy capacity by 2025—five years earlier than the government's original target date of 2030.

China’s “nuclear pipeline” or the total capacity of all its new reactors under development, is also as big as the rest of the world’s combined, at ~250 GW. In 2021, 19 new reactors were under construction, 43 awaiting permits, and another 166 were planned.

In April 2022, plans for another 6 new reactors were announced. China also has the most advanced and efficient reactors in the world, with no need for water cooling; in 2022, for example, the first “fourth-generation” reactor came online in Shandong.

… In fact, proportional to their share, the US contribution was 0.05% of China’s in 2021.

Energy is only one aspect of the climate solution, though; China is ALSO far and away the world leader in EVERY OTHER aspect.

Since 1980, China doubled its forest coverage, planting more new trees than the rest of the world combined.

Per the UN Food and Agriculture Organization, between 2010 and 2020 China had an average annual net gain in forest area of almost 2 million hectares, over 4 times as much as Australia’s (2nd-largest) and nearly 20 times as much as the United States’.

In 2021, the government set a new target rate of afforestation of 36,000 square kilometers per year—or 3.6 million hectares, nearly double its previous rate, or enough new trees to cover the land area of Belgium.

China's shift to a green economy isn't just happening fast—it's still accelerating.

From 2016-2018, EV sales in China jumped from 1% to 5%. They reached 20% in 2022—three years ahead of schedule. (The US finally reached 5% in 2022.)

As of 2022, 98% of all electric buses in the world were deployed in Chinese cities.

China's electric high-speed rail network is longer than every other country's combined, and continues to expand. In 2007 China had virtually no HSR; today, if they had been placed in one line, China's high-speed railways could wrap around the circumference of the Earth.

According to the Paulson Institute in Chicago, when accounting for not just revenue but passenger time and airline trips saved, China's HSR had generated a net surplus of nearly $400 billion as of 2022.

No other country is forcing China to lead the world in the conversion to a sustainable economy—in fact, the United States government has been trying to STOP it, for example by placing sanctions on China's photovoltaic manufacturing.

China's goal was peak emissions before 2030 and carbon-neutrality by 2060. Given how much Chinese renewables have overperformed recently, the peak will likely come sooner rather than later—maybe within the next two years. It may even already be passed.

China's emissions are mainly from coal. But Chinese coal-fired power plants are much different from Western plants.

Chinese coal plants have set the world record for efficiency, approaching 50%, compared with a typical Australian plant’s 30% efficiency.

The PRC’s clean air policies not only cut air pollution almost in half between 2013 and 2020, but also drove a global decline in air pollution. (I.e. if China’s contribution were tallied separately, the overall rate would have increased, not decreased.)

Violating China's environmental policies can lead to real punishment. In March 2021, four major steel mills in Hebei were caught falsifying records to evade carbon emission limits; the next year, dozens of executives responsible were sentenced to prison.

In contrast, though the Deepwater Horizon catastrophe killed several workers and was the largest marine oil spill in history, no one from BP spent even a day in jail.

As of this tweet, Norfolk Southern faces no criminal charges for the East Palestine train disaster in February.

Last summer, after weeks of struggle, the wildfires besieging Chongqing were driven back and extinguished; not just by water, sand, chemicals, or controlled burns, but by community.

Twenty thousand civil servants and volunteers climbed or biked up and down the mountain in the sweltering heat to deliver supplies and construct fire barriers; through their collective action, the cities were saved.

The solutions to the climate apocalypse are collective and mundane—economic planning, technological development, and the redistribution of resources—but the freedom to pursue those solutions is very rare and very dear.

Presently, China alone seems to have this freedom.

Also in China is the largest economic engine in history controlled by a Communist Party and a workers' state, that is not required by class interest to seek profit above all else.

Probably just a coincidence or something, idk.