[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 3 points 5 days ago

You said, all your feelings start bubbling up. So that sounds like more feelings come to the foreground other than existential dread. Maybe those are important too. In that case you could ask yourself what kind of feelings those are and maybe try to just sit with them and notice how they go away or become less intense after a while.

Existentialist philosophy recommends accepting existential dread/anxiety/absurdity as the only way to live an authentic, free life in which we might eventually build our own meaning. Monist philosophies (like mystic tendencies) emphasize the interconnectedness of things and maybe find comfort in seeing separation as an illusion.

Any way, accepting your feelings without judgement is good in general. And like others said, mindfulness based meditation might help.

Disclaimer: in case of existing traumas, mindfulness meditation can be dangerous to try alone, as it might cause people to relive their trauma. And in case of depression, it might not be enough on its own without cognitive behavioral therapy or addressing underlying causes.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 12 points 1 week ago* (last edited 1 week ago)

It's just that normal gravity on earth feels exactly like being in an accelerating elevator in space. So you can't tell the difference from the inside. Like in the elevator you can ask them, whether you're still on earth or accelerating in space. Einstein used this thought experiment to develop the general theory of relativity.

Basically Einstein thinking about that weird feeling you get in your gut when an elevator starts upwards led to him concluding that mass bends spacetime making light from distant stars go in curves around the sun, which was confirmed during the next available solar eclipse.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 54 points 1 week ago

These "right wing christians" are a militia that's responsible for the infamous massacre of Sabra and Shatila, supported by Israel. The so called "Lebanese Forces" fighters were mostly made up of the Kataeb party, which was founded, after their leader visited Nazi Germany and, deeply impressed, modeled the organization after the brwon shirts, with Nazi salut and everything.

So the US counting on literal fascists again for their regime change operation. No surprise, I guess.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 30 points 1 week ago

It's often like, exchanging biting polemics in theory and wholesome support in praxis.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 14 points 2 weeks ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago)

That's a really really long idealist article, that dosn't say much in the end and might have been much shorter if the author had a materialist perspective on fascism.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 23 points 3 weeks ago

From 2001 to 2003, people tried getting the Nazi party NPD banned. They sued at the highest court and argued, that it was a danger to the constitution. The court found, that too many members of the Nazi party, including highest ranking leaders, where funded by the state. Specifically, they were paid by the very agency (Verfassungsschutz) that was supposed to protect the constitution. They had funded the Nazis for years and radicalized them under the guise of introducing under cover agents. The court concluded, that a clear distinction between the state and the Nazi party could not be made. And so the case was dismissed. The funding continued.

Earlier this year, the former head of this agency set up his own Nazi party.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 19 points 3 weeks ago* (last edited 3 weeks ago)

My convos with libs seem like I'm talking to a computer chat bot, the empathy and concern that I'd expect from a real person isn't there.

I feel exactly the same way. It's called the empathy gap and it's a symptom of racism. This is how they can manage the mental gymnastics of supporting genocide and thinking of themselves as good people. Brown people just matter less to them.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 35 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

I just checked, Polaris is about ten times younger than sharks. The other two stars of its ternary star system are older, but not visible to the naked eye, so early sharks would not have been able to use them for purposes of navigation.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 12 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago)

The reason is that all those other things create actual value, thus cutting into profits of capitalists if publicly funded. If you're a capitalist state that wants to steal massive amounts of wealth from the people and redistribute them to the rich by funding an Industry, then war really is the industry you want because it only destroys value.

For example, if you cancelled the Pentagons budget and funded centrally planned healthcare instead, no private healthcare provider could compete. It would completely close down a huge market. Same with education, infrastructure, etc. War doesn't have this problem of closing down a market, but has the advantage of opening up new markets (resources, cheap labour, more consumers, even rebuilding after the war, etc.) via imperialism.

Edit: In short, imperialism is in part a reaction to the tendency of the rate of profit to fall and offers an opportunity to renew primitive accumulation.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago)

Maybe it's about measurement, but also look closer, the change is not 2006, it's 2007. It's when the financial crisis related to the US real estate bubble hit. Also the x-axis is in percent. So it might just be, that the crash hit the regions harder, whose banks had invested most in the bubble: US and Europe. The apparent rise we see might just be production in the global south staying constant, while falling elsewhere.

Also China started huge investments, but I think most of that was at the end of 2008.

Edit: No, I was wrong. Looks like production shifted from medium skilled south to low skilled south. I have no explanation.

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 20 points 3 months ago

This would work inverted as well: "Yeah, I'm running a quick vibe check on the data to find out where the noise is coming from."

[-] woodenghost@hexbear.net 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

What everyone says doesn't completely answer the question. Yes it's about selling your data and attention to advertisers. But if it's about the "meta", than there is a twofold strategy about it: first exploiting the network effect (wikipedia link) while growing. And then locking in the market ("keep you in their ecosystem"), thereby locking out competition. It's ironic, but capitalists hate competition (in their own field) so much they would do everything to avoid it.

Their ideal endgame is what Amazon has achieved: becoming so big, they can start selling other capitalists access to their walled in market.

All these platforms could have been made compatible with each other (like federated instances). Without content walled in behind logins, we would be able to put together our own feed with content from all over the Internet and choose our own algorithms to sort it. But then no one could sell your attention or data to advertisers and small creative upstarts would be able compete with big entrenched content providers.

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woodenghost

joined 4 months ago