I’m responding to the meme which presents learning and critique as separate and mutually exclusive. In order to learn from something you have to critique it, and if you believe that China is not perfect then you know this and should agree with me.

There’s also another thing you’re doing that I see MLs do all the time, which is posit that Chinese socialism is uniquely suited to China and that it must be implemented differently in other places. While I do agree that this is the case, I often see MLs use this argument to excuse flaws in the implementation of socialism in China as necessary alterations required due to the particular conditions and historical circumstances in which it was created.

IMO there were many wrong turns and mistakes that China made in its socialist transition that have had lasting negative consequences, and though they can often be explained by China’s particular conditions and historical circumstances, that doesn’t excuse them.

Learning and critique are the same thing. If you look at China and go “this is perfect in every way and we should copy it,” then you aren’t actually learning anything at all. In my experience MLs don’t get angry with anarchists and others critical of China because they don’t learn from Chinese socialism, but because they don’t like the conclusions they’ve made.

It’s what the kids these days are calling “friend-slop,” which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. It’s just that most of the value comes from creating zany situations for your coop pals to get into and let hilarity ensue. It’s a bit like a lot of card games in that way, it’s simple because it mostly just has to get out of the players’ way and allow social interaction to happen.

They’re making an effort to make them illegal too.

Nice, more instructions to send to revolutionaries in Myanmar.

Not weird at all, they’re eating like many hunter-gatherer societies used to. It was very common to season meat with fruits and honey.

The US killed Iran’s leadership and strengthened their resolve. Now a bunch of younger, more creative, and more passionate people have taken leadership positions. Iranian propaganda has proven more effective and internet savvy, and their military decision-making has likely improved due to destagnation. Trump literally threatening to wipe the entire civilization off the face of the earth likely pushes Iranians who are against the regime to reconsider (even if only temporarily while they deal with the bigger threat), and I couldn’t say I wouldn’t make the same judgment if I were in their position. What a colossal failure, but hey, at least the defense contractors are making money, right? I can’t wait for the blowback from this to inspire the next round of interventions, if we’re even still around by then.

I used to think this way when I was miserable and disillusioned with society in general. When you approach life with the assumption that people are evil by default you tend to only notice things which affirm that belief. I’ve since made a lot of changes in my life and gained a new perspective, and I’ve found that I more frequently notice people doing small acts of kindness when they think no one’s looking. Most people want to do good, it’s just that they don’t often succeed.

Most people are good, it’s a wealthy few who exploit the planet and people for profit who are destroying the planet. The “humans are inherently selfish/evil” line only serves to protect those responsible from accountability by distributing the blame.

They’re not - or at least no one can reasonably claim ignorance now - and they have already voted for anti-genocide representatives in special elections and primaries thus far. It won’t be a wipeout across the board, but AIPAC will lose their stranglehold on US politics this primary season and they know it. They’ve been doing damage control rather than trying to get pro-Israel candidates elected recently.

Surely there’s an indie scene in Japan, no?

When most of the AIPAC candidates were elected the electorate was largely ignorant of Israel-Palestine.

I guess it depends on whether they’re referring to elected officials or the electorate, because support for the genocide is only mainstream among elected officials and not the electorate.

But they could also be referring to border policy, which is a little less straightforward, as a lot of the Democratic electorate still has some reactionary views on the border and immigration as a result of candidates and elected officials refusing to offer a counter-narrative to the “border crisis.”

Which views would those be?

I’ve been oversensitive to AI gen images recently and it’s worse with low-rez. This image just tripped a false positive for me.

It’s often said that it’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism, but it seems vastly more difficult for people to imagine the end of the state, so much so that it’s equated to the end of the world.

It’s hard to tell with the low resolution, but this looks like AI to me. The guy on the left’s feet look weird, and also the bricks don’t appear to have a consistent pattern. The layout of the house with the two garages separated by what I guess is a hallway also doesn’t make sense to me.

Why don’t you correct me instead of marking my comment as bigotry and removing it? I said that China’s social credit system is just an ordinary credit system much like ours, and that is bigotry how, exactly? Explain it to me.

It’s wild, you don’t even have to say anything bad about China to piss you off, you just have to talk about it neutrally without constantly praising it as a socialist utopia.

The fact that you can take a hit to the credit score for engaging in protests and demonstrations is still scary

I was saying that this sort of thing actually doesn’t really happen. The social credit score for the most part is just an ordinary credit score and is only meaningfully affected by finances. Some localities made an attempt at implementing the “social” aspects of the system and subtract small amounts for certain criminal offenses, but it barely makes a difference.

Engaging in protests and demonstrations gets you the same thing it gets you here; tear gas, pepper balls, beatings, and possibly prison time & a criminal record. The hysteria around the social credit system is very silly when the actual dystopian shit is so glaringly obvious, and occurs in both China and the US.

There have been so many lawsuits against Valve recently from so many different angles. I’m not usually one for conspiracy but I wouldn’t be shocked if this is a coordinated campaign to unseat Valve from their monopoly on the PC gaming market so that other games industry corporations can move in. They’ve been trying and failing to break into this market for years because Valve has built so much consumer loyalty.