AssortedBiscuits [they/them]

mfw you still use Windows in 2023 2024 2025

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Cake day: May 22nd, 2022

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  • It seems like scholars use different names as a form of historicization. So Augustus didn’t fight a civil war with Mark Antony. It was Octavian who did so. Popes are almost always referred to by their former names when talking about their pre-pope days. I guess you could argue that papal names function more like a title than their actual names. So Robert Prevost didn’t stop becoming Robert Prevost while Pope Leo XIV is a papal name that’s not his real name.

    It gets weirder for someone like Malcolm X. Technically, “Malcolm X” is the name the man adopted from the time he joined the Nation of Islam to when he left the Nation of Islam. So, “Malcolm X” the name points to a particular historical period within the man’s life just like “Malcolm Little” or “Detroit Red” were as well. The name the man himself actually wanted to be known as is El-Hajj Malik El-Shabazz. That’s his real name. Most people call El-Shabazz “Malcolm X” and some people use “Malcolm X” alongside “Malcolm Little” and “Detroit Red” as a shorthand for “when El-Shabazz was a kid” or “when El-Shabazz was part of the Nation of Islam.” It’s mostly Black Muslims and Pan-Africanists who actually call El-Shabazz the name he wanted to be remembered as.

    Names are just weird.



  • A lot of times, the tut-tutting over adventurism comes off more as cowardice than any principled stance against adventurism as a strategy. There’s a very big difference between Stalin who robbed banks saying adventurism isn’t the way and a bunch of timid nerds in a book club saying adventurism isn’t the way.

    Adventurist acts reflect well on the willingness and courage of the people performing them. Adventurists should be seen as brave but not particularly strategic or even smart individuals. But forced between brave and dim people vs smart cowards, the brave and dim people are vastly more useful. If nothing else, brave and dim people can be trained to become brave and smart people through study of theory, but how do you cultivate bravery among cowards?

















  • In retrospect, they should’ve just kept the religious status quo but made every single member of the clergy be a card-carrying member of the CPSU subject to internal party discipline while banning all other “independent” churches. Religious dogma should incorporate things like “Jesus said communism rules and capitalism drools” and “the bourgeoisie go straight to hell when they die because the bourgeoisie are not human.” Christians who don’t accept Jesus’s teaching that communism is based get excommunicated and send to hell where the rest of the bourgeoisie are burning as well.

    Overall, China handled religion a lot better. There isn’t a hard push for state atheism (although I think the CPC is officially an atheist organization), but all religious groups have to swear loyalty to socialism with Chinese characteristics and submit themselves to the will of the socialist state. Those that don’t toe the socialist line like Falun Gong have the hammer dropped on them.

    The way the CPC handled Tibetan Buddhism is an illustrative example. Instead of abolishing a particular branch of Buddhism that used the skins of serfs for their drums, the CPC incorporated Tibetan Buddhism within the state apparatus. Whenever some religious leader dies and a new “reincarnation” has to appear to take their place, by sheer coincidence, the “reincarnation” who eventually appears is someone who the CPC liked the most.

    This is the way to go. People need to quit being Reddit atheists and think strategically about this.