use a Macbook for the hardware, the unix-based OS, and the good battery life. Then install Emacs and just live inside there. I occasionally look for GNU/Linux “ultrabooks” or Macbook competitors, but they’re always a little worse in a few ways. Better because they use GNU/Linux though, of course.

@Azazel@lemmy.ml Not sure what your point is with this comment? who are you talking about?

Steinem defended her relationship with the CIA, saying: “In my experience the agency was completely different from its image; it was liberal, nonviolent and honorable.” Steinem also stated that she considered the CIA to be allies in promoting U.S. government policy against communism during the early Cold War. — NATOpedia

Although most frequently considered a liberal feminist, Steinem repeatedly characterized herself as a radical feminist.

Great, thanks so much! Respect for working through some less glamorous material. I believe that a lot of the sexy revolutionary theory has been worked out already, and that the intellectual work that really needs doing (besides, of course, practical organizing and agitation) is the less sexy empirical analysis and extending the historical understanding for which Marx only laid the foundation. There are a lot of interesting threads that should be pulled, like this question on class society, but I also would like one day to read more on the Christianization of Europe and indeed the world, and how that interacted with the development of capitalism via the suppression of paganism etc.

I have one minor hesitance, not to say a challenge, but a nagging question impelling me to learn more —

Your description of the commodity seems a little anachronistic, doesn’t it? Certainly commodities existed incidentally in precapitalist societies, and so did money. But it was not predominating production until the capitalist era; Marx writes about this in several places, which I can dig up if you would like. Money, too, was not money in its fully developed capitalist form, until the capitalist era. For example, money could not represent abstract labor until the commodity figures as the general form of the product of labor, which doesn’t happen until capitalism; money also would need to be generally exchangeable for any commodity whatsoever, but I thought that money was limited to a unit of account, accounting for unpaid taxes, in some of these ancient societies? not generally used for exchange of any two commodities?

This is only in particular social groups. Mainly school age children - almost all of them use iOS. Yet still it’s about 50-50 for the nation overall, it’s not at all at “herd immunity” levels where you can reasonably expect every single friend to use iOS

Idk, I have mostly used Android. Maybe that explains some things.

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Very interesting. Do you have any recommended reading or other material on this topic?

Also specifically Elon’s breeding fetish mindset

The workers themselves hold a contradictory consciousness, on the one hand informed by their class interest as workers, on the other hand tainted by bourgeois ideology and some minor privileges as imperial core residents. Hence you have contradictory subcultures, confused in their lashing against the conditions of the working class.

The task of communists is to raise the level of consciousness such that the working class can clearly process their own conditions, in order to overcome them.

The Wikipedia page for hipster has this poor guy emblazoned forever in the banner

I referred to it as a trend before, but really I think of hipster as a subculture comparable to punk or hippie. As a subculture, it has to be evaluated on its own terms. There is a parallel between hipsters and hippies, as the name implies, but punk is a whole different thing.

A mere trend doesn’t go beyond aesthetic; there is no ideology to high-rise pants or plimsolls, although both of those aesthetics might be used by this or that subculture. Aesthetics wax and wane over the years (largely driven by corporate fast fashion, but that’s another discussion) but that movement is perpendicular to culture and ideology as such.

Being a hipster is the ideology of being a hipster, not just the aesthetic preference for thick-frame glasses and beanies. It was the rejection of the mainstream by a particular demographic, largely white urban/suburban youths, and replacing that with a distorted image of the imperial periphery. The periphery isn’t only geographical; it can include neglected communities inside the core itself, such as hillbillies and indigenous tribes. In a way, it continues a long history of psychological fixation by the privileged classes upon the underclasses. They have always been fascinated about life outside the garden, and that fascination manifests in imitation.

I don’t think hipster fashion can be reduced to farm aesthetic from the 1940s or any other period.

People have different reasons to rag on hipsters depending on their own politics, but the universal critique relates to the hollowness and hypocrisy of the trend. From the Marxist perspective it’s pretty clearly a shout into the void, a search for meaning in a capitalism devoid of meaning, which I sympathize with. But that’s precisely the thing about the hipster movement: it rebels by doubling down on the forces ostensibly critiqued by it.

Hipsters want authenticity. From an upper-middle-class, usually white perspective, they peer into perceived “authentic” cultures often of POC and global south. This is coupled with an increase in ✨wanderlust✨, white bougie people traveling to SE Asia or Latin America with a knapsack and a trust fund, with a plan to beg their way through their travels or work an odd job if they must. Back home in the suburbs and cities, they wear choice items that seem to embody the genuine culture of elsewhere. Obviously this is a cynical and materialistic way of obtaining authenticity. Aesthetic over substance, form over function. But that’s the logic of capitalism: culture is itself commodified. Rather than culture being the totality of one’s social existence, it can be congealed into aesthetic, into clothing and vintage record players.

Individualism is another key ethic of hipsterism. The struggle for authenticity immediately confronts a contradiction with privilege. Western individualism is essentially the reflection of privilege, because as a white wealthy person, you must believe in your own difference from the masses, your uniqueness that explains your privilege. But you cannot obtain the authenticity of common folk while refusing to drop privilege and superiority. Hence another layer of hypocrisy. Culture can not only be commodified, it can be worn and removed as necessary, as one would a hat, as the situation demands.

Again, I sympathize with the search for meaning. But meaning is to be found in real existence, not in materialistic consumption, nor in aesthetic.

Time reversal symmetry implies the transmogrification of corncobs into humans while saying the title

The only person here that I’m vaguely aware of is the first guy, from a few TikToks I saw. Royally pisses me off with his takes. Vulgar Marxist through and through. Has a kind of chuddy masculinity that weirds me out. I also am extremely sus of people who insist on “that’s DOCTOR midwestern Marx, show some respect”. That kind of hierarchical bs is quite foreign to my own philosophy. I’m not dogmatic on this point since I understand people have different reasons for it. If it’s not some inherently hierarchical mindset, it’s bourgeois academic brainworms the rest of the time.

Lesbian software

Relevant effortpost about deer “population control”

Eh, opsec around weddings is gonna be nonexistent. They also won’t change the date or venue just due to a leak.

I buy these but only for the 6 and 9