It feels like it’s fed shit all the way down.

Yeah, I’ve got a lot of half baked essays to be written about the dichotomization of the sciences from the arts and humanities. I think it leads to a lot of malformed thought processes and worldviews.

Engineers who literally can’t do basic financial and media analysis.

Lol, this one drives me nuts, because I love to talk about shows and movies with people (no one reads anymore) but even then it’s just the most surface-level vibes discussion. I guess my frustrations are just numerous, but I think the academy is much worse than I imagined it to be when I got here, and that’s been driving me crazy.

yeah, as cool as a general strike would be, labor in the US (speaking just for my country) is not remotely organized enough to pull it off. Getting dues-paying members of my union to even attend a twice-monthly zoom meeting is incredibly difficult. A strike? We just plainly don’t have the organizational capacity for something like that, let alone the will.
You call us feds, but I just don’t think you’ve really truly thought about what an action like that would require.

There’s arguments to be had about reach and influence, but Brian Becker on the Socialist Program and others on Liberation News/Breakthrough News (which are all at least somewhat affiliated with PSL) have had a pretty solid analysis of the Russia/Ukraine war since the start.
I sent this article from Liberation News to a lib (ex-)friend back in May 2022 (the articles says it was published in July, but I guess they edited it because I have my email receipts). I don’t disagree with your broad point, but I think it’s a bit more complicated, or you might be in a bit of a media bubble.

I got to see Amy-Jill Levine give a talk once, I found her book on the parables really interesting

I’ll be real, if I find an academic paper that looks solid from the abstract, I’ll have ChatGPT summarize a coupler sections for me, and if it seems worth my time, I’ll commit to reading the whole thing. I think there’s too much moralizing around the issue, and if you can use it to help you, then you should

This show very quickly became one of my top favorites after I found it

I did anaheim, cayenne, and habanero this year, and they all did really well; I’m having to learn how to dry them properly. I’m in zone 7b, and I was worried a little bit about the heat for a few weeks, but I just made sure to water them a little more often. I hope whatever you choose to grow you do well!

My peppers were so easy this year, and I got quite a few. A lot of my tomatoes got blight, though, which is a bummer :/
growing plants is pretty straight forward though, just give them a ton of sunlight and water every few days (if they’re outside)!

I know I’m preaching to the choir, but in Communism: The Highest Stage of Ecology, Suing makes a pretty strong argument, I believe, that most of the framework for the environmental degradation that did happen in the USSR came about under Krushchev, not Stalin. I know this is just supposed to be a hyperbolic comparison, but it’s not even an accurate one ffs.

Honestly I think if the term “cybernetics” had won over “artificial intelligence” there’d be less of this obfuscation. But “AI” is more marketable, and of course that’s all that matters.

I’ve accepted I’ll get the weird looks at the park when I walk my dog, but dammit I have a lot of thoughts

18 hour drive sounds awful, I’m glad you ended up making it ok!

What happened to ranting to yourself on the way to work? Hell, I ranted to myself for an entire 7 hour car ride once, kids these days don’t know shit

Trillbillies is the answer, much funnier than any of the other popular left-y podcasts

Oh yeah, that’s still basically a full move’s worth of stress. I think the piece-meal approach is the way to go, if you can swing it. It drags things out, but prevents a whole few days of overwhelming stress.

If we count different dorms in college I’ve moved over a dozen times in my life, and it’s still always so fucking terrible. There’s just no way to make it less painful without dropping thousands to pay for someone to do it for you. So, I feel your pain, good luck with the move🫡

Full spectrum war on treats?

live mulder reaction:

This would be wild, but I can’t find any evidence of him actually saying this