history Greenleaf • 1 month ago • 97%

www.theguardian.com

An article about how in the GDR a state-owned firm developed a damn-near unbreakable glass. Of course as with most other industries in the GDR, the plant got bought out by western interests and stripped for parts. We’re told it’s because “socialism is inefficient” but this is a good example of how that’s bullshit - the commies made something of such high quality it was deemed “unmarketable” because retailers wouldn’t have more repeat purchases of people who broke their glasses. Not even because they were too expensive! As the article states these glasses were ubiquitous across the GDR. The article is mostly free a brainworms except one odd digression where the author states that no one knew who the glass designers were because in the GDR they valued the collective over the contributions of the individual. Hey, without Googling, can you tell me who came up with idea for Yeti mugs? Or the Stanley cups? Just a weird point to make, like in any society people have any clue who is designing fucking *drinkware*.

chapotraphouse Greenleaf • 2 months ago • 100%

Based on the coconut tree from which I fell, my IRL social circle skews heavily towards white, conservative evangelical and Catholic types. I also have an unhealthy obsession with following these same politically conservative white evangelical individuals and groups on social media. And what’s surprising to me is, since shortly after Oct 7, it seems that the overwhelming opinion of relatively younger (let’s say under 40) people in this demo is at least some sort of soft anti-Israel opinion. The boomers, they still have that Fetterman-esque love for Israel. But younger conservatives… I usually see opinions about how we shouldn’t send Israel any more money, or acknowledging that Israel is committing a genocide. And it seems like it’s the overwhelming opinion from young conservatives, too. I’m sure there’s plenty of younger conservatives that do support Israel, but anecdotally that group feels very small. That’s not to say I’m seeing a lot of *pro-Palestinian* sentiment, because I’m not. That’s probably a bridge too far for them. Also probably related to the fact that most Americans are just so incredibly ignorant about what goes on in other parts of the world, they can’t formulate full thoughts on these issues. For months now, I’ve been all geared up to argue with anyone I know IRL who supports Israel. But it’s just never happened. Either people care or have any opinion one way or another, or they are critical of Israel. Not what I was expecting. I wonder if AIPAC and Israel realize just how much they’ve lost younger Americans, probably for good (not that they care, they’ll just keep buying off American politicians).

politics Greenleaf • 2 months ago • 100%

To which I say… bring it on! While I know the attack will be nothing more than red baiting, it would amazing if people actually started looking into what he’s actually been writing about and saying. My understanding is that he’s a Marxian economist and not, say, a Marxist philosopher or whatever. And - much like Marx himself - Kamala’s dad is far more focused on critiques of actually existing capitalism than how to bring about communism. Hilarious if the GOP starts to make the campaign about him, then people actually see what he says and then they’re like “hang on a sec, let him cook this stuff he’s saying about how the economy actually works makes sense to me.” Edit: I added the quotes around “has a Marxist dad” in the title because, now that I’m doing some research, I don’t see anywhere where he’s self-identified as a Marxist. It appears he uses Marx’s analytic tools and speaks highly of Marx, but I also wouldn’t want to put words in his mouth. There are plenty of academics in economics and other fields like history and anthropology who think highly of Marx and apply his methods but wouldn’t consider themselves Marxists.

chapotraphouse Greenleaf • 2 months ago • 99%

Not exactly a revelation to Hexbear users but it’s a shower thought I just had. Death to America.

fitness Greenleaf • 2 months ago • 96%

I already run, but I would like to incorporate some total body strength training. Just to stay health and build enough strength to be able to stay fit and limber. I’ve got that “Homemade Muscle” book that seems to be what I’m looking for, but want to see if you all have any recommendations. I’m also trying to figure if there’s some low cost equipment I should add that would help. Like those variable weight dumbells, I think I could afford those. But a full set a weight plates is well beyond what I can afford.

chapotraphouse Greenleaf • 3 months ago • 97%

Obviously it wasn’t like those child emperors wielded any power whatsoever. They were just a sieve by which whatever the rich and powerful wanted would happen. I was thinking about how Trump himself isn’t “dangerous”. He’s a moron who doesn’t actually care about anything policy-related. But it’s specifically because of that, he simply enacts whatever the capitalists pulling the strings in the GOP want - and no doubt, the GOP’s agenda is *awful*. Of course, that doesn’t make Biden any different. The man clearing has pudding for brains now. It’s obvious Nuland was and Blinken now are running the show in foreign policy. And even if there’s a different group of capitalist who support the Democrats, ultimately what they want is largely the same as the GOP capitalists. Good times up ahead…

games Greenleaf • 3 months ago • 100%

I’m in the fortunate and privileged position of having some very long term friends in my life. Unfortunately, we’re now spread across the country. We’d like to try and keep our social connection by playing a TTRPG over zoom or something. I have never played a TTRPG before. I really got into Disco Elysium and that’s got me interested in TTRPGs. Other friends have been interested for years but no one’s bothered to try and organize something. So all of us have zero experience with running an actual game. And no one to guide us through it who has experience. I’m looking for recommendations for a TTRPG for us get started on. Needs to work over Zoom. I’d say the most important aspect is that it’s fun and social. “Fun” sounds like an obvious one but the reality is I have one shot to make playing TTRPGs “stick” with this group. If my friends don’t have a great time with it we’ll probably not play after this. Happy to answer any questions about myself or my group that would help you come up with a recommendation.

history Greenleaf • 3 months ago • 100%

I don’t know. I look at the evidence and details from the trial… and idk. I trust my fellow Hexbears have good, informed opinions on this. Honestly same question about Tukhachevsky. If anything I’m probably more inclined to think he was innocent than Bukharin.

podcasts Greenleaf • 3 months ago • 100%


marxism Greenleaf • 4 months ago • 100%

I heard Engels gets some things wrong like applying dialectical materialism to the natural sciences (which Marx didn’t agree with) but overall it’s pretty good?

electoralism Greenleaf • 4 months ago • 97%

“bUt TrUmP WiLL tUrN AmERicA fascist” Don’t care, we’re already there anyway and the Democrats were the junior partners in making this place a fascist hellhole anyway. I literally do not care what happens to this country anymore. We deserve sooo much worse than 9/11. If there’s a god then this country deserves divine judgement. Death - and I cannot emphasize this enough - to America. I will vote for anyone who promises to stop American imperialism. But since that describes precisely no one in either of the two major parties, I guess I’m not voting for any of them then.

videos Greenleaf • 5 months ago • 100%

m.youtube.com

Damn, girl’s hella talented.

chapotraphouse Greenleaf • 5 months ago • 100%

Claiming you want to see the downfall of the CPC is akin to wishing for the deaths of all 1.4 billion people: Reverse uno card on all those “criticizing Israel is antisemitic” freaks.

memes Greenleaf • 5 months ago • 100%

I kinda don’t like this meme because Garak is cool and the IOF-satzgruppen is incredibly evil.

chapotraphouse Greenleaf • 5 months ago • 100%

Thought this was an interesting analysis, though I think it needs to be taken with a bit of a grain of salt (I think it’s power is what is qualitatively describes rather than precise numbers, and I think the author might even agree with me). I’m always on the lookout to see it quantified how much the average American benefits from imperialism. My guy says if the US was unable to exert hegemony, the US would experience *at least* what Russia experienced in the 90s. These numbers align with that; and this is only talking about dollar hegemony and not, for example, the US using military pressure, sanctions, or other methods for extracting cheaper resources and goods from the global south. That said, I’m not sure you can just run a regression and get your answer. I don’t see how you can isolate the US losing dollar hegemony without it then creating an uncountable number of secondary effects. All this stuff is deeply interconnected. But that said, I think this does a good job of highlighted at least in a qualitative sense just how much Americans benefit from dollar hegemony, and how losing that would be huge problem for the US economy.

chapotraphouse Greenleaf • 5 months ago • 100%

My single issue is “anti-genocide”. I wonder which party is more anti-genocide 🤔

Can’t find the year it was painted. 

news Greenleaf • 5 months ago • 99%

The girl’s mother and her sister were also murdered in the same attack on Khan Younis. Reminds me of [this photo](https://www.nbcnews.com/id/wbna4261858) from 20 years ago.

chapotraphouse Greenleaf • 5 months ago • 100%

As always, Death to America 

chapotraphouse Greenleaf • 6 months ago • 100%

This wasn’t in a rural area or impoverish inner ring suburb. This was in an older but perfectly nice suburb of a large midwestern US city. I had two friends at the time who were just out of college and teaching in public schools. And they both bought houses. One had a spouse who was working (normal job, not high pay or anything) but the other was single. I know for a fact they didn’t have any help from parents. I do know they both had most of their school paid through scholarships so little to no college debt, fwiw. Went on google street view to check out the houses - not large but definitely comfy. Around 1,600-1,700 sq ft single family homes with a yard and everything. Something a small family would be comfortable in. And I mean, I was looking at buying a home around that time, too (and for years afterward). My salary was above the national median but not that much above it. There were lots of options - the only reason I didn’t buy was because my life situation was not stable. I don’t live in that city anymore but looking at my salary now and what’s available on the market, buying a home is pretty much out of reach for me. Certainly what I could get now, in terms of square footage, is drastically reduced. I’m not even taking into account current interest rates, I was just plugging in numbers at the old 4%. *That’s how fast material conditions have eroded for a lot of Americans*. This is what journalists who write this articles about “aww why are young people so down these days, they should just cheer up all that bad stuff is all in their head” completely miss. Probably because in all likelihood, they bought a house a couple decades ago and are secure themselves. It’s why the dems’ bullshit about how the economy is so great is so offensive to us. It’s a denial of reality. Generational politics is bunk, but I also think inequality should be thought of along multiple axes. One is whether or not you bought a house 15-20 years ago or not. If you did, then you’re sitting on a mortgage that is relatively low which makes your material conditions comfortable. You’re not feeling the effects of the bad economy as much. If you’re under 30, then it’s not possible to be in that situation.

chapotraphouse Greenleaf • 6 months ago • 100%

Because: 1.) Fuck the troops. US soliders in Vietnam were every bit as genocidal as IOF troops today. 2.) The whole idea that Vietnam was holding any POWs after the Paris peace accords was a total lie made from whole cloth. There has never been any evidence presented that there were any POWs being held after the war and anyone who spends 10 minutes on the internet reading about it will come to that conclusion. Seeing this flag burn, in emoji form, would be nice.

chapotraphouse Greenleaf • 6 months ago • 100%

I haven't really come up with anything smart to say about this. Probably because pointing out hypocrisy is pointless most of the time. Like, it doesn't matter, no one cares. But the 1932-33 Soviet famine (commonly called "The Holodomor") gets all the attention for being a man-made famine. Despite the fact that no legit historians believe this, even those who hate the USSR like Robert Conquest. At the worst, the Soviet leadership and Stalin were slow to act and believe reports on the ground (don't @ me, Stalin and the Soviet leadership admitted this themselves) but once they did understand the problem, the immediately put what resources they could into mitigating the famine. It was an incredible human tragedy, but it wasn't the result of intentional genocide. Meanwhile right now, in Gaza, there is an UNDENIABLE intentional, artificial famine being conducted on the part of Israel with the full intention of genociding the population. What is happening in Gaza is what libs *think* happened in Ukraine in the 1930s. And yet, so many Americans are either supportive of the actions being taken, or are at the very least passively supportive of the US' and Joe Biden's role in this intentional famine. I'm not even sure what to say, it's such a disconnect.

sino Greenleaf • 6 months ago • 100%

This is some *amazing* art. I mean, the book sounds great so I’ll buy it anyway, but even if it wasn’t, this is gorgeous. I might even have to make a poster out of it.

askchapo Greenleaf • 6 months ago • 99%

So many libs keep telling me if I don’t vote for Biden that Trump will pass all these anti-trans laws that Biden and the Democrats would of course have stopped. I tell them my trans comrades on Hexbear all say I shouldn’t vote for Biden but these libs just keep asking for the proper documentation.

bloomer Greenleaf • 7 months ago • 98%

This comment made my day, just felt it was something more people should see. Thank you, [@ShimmeringKoi@hexbear.net](https://hexbear.net/u/ShimmeringKoi) https://hexbear.net/comment/4673355

effort Greenleaf • 7 months ago • 100%

I was looking up economic data on the former Eastern Bloc and came across [this table on the Statista website](https://www.statista.com/statistics/1073152/gdp-per-capita-east-bloc-west-comparison-1950-2000/). Let’s unpack this a bit, shall we? This chart compares GDP per capita of various Eastern Bloc countries versus the European Union at three different points: 1950, 1989, and 2000. GDP is an incredibly flawed metric for measuring an economy. It is tailor-made to make capitalist, imperialist economies look better and to make exploited and socialist economies look worse; so already, by comparing GDP figures we are spotting the capitalist countries a bunch of points. For more information on the flaws of GDP, check out John Smith’s *Imperialism in the 21st Century*. And of course, GDP per capita completely ignores how income and wealth are distributed within a country. In a more equal country (like the USSR), the median person will have a much higher standard of living than the median person in a country with the same GDP per capita but is much more unequal (like the USA). GDP per capita doesn’t mean much if a small number of people hold all the wealth. I’m not sure how much useful information we can take away from comparing the changes from 1950 to 1989. Some of the communist countries improve versus the EU, some do worse, and some (USSR) basically tread water. Given how much larger the Soviet economy was compared to the others, I’ll make a couple notes here. The period 1950-1989 means you have only about 6 years of the more “Stalinist” economy and then 33 years of the economy after Khrushchev’s “reforms”. So this data says, despite the economic problems that occurred under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, the USSR still held their own against the EU. Further, the 1989 end point feels a bit like cheating. At that point Gorbachev’s death drive was in full swing. I suspect if you chose say 1985 or even 1986, the USSR comparison point might actually have been higher than in 1989, again despite all the problems that were going on in the Soviet economy. But then again, the 1989 data point only further reinforces how bad things would get. According to [Growth Crystal](https://crystalbook.ru/wp-content/uploads/2021/05/growth-crystal-ENG.pdf), GDP growth from 1956-1991 was still 4.9%. The comparison between 1989 and 2000 is truly staggering to wrap your head around. Every country except Poland sees a *massive* decline in GDP per capita relative to the EU (and not like things really improve much in Poland, they more or less hold steady). In the span of just 11 years, for the USSR this comparison goes from 49% to 24%! And remember, that 49% is already a little “deflated” in that it includes a lot of Gorby’s fuck ups. This incredible drop in GDP also does not show the incredible amount of human suffering tied to that drop - over a million lives lost, countless others broken and destroyed. Now, a liberal who’s going through this may say sure, the 90s were rough. But that was just some necessary structural adjustment in the transition from inefficient socialism to efficient capitalism. And sure, 2000 was now 24 years ago and that is a lot of time. But also according to Growth Crystal (ibid), economic growth in Russia since 1999 has been 3.8% per year. That’s… fine. But not exactly world-beating. Importantly, when comparing “what might have been”, you have to take into account the economic collapse of the 90s that was entirely due to capitalism. I did some *very* rough math, and the total average annual rate of economic growth in the USSR (using the Russian Federation as a proxy post-1991) since the fall of the USSR has been around 1%. That’s about as bad as a country can possibly be over a sustained period of time. I think this last point is very important. Libs will compare the present-day situation in the former Eastern Bloc to what it was in 1991, as if they would be frozen in time from that point on. But that is far from what could be reasonably expected had the USSR not collapsed. Yes, even before Gorbachev, the USSR had some serious problems in the economy. You know who also has problems in their economy? *Literally every country*. There’s no economy out there that just runs perfect - capitalist, socialist, and everything in between. The US has problems. The EU has problems. Even China has problems. What those countries don’t always have is leadership (hey, let’s not pin *all* of this on Gorbachev alone) that through some combination of incompetency, corruption, and misguided ideals that takes dramatic steps to wreck their own economy. So let’s come up with a very conservative, plausible alternate path for the USSR post-1985 or so. Really, we just have to assume Gorby doesn’t get a chance to screw things up. But let’s assume instead, Soviet leadership in the late 80s just does some very basic course correcting. Like, a lot of the problems can still be not totally addressed. But assume leadership does get some of the “low-hanging fruit” like accomplishing some anti-corruption initiatives and adopting some tech-driven solutions to economic planning. Just enough to stabilize things a bit. In this scenario, all that the Soviet Union has to do is beat that ~1% economic growth figure, and then the people of the former USSR are better off today if the USSR never collapsed. This is such a low bar to clear, I don’t see how the USSR *doesn’t* achieve this. It’s frankly sandbagging to assume a socialist country that achieved solid economic growth for decades even in bad times couldn’t see 2-3% growth over 30-35 years. Even if you’re a lib and think a socialist economy is fundamentally flawed, you can’t reasonably think this scenario would not likely be achieved. Personally, I think had the USSR survived, they would have eventually stabilized by following a more Dengist path or going all-in on cybernetic central planning once the power of computing was fully realized. Either way, the Soviet economy eventually stabilizes. And it bears repeating, we’re just talking about per capita GDP. Even if alternate universe USSR only saw 1% growth and overall the economies of the two Russias were the same, communist Russia will have a much more equal distribution of wealth, meaning the average worker is much better off under socialism even under the same aggregate outcome. Of course, it’s not just about economic growth. Had the USSR not been murdered, all the human suffering that occurred in the 90s could have been avoided. None of this had to happen. Even if you think socialism is flawed and even if the USSR didn’t fix all of their problems, the present world is a worse world than if socialism in the Eastern Bloc was not murdered (and it most definitely did not die of natural causes, it was *murdered*).

memes Greenleaf • 7 months ago • 100%

Hate that it’s Ted Cruz, though.

chapotraphouse Greenleaf • 8 months ago • 100%

To clarify something, I’m not some boug. I worked at a job for years where they put money into a 401k as part of the benefits, and I was there long enough that it vested. So I have a few grand that’s locked up in an IRA that I can’t get into until I retire. Here’s my simple strategy: I’m putting everything into Chinese index funds / stonk ETFs. My rationale: **it’s all about the emotional risk management.** What I mean by that statement is, in the past when one of my sports teams I root for has made it into the final round of the playoffs, I would place a small bet *against* them. Because if they win, I won’t care that I lost some money. But if they lose, I’ll at least have a bit more $$$ in my pocket, it’s a small consolation but it helps. So how does this relate to China and investing? The way I see it, there’s likely one of two scenarios for where the Chinese economy will be a few decades from now when I can take that money out. Either A.) the CPC more or less just continues on with what it’s been doing since Deng. Continue to develop the productive forces, continue to rack up W after W while the west implodes on itself, and the Chinese corporations I’m invested in will do great - stonks go up and I have a nice little savings built up. Or B.) CPC pushes the communism button in 2050 or so, they nationalize all the corporations, and I lose the whole investment. But you know what, WHO CARES?! THEY PUSHED THE BUTTON! That would literally be the best thing that I could ever see happen in my lifetime, and the last thing I would care about would be my IRA. Seems like no matter what, I end up a winner 😎

askchapo Greenleaf • 9 months ago • 100%

For this hypothetical, let’s say it’s not aliens actually visiting earth. But let’s say JWST finds a planet maybe a few hundred light years away, and we can see lights and cities and maybe spaceships or stuff like that around it. So no contact, but 100% proof there’s intelligent life out there. How would humans (and different groups of humans, like conservative Christians) react to this?