It’s estimated 27 million Russians died during WW2. OP is saying that number is attributable to Hitler. The best estimate given the revealed USSR archives, emigres, and informants puts deaths directly caused or the result of neglect attributable to Stalin is 6.5 million.

Basically the first half of the meme is anticommunist, misinformation that ignores the deaths caused by fascists.

That doesn’t help you understand his supporters though. You have to wade in the shit they call news. You have to hear what they say to begin to understand them.

You’re in a media bubble. It feels like there’s no way anyone could see it differently. The people who disagree with you are also in a media bubble and don’t understand how you could believe what you do.

For everything you said they

• don’t believe happened
• think it was a deep state plot
• believe it’s good actually and believing anything else means you want to kill babies or destroy the economy
• have never heard of it

Reality may have a leftist bias but most people don’t live in reality. Most people live in a reality constructed by corporate media. Social media is largely derivative of it.

Explain Like I’m Five

Libro.fm for stuff not at the library

Bike poggies are worth looking into to keep your hands warm. Studded tires can help with slipping too

Trees can explode actually 😅 Eucalyptus and Aspen trees are know to explode during bush fires.

They don’t explode unbidden like you might assume given Trump’s comment. He seems to do this a lot; he talks about something real, in a way that demonstrates he’s garbage at communicating anything even remotely technical.

The real solutions is of course tending our forests to ensure there’s not enough combustible material to cause dangerous fires. More resources for the forest service is essential. It makes me wonder if these gaffs are far more effective at directing our attention away from the substance of the problem with Trump

Lower Decks was my first star trek show. I’ve been enjoying The Next Generation so far. The first season was pretty bad. The second season was pretty good. The third season has been real good

Mexico is a bad example IMO. The Zapatistas are right there. That’s a pretty significant bit of territory the Mexican State has very little control over.

The bone conducting ones make me nauseous so I got a pair of Bose open earbuds. They’re not as good in loud environments but that’s kinda the point. I ride and listen to music with them daily

I don’t know what that has to do with anything. I’m a lefty, life has never mugged me. I’m a leftist because bad things happen to everyone and the solutions isn’t to hurt people until they’re better people. Giving people time and resources just makes people and society better.

Because billionaires are morally good, hard working, and smart. If a poor person was all those things they wouldn’t be poor /s

I don’t think it’s the source. I think it’s a tool of social control that enables the powerful to create a bare minimum willingness to be ruled. For a long time the doctrine of Christianity was the Divine Right of Kings. Now it’s the Prosperity Gospel. The books did not change but the people with all the money and power ensured the church leaders who served their interest had most of the money and thus followers.

If we didn’t have religion, some other social construct would arise, and I’d argue, has arisen to fulfill it’s role. Modern economic theory justifies the current power order in an unfalsifiable way that reminds me of religion.

Religion could be a liberatory force in society. In fact it has been. The liberation theology movement in South America and numerous heretical movements in the late medieval period are both examples of progressive Christian social movements.

That sort of thing can happen in extreme situations. Zimbabwe and Weimar Germany are the most prominent examples. Both examples involved not having enough stuff. When there aren’t enough necessary goods to buy and people have plenty of money you’re going to get inflation. Using the right combo of subsidies, government run production, purchase quantity limits, reserves, vouchers, and price fixing you can ensure the supply is stable and eliminate inflation even if there’s lots of money.

That’s true. That happens because people are stuck in the narrative of the government needing a balanced budget, just like a household. It also happens because the owners and the corpos use all their money and power to ensure workers pay taxes and thus decrease worker money and power.

Yeah, if the population was educated on MMT the ability to bring corpos to heel would be significantly increased. People arguing for it are fundamentally arguing for a change in how we think about money.

Netanyahu has propped up Hamas for decades in order to separate the West Bank from Gaza. There hasn’t been an election in Gaza for 18 years so nobody there had had the opportunity to choose an alternative anyway. Hamas didn’t even get the majority of votes in that election. Finally, plenty of people who don’t support Hamas, like queer folks and babies, are being indiscriminately murdered by the IDF.

The people in this photo are making a not uncomplicated but ultimately moral stance.

Yeah, I had to install a different launcher Bliss is not my style. I’ve been enjoying lawnchair tho

There’s another factor here. People who are vegan, sober, poly, don’t drive, and any number of choices are breaking societal norms. Most people don’t even think about these things as choices. They do the default. Realizing that there’s a choice, and that this person decided not to do the default, puts people off. It makes them uncomfortable. They begin to question things they’ve never had to evaluate.

That’s why I stopped using Google a few years ago. I moved to ddg and liked it pretty well. I switched to kagi earlier this year and it’s going pretty well. I still run into some captchas that refuse to let me pass. I usually just turn around at that point

I will say my Fairphone is a good bit thicker than my work Iphone but honestly it’s not a significant downside for me. The weight is a bigger deal but still not worth the trade-off for a phone I can be confident I can repair myself

The original definition is a community where private property is not a thing. Private property is when an individual can control the land, tools, and knowledge people need to survive. Private property is factories, not your toothbrush.

Most pro USSR, PRC, or Cuba leftists believe those countries governments controlling all or the vast majority of private property constitutes communism. Some think these countries are socialist and working their way to communism.

Many anti-communist people don’t really understand how these countries work specifically. All their ideas of what communism is are based on how they view the above communist countries.

Finally right wingers will describe California as communist because they have social programs and higher taxes than some states. Basically if the government is intervening in the market by supplying a service or good directly to a citizen that’s communism.

From what I’ve observed most people lie somewhere on this spectrum of definition.