I’m not organized enough.

I’m technically in three local groups, but I don’t have time to really contribute to even one of them as much as I’d like.

Maybe (anonymously?) contact their union to warn about it?

The Germans teach about the genocide they committed, because they get a sick sense of moral superiority out of pretending to have denazified.

All the while it does nothing to prevent their complicity in the ongoing genocide in Palestine.

Got it, thanks.

Why did the rain impact the crossbows more? Was it because the longbowmen were better trained in rain or something?

Nice! I wish, I had had more. I’m basically self taught with podcasts and stuff.

Cool! I hope to befriend some crows someday.

Yes, I know, it’s great! Just thought wikipedia might be enough in this case.

Yes I totally agree, it’s almost opposite. That’s partly why I said I don’t agree with the content, just the sentiment. Even as I wrote it, I wondered if someone would pick up on it. I’ll put more care into it before posting random associations next time ;)

Nietzsche might not have liked those chuds though.

The idea of making the position of landlord into a minor deity is much more similar to the divine right of kings, in that ownership of land is divinely ordained, or antebellum pro-slavery Christianity, being a slaver is a necessary and holy thing.

Well said!

That’s cool, that he comes towards you. Does he already know you? Because last time I tried to feed unknown crows and they noticed me looking at them for two seconds, they got scared, even though I was like 10 meters away and other people had been passing closer than me. You could almost see a small exclamation mark above their head before they flew off. I still left some food and they came back to it, once I was further away.

Master-Slave-Morality

By saying humility is voluntary, slave morality avoids admitting that their humility was in the beginning forced upon them by a master.

I don’t agree with Nietzsche on morality, as it’s not a materialist analysis, but still… Seeing people elevate bootlicking to a religion always makes one want to overturn all of ethics. (Not unique to these cases of course, christians did it on large scales.)

Maybe there will be some difference. Last administration he seemed to focus on representing a slightly different section of US capitalists then Obama/Biden (however with large overlap). Different parts of capital have different and partly conflicting interests, which might result in slightly different foreign policy.

Basically it’s less about which person is in office and more about what this means for how power is distributed among capitalist factions. For example capitalists with a lot of profit depending on fixed capital inside the US might gain power, as well as the industrial military complex with profit coming from accumulation by dispossession, while highly mobile international capital might lose a bit. This is just an example. In this case it might lead to slightly less hot wars, while the war machine continues to grow. There are more factions like landlords and finance and resource extraction.

It’s hard to tell now though, because these factions are probably now still fighting about power behind the scenes with very little transparency.

Also it depends not just on the interests of these factions, but also on what their respective strategies will be in dealing with the decline of the empire and inevitable crisis.

I’m happy to hear that! If you want to look into Federici, the book I mentioned is online here: archive.org

The idealist would look at patriarchy, racism and capitalism and naively conclude, that at some point our thinking went wrong. That the wrong ideas got popular, because people just happens to be wrong about them. A constructivist idealist might propose changing how we think about stuff to change these bad ideas.

A materialist, would realize that, patriarchy, racism and capitalism are more than bad ideas but really oppressive power structures with very real grounding in material contradictions in the way society is materially reproducing itself. As such, attacking them merely in the realm of ideas without also changing those structures, is doomed to fail.

For example the current rise of fascism, which threatens trans people, is not solely a consequence of people believing bad ideas, but a reaction of the ruling class to the growing crisis tendencies in a falling empire, which the materialist can ultimately trace back to things like the tendency of the rate of profits to fall. That’s why fascism will never be defeated under capitalism.

However, you can still think of constructivist techniques as useful tools for deconstructing oppressive structures and narratives, even while being a materialist.

The Marxist author Silvia Federici in her work “Caliban and the Witch” explains how emerging capitalism needed to enforce a gender binary, sexism and the separation of wage labor in the factories and unpaid reproductive labor at home (reproducing the ability to work). She treats it as a form of primitive accumulation similar to the enclosure of the commons and colonialism. This helped to provide capital with the push to get started and also served to divide the working class.

Ah, that makes sense, thanks for taking the time!

And just to come full circle:

Baalbek, named after Baal, is an ancient city in the Beqaa plane in Lebanon. It was known as the bread basket of the Roman empire. The Romans build the largest temples outside of Rome there and allowed worship of Baal to continue in the large entrance building in front of the Jupiter temple. The temples stood in good condition for centuries and are now under threat by IDF bombing, which has already come as close as 500 meters, while every building in the city has been declared a target and it’s people ordered to evacuate.

She will and after that eat some noodles.

Good effort comment, thanks! Are you sure about merit based evaluation for MJ? Wouldn’t people just strategically exaggerate their grades?

MJ encourages honest evaluation because exaggerating grades can backfire if too many others don’t follow suit.

I guess I don’t quite understand this point. Why wouldn’t everyone exaggerate grades?

Dolphin liberals would just tell all the dolphins to give dolphin Harris an excellent grade, insisting she was excellent in comparison to dolphin Trump. (Sorry to break out of the thought experiment.) So this:

This can help identify when all candidates are weak

wouldn’t happen when all the dolphins try to game the system. Did I misunderstand?

You said, all your feelings start bubbling up. So that sounds like more feelings come to the foreground other than existential dread. Maybe those are important too. In that case you could ask yourself what kind of feelings those are and maybe try to just sit with them and notice how they go away or become less intense after a while.

Existentialist philosophy recommends accepting existential dread/anxiety/absurdity as the only way to live an authentic, free life in which we might eventually build our own meaning. Monist philosophies (like mystic tendencies) emphasize the interconnectedness of things and maybe find comfort in seeing separation as an illusion.

Any way, accepting your feelings without judgement is good in general. And like others said, mindfulness based meditation might help.

Disclaimer: in case of existing traumas, mindfulness meditation can be dangerous to try alone, as it might cause people to relive their trauma. And in case of depression, it might not be enough on its own without cognitive behavioral therapy or addressing underlying causes.

Wow, I do the exact same thing sometimes! Also watched allot of Star Trek. It’s not ideal for me, because it’s not a calm topic, but if I can’t help thinking about these things anyway, might as well. How does it work for you? Any tips, what (else) to think about when falling asleep?

It’s just that normal gravity on earth feels exactly like being in an accelerating elevator in space. So you can’t tell the difference from the inside. Like in the elevator you can ask them, whether you’re still on earth or accelerating in space. Einstein used this thought experiment to develop the general theory of relativity.

Basically Einstein thinking about that weird feeling you get in your gut when an elevator starts upwards led to him concluding that mass bends spacetime making light from distant stars go in curves around the sun, which was confirmed during the next available solar eclipse.