• SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    10·
    7 hours ago

    Sometimes I try to ground myself by imagining the irrelevance I have within the universe. Voyager 1 just reached 1 light day away from Earth. It is the most distant human-made object out there. 25 billion kilometers from Earth.

    Our milky way has a diameter of 100 thousand light years. To give you an idea: Voyager 1 was launched nearly 49 years ago in 1977. At its current pace it would need nearly 1.8 billion years to cross just our galaxy. And there are 2 trillion galaxies out there as per our calculations, which are flawed as well.

  • amemorablename@lemmygrad.ml
    12·
    13 hours ago

    Was reading up on the term Hikikomori on wikipedia just cause that was the first result that came up in search and noticed how it mentioned neoliberalism like once and other than that it had this tone of like “this is such a hard problem, there are various factors involved.”

    Reformists always act like these things are super hard to figure out, but somehow fail to compare the system of power to societies where the issue doesn’t tend to occur. That’s the actually weird phenomenon, the feigned ignorance of anything that exists outside the status quo, not some people ending up as dependent recluses because capitalist society literally does not want to have a place for everyone and introduces scarcity on purpose; the fact that the daily operations of capitalism do not miss the presence of these people is a feature, not a bug. And in not missing them, it becomes very easy for them to exist apart from society. Society is not even meeting them halfway. Capitalists build a society based on “winners” and “losers”, where “winner” is synonymous with material success/power and “loser” is synonymous with material failure/isolation, and then act confused that some people exist in the “loser” category. As if they didn’t build the system to create and reproduce that dynamic.

    But they need the feigned confusion because admitting that society is rigged to screw over a bunch of people means it also isn’t the fault of the people being screwed over. As long as they keep the confusion narrative going, they can point and say “I guess it’s a you problem.”

  • Darkerseid@lemmygrad.ml
    12·
    1 day ago

    east is a podcast youtube channel is suspended

    ran by Iranian ml their podcast on apple podcasts is still up though

  • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    15·
    1 day ago

    Well, my unemployment is coming to an end. Maybe holiday is a better term because I wasn’t facing the danger of starvation or being homeless but technically I was unemployed for a few months. Nearly four months ago I was sitting at my desk and had enough. I stormed up to my boss his office and just said that I was quitting. Didn’t really have a plan.

    I tried to go on a literal pilgrimage to Santiago but after some weeks of walking I didn’t like it so I went home. Took some more trips left and right on my own to figure things out. Maybe the entire journey of it all was the pilgrimage I was looking for.

    I will have a blue collar job again after nearly a decade of working in an office. Curious to see how it goes.

    • ☭CommieWolf☆@lemmygrad.ml
      8·
      1 day ago

      If it is, good. Their training data is going to be half filled with stupid questions about sex and dating, from what I can remember about askreddit the last I was there, several years ago.

      • KrupskayaPraxis@lemmygrad.ml
        8·
        1 day ago

        Yeah I agree, it’s why I don’t check it out anymore. I remember being on a school computer checking the subreddit and almost all the posts were too inappropiate to open in public. Since then I never looked at Askreddit again. And I’m not a prudish person at all.

  • Darkerseid@lemmygrad.ml
    4·
    1 day ago

    has anyone read anything written by J Arch Getty, particularly The Road To Terror

    He is still critical of Stalin. Getty is referenced a fair amount by pro-Stalin scholars like Grover Furr

    found this rec on

    https://www.reddit.com/r/TrueAnon/s/AbOo7GVhZC

    Sure! I love this history.

Fitzpatrick and Getty are both "liberal" historians. I know Fitzpatrick came from a family of fellow travellers however. Her book *On Stalin's Team* is a great overview of the people who made up Stalin's inner circle from the 1920's up until his death. Some v amusing and heartwarming anecdotes in this one. Her book *Everyday Stalinism* is good as well.

J Arch Getty has written extensively on the great purge and was one of the first historians in the West to question the absurdly high death tolls. His book *The Road to Terror* is the "revisionist" take on the purge which emphasises the from below and mass participatory elements. He is still critical of Stalin, however. Getty is referenced a fair amount by pro-Stalin scholars like Grover Furr lmao.

Another book I'm currently reading is Terry Martin's *Affirmative Action Empire* about Soviet nationalities policy. It's great thus far.

Other historians to check out: Ronald Suny, Stephen Cohen, and Lars Lih. Have also heard good things about David Priestland's work. Orlando Figes and Stephen Kotkin have shitty politics but their work is decent as well.

I get lots of good recs from this substack: https://thestalinera.substack.com/. It's fairly pro-Stalin / pro-Soviet but grounded in the actual, verifiable history. The author is quite critical of Losurdo actually, who he sees as trying to hard to reconcile Stalinism with Dengism.
    • DornerStan@lemmygrad.ml
      4·
      18 hours ago

      I can’t remember my opinion on Getty specifically (I think mildly positive?), but my general opinion is any of them are as good as their sources, and anything between should be examined very critically (if not outright disregarded).

      Fitzpatrick’s primary research, for example, is valuable for the perspectives of those she’s interviewing (which themselves have a subjective relationship with the truth, we can’t forget) or the effort she’s spent reading the archives. But she will also cite Conquest and the like. And as with all historians, she’ll have a couple paragraphs of exposition or narrative between actual cited data, exposition which has multiple problematic layers in relation to the truth. So when I’m reading anyone, I’m mostly focused on the skeleton of cited data, less on the skin of narrativization.

      Casting a wide net is warranted due to this, rather than reading a single book cover to cover. Grab epubs off of libgen or wherever and don’t be afraid to follow a citation trail back.

      Regarding whether being cited should give a historian legitimacy: not very much, at least in controversial topics or revisionist works. When someone is advancing a thesis or argument, citing a person that supports the opposing view is a strong tactic (like citing Fox News to a conservative), since it acts as a sort of immanent critique. So revisionist school historians like Getty and Fitzpatrick have a tactical reason to cite people in the totalitarian school, because that’s who they’re in conversation with. Similar for apologists/MLs opting to cite western academics. There’s often a difference between a source that is more likely to best approximate the truth and a source that your target audience would find compelling.

      Someone trying to approach the truth as closely as possible will try to focus on sources as close to the event as possible. Someone trying to convince someone will focus on sources that resonate with the target audience. Someone trying to get published will focus on sources deemed acceptable by academia/industry. The latter two influences tend to dominate the first.

      Most of this is blathering that actually symbolizes frustration at my inability to retain information (like anything specific about Getty, whose books are packed away somewhere with the rest of my library).

  • Maeve@kbin.earth
    14·
    2 days ago

    We lost three in our tiny village in as many days. Make the most of what and who you have.

    I’m grateful I have this community and got to mind travel a little while with you fine people.

  • SlayGuevara@lemmygrad.ml
    18·
    2 days ago

    A far right party opened their own school in The Netherlands today. Got 200k government support because ‘freedom of education’. They have a poster of Dutch colonies because they are proud of Dutch colonialism. One of their teachers was caught sending antisemitic messages on WhatsApp some time ago.

    Currently a whopping number of four children attend the school. They need like 100+ more in a few years to keep getting subsidies.

  • reallybigShell@lemmygrad.ml
    7·
    2 days ago

    What are some good substacks/medium pages. I just moved into a new apartment and the internet isn’t up yet (I have to pay for it) and i can’t watch youtube videos (it will deplete my phone data too much) so I want to do some reading