We had 385k views on a video for TikTok, but after that our reach got severely reduced, probably because we didn’t post enough or didn’t post in the right format. You can see our profile here: https://www.tiktok.com/@prolewiki
TikTok is a very insular platform, they barely leave it because it has everything they want on it. What we found from our usage of TikTok is that on 385k views, you had maybe 10 of them check out the website. Compared to Twitter where on 100k views, we can get 100-200 people checking out the website on threads (with a call to action).
There’s probably something we can work out, I’ll have to think about it and get back to you if that sounds good.
I believe the log entry you shared comes from a beehaw moderator, as the comment was made on one of their communities and I know they sometimes remove comments or ban people with this reason.
The moderation log is shared across all federated instances. I.e. since Lemmy.ml federates with beehaw, they both contain each other’s entries. It’s a bit confusing and I’m not sure why this feature was added, it didn’t use to work like that lol. But it wasn’t a removal done by the lemmy.ml team.
Labour aristocracy would probably fit you the best. The labour aristocracy isn’t really a class in the Marxist sense, but it’s a good “in-between” to proletariat and petite bourgeoisie, as the labour aristocracy are still technically proletariat and yet tends to identify with the petite bourgeoisie. It doesn’t prevent one from becoming a communist of course, this applies to the non-class-conscious workers. We can also understand the labour aristocracy as the placated proletariat, the subset that gets benefits so as to reduce their class consciousness.
Otherwise you would be proletariat.
They actually serve a very important purpose as we can’t analyse the data as deep as we’d like (example: look at the subset that answered White, and see what they answered on the other questions). I don’t want to spoil the results yet to avoid priming other survey-takers, but it’s already given us an interesting insight!
Europeans don’t tend to identify as “white”
I assure you we have no problem identifying as white when required 😉 but I could see that this could be a difficult question to answer for Europeans who wouldn’t identify as white, as was historically the case in some regions.
Personally I never had any results from home workouts because I just can’t get into the mindset; you always have the possibility of stopping mid-workout. At a gym or other dedicated space, once you’re there you figure as long as you made the trip you should stay and finish up. But your mileage may vary.
It’s also difficult to overload when you’re limited in the weights you have at home, and the lack of equipment prevents some very interesting exercises, like the back hyperextension on the purposely made bench:
I don’t know you personally but I still agree with your doctors, it sounds like your problems could be solved with exercise. It’s good that you have this confirmation at least, it tells us you have options.
I have slight scoliosis and my lower back also hurt sometimes, but now that I’m fitter, my lumbar muscles help keep the spine in place and I have completely stopped feeling any pain in my lower back. Same thing for the tendons, I expect you spend hours on the computer, like most people these days, which means your arms are always bent and your tendons become soft.
For the back problems you normally would look at weighted back exercises that target the location of your pain. Your back is all muscle but essentially there’s the shoulderblades, upper back, and lower back.
For the tendons, this is fixed with exercises that work your tendons indirectly, like the bench press: most of the weight will go into your chest, shoulders and arms, and your tendons should be spared. They will then slowly reinforce. You should find an exercise that doesn’t hurt your tendons (personally I had better luck with barbell exercises than dumbbell exercises when I had my tendinitis), and you should also stretch your tendons throughout the day:
(do both: palm facing out, palm facing in, both arms, throughout the day).
Is it possible for you to visit the gym on your commute? E.g. leave work -> go to gym -> go home? How about other facilities, like a pool?
I’m of the opinion that you really can’t beat resistance training, muscles are the basis of a healthy life and transfer to everything you do – the cliche of the bodybuilder who can’t touch his toes is exactly a cliche. But there’s a low-impact cardio exercise you can do at home if you get a rowing machine
They’re super expensive and you only do a pulling motion, which means no pushing muscles will be involved. But it could be a solution if you want to train at home. There’s other cardio machines of course, like treadmills or bikes, at varying price ranges but I like to recommend the rower because it works your whole body and is low-impact.
Also check out this guide: https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Essay:A_nutrition_and_fitness_guide. You can start working on your weight or physical fitness independently of the other.
On Twitter they’re sharing a story of an apparent Russian soldier who talks about the dam and how Russia benefits from it. I don’t get it, all Russians are invaders and liars, except for this one random vlogger, you can trust him? lol
Some people said he had a Ukrainian last name but I think it’s more likely this guy is making shit up to sound interesting lmao
I see a lot of people making a convincing case it was a Ukrainian hit job, and I’ve even seen a somewhat convincing case that it was just an accident and nobody is to blame (but I don’t think dams usually fall apart like that lol).
So far I’ve only seen NAFO bots shouting “russian propaganda” when asked to present evidence as to why Russia would destroy their own dam. Only reason I’ve been able to glean is that it makes an offensive more difficult in this area and lets them reposition troops somewhere else… for all the three months that the water will be there.
The war increases risk of nuclear attack, creates the surge of weapons into the region which is ending up with reactionaries committing atrocities in the Donbas region, to organized criminals and even to places much further away
Yeah, you’ll see, I’ve been saying this for a while but the Banderites that got weapons and training from NATO are not going anywhere after the war, they’ll still be alive.
And what do fascists usually do when they get weapons?
These weapons will find themselves into criminal organisations as well as in the hands of terrorists, not solely the Banderites, who will terrorise not only Europe but the whole world. Some of these weapons have already been found on the black market.
Complete denazification is never negotiable anyway.
There was a CIA-funded coup in Ukraine in 2014 (Euromaidan https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/2014_Ukrainian_coup_d'etat), after which a Banderite president, Porochenko, got into power.
Bandera was a Ukrainian fascist who gleefully collaborated with the Nazis during WW2 (https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Organization_of_Ukrainian_Nationalists).
Because of their shared past inside the USSR, Ukraine and Russia’s borders and history got mingled, and Krushchev gave Ukraine the region of Crimea in 1954. The people in the Donbass region, to this day, are ethnically Russians but with a Ukrainian nationality.
Things worked out fine until the Banderites started making a comeback. When Porochenko assumed the “presidency” of this fine “democracy”, he start promoting Ukrainian nationalism and indeed exceptionalism. Russian was no longer considered an official language and the people in the Donbass slowly were becoming second class citizens.
Moreover, a worrying turn of events was that Ukraine, since 2014, was rapidly rehabilitating their Nazi past with pride. New Bandera statues were being put up. This map gives an interesting outlook on the divide Ukraine was facing as an “independent” state:
2014 is also around the time the Azov Battalion was formed (https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Azov_Battalion), named after either the town of Azov, in the Donetsk Oblast – the same one that seceded from Ukraine – or the neighbouring sea. Their goal was to terrorise the people living in the Donbass with full government support. I think it’s not hyperbole to say they were trying to ethnically cleanse their ethnic Russian minority who, let’s remember, were Ukrainian citizens.
This eventually led to a civil war that has been raging since 2014 and is still going on, except Russia is now involved directly.
The first kickoff that got Russia involved was the attacks on Crimea, which like I said belonged to Russia before Krushchev the revisionist gave it to Ukraine. So Russia moved their troops in (I’m iffy on the details of when and why exactly), a referendum was eventually held, and Crimea decided to join the RF.
Russia under Putin of course considers the people of the Donbass and Crimea as Russians, and I personally think there is merit to the claim that Putin wants to repatriate Russian regions into the RF. As for the Donbass, the “People’s republic” (mostly in name, they weren’t really socialist) proclaimed themselves in the Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts, which Russia recognized. Thus the RF became involved in this civil war originally as more of a passive supporter, promoting a dialogue and then, when the agreements were achieved, soldiers from the RF were sent to the Donbass to set up checkpoints and prevent more incursions into the oblast, notably from Azov.
This dialogue led to the Minsk I and Minsk II agreements. It first led to Minsk I which essentially said stop shelling the Donbass and let them live in peace as Ukrainian-Russians (and when I say shelling, I mean it: they were using mortars and other military weapons on civilians in the Donbass). Ukraine signed the agreement and then promptly went back to shelling their own citizens.
So Minsk II was signed and again Ukraine ignored it and continued terrorizing their people.
Eventually, Zelensky was elected in 2019 and… nobody in Ukraine seemed to care. There’s a video, if I can find it, floating around the Internet of Zelensky meeting with his troops at the frontline in 2019 or 2020 and telling them to stop attacking the Donbass and the soldier he’s talking to just doesn’t give a shit. This guy has no authority whatsoever, just because there was an election after the coup doesn’t make Zelensky an actual authority figure.
From what I understand Zelensky takes his orders from the Banderites running the country currently, and the Banderites take their orders from NATO.
So the shelling continued, the people in the Donbass were still fighting, Russia was at a stalemate but was clear in not getting involved directly for the Donbass. Meanwhile in the western media the Banderite legacy and revival of Ukraine was completely ignored as they focused on running yellow journalism “trust me bro Putin is totally going to invade Ukraine tomorrow trust me” articles year after year between 2014-2022.
Except suddenly in 2021 Ukraine started talking about joining NATO. And Russia is not stupid: if randos like us on the Internet can see the writing on the wall, Russia can see it too. NATO gave their promise to Gorbachev, the traitor to socialism, that they would not expand eastward. That was in the 90s. Since then, they did expand towards Russia.
And that was pretty much the red line for Russia who was slowly being surrounded by NATO (https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/North_Atlantic_Treaty_Organization). Let’s remember that while NATO claims to be a “defensive alliance”, they invaded Iraq (during the Kuwait war) and Afghanistan, two countries who did not attack a member state. Russia had also been fighting against NATO for example in Syria, and IIRC also deployed troops to some South American countries (including Venezuela) to prevent US regime change.
Does Putin want Russia to be imperialist? Probably. I mean, once capitalism is sufficiently developed in Russia, they’ll have to. Putin at least has shown he has no plans to become a comprador (despite being courted as such before he was elected). But they’re not there yet. At this time, I really don’t see the arguments that say Russia is imperialist. Their GPD is about the same as that of the Low Countries combined and capitalism is not sufficiently developed in post-Soviet Russia to start exporting capital and forcibly opening new markets for themselves. They’re barely back to their pre-illegal dissolution outputs.
With that said we can’t ignore the Donbass is a very resource-rich region. Historically, Donbass was the producer of steel for the Soviet Union (if you’ve heard of the “Azovstal” battle in Mariupol, it literally means Azov steel, Azov being the neighbouring sea).
And now, it’s come out that NATO had 0 intention of letting Ukraine join and announced membership just to provoke Russia, Zelensky is doing more unhinged shit by the day (here’s the war crimes he committed just in the early months of the war: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/137899), and Merkel recently admitted Minsk I and II were only negotiated to gain some time for NATO to train Ukraine.
With this context in mind, I don’t see how we can analyse this war any differently than Russia defending itself against NATO. I echo was some communist parties have said, that it’s regrettable these once fraternal people united under a socialist government are now at war against each other. We can blame NATO for that, but I also can’t ignore the Banderite revival in Ukraine that was their own doing, and I’m not going to cry for dead Nazis.
As for annexation, there is no certainty this is going to happen. When the war began, Russia announced their goals clearly: liberate the Donbass region, safeguard Crimea (Ukraine cut off the water supply, using the dams on the Dniepr – one of which was blown up last night), and basically push NATO back, i.e. make Ukraine sign a treaty that they will not join NATO. But the war has evolved so much from the early days, like the Ukrainian Army now is mostly NATO soldiers and the US keeps telling Zelensky not to sign a peace treaty (and like a good little dog, he obeys). This thing could have been over in the first 3 months if Ukraine had been willing to negotiate, but they don’t. At every turn they find new ways to fuck up, and at this point what can Russia do but keep pushing forward until Ukraine has no choice but to accept peace? Anything can happen at this point as to the fate of Ukraine.
Hey, I just wanted to clarify something because I wasn’t sure from reading your comment, but Lemmygrad federates with everyone by default, except instances that have caused us troll waves in the past. We federate with e.g. lemmy.one and beehaw.org, but they instantly blocked us on day one.
I remember lemmy.ml has had a few surges of new users in the past. I don’t remember if they were as big as this one, but we’ll know in a month or so how many of these new users will actually stay active on Lemmy.
The numbers update once a day on https://join-lemmy.org/instances, lemmy.ml surged up from behind us up to 1.1k and beehaw went from like ~100 to 500, but apart from that the other instances don’t show huge numbers. They also block us, so we won’t see them posting here.
Everyone should remember to use the report function. It’s accessible by clicking the three dots under a comment or post and clicking the flag icon.
And yes, you’re all allowed to debate liberals that wander here as much as you want, but please also report them if they’re anti-communist or start trolling.
How has your reading been going by the way, comrade?
https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/State_of_Israel
Basically all Arab countries (and beyond, but let’s focus on the Arab countries) hate Israel. Their governments have at times normalised relations with the occupier, but tensions always remain high and Israel keeps launching rockets at them once in a while.
I’m not worried.
We don’t have aspirations at lemmygrad to become the biggest or most active instance. We’re happy to have a space where we can be with each other. If we wanted to be big we wouldn’t be running a communist instance. In fact, we get a lot of new account requests, but we deny a lot of them for being ultras or anarchists (some we let through if they seem good).
Those new arrivals don’t understand the nature of federation and the nature of open source software. Like others have said, they want reddit just on a different domain name. Then let them have their Reddit, I’d rather they confine themselves to a single space than spread all over the fediverse.
Frankly Lemmygrad can survive without federation, what’s important is that Lemmy is the most advanced open source software to run a link aggregator, no other project comes close. Someone in the reddit thread was saying that because of the devs’ political leanings, the project would never grow and this is exactly the type of elitism reddit produces. This person discovered Lemmy yesterday, but has very strong opinions on it and apparently understands the ins and outs of the project. Meanwhile the Lemmy project keeps growing and is the most robust and popular open source alternative to Reddit. But we’re sorry our volunteer developers are not slaving away hard enough to produce your toys, great Redditor 🙏
Anyone can use lemmy, and what we should start thinking about is when the fascists will start opening their instances. There is no way you can prevent that at a fundamental code level; lemmy cannot stop anyone from opening their instance. All you can do is defederate from them. The fascists are probably not going to start opening their instances because of said politics from the devs though, so once again tankies are saving libs from fascism and get ostracized for it lol. They’ve had 4 years to try and coopt this project and they haven’t done it.
There is no way we will defederate from Lemmy.ml or that Lemmy.ml will defederate from us. People can clamor for it all they want, it’s never gonna happen. If they’re not happy on lemmy.ml then they can join one of many dead liberal instances that keep popping up because they want to be administrators of their own space rather than work with others.
We’ve handled an “exodus” before (they go back to Reddit in the end no matter how much they criticise it), we’ve handled trolls, we’ve handled DDoS attacks, they can’t bring anything we haven’t seen before.
Came from an account that was just approved too 👀