Dirt_Possum [any, undecided]

There are links to alternative front ends in a comment below. Also, old.reddit is working OK for me without needing to login. You’re right, NSFW old.reddit is requiring login now.

There might be a few outside of here that know it, but they write essays about how George actually must have meant it to be the other way around to reassure themselves.

China has recently made positive strides on a number of issues like LGBTQ rights, so there’s no reason not to hope they can also start moving in the correct direction when it comes to phasing out animal cruelty and meat consumption as well, as they continue to economically surpass the reactionary west. Their dedication to addressing climate change will also at some point demand the recognition that using animals as a major source of food is unsustainable.

Wait, what’s worse? For who? I’m not totally sure what you’re saying here but as someone who has survived by doing sex work, who has been repeatedly sexually exploited*, and who has also been more than what I think most would just call exploited, I would not say that any of that was worse for me than being murdered on a factory farm. Can we just agree that exploitation and the objectification or commodification of sentient life is very bad and needs to be abolished?

*(Side note to make clear that sex work is not inherently exploitational either but that’s a different ball of wax.)

Part of what’s funny about the video is that he was trying to showcase a software update Tesla released, the purpose of which was specifically for making it safe to close the trunk on your fingers. He tests it with a cucumber and banana and it actually looks reasonably safe but then he does the test with his finger. Not only does the test fail but the trunk won’t open so he’s stuck there shocked in obvious pain and can’t get his finger back out.

It doesn’t actually break but he shows it afterward and it’s clearly smashed with bruises and a decent sized cut from the trunk’s edge. He comes back and has some excuse from tesla about it being because he tested with veggies first and the software thought he was trying to shut it with something blocking it because of the previous repeated attempts. He actually starts to test it again with his finger saying “This time it should hurt way less…” but he can’t do it, he keeps pulling back right before it closes in what I might have said was finally a tiny bit of sense, only it’s an instinctive reaction and he can’t help it. He concludes that we’ll just have to trust it from the last banana test.

Here it is if anyone wants to watch: www.youtube.com/watch?v=rA55B1kobnw

Nah, contrary to the belief of some weirdos, poking fun at people for their supernatural woo idealism is providing a positive service.

Incredibly hurtful? Cowardly? Come on. That’s the same as a chud crying about being pasted in a bad light onto a wojak comic. It’s a dumb meme, you should be happy your pfp made it onto one that someone made for a niche leftist website to chuckle at. I have seen you tear into liberals for their bullshit beliefs (which I enjoyed watching), and I wouldn’t have expected you’d be so weirdly sensitive to being on the other side of that equation. I think most here would take this as being barely more than a comradely joshing. You weren’t even the prime character in it, your pfp (pfp for christ sakes!) was pasted over the microphone of the original pic. But given all that, the fact you got this twisted up about it makes me feel like it was all the more a good thing to do. You should take this as an opportunity to examine why you did find something so mild as this “incredibly hurtful” but more importantly why your fellow communists would be jokingly comparing you to the current poster child for woo lunacy.

As for what is comparable, well you both believe in nonsense woo that would make many spirit crystal chiropractors blush and you both have come up with absurd justifications for it. You have this strange fixation that I was calling you a zionist when it was pretty clear that had nothing to do with it, and the comparison was around the nutty unsubstantiated beliefs. In fact I didn’t know the other person in the picture even was a zionist, but I did know she uses her “spiritualism” as a justification for the dippy new-age version of white supremacy. I think you just focus on the zionism part because you’re mad at me for making a mediocre niche meme picture and you saying that I’m calling you a zionist is a way to try to lash out. But nah, I wasn’t calling you a zionist, I was calling you a nut. So please enough with the hyperfixation on zionism. By putting your pfp next to a picture of her, I didn’t call you a zionist any more than I called you someone who appropriates black culture by wearing dreadlocks, and I think you actually know that.

You happen to be lucky in that despite adamantly believing in wacky things that there is zero proof for and has been demonstrably proven false, you still arrived at the correct conclusions about politics, capitalism, imperialism etc., which I think most here would agree is by far what’s important. But again, I think you got there in spite of having some massive brainworms about the supernatural. Having wacky batty woo beliefs isn’t a crime but it is one hundred percent on the table fair game to be made fun of, and it needs to be. Because uncritical belief in magic is not something that should be present in a healthy society, the society that we as communists and materialists should aim for, where we examine reality with a scientific mindset to come as close as we can to modeling reality instead of making up just-so stories that fit our conception of how we wish things were instead of how they are. It is only through brutal honesty with ourselves and how the world works (as opposed to how we wish it worked, like with magic telekinetic, telepathic or prophetic powers) that we can find the way towards true human flourishing. Going the route of ghosts, demons, telekinesis, astral projection, crystal powers, star seeds, or whatever, it’s all different facets of the same bunkum and it is anathema to a materialist conception of reality (in whatever way you want to define materialism, strictly Marxist, more broadly philosophical, but any meaningful definition of materialism).

This Shanin person (who tbh I didn’t know existed until the thread here about her and that chud singer) has also followed this path of going down the rabbit hole of unsubstantiated spiritualist nonsense that “makes sense to her” despite all these things she believes being obvious, provable bullshit. She arrived at much more odious conclusions about people and supremacy, and that’s not surprising. I know the concept of the “slippery slope” is often abused, but in this case it’s very fitting and actually happens a lot. I’ve watched it happen with people, the new age woo to white supremacy pipeline. It’s not uncommon that it is tangential to Joe Rogan. It’s not always a bad trajectory, but it often is. When you start believing in this kind of antiscience wishful thinking, you can follow it to all sorts of conclusions, literally anything imaginable, including the truly horrible and antihuman. I think of the esoteric alien origins horseshit that many of the inner core nazis made foundational to their beliefs. I think about the batshit mormon beliefs that were based on the whims of a known charlatan con artist, and how interwoven all of that became with the white supremacist “security” apparatus of the US, the most evil organizations that ever existed. Magic underwear is innocuous and even funny, but it’s part of a sort of larger complex of beliefs, a structure founded on woo supernatural mysticism, self referential and self reinforcing, that is used to justify some of the most heinous crimes. A failure of critical thinking, which in my opinion is a form of a failure of self crit, is dangerous in the long run, and belief in magic is without a doubt a failure of critical thinking.

There, does that meet your criteria for being “said it to your face”? I don’t see how anything else I posted before wasn’t saying it to your face. I don’t even know what subtweeting is, as I fortunately never got sucked into that brand of social media. But stop implying I was doing something underhanded or sneaky. That’s absurd. I made a dumb meme pic and posted it where you and anyone else could see. Just like with the zionism thing (that didn’t happen) you keep twisting me into this strange caricature that has nothing to do with… well, anything, and assigning to me these nonsensical intentions that simply aren’t there. It’s weird, comrade! Don’t do that! Now, if you want to take my pfp and paste it to compare me to some scientism nerd like ND Tyson, or even a bigger asshole like Dick Dawkins, that would be a fair reciprocal and I’d have to laugh even. But I wouldn’t suddenly think you were, for example, accusing me of SA just because they were (I think?) I definitely wouldn’t come back and call you a coward and make up all these off the wall accusations about your intentions.

Whatever though. I feel like I’ve said my piece and I’m pretty sure also answered your questions, mostly by trying to straighten out the misconceptions about me you glomed onto. I know this was long, but that’s mostly because I think you’re still a decent poster and commie, so I’m taking the time to lay it out there. If you were just some random chud which I’d assume you were if this thread was all I’d ever seen you post, I’d roll my eyes, PPB you and move on. Even though the hostility you assumed I had wasn’t there in my original image post nor this comment, I do feel like your response with demands of posting “to your face” and calling me cowardly, etc. really was hostile. And I don’t like that. So this is the end of the conversation at my end. I expect you’ll respond, and I hope it is about things I actually said this time. But I won’t know. Tomorrow is my scheduled day to touch grass and be away from the internet entirely, and I won’t be touching this pile of internet drama with a ten meter pole. Again, I’ve said my piece, I went into great detail specifically to answer your hostile questioning, now I’m disengaging.

What are you talking about, no they aren’t. Besides, when did it become not ok on hexbear to treat harmful and false ideas with the condescension and disdain they deserve? You do know about the Posting Policy Bulletin at the bottom of every hexbear page, I hope. Also, telling someone to relax is pretty condescending, just fyi.

Removed by mod

Bouldering and parkour.

Chinese are jailed/imprisoned if they speak critically about Mao Zedong or Xi.

I call bullshit, because some of the people I know who live in China are critical of Mao and Xi and have never expressed any hint of a fear of reprisal for the things they’ve said to me as well as to other Chinese people. But the US? Civil rights leaders in the US are murdered in their beds and burned alive in their cars. Whistleblowers and journalists are either imprisoned & tortured, “suicided,” or forced to flee the country to hopefully find asylum in order to avoid those other fates. Musicians and artists critical of the regime can have their entire careers destroyed for the most mild criticism (see Dixie Chicks saying a mean thing to poor little war criminal dynastic ruler Bush junior).

Chinese children were taught Mt Everest is owned by China.

Part of Everest is in China? “Owned?” American children are taught Hawaii is “owned” by the US. If they are taught about Puerto Rico’s existence at all, it is that it’s “owned” by the US even though it doesn’t even get the pretense of benefits that states get. US children are taught huge swathes of the south west section of the north American continent are “owned” by the US even though it was stolen from Mexico. I could go on, but since you mentioned below how the US supposedly teaches that it did steal land, see my response to that.

Chinese children were taught Genghis Khan was Chinese.

Even if that’s true, it’s nothing compared to the jingoistic historical revisionism US kids are taught. US children were (and are) taught Columbus “discovered” the Americas and only very recently and only in some more “progressive” states it’s being lightly touched on that he was actually a deeply evil genocidal mass murderer driven entirely by greed. Children in the US are taught to worship their wealthy, white “founding fathers” who were slavers and (CW) r*pists. US history class is more lies than reality, so it’s funny to me you would harp on this as an example of China being worse than the US with such weak tea nonsense like China claiming Genghis Khan.

Beijing completely threw out the 50 year agreement they had with U.K. regarding Hong Kong.

I’ll defer to other people here who know more about that because I admittedly don’t. However, if I started to list the ways that the US has reneged on its agreements with other countries, its countless outright betrayals of even its supposed allies (see the famous Kissinger quote about how it’s dangerous to be an enemy of the US but fatal to be its ally), then I’d quickly exceed the text character limit for comments. The US constantly lies in all its agreements and treaties. Since the genocide of the indigenous peoples is something brought up in this comment thread, consider the well known fact that the US would make and break treaties with indigenous tribes all the time as a casual way to genocide them and steal their land. That shit never stopped.

Want your driver’s license without passing the exam? Bring the instructor.

? So I guess the implication is that you can buy your drivers license by bribing the instructor in China? I can believe that kind of thing happens sometimes, as it does in any country. But is it actually something rampant in China or is it just a cherrypicked example pulled from your ass? Something that is rampant in the US is kids with rich parents passing their driving tests when they shouldn’t by virtue of their having rich parents. And not just driving tests, but literally any test or barrier to entry you can imagine, if you’re rich, you will likely get an easy pass that average people don’t get and that poor people are never even given a chance to participate in. This is something so well known in the US that it’s commonly joked about. But to keeping focused on driving, rich people in the US are known for buying (bribing) their way out of DUIs all the time, and even when they are penalized, it is the tiniest slap on the wrist for them while it can mean the end of a poor person’s ability to earn their already measly livelihood. Even if every entry on your list here of things that exemplify how bad China is were true, it still wouldn’t come close to the things I could list about the US that are so much worse.

Beijing regularly hides images en masse such as Tank Man

No it doesn’t. I’ve seen Chinese memes with “Tank Man” that make fun of the Western obsession with it. And once again (since this whole discussion is based on how China is supposed to be worse than the US) the US hides controversial shit all the time. One of a million examples, I was recently looking for articles and images discussing/showing the prevalence of full on naziism in the Ukrainian military and leadership before Feb of '22, back when that could still be openly reported on. I found a bunch in archive sites but the original articles had been scrubbed from the original news outlet sites where it had originally been reported. Articles that were considered fine and simple reporting done by mainstream news media are now erased and referencing them is called “Russian disinformation.” It would be funny if it weren’t so pathetic. Of course China does censor things, but it openly acknowledges that it does so and doesn’t try to hide behind the notion of “free speech” a joke and a lie that the US tells its citizens.

In China? Try Googling Tiananmen Massacre. Google and the massacre are both blocked.

Google is blocked for good reason, and even in western countries, it’s recognized how google is a tool for people with wealth to spread their viewpoint and suppress dissent in all kinds of ways, with one of the more obvious ones being that they simply pay to have search results that benefit them at the top and results that are bad for them buried under pages of other results or never even getting served at all. In the US, even my virus scan sofware kept trying to block (blacklist) Yandex. lol. As for Tienanmen square, where unarmed Chinese military were lynched, no it is not blocked. Certain propaganda about it may well be blocked by China, but this event and talk about what happened is not blocked. It is referred to as the “June 4th incident” or something like that (because a massacre of students didn’t even happen, Tienanmen Square ‘Massacre’ is a name made up by US agencies for propaganda spin) and it is openly discussed in ways both critical and supportive of the CPC, which you should know if you really did live in China for 4 years.

Americans are taught we stole land,

When they are taught that (which is rare and totally understated) it is also taught that it was generally for the greater good, that either it had to be done or that it would have happened anyway, and most importantly, it’s taught that “it happened a long time ago and we’re better about that now” which is a complete lie because they are not better about it now and even if they were, it’s not taught that the people of the stolen land are still oppressed and systematically kept from reclaiming their nearly-erased culture let alone the land and wealth stolen from them, and while the descendants of the people who stole that land and genocided the people there, are still benefiting from that theft and genocide. Funny how that just isn’t part of the curriculum in the US.

bribing is not common for average citizens,

“Average” citizen? Maybe not, but only because the average citizen doesn’t have the means to bribe anyone, since they’re barely avoiding homelessness (which is de facto criminalized in the US) and living paycheck to paycheck. But bribery for rich citizens in the US? It is more than common, it’s so prevalent that the entire economy, which is based on finance capitalism and rent seeking, would screech to a halt if there was a real crackdown on bribery.

and everyone is critical of the government here.

And they should be. The government of the US is a sick joke that doesn’t represent or support people at all. Most people in the US realize this even though a big chunk of them misunderstand the reasons why.

But sure, keep to your simple insults.

Lol, keep my “simple insults”? You referred to an entire country as an ugly woman. I called you a misogynist. Can you really not see how much of a hypocritical clown you are?

Thank goodness I’ve also never shat my pants as an adult, but I have come close. If there hadn’t been a room with a toilet relatively close by, there were a few times when I probably would have. Either that, or be forced to drop trou and let loose somewhere where doing so would be entirely inappropriate. I always found a loo just in the nick of time, but it’s easy for me to imagine what would have happened if I hadn’t been so lucky with washroom proximity.

On the contrary, I find it hard to believe that any adult hasn’t experienced at least one time in their life when their bowels very suddenly and threateningly demanded that they get moved pronto and give their owner’s very little time to find a restroom, all while putting them in considerable and increasing anguish until they do. Sure, we can hold it for a while and under normal every-day circumstances it’s not too difficult. But if you’ve ever mistakenly eaten something that “didn’t agree with you,” but that realization only dawned on you at a very inopportune time, you would know that this is a recipe for disaster.

Open bribery. Blind allegiance. Lies built into education.

I’ve lived in the US for several years and it’s funny you should mention those things in particular, because every single one you listed was worse there than in any other part of the world I’ve been to. In America, they call their open extreme bribery “lobbying” and it’s well known to everyone there that literally nothing happens politically without massive amounts of that bribe money. They have such grotesque blind political allegiance that there are 2 teams, blue dems and red repubs, and any citizen who doesn’t publicly perform their intent to vote for their team and give their full support completely regardless of what their team does or doesn’t do for that citizen and their interests is shamed and blamed. The lies are so engraved into their education that almost all of them think that “liberal” means “leftist” lol. I mean for fucks sake, their children pledge allegiance to a fucking flag in a jingoistic daily ritual. I may not have lived in China for 4 years, but not only can I not imagine it being any worse than the place the nazis modeled their ideal state after, that completely contradicts everything I have learned about China from people I know who did (and do) live there.

You’re full of shit. And you’re a misogynist loser.

Intentional bad faith misreading of what I said as well as an unwillingness to even try to comprehend what I did say. Also, you don’t get to decide for other people what is traumatic for them. The self centered lib-brained gall of some people to think they’re the arbiters of other people’s trauma… Just wild.

Because they’re literally given the power to not see it if they don’t want to

Can you really not see why this is just a bad argument? Not to mention selfish? The exact same thing could be said about literally anything that we require content warnings for. Talking about SA? “Bro, just block me if you don’t wanna see detailed depictions of assault!” Traumatic gore (which is actually what “meat” really is)? “Come on bro, it takes no effort just to block me when I post gore images, so I shouldn’t have to figure out how to use spoiler tags late at night for your delicate snowflake sensibilities.” Even then it’s retroactive, people are not given the power to not see it if we don’t want to the first time around. Blocking you comes after we’ve already been forced to see something we didn’t want to see and only works in hypothetical future occurrences.

I’m not saying it was massive. If that was what it read I was implying, maybe my language was a little hyperbolic. But I actually am aware of the downvotes and am including that information in talking about this.

17 up and 10 down on my first and very mild comment. 22 up and 11 down for his long, swerfy response. The support is in his favor. This is really splitting hairs though, and the exact numbers don’t really matter. Just that there are quite a lot, even a slight majority of people supporting SWERF garbage. I also think that moderation says a lot about a community, what it really stands for. To me, it’s telling that I got banned for rule 2 (bigotry, sexism, etc.), which is what I was calling out, while the actual bigotry and sexism still stands with a bunch of upvotes, does speak to the general vibe of what is ok and what isn’t.

Also, the user who felt ashamed and was calmly defending herself just commented here in the megathread further down, saying that she’s getting downvoted.

Nothing to apologize for, and whoever is downvoting you can go fuck themselves.

Yeah, the whole “protecting” sex workers like you is part of the whole patriarchal anti-feminist shit pie. Like you mentioned in one of your comments, it comes down to a sense of ownership over women and women’s bodies. Infantilizing “protection” of women is not the worker solidarity they pretend it is. It’s just couching misogyny in Marxist terms so they get to feel both superior and intellectual about their sexist brainworms.

You are not saying crazy stuff, and you are doing good work that really does help people. You should be proud of that. And you can be proud of it while still recognizing the dangers of such work in this world as it is, and the inevitable exploitation that happens with all work under capitalism but that sex work suffers in particularly acute ways. The problem, as usual, is with capitalism. Not sex work inherently. And definitely not you.

As for migrating to hexbear, just do what you feel comfortable with. You can engage with both communities regardless of which one you have an account with, and you can maintain accounts on both instances too if you want. There are going to be problematic people to some degree in both, but yeah, I have to admit I was pretty shocked how bad lemmygrad is with this issue, and apparently feminism in general. edit: I do think hexbear will have your back better with this kind of thing, and we don’t even have downvoting here, so I think over all it’s going to be a less antagonistic atmosphere. I would say make an account and after a bit see which instance you like as your home instance more.

Anyway, since it got removed over there, I’ll say it again here: Solidarity and compassion to you, comrade. You’re valid and awesome and don’t ever let SWERFs make you think otherwise.

edit. And thanks for having the courage to say what you did in the thread over there even with people downvoting you, and also thanks for your comment here, I appreciate it.

Ok, I see. Yeah that doesn’t surprise me after today. It’s too bad her post is gone.

You got banned from genzedong not lemmygrad,

You’re right. Fixed.

yeah that’s a problem with lemmygrad, they’re not really swerf as much as not read up on feminism

Disappointing. Not being read up on a topic is one thing, but when actively spouting misogynist SWERF rhetoric, I’d say that’s a deeper rot than simply not being read up. I know for a fact there are a number of lemmygraders who are not like that, and are very much feminists and support sex workers because I’ve talked to them in the past. But judging by that thread and the support there for the SWERF, it really does point to it being a real problem with the site culture.

Looking around a bit I see there have been long-time and well known trans hexbears that wanted to defederate from lemmygrad due to the transphobia too.