It’s all fun and games until you get fined for neglecting your property

I like them as an option, there are some programs like Bottles or specific game launchers that work under flatpak better than the versions available via native package manager (with Bottles in particular, you can use various built-in sandbox features via flatpak which makes things a bit more secure), but it’s also a bit of a pain because it’s an additional package manager you have to update separately now, or tweak if things go wrong.

The thing with boycotts is that it’s such an online thing. You can proclaim a product or an author the product funds to be problematic morally, call to boycott it to support some cause, and most people are indeed going to join the boycott then post about it on social media, do the moral song-and-dance to join the cause.

In reality, the vast majority of those people aren’t invested in the product or the world and wouldn’t have bought anything from it, boycott or not. It’s much harder to say no to things when you’re actually invested into them, meaning boycotts aren’t likely to influence those people. With that in mind, you now have a bunch of free advertisement for the product in a sense that it won’t leave the public consciousness, a bunch of people not interested in the product doing their “activism” and a bunch of fans of the product fighting the boycotters (as seen with Hogwarts Legacy for instance).

I haven’t read or watched or played a single product from JK Rowling’s catalogue, but I’ve seen this happen time and time again with other media or companies such as the infamous Blizzard.

Yeah, pretty sure its the devs of the game that are ultimately responsible for moderating their game forum, making internal employees or trusted players mods and so on. The main issue comes from communities that aren’t being moderated, or from the general steam forums.

Not as bad but still quite terrible are probably the steam forums. There are some systems in there that literally encourage and reward saying the most stupid/offensive shit, and with a very lax moderation it’s just a complete mess.

I mean, even this kind of argument doesn’t really work in reality. We already live in “hell on earth”, and via electorialism usually two choices are given: the progressive “nothing ever happens” option (so your socdems, democrats, you’ll be lucky to get a good policy or two but no real change to the status quo) or “literally hitler” option, maybe some parties that stand in the middle of the spectrum if the country is “advanced” enough.

In other words, via electorialism you can either preserve the hell on earth or make it worse, and the process of voting legitimizes this status quo as it’s what “people have decided” rather than who the ruling class cast as candidates, who had the most money and media influence for campaigning.

It’s important to see electorialism for what it truly is.

Chess “is diverse and inclusive,” the German Chess Federation said

Lol, lmao even. It’s one of the more sexist sports there are in terms of organization, often marginalizing women and most of these marginalizing structures are still there to this day. This isn’t to excuse anti-LGBT rhetoric, but pretending like everything is fine with chess probably doesn’t help.

That name rings a bell

socialist candidate

looks inside

another socdem

Think the billionaire is safe, even more so considering the proposed pro-business policies by the candidate

Critical support to imperialist conflict

Yes, nothing gets me going like innocent proletarian blood spilled in bourgeois conflicts like these

Calling it right now: it’s a nothingburger as nothing ever happens

Long walk through the park is quite nice - no cars, no pollution, just lots of birds chirping and strangers passing by

I honestly don’t mind if someone bases their beliefs based on flawed theory or books, as that does show some degree of engagement with actual texts and leaves the room open for recognizing why it might be flawed via future reading or discussion.

What I was mostly referring to were people who claim to be Marxists/Anarchists/whatever, proceed to not read any theory whatsoever and just roll with what they imagine the theory to be, usually based on some surface-level discourse floating online. Now that’s where one can find true incoherent bangers

The right also has some prominent socio-economic writers such as Thomas Sowell and other writers adjacent to Austrian school thought, so it’s not just media slop but also book slop.

It’s just a bit unfortunate that the right doesn’t read any theory, even ones that agree with their worldview, they just like talking about the authors because book = smart. Same with the left - there’s lots of people who proclaim themselves to have some theoretically heavy position (e.g. communism or anarchism) then proceed to say the most stupid shit.

Been in the same exact position :(

Hope you get to make up for the lost time

I was germophobic my entire life up until like a year or two ago where I kinda got over it and stopped giving a shit, but I’m still incredibly paranoid about food expiration, even when the best before day hasn’t been reached as is 1-2 days away.

At least his critique is clear and coherent.

If validity of theory was based on what its writers had done, then Marx would be worthless and Urban Guerilla doctrine would be invaluable.

Trade and wage labor also aren’t exclusive to capitalism.

Yes, trade isn’t exclusive to capitalism, I never claimed otherwise. However, there is a distinction between commodity exchange for exchange-value (capitalist trade) and international distribution of goods to satisfy needs (socialist distribution), whether through planned allocation or transitional forms like labor vouchers.

Wage labor is specific to capitalism, it’s a sale of labor-power as a commodity, exchanged for a wage, with surplus value being appropriated by a class/managerial apparatus. This is THE fundamental relation of capitalism, and you’d be better off reading theory than blindly quoting it.

Though I will give a concession - socialism is such a meaningless term that it means like 4 different things depending on who says it: liberals would say it’s social democracy, ML’s say its state capitalism, Marxists and Leninists say it’s socialist mode of production (post-transition period) and Posadists would say it’s when nuclear annihilation. A word doesn’t make a thing so if you consider state capitalism to be socialist - fair, all power to you. However - Marxists, Leninists, Liberals would all collectively disagree. You did drop a Lenin quote to strengthen your argument so let me do the same:

• Lenin, The Tax in Kind

No one, I think, in studying the question of the economic system of Russia, has denied its transitional character. Nor, I think, has any Communist denied that the term Soviet Socialist Republic implies the determination of the Soviet power to achieve the transition to socialism, and not that the existing economic system is recognised as a socialist order.

In the same text he also calls NEP USSR as state capitalist due to the concessions he had to make for the transition, which is explicitly made distinct from Socialism.

And I’m adamant that it’s a mischaracterization. Identifying the dominant mode of production is not a “one drop rule”, it’s literally foundational Marxist analysis - modes are defined by prevailing relations of production, not how it’s managed or ideological labels put onto them.