Yeah, not good faith afterall. Learn to read, I guess.

Assuming you’re good faith, I really just don’t think it’s that simple. There’s also no whataboutism. If you had read and engaged with the OP and my comment, you’d see OP was directly comparing these countries to the West, which notably does include the US. My comment does the same, because I am engaging with the OP.

I’d recommend looking into the history of fascism if you want to learn what makes a country fascist. There’s many different viewpoints, and some do define fascism in a way that would capture what you’re saying and exclude the US. I don’t think those are very good definitions - they usually say “fascism is when dictatorship”, basically.

Others use definitions that explicitly tie fascism to particular ideological views (specifically views held by fascist Italy and Germany) like anti-semitism or anti-communism. That’s probably too prescriptive and excludes basically any government that is not Italy or Germany in the 20s-40s.

You can see a good summary in the wikipedia article caleld “definitions of fascism”. You’ll see there are many definitions of varying quality and historical accuracy. The best definitions, in my opinion, focus on traits that capture the governmental structure of fascist states that make them different from non-fascist states. That includes economic and structural points.

I think we can use a tighter definition of fascism. Fascist governments have these traits:

1. privatization of public goods/services (that’s a hallmark of fascism, they literally invented privatization in Germany in the 30s, and maybe actually Italy in the 20s)

2. some sort of in-group supremacy dynamic (racial in the case of Germany & Italy)

3. extreme nationalism & militarism

4. suppression of democratic groups (e.g. trade unions)

5. a government characterized by state-directed autarky, with production organized into government-sponsored cartels. (This is why privitization is important: that’s what makes this possible)

So, does the USSR have some of these characteristics? Sure. Of course. Modern day China, too. And the US & Russia. But to be fascist, a government needs to do these things at once - it needs to have the economic and structural factors that distinguish fascism from other forms of government.

I think the trouble is that “freedom of speech”, “freedom of expression”, etc. can be and are weaponized by colonial/hegemonic forces.

But, that said, that’s why I am not 100% supportive of this view. Possibly naïvely on my end, I think those sorts of freedoms are important not only for individuals but also as a check on state power. That said, I see how manipulative the US state department can be - and for that matter how manipulative foreign govts have been to the US - especially in recent election cycles… so I think it is a double edged sword.

That’s part of the reason I am also not a full blown anarchist/libertarian socialist. I can see the value in centralized state power when it comes to defending the state and people

I think they don’t completely diverge. I am sympatetic to this viewpoint, I just don’t fully endorse it. I think as leftists we should be generous to other leftists and their ideas.

Some do feel that way. Others feel that he isn’t a strong departure from where we were already heading. I think accelerationism is bad and we should never put ourselves in a position where fascism wins. Fascism needs to always be playing defense until it is totally defeated. Especially when it supports american hegemony, genocide, global poverty, etc.

A note on my biases: I am a leftist. I am generally “anti-authoritarian”, but I have read some theory and listened to enough commentary to understand why folks are pro-authoritarian (and why Authoritarian is a label only applied to enemies of american hegemony). I am on .ml - which I don’t think matters, anyone’s account can be anywhere: fediverse, baby.

Lemmy.ml is a website hosted on a server. Why do its mods and some users hold those beliefs?

Many of those people are communists. Opposition to american hegemony is the main reason, or critically supporting other actually existing socialist states. They may think China isn’t perfect, but they’re attempting socialism and are standing up to the US and have the best shot at success. In the case of North Korea, they may think that attempt at socialism is genuine and much of the bad stuff they do is falsified or exaggerated for propaganda or just be giving critical support to a country that has been destroyed by the US via war and sanctions.

Or, in the case of Russia & Iran, they have stood in firm opposition to American hegemony, military bullying, etc. even though they are not Communist/Socialist. So, even though they do a lot of bad things and don’t have socialist values, they are a lesser evil than America. For Russia, them pushing back against NATO is seen as a direct war against the advance of global capital, even though Russia is capitalistic and fascistic (much like a weaker version of the US).

In all of these cases, when a person supports these governments, they are not really saying “Country good”. They are saying “I critically support Country in opposition to American hegemony and global Capital”. There’s a lot of memes and jokes, and some people just really support Russia and NK uncritically - humanity is a rich tapestry - but that’s the gist of it.

Understanding this POV requires an understanding of history (re: socialism & US interventionalism), critical theory (re: media), and an ability to be generous to edgelords online who are not always the best messengers of this (valid) viewpoint. It is socialist realpolitik, not idealpolitik - a view where current events can be interpreted in a way that their outcomes may foment the material conditions favorable to socialism.

Now a question for you: How can a democratic & socialist country exist in a world where American hegemony exists and America is hell-bent on maintaining the global capitalistic order?

Given the US’ massive power and history of destroying socialist movements with tremendous violence (military and economic), can a country maintain its status as a real democracy without the US:

• covertly funding extremist groups to coup the democratic government (Iran),

• committing direct election tampering to elect a pro-US party (Venezuela, unsuccessfully),

• launching proxy wars to murder their people (Vietnam, North Korea),

• destroying the country’s economy with sanctions and completely disconnecting them from global trade - causing mass starvation and poverty (North Korea, Cuba)

The answer is that without the aid of a country capable of standing up to the US, they do not. These countries that still have socialist goverments have to hold on to power in a world where US hegemony is a fact.

I wonder if it’s a regional thing? I’ve only ever heard it in movies or older TV shows. Where I live people are much more likely to just say “crippled” or describe someone as walking with a limp.

I was confused when I saw Pulp Fiction as a kid because I was like “why is this handicapped guy in a leather suit and what does him being hadicapped have to do with his apparent hobbies” lol. But like I said, never really heard it used in other contexts.

Gimp is really just a rare/archaic ableist slur anyway - like to refer to someone with a limp or otherwise a leg/lack of a leg that impedes their gait. I’ve never heard it used in my life.

The sexual usage is from gay bdsm subculture in the 70s that the large majority of ppl who are aware of it are only aware because of Pulp Fiction.

My vote is for pimp

I was agreeing with you

The framing and double-standard is chauvinist and bad.

But there are reasons to be skeptical of suicide stats worldwide due to cultural ideas and norms around suicide. Like, look at the US. It was common practice for coroners to put accident as cause of death even if it was clearly suicide - and still is, to some degree. Only recently have statisticians began including certain other cases of “accidental” death as suicide (some single car crashes, gun “accidents”, ODs, etc).

And different countries have different methods for reporting out on suicide. It’s not founded to say countries are intentionally skewing suicide stats, but it would be constructive to be skeptical about how those figures were arrived at before believing memes without citations.

Disliking AI is fine and good. But that is a really dumb argument.

“60 employees who can’t be productive without the internet? And this is progress?”

“60 employees who can’t be productive without computers? And this is progress?”

“60 scribes who can’t be productive without clay tablets? And this is progress?”

Etc.

Edit: LLMs/AI are going to change some things. They are going to make (shitty) coding and various automations much more accessible. They are probably not a revolutionary technology like computers/internet, but that they could be a core part of some people’s workflow is absolutely not unthinkable. It has been shown that there have not, so far, been major boons to productivity on the whole, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have some use cases.

Kobo is pretty good. I like mine. Is it as nice and user friendly as Kindle? Probably not. Do I own it, not rent it, am not served ads, and don’t have to deal with shitty DRM? Yes. Zero regrets. Got one for my sister and my wife, too. They also really like them.

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This is what I ended up doing, and it works great. I knew about aliases, but didn’t really use them at all - I didn’t know about bash functions though.

So now I have a few functions in .bashrc for short things and am just aliasing shell scripts for easy access to more complex tbings I don’t want cluttering the file

Oooh ty that makes a lot of sense. I was unaware of that functionality.

This should be the next step for me. When you do aliased commands, can they take arguments? Like to download a playlist with yt-dlp, could i do download-playlist [URL]?

It’s really easy. Linux Mint. Bootable USB. Back up your important files on a separate harddrive. Plug in USB. Reboot. Install. Port old files over. Good as new

Bonus points for looking into how to optimize your partition structure, but it’d be fine to just let it do its thing. Also like… I guess you should probably make sure your audio and video cards are supported, but they like 98% are

Hell yeah. I was considering a C5, but saw people online saying ads are present on LG.

I use shield anyway, but I will probably just follow your advice and set default input to the shield

Anybody have un-enshittified 4k tv recommendations?

Mainly want good picture quality for movies + high refresh rate for games.

~100mg - 300mg/day. That is 1 cup of coffee (espresso-based drink) to 3 max.

I try to limit myself to 1 now unless I am really tired or am having trouble focusing/thinking clearly. I was up to 2-3 every day, but it was messing with my anxiety more than I realized at first.

It also isn’t as performant for the price, or so I’ve heard. They’re working on it, but it isn’t up to par with big name companies.