communism

@communism@lemmy.ml

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How many times a year do you wash your jeans?⁩ ⁨⁨21⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago⁩:

  If I wear them daily, then weekly. So about once every 5–7 wears.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Avocado. Is it really so untasty or I am doing something wrong?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  People like it because it has a creamy, refreshing texture, and a subtle flavour. Try toasting a slice of sourdough bread and smearing avocado on it. Top with sesame seeds if you can get them, and salt and pepper. Or you can try it on things, like people have it with chilli (not the peppers, the Mexican dish). Avocado with white rice is also nice.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can some please explain to me why it is that your health insurance can deny you medication, even if your doctor says you need it?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  Nobody can defy the laws of thermodynamics, but some people can be genetically predisposed to being fatter, just as some people are genetically predisposed to being taller. Plenty of skinny people (myself included) can eat through loads of fatty fried foods and not put on a single kg. Meanwhile you see a fat person eating all salads and they get told maybe they should eat fewer salads.

  And even if it were entirely down to what you eat, calling it an issue of willpower is just insulting. Do you think people struggling with drug addiction just have a willpower issue? If OP is in the US (which I’m assuming she is from the described healthcare system), the food there is designed to be practically addictive and unhealthy. I doubt OP has a diet of cheeseburgers and doritos—it wouldn’t make sense for someone trying to lose weight to eat like that—but if she did, that’s clearly a social issue of both fast food companies under capitalism, availability of healthy food, and a US food culture centred around destroying your arteries. Sure, a drug addict could simply physically not pick up the needle, but they can hardly be blamed for doing so when there is an obvious material reason for them doing so, ie a chemical addiction.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨(serious) What would we be losing in a world where most people didn't own a car? Please read the OP before posting.⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  The car-centric culture of many places (especially the US, but it does apply in basically all of the industrialised world to varying degrees) is due to infrastructural factors. If a country is designed to be navigated by car, then you need a car to participate in that society. That’s why people want cars.

  Things like the freedom of having a car are also from social factors. A lot of people learn to drive as teenagers, and want to escape the patriarchal environment of the family, hence a car provides freedom. In a world where children are socially raised and the family is abolished, teenagers don’t seek to escape from the family. And, of course, a car can be a way of providing freedom because other means of freedom of movement don’t exist—a lack of accommodation for disabled people to get around, a lack of public transport and safe cycle routes, etc.

  Most people wouldn’t want to give up their car for those reasons. If we just got rid of all cars without addressing any of these issues, I’m sure most people would be unhappy about it. So if that’s what you’re suggesting, plenty of people do stand to lose. But if we address the issues that make cars the only option for a lot of people, I don’t think the average person would care. Car enthusiasts can still have their cars, but it becomes a hobby or lifestyle choice, like people who have a boat. And car haters would most certainly be a lot happier too.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can some please explain to me why it is that your health insurance can deny you medication, even if your doctor says you need it?⁩ ⁨⁨6⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩:

  My weight varies around 50kg and there was a stretch of a few years where I tried bulking up to put on muscle. I found it very difficult and only got up to about 65kg where I plateaued (and it was damn difficult to get to that point—required an annoying amount of calorie-counting). I think my body is just naturally averse to putting on weight. It naturally follows that there are some people with the inverse problem, where their bodies naturally want to keep fat. I have friends who say they have this problem, and I have no reason to believe they’re lying; they know I wouldn’t judge if they just said they like eating and don’t feel like changing. There’s 8 billion people on Earth and plenty of genetic diversity among us. Of all the fat people in the world, you really think every single one of them is incapable of simply eating less? Or do you think I’m too stupid to decide to eat more food? Come on.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why do horses allow humans to ride on their backs?⁩ ⁨⁨5⁩ ⁨weeks⁩ ago⁩:

  They get trained. Think about humans for example. There’s lots of stuff we don’t think twice about doing that aren’t necessarily things we would naturally do; they’re taught to us socially and we get used to them as part of life. Horses were domesticated, firstly selectively bred to be friendlier to humans and faster, but secondly they still get trained to form a bond with humans and to do what humans want them to do. They get used to being ridden.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are americans taking health advice from a former heroin addict ?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Wtf is wrong with being a former heroin addict? I know plenty of drug users and former drug users who aren’t fascist shitstains and are actually pleasant people. Also like, you’re going after him for being a former addict? God forbid someone be in a bad place in life and luckily manage to recover from it… Addiction, a health condition, just morally scars you for life then? Would you say that about someone who recovered from cancer? Fuck off.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨if portals are invented, will I be able to eat out myself?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Eat someone out while being eaten out. Same effect.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨With all this talk about Ai not being profitable why aren't we using it in video games? I dont mean replacing developers I mean in NPCs in the game. I make them more realistic.⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Have you ever tried to run an LLM locally? It makes CPU usage go way up, uses a lot of RAM, etc. It would tank game performance and/or require beefier PCs.

  Games already have had AI for a long time, but the kind of AI you’re talking about would be far more computationally expensive than what they currently use.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are you people all bots?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m not saying astroturfing doesn’t happen, but I don’t think it’d be worth investing into a bot farm just to leave low-quality social media comments for a political agenda. I’d be surprised if the practice is widespread. There are plenty of things intelligence services do that are more effective at achieving their goals.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are you people all bots?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  There are bots that openly advertise themselves as such. Less common on Lemmy than Reddit but I’ve seen a few.

  undercover bots pushing agendas

  Do we have any real evidence these exist? I only see very spurious accusations of being a bot directed towards communists and other left-wingers, particularly towards racialised people and colonised people. I’d be both sceptical of their widespread existence and of their efficacy at effecting any kind of political change even if they did exist.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm about to get fired. How do I make sure my next job is a better place to work?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  It depends. I have worked for nonprofits and know a lot of people who do. Word of mouth/connections with people already working there is a good way to find relatively decent NGO work. You would likely be paid near minimum wage though, it’s true, but a lot of NGOs do have well-meaning people who try to make a difference working at the lower levels; they normally have a bureaucratic layer that sucks but your actual coworkers are normally quite sound if you can find the right job. And some NGOs still do overall decent work even if the leadership sucks; they aren’t revolutionary organisations by any means, but when you’re looking at jobs, you’d be comparing them to some generic corporate job which sucks more.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm about to get fired. How do I make sure my next job is a better place to work?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Then you can still look elsewhere in the nonprofit sector. It doesn’t have to be a law firm.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨I'm about to get fired. How do I make sure my next job is a better place to work?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  You could look for another job in the nonprofit sector. Your past experience will help you. You’ve not said what your specialisation is or what exactly you do—if you’re a lawyer and want to keep lawyer-ing, I suppose you could look for another nonprofit law firm, or something like a human rights law firm.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Mount an ISO in Linux?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  Commands are normally not considered “code” on their own. Someone who just runs commands on their computer to get a few operations done will normally not learn any programming constructs or concepts. If you’re doing shell scripting that usually crosses the line into code as you’d be using if statements, for loops, etc, which you normally don’t use if you’re just moving files around or whatever in the shell.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How do I properly and safely clean smartphone?⁩ ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨month⁩ ago⁩:

  For the outside, I just use an antibac wipe. For the ports and grills, I bought a set of anti-static tweezers for this purpose.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Does smelling your food while you cook it make it taste bland?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’m baffled by how many people are saying they experience this. This has never been a problem for me. I thought conventional wisdom was that food tastes better when it’s your own cooking, and I’ve definitely found that to be true for me personally. Not that I’m an amazing cook but I think the cooking process helps me appreciate what has gone into the food and makes it appear better.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Anyone in the US also feeling extra suicidal after hearing the news today?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Why the fuck are you suicidal if you’re in the US? You’re not the ones being invaded. Talk about making things about yourself. You should be sabotaging your country’s war efforts.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How to get greasy spots out of wooden cutting board properly?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I would just keep it as is. But yeah, sounds like your board wasn’t oiled properly. Rub some mineral oil into it and leave to dry.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How open are you about yourself to others online in general?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Semi-private as well. I try to have completely separate identities on different websites that aren’t easily linked to each other, and each different identity has different “boundaries” on what I will share about myself. e.g. on some websites I share what country I live in, some I don’t. On some websites I specify my gender, on some I don’t. Tbh I don’t think I specify my age anywhere because I started using the internet as a kid and got used to never stating my age—still feels wrong today as an adult.

  That all being said, I do still have varying things I’m open about in different contexts to enable me to have conversations about topics I want to have conversations about. I don’t state anything my government doesn’t know though (unless it’s completely irrelevant/useless for them to know).

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨What is the difference between an American liberal and a liberal outside the USA?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In the US, they use “liberal” to mean “left-wing” (and their left wing is also most countries’ right-wing or centre).

  Liberalism actually refers to, essentially, the ideology of the bourgeoisie: of individual freedoms, markets, inalienable property rights, etc. In most countries with a political party that calls itself “liberal”, these parties will be centre to right wing and generally support a “freer” market as well as some social freedoms.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Can someone ELI5 RSS/Atom feeds?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  RSS/Atom feeds are exactly what you describe. And there are plenty of local-only RSS readers. I use newsboat personally. There are also GUI programs, and mobile apps, if that’s your preference.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨How often do you change your towels?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I wash my body towels (for stepping out of the shower) weekly. I wash hand towels, for drying hands after washing hands, whenever I feel like it, quite infrequently but they get washed.

  I’d only replace a towel if it fell apart or something like that. If it’s unusable.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨at what point in life it's too late to go back to school?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I’ve been through surgically induced menopause and I’m fine? It’s a bit baffling and honestly misogynistic to suggest that basically any woman from middle age onwards is incapable of doing a degree. I don’t think menopause made me stupider.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨at what point in life it's too late to go back to school?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  I think this question greatly depends on where you live. Is uni free where you live? I’m guessing not from you mentioning the cost of a degree and debt. Then how does the debt work? In some countries, the government issues student loans that are repaid much less stringently than most loans, and it’s not a big deal.

  Depending on how the system works where you are, I’d weigh up the financial cost of going back to school vs what you would gain from it. What are you looking to get? Education for the sake of education? A better job, such that the financial cost of the degree will repay itself? The uni experience you missed out on? Something else? How much do you value that thing compared to how much it will cost you?

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are there so many Christmas songs, yet hardly any New Year's ones?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  Jingle bells and sleigh ride reference modern christmas traditions (Santa)

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why are there so many Christmas songs, yet hardly any New Year's ones?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  New Year’s is celebrated by everyone

  I mean, for a lot of people the lunar new year is more significant than the solar new year.

  In any case, I guess it’s twofold—the proximity of xmas and solar new year mean that a lot of christmas songs double as new years songs, and also that there’s more culture and tradition associated with christmas than with the solar new year.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Why does everyone put celery in soup stock?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  That’s interesting… I like getting chunks of carrot and celery in my soups. I deliberately cut them large, about as large as you can get whilst fitting on a spoon, for that reason.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨Are skin readings a thing when it comes to psychics?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  It does, but people of any gender can be abusers etc. It is a real problem that lesbian survivors of abuse from a female partner find it difficult to escape their partner because their partners are e.g. allowed into women’s shelters. It’s also not hard to understand that the environment of homophobia and misogyny leads to many women and girls getting into toxic relationships with each other where abuse can develop. I say this as a lesbian who was in some unhealthy relationships in my teen years. A lot of lesbians have similar experiences. I’m not saying that lesbians are predatory on a level comparable with straight men, but I am saying that narratives around abuse and violence completely ignore the violence that LGBT people may experience in their own relationships. Judging by OP’s profile picture they are also a young lesbian.

• ⁨Comment⁩ on ⁨what happens when you cut something?⁩ ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago⁩:

  In most cases cutting causes a physical change not a chemical change.