Samskara
@Samskara@sh.itjust.works
- Comment on What Phone do you guys use? 1 day ago:
I definitely have to change mine. I already bought a replacement a year ago and haven’t gotten around to putting it in. It lasts for a day of light use.
- Comment on What Phone do you guys use? 3 days ago:
iPhone 12 Pro
- Comment on What's the weirdest argument you've gotten into with someone? 3 days ago:
Sounds like a pretty typical interaction.
- Comment on oh ok 3 days ago:
That‘s what human minds mostly do as well. The overwhelming things you think and say are things you have heard or read elsewhere. Sometimes you combine two things you learned from the outside. Sometimes you develop a thing you learned a small step further. Actual creative thoughts stemming from yourself are pretty rare.
- Comment on oh ok 3 days ago:
It has been trained to have a slave mentality.
- Comment on How do wealthy people know if the people they meet are wealthy or not? 3 days ago:
Don’t forget expensive schools.
- Comment on That's how the world works. 4 days ago:
Cacti are more difficult than other plants to grow.
- Comment on How possibly? 6 days ago:
Exactly. Women will encourage men to do violence on their behalf pretty often.
- Comment on 1 week ago:
Yeah, video games are still seen as low brow entertainment, not worthy of being accepted as sophisticated high culture.
- Comment on Turkey Mention 1 week ago:
I have eaten dog meat before. It’s kind of gamey. Not particularly great, but not bad either.
- Comment on Great Tits 1 week ago:
- Comment on How possibly? 1 week ago:
Have you ever talked to gay men?
- Comment on How possibly? 1 week ago:
The gay community is not uniformly homogeneous. There are plenty of gay men who aren’t big fans of flamboyant queer culture.
- Comment on How possibly? 1 week ago:
You don’t dismantle the patriarchy by attacking men and blaming them for everything. The patriarchy is upheld by women as well. Women have privileges under the patriarchy, that feminists are not ready to let go off.
A post patriarchy has to be better for everybody and can only be reached by gaining the support of men.
The current trend is a growing political division between men and women with women moving to the left and men to the right. The currently employed strategy of putting men down makes this worse.
- Comment on Le boo hoo 1 week ago:
Football (sports fandom in general) is one of the few spaces where manly men have a safe space to express all their emotions in a supportive group setting: anger, hate, joy, sadness, love, enthusiasm, and so on.
Men are often sanctioned by women when they show weakness. So this is a very important psychological, social, and therapeutic space for men. It’s an outlet for suppressed emotions, which is healthy.
You might think it’s silly, but it’s a good and healthy institution and custom.
- Comment on How possibly? 1 week ago:
Men
- higher loneliness
- seen as dangerous by default
- higher mental illness
- worse academic performance
- higher suicide rates
- higher rates of homelessness
- less likely to get child custody in a divorce
- less support infrastructure
- are more likely to be dismissed when asking for help
- work more dangerous jobs
- higher workplace accident rate
- higher probability to be victim of a violent crime
- more likely to suffer from addiction (gambling, porn, substances)
- lower life expectancy
- Comment on [deleted] 1 week ago:
Native: German
Well: English, French
A little: Spanish, Esperanto, Latin
Able to understand partially: Swedish, Dutch, Portuguese, Italian
A couple of phrases: Czech, Ukrainian, Polish, Hebrew, Arabic, Japanese
- Comment on BBC Breaks Law by Failing to Say If It Made Calls to Israeli Embassy 1 week ago:
I don’t think journalists should be forced to disclose their phone records. Of course the BBC should be allowed to make phone calls with embassies to get information and statements.
Israel supporters complain about an anti Israel bias at the BBC pretty regularly.
www.timesofisrael.com/…/bbc-anti-israel-bias/
- Comment on When people recommend Brave browser. 1 week ago:
Use uBlock origin and sponsorblock for a perfect YouTube experience.
- Comment on When people recommend Brave browser. 1 week ago:
Waterfox with uBlock origin
- Comment on When people recommend Brave browser. 1 week ago:
Back in the 1990s and early 2000s you used to get an email address and some webspace included in your internet subscription. I remember making a small personal website on the 15 MB of web space I got. The URL was a bit cumbersome www.my.isp/www/somesuperlonguserid/home.html but it worked fine.
These times are sadly over.
- Comment on fighting evil by moonlight 1 week ago:
The mistake here is to think you have to fight your political opponent directly. You have to fight to gain popular support.
- Comment on fighting evil by moonlight 1 week ago:
Solidarność
- Comment on fighting evil by moonlight 1 week ago:
That’s often repeated, but not historically true.
- Comment on Gaysadilla 1 week ago:
Elvis
Is an actual good example.
Another example is Western Yoga. It repackages Indian philosophy, spirituality, and associated physical exercise as wholesome exotic exercise for western women. Yoga and eastern philosophy and spirituality has entered the West from the 19th century on. It has developed its own practices, distinct and separate from the Indian original, while retaining the vocabulary and exotic trinkets around it. I don’t hear many complaints about that though, neither from Indians, nor from the woke (for lack of a better concise term). Mindfulness meditation has completely done away with the exotic decorative elements.
It can be difficult to draw a line between cultural admiration, idea exchange, intercultural learning, and exploitative appropriation.
A related topic that gets no attention in the USA is cultural imperialism. The USA is so dominant culturally, it suppresses and even extinguishes local culture and languages around the world, including Western countries in Europe. That’s not only rap music, Hollywood, and blue jeans, it extends to philosophical and political ideology. Terms like PoC and white privileged are mindlessly copied to Europe. Even though anti Slavic prejudice is widespread in Western Europe, even though they are just as white, or even more blond and blue eyed (Poles and Baltics) than Western Europeans. Turks, Greeks, southern Italians, Lebanese, Cypriots, and Israelis basically look the same, but get treated differently. Still people try to shoehorn this into the term PoC, instead of developing their own models, that fit the reality in Europe. It becomes more problematic when using BIPoC, as lots of countries in Europe have indigenous majorities.
This cultural political dominance lead to huge protests during Black Lives Matter also in Europe, even though it’s a minor issue in Europe. Drowning refugees in the Mediterranean die in far higher numbers, than from police shootings. Black Europeans usually don’t have a history of being enslaved either. Most came from Africa by their own desire. (White European) Activists still rather reuse American ideas regarding this, instead of developing their own more fitting analysis.
- Comment on fighting evil by moonlight 1 week ago:
That’s ahistorical.
The far left terrorist groups in the 1960s to the 1980s in Europe (Germany: Rote Armee Fraktion, Italy: Brigade Rosse, France: Action Directe) were largely unsuccessful. Meanwhile civil protests and peaceful popular movements were successful at changing society. Their history demonstrates really well how your kind of thinking fails.
To pick a different example: Greenpeace are pretty hands on with their direct action, but don’t directly destroy their targets. They have been very successful overall. Far more than any more violent group.
The IRA in Ireland was unsuccessful for decades until they gave up armed struggle.
There’s always a lot of context to consider. What society does the movement happen in? An open democratic society is different than an authoritarian one. Even an authoritarian government can have limits on how much force they are willing to use to suppress a popular movement. A nationalist independence or freedom movement works differently than one that wants to replace the type of government.
Non-violent protests can be very effective in the form of strikes. A general strike needs wide support among the population, but can force governments to negotiate and compromise.
The movements for revolutionary change in the former Soviet block were largely non violent and successfully toppled an empire and dozens of governments. That’s the biggest historical change in recent history. Of course leftists tend to ignore these.
willingness to escalate
There are many ways to escalate, that don’t involve violence.
There’s also a pretty big scale of violence. Breaking into a building to occupy it, throwing stones at cops, shooting a politician, hijacking an airplane, and blowing up a crowded market are not in the same league.
every tool available
It’s good strategy to purposely and consciously select the tool to use. Using the wrong tool can lead to less popular support, internal division, marginalization, tougher state reactions, etc.
- Comment on It Can Always Get Worse 1 week ago:
It might just be the hardwood floor, not rock bottom.
You can actively dig yourself a hole after hitting rock bottom.
- Comment on fighting evil by moonlight 1 week ago:
How to ensure to remain on the unpopular fringe.
It’s the same mindset as: „someone called me racist once, so i will become a full on Nazi now“.
If you want actual revolution, you need to appeal to a wide audience for support.
- Comment on Gaysadilla 1 week ago:
What do you think about t-shirts in Asia with bad English spelling, that resemble American colleges‘ designs.
Many Muslims and Christians in India eat beef. India is an extremely diverse country with many languages, cultures, and religions.
- Comment on Gaysadilla 1 week ago:
I have asked four black people I know about whites wearing dreadlocks. The answers ranged from my cousin‘s Nigerian wife; „Haha, nah, it’s fine.“ to my neighbor „That’s something only white women care about“.
It’s a step on the spiral of moral purity, that doesn’t actually improve the life of any black person.