China is indeed moving in the right direction. That doesn't mean I think China is a force of good in the world.

Then what would? If the fact that China is doing good in the world is not enough for you to think "it a force for good in the world" then what does it need to do? Oh, I forgot, you think "all nation states are bad by definition" and unironically believe that the more people a government represents, the more evil it is. So in order for China to be "a force for good in the world" China simply has to cease to exist. Got it. Nope, that doesn't align with US interests at all.

It's a nation state and should be subject to criticism. And all I'm saying is that there are people who will religiously dogpile you if you try to do that, and I call those people tankies.

Literally no one on lemmy has ever said China is above criticism. I dare you to find a single instance of that ever happening.

lmao. I unironically believe this though.

The more you concentrate power, the harder it is to keep bad actors from abusing said power.

What makes you think the power over those billion+ people is all "concentrated"? Could it be (gasp!) that the power is largely distributed among those people who overwhelmingly support that government? This is just capitalist-realism-brained misunderstanding of how communist parties work.

Most Americans approve of capitalism. Does that make it good too?

No, but that's certainly not what makes it bad.

China is a government that rules over billions of people. That is, by definition, evil.

Funny how 95% of the Chinese population approves of and rates favorably this terrible "ruling over" they are being subjected to.

New theory just dropped, everyone: The more people a government represents, the more evil that government is.

Anyone who uses the term "tankie" unironically to disparage other leftists is a lib. Anyone who uses the term ironically to make fun of those who don't is a leftist. But you're right, conservatives don't know what it means, they also don't know that they are libs as well.

I maintain that the batshit conspiracy theories were cultivated and amplified by three letter agencies and the like for the express purpose of poisoning the well with regards to the actual real conspiracies that did and do happen. Now whenever you talk about these looney tunes cartoon villain shit crimes and events, it's easy as fuck for anyone to write you off as you yourself being looney with with "that's just a conspiracy theory" as if conspiracies don't happen. But look people, conspiracies do happen. All the fucking time. And it's open knowledge that cannot be denied, it's even admitted to. "That's a conspiracy theory" is not a remotely valid reason for thinking it didn't happen! Meanwhile the false batshit stuff gets pushed relentlessly at every opportunity, even into mainstream pop culture, and that's what ends up getting treated with a "hmmm, well maybe" by the same people who will scoff at you for trying to tell them of real things that can be verified. It's truly maddening.

Popular belief that all conspiracy theories are each just "a conspiracy theory" is itself a conspiracy.
(And like all conspiracies, when you try to explain this, you're disregarded for pedaling in conspiracy theories.)

It's not that I really disagree with this, I just think it's mostly moot. Overall, it's splitting hairs in a somewhat odd way, and especially considering the context of OP, where their friend is pressuring OP to vote Democrat, it just doesn't apply. It's almost obvious that what we are talking about here is not some secret schroedinger's voting booth vote that no one else knows about, but a vote that is announced and therefore is a form of, as you put it, public endorsement. If someone secretly votes Kamala without telling a soul, especially if they're doing real community work that benefits people in material ways, then sure, none are the wiser and the actual work that person is doing supercedes whatever asymptotically minuscule effect a single vote has. But then we're almost getting into "If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?" territory.

Though that's not really what we're talking about here. Going back to my analogy above about a friend supporting the murder of your family (and to be clear, I know you're not the same person I was responding to with that analogy). If you are completely and forever ignorant of your friend's support for that person murdering your family, and their support of that murderer doesn't actually change the ability of that murderer to do any more harm, then of course, you would have zero reason to think or feel negatively about your friend and no material difference is made. I would still contend that your friend is a shitty friend and a shitty person, but again, "if a tree falls in the forest..."

But that also does bring up another aspect of this. The person who voted blue (or in the analogy the friend who secretly gave their insignificant support to your family's murderer) still themselves know what they did. So it matters to them. And while it may make zero difference to the outside world in that very moment or by that specific act, it still "matters" in the broad sense depending on their reasoning. If a person votes blue, or red for that matter, so long as they're voting for fascists, is it because they do feel that the benefit to themselves outweighs the genocidal harm that candidate has done and will do? Is it because they laughingly did it in a cynical fit knowing that their vote doesn't mean shit, though they actually despise the person they voted for and recognize they won't benefit from that vote? If it's the former, then that person is still someone who can't be trusted to do the right thing, even if no one is aware of it. If it's the latter, then sure, but I think their jokerification is approaching worrisome levels even if no one else knows. To put it one last way, if someone is secretly a racist, but never expresses it and only does things that positively effect the people they hate, then "no harm, no foul" but I still think that in the real world, a person who is racist will always tend to behave in ways that have negative effects in the world. And so too with secret Harris voter. No one might hear that one tree, but there is a near certainty other trees are going to fall when people are around to hear it.

Edit to add:

In short, I'm with @frauddogg@hexbear.net on this one.

I'm not going to pick arguments over votes in the presidential election

I am. I want to know exactly who decided that in their personal calculus, that they could accept the genocide of another sovereign group of people if it meant the security of their own rights-- because when it's my turn on the sacrificial altar, it'll be those same coons, crackers, and assorted miscellaneous misleaders holding the knives.

I want to know who I can't trust turning my back to.

Why do you care about how they vote? It literally doesn't matter.

I agree that voting doesn't matter in terms of making a material difference in the social hierarchy because the US is not a democracy. However, who a person votes for (or whether they vote) is an indication of their values, which are in turn an indication of their future behavior, and anyone who votes for the regime that is currently conducting a fucking genocide demonstrates either their ignorance (which it seems OP's friend cannot claim as a so-called socialist) or a fundamental lack of solidarity with those who are being dehumanized, tortured, and murdered, the victims of that genocide. It demonstrates a fundamental lack of solidarity with all oppressed peoples of the world. Just because voting doesn't matter with respect to who wins the election, it sure as hell matters on an interpersonal level.

Find it pretty funny how electoralist brainworms have infected even socialist Americans to the point that they'd think convincing someone not to vote is a useful course of action.

It has next to nothing to do with electoralism as it is only tangentially related to the election itself. Again, it is about a person's position relative to class struggle. If a member of the ruling class were murdering your family and your friend decided to throw in their support to that murderer with the rationalization that that murderer might benefit your friend more than some other murderer, it doesn't matter how inconsequential their support is - it still tells you a great deal about your friend's priorities and interests which don't actually include your dying family or other oppressed people, only themselves.

Or go vote to better maintain a friendship. Or lie about it. Again it simply doesn't matter.

Everything else aside, this is still terrible advice. Lie to your friend about your principles regarding genocide to "better maintain a friendship"? Gross.

Again it simply doesn't matter.

Socialism is not nihilism.

Weird, that's a big part of the reasoning I have for wanting the Democrats to lose. (It shouldn't need saying, but just in case: I don't want either of the two fascist parties to "win," and it probably wouldn't be wise to say what I do want to happen to both the candidates , but since one of them unfortunately will be winning the election...) I think a Trump win will make it harder for these people to pretend they care, because they actually have to, you know, pretend. Which is the hard part. They can't just go back to brunch again (as they did when Biden won), simply ignoring everything the profess to care about (like children in cages) and saying that all is right in the country, or at least on the right path, since one of their good guys is in office. Their brains are in dire need of breaking imo, and that won't happen if Trump loses.

Nowhere near as bad as your mom as far as the level of obsession, but as I see it, my dad fell much further from having relatively good politics (for a lib boomer) to a flat, simplistic "Trump bad" position without much concern beyond it and with a seeming sudden lack of curiosity (let alone understanding) about world events and geopolitics that he used to follow.

When I was a kid in the 90's he would tell me about US imperialism (though I don't think he used that word with me) in South America, how terrible it was, and how much the US lied about all of it. He fucking hated Reagan and Bush 1 (for all the right reasons) and strongly opposed both Iraq wars, attending protests against them, even the second one when most of America was deep in the throes of Islamophobic 9/11 derangement. He got really into learning about the life of Che Guevara for a while, reading several biographies on him, though to my disappointment now, I don't think he ever actually understood the politics, just recognized Che as someone who was genuinely fighting for the oppressed people of the world and respected him for that. I hate to say it, but I'm sure there was also just some glamorization of the revolutionary aesthetic in there too, which is fine so long as you also have an understanding from a materialist perspective and engage with the theory, which is where I suspect he fell short.

He's old enough now that I think actual age-related cognitive decline is playing at least some role in this, but the much bigger factor is that since he has no energy, he just lays around watching CNN and MSNBC all the time, and it is really sad to see. He thinks he's not being affected by the propaganda and still considers himself "on the left" because he also watches and likes the far left radical Amy Goodman on Democracy Now! (I know). I was shocked back in 2022 how easily and fully he bought into the narrative for how terrible it was that the big evil Russia invaded poor, innocent little Ukraine just out of the blue. I'm not surprised by it anymore, but now with election season, his politics are centered entirely around Trump. And it's an odd, almost gossipy kind of talk about Trump's latest shenanigans that I know is inspired by CNN talking points. It's not odd in itself, it's actually very typical, it's just odd for him, as he was never like that. He often now refers to the news anchors by first name as if he knows them sometimes, which is so uncharacteristic of the way he used to be that I couldn't have imagined it 15 years ago, or even 5. A few weeks back he was telling me about how he is now boycotting the brand of wine he used to enjoy because the owner of the company is a Trump supporter and how he just couldn't in good conscience keep giving business to a Trumper. I think he was hoping this would impress me. I asked him if he really thought that any of the other multi-millionaire or even billionaire winery owners were any better, and started to ask if he was fine buying from Biden supporters, seeing as Biden was (is) the one currently committing genocide. But I didn't say that because we were getting along well and I didn't feel like it would do any good at this point.

But yeah, it has been sad to see not just someone I care about but someone who was even formative for me on my own path to leftism become so hooked in to the same kind of thing he used to be critical of, and with so little awareness of it.

How are you supposed to stay alive during those two years? Fuck you, die in a gutter.

Exactly. And if somehow you do find a way to work despite your disability just to survive in the years you're waiting and hoping for help, they will use that as proof that you don't need the help and deny your application since clearly you're capable of working! It's just one of the more enraging Catch-22's of the whole ridiculous process, but it's hardly the only one.

There are ... novels?!!!!!! Okay frick, I have to check these out, thanks!

Sure! And yep, there's three of em (plus apparently a fourth that was never finished). It's been roughly 2 decades since I've read them () so I'm hesitant to sing their praises too much, but I can confidently say that as novels they are far better than I would expect any book-based-on-a-video-game has any right to be. They definitely deepen the universe and the lore, as you might imagine.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Myst_Reader

Glad I could help!!

I was so into Myst as a kid I even read the novels. Book of Atrius was decent for what it was, as I remember it anyway, but I really loved the Book of D'ni. To this day I will still sometimes use the name of one of the major characters from that book as a screen name.

It's shocking to me how little I actually remember of it all now, but hot damn do some of the images you posted push that nostalgia button in my brain.

Don't know tbh, I still only have an old original PS4 I bought used. But a while back for a brief moment I looked into what it would cost to get a PS5, I read about the major problems people had with it and stick drift is a really big issue with the dualsense controller. What I've read since is that it has only gotten worse, and there are countless nightmare stories from people trying to return or replace them. Apparently there is a "pro" version of the controller that has been out since 2022 or something and it's main selling feature is that you can swap out the sticks. The sticks still have the same drift problems, mind you, they're just modular and swappable, so instead of having to buy an all new controller every year or so, you only have to pay for a new pair of sticks. But that controller alone like like $140 or something.

Well, you'll definitely want a second controller because the PS5 controller sticks are well known for very quickly developing problems like severe stick drift. So when your first controller inevitably goes bad, you'll want that spare, either as a replacement entirely, or as a backup while you spend weeks first arguing with Sony just to honor the agreement to fix their shit (if you're lucky enough to still be under warantee) and then shipping it to them and waiting far too long for them to return it, and then only to find they did nothing and have to go through the process all over again, to finally hopefully get back a fixed (for the time being) controller. So yes, a second controller is necessary, even if you only ever play solo.

You might also want to report this to wherever you downloaded it from. Even if found on the high seas, there's usually a mechanism for reporting a download that isn't what it's claimed to be.

I am almost certain this isn't revisionism by the author, rather OP found a hijacked text.

I can't find any evidence of a 2021 edition of "In God's Path" being published. The book was originally published in 2015, and there doesn't appear to be any subsequent editions. Which means that what you found is almost certainly a hijacked textbook. Some fascist piece of shit is passing off their own fascist rhetoric as academic text. Since it looks like your prof is in the clear for not actually teaching a course on Islamic history with disgustingly Islamophobic text, I would encourage you to tell them about this. It's fairly likely that you're not the only student who downloaded this load of chauvinist lies thinking it is the real text they're meant to study, but other students might not be so aware of how blatantly false (and fascist) it is. If your instructor is actually cool, then this could end up being a good opportunity for a teaching moment even.

You do know about the backrooms right? And liminal spaces in general?

It is definitely not just you that gets certain... feelings about such places. A strange familiarity. The realization that most of us do was even a bit of an internet phenomenon for a while.

Here's another kind of interesting video essay: Liminal Spaces: A Theory Concerning Our Existence

I could have sworn it was on the list of things that would quickly get your comment removed if you didn't edit it out, which I think is the right call for a community that has a firm stance about oppressive language in even common and casual phrases. But a quick perusal of search results shows (to my disappointment) that "butthurt" is still used somewhat regularly around here.

edit: maybe I'm too sensitive to this sort of thing, but the way I've always interpreted it is that it's not just homophobic (though it is that too), it also reflects how normalized (cw) r*pe culture is.

I think before the capitalist system beats it out of them and corrupts them into sociopathic monsters, they do. There are likely exceptions and outliers like there is for any human trait, but for the most part, as a social species, individual members of it are born with an inherent empathy for others. The major question here is whether or not a grain of that empathy still exists or can be re-instilled in a person who has been so thoroughly corrupted by the pathology of being a top beneficiary in a capitalist, greed-is-virtue system. I'd like to think so. That's perhaps the main purpose of reeducation.