amber (she/her)

I’ve never really thought about it outside of the context of code, but I wonder if Git would be handy for this. Plain text and markdown would work perfectly, but there might be better version control systems for things like Office/LibreOffice.

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Like what am I supposed to tell people? I’m seriously asking here. I don’t know and I don’t expect you to know either, but I really don’t know what to say to people about any of it.

I don’t know either, I really wish I did. Appealing to their morals doesn’t work. Appealing to their self-interest doesn’t work. Yelling at them about immunocompromised people definitely doesn’t work, maybe the least effective thing I’ve tried so far. Being visible and vocal in my workplace hasn’t worked. And people’s logic just goes round and round, you disprove one thing and they use it to justify some other misinformed take, and then you disprove that one and they move on to the next or bounce right back to where they started. It’s a never-ending cycle of cynicism and defeatism at best, and ableist, settler brainworms at worst. I wasn’t kidding when I said being nice doesn’t work, so now I’m just mean. At least that way I’m not biting my tongue off.

The problem is the practicality of it. I can’t give people more willpower to stand up on this. And sure I can go on with guilting myself or telling myself I’m doing some small amount of % harm reduction or telling myself I’m being principled, but it’s not helping me persuade anyone else or explain well to them why I’m doing it.

So what are we supposed to do? At least masking can have a positive effect at all. Who benefits from us not wearing a mask? The capitalists kind of benefit I guess, but even then I can’t see mass disabling your work force as beneficial to them, really. The only other people I can think of are those who choose to opt out of masking for their own personal comfort, trading their health and the health of those around them to avoid social pressure. Hell, it’s not exactly a material benefit, but least when I see people properly masking I can feel a little relief that anyone around me cares.

The only other thing I can think of is if you are the organizer for any sort of event or social gathering, require N95 respirators and strictly enforce that rule, kicking out anyone who takes theirs off or refuses to wear one. Agitating in gatherings you don’t organize is worth it too I’d say, though frankly I wouldn’t expect much in my experience. I guess if you can get your job to provide air filtration that would be good too, but again good luck if you already can’t get your coworkers on board.

I mostly recall posts qualifying as “anti-mask” coming across as a defeated, beaten down attitude about it, like “I give up”, not something anti-science or the like.

That is being anti-masking and anti-science. Copying and pasting what I said in the Hexbear thread on this:

Should I not confront racism or misogyny in my workplace just because everyone around me is racist/misogynistic? Should I not reject the attitude of lesser-evilism just because everyone around me are chauvinistic liberals? Of course not. I don’t understand why so many cannot make that same connection with masking. Yes, our governments, especially the US government, have severely dropped the ball with Covid. But masking is only one step towards a community response to protect the vulnerable, and the most basic one at that. If we can’t clear that bar, how can we expect to accomplish anything?

If you live with people who refuse to mask, I feel for you, that’s awful and I’m sorry they are damaging your health through their inaction. That does not excuse contributing yourself to the spread of illness in your community. If you have the ability to mask but refuse and take a defeatist attitude, then you are not my comrade. Camaraderie is not given freely. Respect is not given freely. I’m tired of being talked down to people who claim to be on my side while contributing to the shit that has fucked up me and my family’s entire life for the last almost half decade now.

On top of living in places where virtually nobody else is doing it anymore, which can attract strange looks or worse, depending on the place. Which can be very isolating, trying to somehow overcome that and be principled while people are getting sick in spite of what we do.

I’m sorry but fuck off with this. You want to know what’s isolating? Having all your friends abandon you because you are immunocompromised. Being forced out of every community you were a part of because none of them will accommodate you. Being forced into the fringes of society because everywhere you go, everything you do, is a constant, neverending reminder that your life matters less than everyone else’s to the general public. And you know what’s really isolating? Spending years, years, calmly and patiently explaining to people the dangers of Covid, the effectiveness of masking, the history of ableism that has led to this disaster, the action we can take to improve, offering people free masks, free tests, anything at all out of my own pocket (even though we are barely scraping by ourselves!) just to try and get anyone to care at all, and none of them accept them, no one takes what we say seriously, and no one can be fucked to change their behavior. How long do I have to be nice and patient with people for? Cause it sure as fuck isn’t working, and if being nice won’t work, then I have no problem with getting mean.

Masks and respirators for prevention of respiratory infections: a state of the science review

You may find this useful as an in-depth look on the topic of masking. It’s pretty long, but I think worth the read.

I do still mask every time I leave my apartment. There’s essentially no reason not to in my opinion. It would obviously be much safer if everyone was still masking, but at least in my experience, diligent masking has been very effective at preventing illness in my household despite the lack of precaution from the public. People can be kind of weird about it sometimes, but it’s mostly limited to staring and the occasional rude statement, which as a trans woman is something I was used to before the pandemic anyways lol. I do worry sometimes about the chance of someone getting violent with me or my wife, but also if the alternative is giving up the mask and destroying our health, and maybe even killing her if we get unlucky, just to please ableist assholes, well, the choice is obvious to me.

I wish I knew more about the masking culture of other countries. All I can say with certainty is that in my community (A large city in the US), nobody gives a fuck about public health at all, and largely refuse to change their lifestyle in any way to help themselves, much less anyone else. Unmasked people outweigh masked people by an enormous amount, and the few maskers are often wearing surgical masks or other insufficient PPE, and I frequently see people still wearing them beneath their nose or taking them off in public. Many people I talk to are well aware that Covid is still around and is destroying everyone’s health, but they either seem to think it doesn’t affect them, or prefer to live in a lie and ignore it.

Prolewiki has an absolute beginner’s list that should be valuable to you. +1 to Blackshirts and Reds, personally I would read this before anything else. The State and Revolution is definitely a must read for all socialists, but I think I agree with the beginner list that it would be better as a followup once you’ve got a working understanding of marxism.

i seriously doubt they actually believe this even a little bit. fascists constantly say obvious nonsense like this, that they know is obvious nonsense.

oh damnit lol. thanks, should be fixed now

In addition to the answers you’ve gotten already, here’s some links that may be of interest to you.

How did the whole war in the Donbas start? Why did Donets and Luhansk declare independence?

According to Lenin’s definition of imperialism, is the Russian Federation imperialist?

PSL Statement on Russia’s military intervention in Ukraine

Prolewiki page on the war

Most of these links are a few years old already, but at a glance they appear to me to still be relevant. I’m unfortunately busy with work so I can’t take a more in-depth look at the moment, but hopefully this will still be of some value.

What the fuck is are you talking about? Yes, obviously there is basically no such thing as consentual wage labor, we don’t call it wage slavery just to be provocative. I’m so sick of communists turning into libertarians the minute sex work comes up.

Highly recommend you read Masses, Elites, and Rebels. I was just corrected myself on the topic of brainwashing the other day by some people here. They are not a brainwashed CIA bot, they are a beneficiary of imperialism who latched onto propaganda as a means of justifying their place in the world and their continued inaction.

I’ve been meaning to read this essay for a bit! I read a chunk of China Has Billionaires yesterday on my break. I like how clear Roderic Day’s writing is, so I’ll definitely have to make time for that next.

Great comment! You’re absolutely right, they aren’t brainwashed. I made my comment mostly out of disgust for the shameless appeals to morality you frequently get from those who vote Democrat, but looking back I feel calling them brainwashed implicitly absolves them of the deliberate choice they make to align themselves with imperialist interests in pursuit of personal gain.

It’s really disturbing that anyone could be so brainwashed as to believe the Democrats are meaningfully different from Republicans when they are constantly vowing to kill as many people and ruin as many lives as possible. You really expect me to side with you to stop Trump when you are criticizing him for not being ruthless enough and promising an even more cruel border policy?

For DS Games Rhythm Heaven is really fun, it’s basically a collection of rhythm mini-games. Another good one is Mystery Dungeon: Shiren the Wanderer, from the same series as Pokemon Mystery Dungeon but with less focus on the story and more traditional roguelike mechanics. For 3DS, someone already said it but Shin Megami Tensei IV is a fantastic RPG.

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“You know, frankly, these folks continue to spew pro-Hamas talking points, continue to spew anti-American, anti-Israel hatred,” Lawler said,

adding that “many of them don’t seem to recognize the irony that if they were actually in Gaza, Hamas would very likely kill them.”

Seems a lot more likely that the IDF would kill me if I were in Gaza, actually

there’s a really good port of dodonpachi daioujou on the iphone app store, idk about android. sorcery is another good one, based on an old steve jackson gamebook

This article doesn’t contradict what I said so I don’t really understand why you linked it? I didn’t say memes have no social impact. I said that voters cannot be disenfranchised by a meme.

Anyways, I don’t really care to keep arguing about this tangent with you, so feel free to reply with whatever inane drivel first comes to mind so you can go back to defending the people committing genocide.