pearable

joined 10 months ago
[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 14 points 5 days ago (1 children)

All of these are individual actions. I'd add organizing with other folks trying to make a difference. Direct action or political advocacy can have a much more significant effect than an individual acting alone.

[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 23 points 1 week ago

It's estimated 27 million Russians died during WW2. OP is saying that number is attributable to Hitler. The best estimate given the revealed USSR archives, emigres, and informants puts deaths directly caused or the result of neglect attributable to Stalin is 6.5 million.

Basically the first half of the meme is anticommunist, misinformation that ignores the deaths caused by fascists.

[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 month ago (2 children)

My partner's iPhone is six years old. We're going to replace it soon because it stopped receiving security updates. She'd keep using it until it completely bricked otherwise.

I appreciate they're some of the best around for longevity but I wish they'd push further. I have a Fairphone and their firmware support is the same so it's frustrating that there's not really an alternative here.

I wish more devices would move in the Framework laptop direction, where hardware can be upgraded and old hardware can be repurposed.

[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 9 points 1 month ago (5 children)

That doesn't help you understand his supporters though. You have to wade in the shit they call news. You have to hear what they say to begin to understand them.

[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 105 points 1 month ago (9 children)

You're in a media bubble. It feels like there's no way anyone could see it differently. The people who disagree with you are also in a media bubble and don't understand how you could believe what you do.

For everything you said they

  • don't believe happened
  • think it was a deep state plot
  • believe it's good actually and believing anything else means you want to kill babies or destroy the economy
  • have never heard of it

Reality may have a leftist bias but most people don't live in reality. Most people live in a reality constructed by corporate media. Social media is largely derivative of it.

[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 40 points 1 month ago

"I don't even know you. You're not the man I married 5 years ago."

[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 6 points 2 months ago (1 children)

China's energy grid is about 80% fossil fuels. Assuming their energy mixture remains unchanged (a bad assumption as their coal usage is on the decline) it would take about 65,000 miles for an EV's carbon output to break even with an equivalent ICE vehicle.

The waste and suffering involved in carbon intensive fuels is ongoing instead of being single event. One benefit of renewable tech is the recyclability of it's components. Once we're made the battery it can be recycled and died not require ongoing extractive mining forever.

EVs have a place in a just future and can do some good at this time. Alternatives to cars are still a far more important and uncomplicated solution to our climate problems

[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 2 points 2 months ago

Direct action gets the goods

[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 18 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Basically.

For example, tens of thousands of people die every year in the US because of inadequate access to health care. Universal payer would be cheaper and result in fewer preventable deaths. Centrists do not support the policy and thus are willing to let people die in order to support the parasitic insurance industry.

The genocide in Gaza, homelessness, prison industrial complex, climate change, etc. all get people killed in preventable ways. But we have to protect the owner class so we're not going to do any of the clear solutions. Letting people die needlessly is an acceptable result.

[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 months ago (1 children)

Explain Like I'm Five

[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 2 points 3 months ago

Libro.fm for stuff not at the library

[–] pearable@lemmy.ml 3 points 3 months ago

I think it has to do with complete distrust in western news and government (WNG). They can discount anything WNG says; especially when, it goes against their belief that the US is bad.

I believe we live in the most sophisticated propaganda machine ever developed but the folks who are a part of it mostly don't lie. They've got the same problem the tankies have but reversed. The folks who work in WNG believe the US is good. They naturally distrust and minimize any info that would conflict with their beliefs.

There's a lot of cognitive dissonance.

The only way I can navigate my belief in the fundamental inaccuracy of information is acknowledging it and accepting I don't have enough info to be certain a lot of the time.

 

Basically what the title says. I tend to lean anarchist but I'm not opposed to reading some Soviet sympathetic literature since I like to expand my horizons.

Edit: to be more specific. Parenti describes life in the Soviet Union as largely comfortable, perhaps too comfortable. People's needs are largely met. They have economic security. Most folks are quite skeptical of the news, "I know of all these disasters happening around the world but I don't know anything that's happening in my own country" and a general disbelief in the true news about the problems in capitalist countries. This results in a disatisfaction, particularly among the intelligencia and beauracracy, that results in the top down disollution of the USSR. From there he describes shock therapy and the deprevation that resulted.

How good is his research? How good are his sources? I believe quite strongly that we live in the most sophisticated propoganda machine ever devised. That makes me skeptical of a lot of the common narratives about the USSR but more than just the US is capable of lying and I'm curious how willing Parenti is to believe in obvious falsehood.

It should be noted he does criticize the USSR but at the end of the day believes in the project of state communism.

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