Gorilladrums
@Gorilladrums@lemmy.world
- Comment on This Fall, Florida Students Will Be Forced to Take “Anti-Communist” Classes 3 days ago:
But is this not just a more sophisticated presentation of the No True Scotsman fallacy? You can’t dismiss every single attempt at communism with some variation of “that wasn’t real communism”. After so many attempts in so many countries over so many years, we have to accept that the idea itself is inherently flawed.
We have to establish a common standard that defines failure and success in an ideological system. You seem base your definition on perfection, where you think a capitalism is a failure because it’s an imperfect system while communism has never been tried because there has never been a perfect implementation of it. I disagree with this notion entirely because perfection can only exist in the abstract. Every system that has and will ever exist in the world is going to flawed. What separates a successful system from a failed system is how productive it is in practice.
I also don’t accept the premise that communism is the next in the evolution of economic systems. Society always has a bunch of competing ideas that all claim they’re the next big thing, however just because an ideology claims that it’s next in the evolutionary ladder that doesn’t mean that it is. Societal evolution is not defined by claims, but by the actual implementations that took place as well as their results.
As implied in my previous comment, I’m big on accepting history objectively. The statements you’re presenting go against this notion. I don’t like the idea of pretending that ideological claims are historically accurate or objectively true while dismissing the criticism against them as propaganda. If you have case to present to prove otherwise, please do present it. Otherwise, I have a hard time accepting communism as anything other than a proven failure.
- Comment on An 18-year-old woman in Queensland faces two years in jail for wearing a shirt that says "from the river to the sea." 3 days ago:
I mean that is the discourse. The central question is where the line should be drawn.
- Comment on An 18-year-old woman in Queensland faces two years in jail for wearing a shirt that says "from the river to the sea." 3 days ago:
That’s a very dishonest way of viewing things. Every society on earth has book bans if you go that far down the chain. While this is a concerning trend because parents shouldn’t have their child’s school remove books, it’s also disingenuous to pretend that is on the same level as a federal or state book ban. Actually, I don’t there’s even a county level or a municipal ban on any book anywhere in the country. We’re literally talking about community level institutions, and even it’s a very tiny number of them in the country and they are all facing significant push back nationwide. That is not at all the same as Saudi Arabia having a national ban on George Orwell’s Animal Farm or Iran having a national ban on The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie where it’s illegal to seek out, read, or posses these books and doing so may result in actual legal punishments.
- Comment on An 18-year-old woman in Queensland faces two years in jail for wearing a shirt that says "from the river to the sea." 3 days ago:
I think there’s a MASSIVE difference between conservative parents is some random rural town in Oklahoma removing a book because they’re paranoid that mildly explicit sexual content might corrupt their kids and the federal government banning books nationwide. We can and should be critical of the former, but we also have to be honest about the discourse and not pretend that its the latter.
- Comment on An 18-year-old woman in Queensland faces two years in jail for wearing a shirt that says "from the river to the sea." 3 days ago:
I disagree with this. It is a very, very big stretch to try and pretend that individual libraries and schools taking out books is the same as a federal ban. The former means you can’t access that book in that specific building from that specific institution, however, you can very easily and freely get it anywhere else. The latter means that you cannot access that book anywhere in the country and possessing it could result in legal punishments. While both of these situations suck, they are not at all comparable.
I also think it’s important to note that the vast majority of the book banning discourse is fueled by paranoid conservative parents in conservative areas who think that books containing explicit sexual content is corrupting their children. It’s stupid and worthy of criticism for sure, however, that’s still not the same as what you’re saying that it is, which is that the books being banned are covering up the things the government is doing.
I’m against these low level book bans as much as the next guy, but we have to be honest about what the scope and content of the discourse.
- Comment on An 18-year-old woman in Queensland faces two years in jail for wearing a shirt that says "from the river to the sea." 3 days ago:
This was found unconstitutional by a federal judge: ftrf.org/…/First-Amendment-Victory-in-HB900-READE…
- Comment on This Fall, Florida Students Will Be Forced to Take “Anti-Communist” Classes 3 days ago:
Communism IS a failed ideology in both theory and practice, and some of the most horrific atrocities in history have been committed following Marxist principles in order to achieve. That’s just objectively true.
However, I have problem with narrative driven education like this because you are guaranteed to have a lot manipulation and misinformation in there. History should always be taught objectively because the entire point of teaching it so we can learn from it. If the education is honest, how can we expect students to draw the right conclusions?
Education does play an important role in installing the right values, principles, and morals in the younger generations. However, it’s equally as important for the education to be unbiased, accurate, and taught critically. We can and should teach the flaws in communist theory, why communist attempts failed in history, and the atrocities committed in order to achieve it. However, we also must give an unbiased understanding of what the ideology is or at least supposed to be, what communist regimes ended up doing well, and an objective break down of our own history, flaws, mistakes, and atrocities.
The goal should never be to brainwash students into thinking communism is bad just because they’re told that it is. The goal should be to equip our future generations with accurate facts, critical thinking skills, and a broad understanding of themselves, their country, and the world so they’re prepared to face life in the best position possible. We shouldn’t fear facts, we shouldn’t fear criticism, and we shouldn’t use fear to teach. We want kids to today to reflect on themselves and their society and question things that they think are not right. That’s how societies improve and move forward. We can’t let these MAGA morons hinder the future of our kids or society’s progress because they’re insecure and ignorant.
- Comment on An 18-year-old woman in Queensland faces two years in jail for wearing a shirt that says "from the river to the sea." 3 days ago:
The US doesn’t have any banned books. People who think this tend to be the type who uncritically consume misinformation. There are no banned books on a federal or state level. The discourse around book banning stems from a few individual schools, school districts, or libraries in heavily conservative areas removing books because the locals don’t like their content.
- Comment on Uber is letting women avoid male drivers and riders in the US 4 days ago:
People who talk like this tend to not interact with anyone, they just sit in their house all day writing comments like this
- Comment on Trans people in Kansas are being ordered to surrender their drivers licenses 2 weeks ago:
They won’t go that far because they now have a vested interest in protecting pedophiles. They’ll just come out and say that being trans is illegal because it’s against god or something and that it’ll punishable by death. And guess what? They’ll get it away with it too just like how they’re getting away with this crap.
- Comment on Trans people in Kansas are being ordered to surrender their drivers licenses 2 weeks ago:
They’re intentionally focusing on the wrong 1%. Going after trans people is meant to serve as a distraction.
- Comment on Trans people in Kansas are being ordered to surrender their drivers licenses 2 weeks ago:
It should be the opposite. This is the perfect example of why the death penalty should 100% be abolished. Right now they’re going after driver licenses and bathroom usage, but the slippery slope is very slippery. It won’t take much for them to make being trans an illegal offense punishable by death.
- Comment on he forgor 2 weeks ago:
Controversial opinion The point of college is NOT to prepare students to be “work ready” if that makes sense. The point of college is to give you the critical thinking skills necessary to be able to learn, grow, and make decisions on your own as an adult professional. Whatever technical knowledge carries over to your job is just a bonus.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
I’m willing to bet that it’s the latter almost every time. MAGA’s hatred for electric cars and sustainability is truly unhinged.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Okay, but it’s rarely hated for that. The hate fests always revolve around this weird assumption that this car is driven exclusively by incels and MAGA types, but that’s simply not true. Like sure its ugly and a bad product, but it’s not exactly unique in that aspect there’s a lot of other cars like that.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
I never understood this weird hate boner that Reddit and Lemmy users have for cybertrucks specifically. It can’t be a moral position because they’re fine with regular Teslas, just not this one. It also can’t be about the ugly design because they’re fine with other ugly cars.
The thing is that I’ve seen a few of these out in the wild, and they’re almost always driven either by Indian tech bros or white finance bros. I’ve never seen any right wing types drive these like so many people here seem to think. In fact, the right wing types have this weird vendetta against all electric cars and they intentionally go for the gas guzzling pickup trucks. Which this hate boner even more baffling. It’s like people are mad for the sake of it.
- Comment on A “QuitGPT” campaign is urging people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions— Backlash against ICE is fueling a broader movement against AI companies’ ties to President Trump. 4 weeks ago:
I don’t necessarily disagree with you here, I also think that no generative LLM is worth paying for, let alone a subscription with such a ridiculous price. However, I can still at least understand the appeal for a certain niche subset of people who constantly do the few stuff that a generative LLM like chatgpt excels at.
- Comment on A “QuitGPT” campaign is urging people to cancel their ChatGPT subscriptions— Backlash against ICE is fueling a broader movement against AI companies’ ties to President Trump. 4 weeks ago:
They’re extremely helpful, just not at a professional level. They can help a student proof read an essay or a content creator come up with a script, but they can’t help you code an app from scratch or give you a medical diagnosis.
- Comment on Praise Be 4 weeks ago:
Yes, the sahih hadiths explicitly state that mohammad married Alisha when she was 6 and consummated the marriage when she was 9.
This marriage was justified in the quran via a verse 65:4, which virtually all the credible islamic tafsirs agree that it justifies child marriage and pedophilia.
- Comment on Praise Be 4 weeks ago:
Pedophilia has always been a part of Christianity. Mary was 13 when she gave birth to Jesus. Joesph was in his 70s. It’s the basis of the religion. At least Christianity tries to hide it by pretending that she was virgin and her child was actually from god. That’s better than, say, islam, where mohammad just outright marries Aisha when was 6 years old and pretended that allah told him its halal.
- Comment on Ubisoft Fires Team Lead For Criticising Stupid Return-To-Office Mandate 5 weeks ago:
Is there a company that’s trying to trying to destroy itself as much as Ubisoft? The CEO and board that’s running this company are genuinely some of the dumbest motherfuckers in the world. These idiots are still dedicating significant resources to make NFT games, they’re still trying to insist that microtransactions are fun, they refuse to do anything to make their enjoyable to players, and they’re trying everything in their power to squeeze out their talent. At this point, Ubisoft deserves to collapse.
- Comment on YSK that a general strike is one of the most effective ways to push for change. There is a general strike in the works across the US for this Friday. 5 weeks ago:
Except for this whole part
If you actually took the time to read my comment, you would’ve understood the context right away. I was very clearly talking from the perspective of the general public. Go to your average American, not even, go to your average politically active young left wing American and ask them about the ICE out strike, and I guarantee you that they wouldn’t know a damn thing about it. Ask them if they knew if the strike was even a thing, ask them if they knew the leaders, ask them if they knew the goals, ask them if they knew how they could get involved in the organization efforts, ask them if they knew what organizations sponsored the event, ask them literally anything about it, would they know any of it? The answer is a resounding no.
You can sit here and try to double, triple, and quadruple down on me being wrong here, but again, the results speak for themselves. You’re literally arguing against reality here. Actually now that I think about it, what in the fuck are you even arguing for? At least I’m providing criticism for improvement. I’m seeing something that’s clearly not working, and I’m providing what I think would produce better results. What are you doing? You’re trying to shut down my criticism without a second thought, actually no, without ANY thought. You’re going out of your way to defend an event that was objectively a failure. What for? This is precisely the time for internal discussion and criticisms, because that’s how movements grow… and you’re saying my criticisms carry water for fascists? Man, shut the hell up. You’re literally standing in the way of progress. If you’re not actually planning to help refine or expand the efforts here then just get out of the way.
Look, I gave it a pass with your snarky restatements. But this is just gaslighting.
You know it’s ironic because you’ve been providing nothing but snarky statements
Good. Hopefully you’re not busy being snide and gaslighting with them.
Do you seriously not see the irony here?
- Comment on YSK that a general strike is one of the most effective ways to push for change. There is a general strike in the works across the US for this Friday. 1 month ago:
I’m not wrong, the results speak for themselves. Are you going to honestly sit and here and actually argue that this was a great success? It’s disingenuous. There was no impact whatsoever.
And repeating this the futility of it all is exactly how you support the current tyranny facing us.
No, you’re supporting this fascist administration by naively and arrogantly doubling down on something that’s clearly not working. We’re not going for participation awards here. We want real, tangible results. The reality is that this sort of shit is just performative and it does nothing as you clearly see, but it doesn’t have to be like this. These efforts could be so much more effective if they worked to apply pressure locally first before attempting to go nationwide.
You seem so frustrated that people are patting themselves on the back for sharing jpegs, yet you sit here doing significantly less than the bare minimum. You are working against it.
Quite the assumption, wouldn’t you say? I wouldn’t waste my time arguing with you if I didn’t believe in what I said. I’m actually active in my the efforts of my local community, which is why I can see things clear as day. Democratic movements have to be built from the bottom up to produce real change. A simple 1 day strike from any profession, like teachers or nurses, in a single city like Boston would have more impact both in the short and long term than faux “national” strikes like this. Why? Because that concentrated pressure will actually cause the people to notice and the people in power to panic. That’s real pressure.
- Comment on TikTok uninstalls are up 150% following U.S. joint venture 1 month ago:
Did YOU read what you said?
Your entire spiel from before was literally nothing more than a collection of fallacies. You used a false equivalence by comparing worst case domestic repression (death squads) to foreign data misuse, which are fundamentally different types of risk and not logically comparable. It engages in whataboutism by deflecting concerns about China’s data access with references to American authoritarian threats, which doesn’t actually refute the original concern. The argument also builds a straw man by reducing all China related security worries to racist “Yellow Peril” panic, ignoring more nuanced, non racial critiques about state power and influence. Finally, it also leans on appeals to extreme outcomes and fear, invoking Nazis and executions to shut down debate rather than assess proportional, evidence based risks. Together, these fallacies prove two things: 1) You’re engaging in bad faith and 2) your points were inherently flawed and logically unsound.
Like what even is the thesis supposed to be, that the concerns about China aren’t real or serious because propaganda exists or because other threats exist? It’s such a nonsensical take. People aren’t concerned about China because of propaganda, they’re concerned because China’s actions, intentions, and track record raise a lot of red flags that are concerning. It doesn’t take a genius to see that something nefarious is going on with these Chinese apps. Like for example…
- Why is the international version of TikTok banned in China?
- Why does the domestic version of the app and the international one use different algorithms?
- The CCP has unrestricted control over all corporations in China, how much of the data collection is directly ordered from the government?
- There are reports from multiple countries stating that China is collecting massive amounts of data for military purposes, what are they collecting and why?
- China is also well known for spending tens of billions on propaganda campaigns, are they using the data from apps like TikTok to more effectively manipulate public opinions around the globe to further their interests?
- What about the secret police networks that the CCP has established in foreign cities where there’s large populations of ethnic Chinese residing? Countries around the globe have uncovered hundreds of these networks, is the CCP using this data to find, target, and silence dissent?
These are are valid concerns that you’re trying to conveniently dismiss because you’re either ignorant of them or you’re being dishonest. Like do you not find any of these things even slightly concerning? Trying to chalk up these legitimate concerns as nothing more than product of fearmongering and propaganda is the most intellectually lazy way to dismiss them because you can’t be bothered to parse through the implications and consequences.
If you don’t care about things like privacy, tyranny, freedom, ownership, safety, and the like then that’s your problem. However, just because you don’t care that doesn’t mean others don’t or that their concerns are product of propaganda. If anything that’s a more of a reflection of you and how your own beliefs came to be. Your stance, even if we ignore all the fallacies, isn’t even a principled one. At least what I’m saying is consistent and principled. You on the other hand? You’re acting smug over a disingenuous, fallacious, and inconsistent stance, it’s, as you would say, fucking pathetic.
- Comment on YSK that a general strike is one of the most effective ways to push for change. There is a general strike in the works across the US for this Friday. 1 month ago:
Me: “These hollow performative stunts have no impact and resulted in zero results. We need to work establishing a real opposition with true roots to get actual results in the most effective way possible!”
You: “iS tHiS fAsCiSm?”
Like come on, you gotta be a troll. There’s no way anybody is dim enough to think a small collection of individuals posting random “national strike” pics on Reddit and Lemmy is going to actually produce anything substantial nationwide. It’s Jan 31st, we literally saw this fail because it wasn’t a real attempt to begin with. Nobody knew about it, nobody is backing it, nobody is leading it, there’s no goals, there’s organization, there’s no coordination, there’s literally nothing… and what do you know? Nobody fucking participated. How much further into tyranny do we have to slip before you mouthbreathers understand that you can’t virtue signal your way out of authoritarianism.
- Comment on YSK that a general strike is one of the most effective ways to push for change. There is a general strike in the works across the US for this Friday. 1 month ago:
I’m not giving steps, I’m merely stating a very basic fact. Movements need substance, that’s just reality. They need foundations to stand on to do anything meaningful. That’s the most basic of observations.
Like do you seriously think that the civil rights movement happened overnight because MLK decided one day to do a big march and everybody decided to randomly join? No the civil rights movement and all the other movements in history took decades of independent grassroots movements organizing, mobilizing, and coordinating with each other. That’s how they eventually consolidated to form unstoppable national political force.
You can be butthurt at what I said or deny it all you want, but reality isn’t going to change because what I said is a simple truth. If I was wrong then something would’ve happened today, but nothing did. January 30th is already over, and there was absolutely no impact or buzz surrounding this “strike”, not even on social media.
- Comment on YSK that a general strike is one of the most effective ways to push for change. There is a general strike in the works across the US for this Friday. 1 month ago:
I realized years ago that the progressives in this country a complete joke. They constantly put their own careers ahead of the greater good, they talk big but their actions never match, when push comes to shove they cower, and the most infuriating thing is that they always choose to uphold the status quo.
If they were the real deal then they would’ve worked day and night to build a coalition to stop Trump in 2016, but they didn’t. They would’ve build a strong opposition during his first term and stopped him from passing anything, but they didn’t. They would’ve use their opportunity under Biden to prosecute Trump and his gang of criminals after Jan 6th, but they didn’t. They would’ve at least fielded real candidates to stop Trump from returning, but they didn’t. Now that Trump has been in office again and literally dismantling the country, they’re still not doing shit. I lost all faith in them. If change were to happen it has to come from the people.
- Comment on YSK that a general strike is one of the most effective ways to push for change. There is a general strike in the works across the US for this Friday. 1 month ago:
You can’t go from 0 to a 100 and expect results. The national strike that the post is talking about is going to result in absolutely nothing. Barely anybody is going to participate if at all.
Why? Because most people aren’t even aware this is a thing, and to the small minority that is, they still won’t participate because they’re going to be the only people doing it. If one or two people from your workplace participate, they’re going to be penalized for not showing up. Same goes with boycotting or whatever else is planned.
My point is that there is currently no foundation to support such a strike. You can’t scale up if the people aren’t mobilized and onboard. How about instead of calling for a national strike, you work to convince your local unions to buy in? Two people participating at a workplace will do nothing, but if 70% of workers don’t show up at then that means something. It will send a message to the local community and might even make it to the local news. Then from there you coordinate the unions and other orgs (churches, schools, universities, nonprofits, etc) to organize a city wide strike, then a statewide strike, and then a regional strike, and if that succeeds then you can think about doing something on a national scale. However, trying to skip all the steps usually doesn’t result in real change, which is what’s going to happen here.
- Comment on DuckDuckGo poll says 90% responders don't want AI 1 month ago:
We can agree to that
- Comment on DuckDuckGo poll says 90% responders don't want AI 1 month ago:
It’s not impossible. You could build a model that’s built on consent where the data it’s trained on is obtained ethically, data collected from users is anonymized, and users can opt out if they want to. The current model of shameless theft isn’t the only path there is.