Weydemeyer

The crisis was one of capitalist profitability - the rate of profit - moreso than one felt directly by workers (though they still felt its impacts - the late 70s in particular is where this was felt most acutely. The hatred most boomers feel towards Jimmy Carter is mainly due to the economic pressures they felt at the time). Of course that was still the time of boomers buying homes for relatively cheap so it looks good compared to now but not compared to the decades before it. The 1970s were known as the era of stagflation. Essentially, the capitalists were squeezed by higher prices (oil embargoes, labor unions, etc) and had to find a way to reverse this and restore profitability. Things like offshoring and financialization of the economy were the solution. And that worked for a while, but now there’s no more gains to be made there.

I think the user darkcalling, in commenting on this story in the current Hexbear news mega thread, had a spot on analysis of this:

Section 230 repeal is game over.

No more VPNs because they're liable for CSAM, terrorism, death threats, copyright abuse, etc. Even if they're off-shore and dare to thumb their noses at the US their domestic hosting partners will drop them out of liability concerns themselves. This is a terrifying unraveling of the internet as we knew it. Far more drastic than the death of blogs and forums and the rise of centralized social media. Far more drastic than even AI spam washing over everything and making real content hard to find.

There really are no alternatives waiting in the wings. You're not going to be able to torrent blurays over L2P or Tor. You're not going to be able to watch streaming videos with friends. For a while you'll be able to use Canadian servers, maybe Mexico (don't know what their laws are like) until they pass similar laws and tier one ISPs start throttling that type of traffic into/out of the US.

The boot is finally here, the death of the open internet will occur if that passes. Total narrative control. Social media companies seized by the throat by the US government, either cooperate in censoring what they want or they actually hold you accountable for everything your users do. Have good users? Here are some fed infiltrators and zionist intelligence companies who are going to spam you with illegal stuff and report it to us so you'll be done anyways.

The speed at which western governments have been moving recently to erode privacy, and thus a free internet, really has been staggering to me, and I’ve been following this stuff for a while. There’s been a total blitz against 3 pillars of freedom: 1.) destroy our ability to have private conversations (chat control), 2.) know exactly who everyone is online and identify all your online activity (age verification), and 3.) effectively destroy user generated content - at least content which is a threat to power (this attack on Section 230).

Personally, I think this recent all-out attack is due to 2 things. The first is the genocide in Gaza. The ruling classes were caught off guard there. They had previously been operating under the assumption that their control of mainstream tradition media meant they can control whatever narrative they want. Social media was for kids and they’re not politically relevant, so who cares. But having a genocide live-streamed completely destroyed decades of hard work at crafting a pro-Zionist public in the west. They’re not going to let that happen again, so bye-bye TikTok (the other platforms like Instagram were already compromised, TikTok was the only one outside of their grasp).

The second factor though, despite all the bluster and bravado about how “great” the economy is from Trump and the media (and tbf, Biden and the dems before him), I think the ruling classes know damn well just how bad things are. More than that, they know things are gonna get a lot worse. Neoliberalism was the method by which capitalism was able to extend its life. The crises it faced in the late 60s and 70s were really just an extension of the Great Depression. The only way the capitalist world was able to pull itself out of that was through a global war that destroyed so much capital that they got an economic boom for 2-3 decades just from rebuilding the world order. But now neoliberalism has spent itself and they have no answers for what to do next. Thus, they are fully expecting the people to fight back. The internet is maybe the most powerful tool that people have for organizing themselves and fighting back, so that MUST be brought under lockdown by the capitalists before it’s too late.

EDIT: I also wanted to ask, since I’m fairly new to federation… how would repealing Section 230 affect the fediverse specifically?

I have an N64 and a Sony PVM, so I play a lot of games on that. But there’s two I play much more regularly than all the others: Mario Golf and Mario Tennis. They both hold up incredibly well.

I second this. I enjoyed reading Lenin’s Imperialism very much, but it also felt very dated (as it should, it’s well over 100 years old now). I can’t help but think that if Lenin were alive today, he’d agree. That doesn’t mean it’s not an incredibly important work that we can’t draw from today, but we should also understand how the world has changed since.

I haven’t read John Smith’s Imperialism in the 21st Century yet, but I’ve heard it’s a very good update.

Yes, I think my advice applies more to an interview than something you would put down on paper on a questionnaire.

I am going to go against the grain of conventional advice and say you should just outline it like you did here. I have been in the position of hiring people before. I much prefer to know the real reason why someone left a company. Granted, if someone says “my boss was an asshole”, I would probably just see that as likely making excuses. But, if someone says “I left because I was subjected to verbal and emotional harassment by my boss, and if you want me to provide specific examples I can do so”, that’s actually information I would prefer to know. I think your situation falls into that later example for sure.

The idea that you should never speak ill of a former employer regardless of the circumstances IMO is bad advice.

You’re talking about simple conquest. By that definition any offensive side in a war is imperialist, which is nonsensical as that means nearly every war in human history involved at least one “imperialist” power.

Imperialism is system of establishing and maintaining hegemony over large areas for the benefit of an elite (capital in modern times, patricians in ancient times, etc) within a metropole (probably too simple of a definition but it works). The Romans were an empire not just because they had an emperor and not because they conquered lands, but because they controlled lands from Spain to Syria and wealth flowed from those lands into Rome.

Following the news.

Between internet sites, twitch, podcasts, etc I spend hours a day just following the news.

What’s insidious about this for me is that following the news is a good thing. I feel I’ve found enough solid news sources that I can stay informed about what’s happening in the world. When I don’t follow along with what’s happening I feel anxious, like I’m going to fall behind and then I will somehow get behind and not be able understand what’s happening around me.

So while following the news in itself is not a bad thing, it has negative consequences in my life, mainly around time. It cuts into my time with my kids a bit. And it definitely cuts significantly into my time for reading books, which is probably my #1 hobby.

I’ve tried to reduce the time I spend on it all but it doesn’t usually work. So it’s a habit I’m trying to kick but not really being successful at it.

I support the DPRK but tbh their flag is kinda mid.

Invading / starting a war is not the same thing as imperialism.

I share most of the opinions expressed about it already expressed in this thread, so I’ll add one: whenever I’m exposed to libertarian media (podcasts, articles, etc), I’m really struck by just how surface-level the analysis is. It’s like, for anything going on in the world, they simply try to tie it back to “biG gOvErNmENt” and shoehorn everything into that. They won’t even show their work of how they get from A to B. I get that once you start applying dialectical materialism to your analysis of the world around you, other analyses can seem vulgar. But tbh even your typical liberal worldview seems more thought out than libertarians.

As an example, a libertarian I know was complaining about how California is going eliminate plastic carrier bags at supermarkets. I just asked “ok, then how else are we going solve the problem of plastic bags everywhere?” They just sorta shrugged off the question and said the government has no business banning bags.

I actually was a libertarian briefly a long time ago. It was the fact that it offers no real solutions for the biggest problems we face as a species was why I eventually abandoned it.

Reading about Google’s proactive involvement with the IOF in Gaza is truly sickening.