Are you seriously conflating communism with authoritarianism?

It’s like you guys went through the red scare and instead of figuring it was a stupid insane witch hunt without any real foundation, decided that the republican definition of “communism = evil” was actually true, but you wanted in anyway. It’s ridiculous.

I actually don’t think this is true. I used to think it was true, but after seeing more and more people I think it’s simpler than that. It’s a belief in the justness of hierarchy— the “great chain of being” from medieval thought, where people on the top both deserve to be there by right of being there, and it is right to submit to them.

On a certain level, I even see the point. Despite anarchist clams to the contrary, leaders are important, necessary even to accomplish anything greater than a single person can manage. Even kids can see this first hand the first time they get assigned a group project by their teacher, or try to win a game of sports. But it’s too easy to twist “we need a good leader” into the tautology of “the leader is good, right, and justified because he’s the leader”.

If everyone rebelled against leadership all the time, there’d be no leadership, and people do need leaders. But at the same time, leaders can be or become shitstains that need to be rebelled against. It’s difficult, and I don’t think being reductive about the difficulty is right.

Spoken like a dog lover who doesn’t get cats. Many… dare I say even most cats would. Not constantly, not in an obsessively needy way, but they do love you and want to be around you and want to know where you are. They do actually care.

My memory was that the new episode of X-men would run on Saturday, but during the week they’d loop episodes previously run before the school bus arrived.

That when breathing funny is a ptsd trigger, breathing exercises and meditation is a bad idea. Reciting memorized poetry helps more— the Raven did me wonders, Jabberwocky too.

Sorry it isn’t the kind of more generalized advice that applies to more people, but you asked what I discovered about myself, personally. You probably don’t have a ptsd trigger when focusing on your breathing— that probably helps you relax.

Tankies don’t only support modern fascist Russia, they also support Stalin and Mao. In fact, pick a brutal dictator, and they likely have full support. Pick any American sin (and there are many) that they decry and you’ll find them cheering and supporting and rationalizing a non-American committing that sin but worse.

When Reddit killed Apollo, I no longer had the means to use Reddit— I’d rather not have Reddit than use the Reddit app.

Unlike so many people here, I have nothing against centralized social media, and I actively miss it— I miss having a large user base to talk with, I GREATLY miss all the specialize niche communities I followed. But it’s not good if I can’t access them.

Yes, the centralized nature of Reddit means that one person can fuck up the entire community… but decentralization means I have no one to talk to about the things I want to.

Anyway. I’m here hoping that enough people will eventually join that I can have MY Reddit back. I’m frustrated that the place is so tankie infested though, and fear that’s greatly holding it back.

Even if it was sterile, that still doesn’t mean “safe to drink”. Lots of sterile things will kill you.

Now, Bear Grylls taught us that in this case, yes, you can drink urine in an emergency. But prefacing it with “it’s sterile!” is both inaccurate and meaningless to the conclusion.