Acing exams to own the libs.

Unconditional support to our trans comrades.

joy emoji + rofl emoji + lmao

There are already Open Source dating apps. You might be interested in checking out their implementations and how they address the questions you’re asking.

The most-used one appears to be, of all things, the 4chan dating app Duolicious. Here’s a link to a “KnowYourMeme” article describing what it is. It had a lot of discussion around it and seemingly a lot of active users.

The other is Alovoa which has been around for a long time, and is the one that usually comes up when you search for Open Source dating apps. I’m not sure if it actually has an active user-base though.

I think this actually highlights an important point, which is that attempts at creating generic alternatives are a lot less likely to succeed compared to targeted ones. Even the big companies realise this. You see more and more dating apps popping up in different countries targetted at muslims, lesbians, vegans, black people, and so on.

People tired of Tinder & Co. are more likely to find and try your app if it’s the one that comes up when they search “flat-earther dating app” (if that’s what appeals to them) as opposed to randomly choosing one of the dozens of generic dating apps.

4chan’s conditions are especially unique in that it has a specific site culture, a very large user-base, and it’s a forum/imageboard which means that the app already had a place to market itself to all 4chan users. This is probably why it became successful.

Ultimately, I think that’s more important than the specific discovery mechanics of the apps. They become less relevant anyway as you’re already filtering a lot of people by using a more niche app.

In a lot of countries and cities you might find only a handful of people in your region to begin with, and it’s more likely that you’d meet them and talk since you already have a common ground, as opposed to endlessly swiping through hundreds of profile.

Yeah, that’s understandable of course. It becomes very difficult to find anything to trim once we get to this level. The only thing I can think of, and I would pose this as a question rather than a suggestion, is “Value, Price, and Profit” absolutely necessary for the basic course? The “Political Economy” section would certainly feel quite thin if it’s excluded.

Aside from that, I don’t think much can be done in terms of cutting things out. Maybe if there are shorter alternatives to works such as “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, or a couple essays to replace “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”, but at this point we’re resorting to quite extreme measures.

I believe the only way to go beyond this, which is completely out of scope of this project, is to create more works such as the Abriged version of “What is to be done” and use those for introduction rather than the unaltered classics.

I don’t disagree. Admittedly, it’s a bit difficult to put myself in the shoes of a lib who’s been exposed to this list for the first time. Different people would be curious about it for different reasons.
I hope you’re right that reading the works in the first section back-to-back would be enough to motivate them to read further.

I would rather aim for 20 hours as the goal as opposed to 25. If I were in your shoes, I would add “Yellow Parenti” at the end of a section (maybe after the checkpoint) as a “strong recommendation” and just not count it to the hour count because it would technically be “optional”.

I like the list for the most part and believe that the decisions for what to cut and what to keep in each section are well-reasoned.

My main concern is with whether too much is being asked from Nia Frome’s 5-10 minute “Tankies” article.

The way I see it is that while the first two sections do more than a good enough job of correcting misconceptions about Marxism, they do not do an adequate job (in my opinion) of addressing the ‘elephant in the room’ for most people, which is AES.

tells me to ask my GP to refer me for mental health treatment if I’m having difficulty coping wit my life situation

This is beyond what even I would expect from these fascists. What in the actual fuck. You couldn’t make up a more fucked up response if you tried.

I’m sorry you have to go through this bullshit.

I also don’t bake very often, but it does not frustrate me. I find baking quite enjoyable. You need to respect the recipes and trust the process. It requires more precise study rather than feeling things out if you want to experiment with your own creations.

It also requires you to be quite familiar with your oven, as they vary more than you might initially think. With experience, you can then adjust certain things according to your taste like the amounts of sugar, lemon, vanilla, etc., without messing with the texture of the final product.

Like you said in another comment, a fun part of cooking is experimenting and improvising on the fly. That being said, I do find a different type of joy with baking compared to cooking.

It can be very relaxing. You have a recipe that you know you like, or a new one you want to try out from someone you trust. You don’t have to stress or think too much about the ingredients and adjustments. Take your time to measure, mix things smoothly, knead, decorate if you want to, turn on the oven, set a timer, and enjoy the pleasant smell of freshly-baked goods. You can look at it from the outside until the crust is just the way you like it, and just trust the recipe and timer to take care of the inside.

I love cooking, I often put a lot of love into it, and use only plant-based ingredients. But still with baking it feels more… wholesome. There’s just something about the process itself, and the joy of taking something freshly-baked out of the oven. It feels peaceful and rewarding.

Not really an activity in itself, but I do find that playing “lo-fi” music makes anything that I’m doing at that moment feel very chill. Whether it’s folding laundry or cleaning, taking notes after meetings, playing video games, whatever.

It’s a bit obvious that chill music gives a chill vibe, but I didn’t really realise how big of a difference it makes.

Funnily enough, I noticed the difference most when I was playing online competitive games, lol. Bad matches, terrible plays and angry comments from teammates, losses, etc. didn’t really affect my mood when I had the chill music on.

Many of them I think see women’s bodies as kind of treats that they’re entitled to access to

That’s a very uncharitable interpretation, I don’t believe that it’s true at all. I will give them the benefit of the doubt, even if they did not afford us any.

Ultimately, I think that their position aligns with the petty-bourgeois aspects of many Anarchist tendencies, which is predictable and expected when you have a “big tent” leftist community.

Rather than the focus on the sex trade as a whole, and the conditions and relations of overwhelming majority of sex workers around the world, their analysis centres around petty-bourgeois sex workers, mainly in the global north, even if they don’t realise it. The concept of “I’m free to do what I want with my body”, and thus abolishing the concept of sex work, of having to sell sexual services for money, is infringing on individual freedom.
They would argue that no one should have to sell sexual services for money, but they should be able to if they want to, and this is the part that shows their indifference to and detachment from the material reality of the sex trade in most of the world.

I’m not going to rehash the entire argument, but this is a much more sober and charitable interpretation of their position. It still does not justify their slander against us in any way, and ironically, I can turn around and call them SWERFS and chauvinists since their position on the issue is harmful to the vast majority of people in the sex trade.
It’s not something I would do, because I don’t believe having an incorrect analysis in good faith makes you a bigot, it just makes you incorrect.

I saw that thread and was quite displeased, to say the least, about the way the users and moderators on Hexbear handled that interaction.

I understand that there is a strong disagreement between various leftist tendencies on this topic. Being accused of being a SWERF and a misogynist for explaining the common ML position on the issue, centring the experiences of sex workers, and genuinely trying to work towards the liberation of everyone who finds themselves as victims of the sex trade is beyond absurd. It’s completely unacceptable.
Not to mention the deletion of comments from people explaining their positions, leaving up only the accusations against them, and the relentless dogpiling.

That post has left quite a bitter taste in my mouth and tainted my view of Hexbear as a whole. I still have appreciation for a lot of people there, but it was really disappointing.

I hope you have a pleasant experience here.

Yes, of course. I already elaborated on that in the post and in various comments in this thread. The most realistic idea would be to use some form of machine translation with specific parameters and have a crowd-sourced review and adjustment approach.

Whether it’s feasible or not depends on how well the machine translation works, but there’s good reason to believe that it’s already good enough these days for a task like this. (and if it’s not quite there, then it’s only a matter of months or at most 2 years)

My only concern is that it could over correct and overwrite theoretically-relevant terms (proletariat, bourgeoisie, contradiction, labour power, work, etc.), which is why I believed it needed to be trained specifically on marxist texts to understand the relevance of these terms.

I’m not sure how much of this would be addressed through training or simply just prompting. In any case there would need to be multiple runs of manual review.

A lot of valid points here. This method you describe is actually quite common for learning languages.

I only take issue with this:

Sadly, you just have to put up with poor translations

Sure, 20 years ago we might have had to put up with them, but why now? Today we have the digital infrastructure and communities to distribute new works without publishing houses. We have the technology to revise and update old translations to more legible modern standards. Why shouldn’t we at least attempt to take advantage of the tools we have at our disposal?

This is quite interesting, but do you think it would be applicable to translation work? So if we use your example, the original version of the text would be the “draft” and it would be able to modernise the language? (not sure what it would be trained on though, maybe modern marxist texts?)

I would assume it’s possible to reign it in so it doesn’t attempt to modify the content itself too much.

Agreed on all points. I also definitely think we should leverage the fact that these works are digitised and available on the internet; we aren’t bound by the limitations of publishing in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In the practical the problem as always will be to correctly convey the material without (inadvertently or not) removing or rewording things. Older editions are not innocent of this btw

We also have the benefit of later works that have built upon the work of those 19th century books and essays. I wouldn’t doubt that well-read MLs today would have a better understanding of the relevance of certain phrases and terminologies than the 19th century translator, and that they would be better equipped to relate and connect it to other relevant theory.

I’d be interested to see what @[email protected] is working on if he chooses to publicise it.

I am neither actually, i just speak fluent German as a second language.

That’s my bad, I shouldn’t have assumed. Though in my defence I’ve seen you comment on events in Germany a few times and Gauss is German, lol.

I definitely agree regarding the history aspect, and having to understand the context in which the works were written and the particular events and currents the authors were referring to.

However, I would like to clarify that I do not mean simplifying the texts, that is, as you said, the job of summaries and commentaries. Here I am strictly talking about the language.

As far as I know, you are German or at least a native German speaker, so I can only assume that you read Marx and Engels’ works in German. This I cannot comment on, since I have not read the original works as I do not speak the language. I’m not sure if any of the concerns I have expressed are applicable at all to the German and French editions (or any language other than English).

My point is that if we were to take the original German text today, for example from “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” and translated it to English, it would be more legible to today’s English-speaking audience compared to Edward Aveling’s 1892 translation.

To clarify, I’m not claiming that the idiosyncrasies of 19th century English translations are holding the movement back. I’m just saying that they make reading theory more difficult that it needs to be, which might not be a major factor overall, but why not attempt to improve accessibility in this sense?

I would have to say I disagree about the second point. I don’t see the benefit of making theory more cumbersome by keeping around old translations in a language that’s not very familiar to the majority of people. Reading groups are very valuable, but moreso for discussing the contents of the books and explaining the context, history, etc., not for translating 19th century English idioms and phrases.