CleverOleg

I got my think pad from a state university surplus shop. Those are great for finding good stuff.

They actually had a falling out a few years ago, Yogi and Sean don’t speak anymore and it seemed kinda hostile. I know Sean is somewhat controversial but I’ve never actually looked at the criticism since I sorta dropped out of listening to that pod quite a while ago. Was one of the very early parts of my pipeline.

Reminds of that great line from Once Upon a Time in the West:

How can you trust a man who wears both a belt and suspenders, a man who can't even trust his pants?

I saw a take on Reddit about her that I really liked, and it applies to so many others:

Leftish or socialist-lite people like Natalie do genuinely like the idea of a socialist or at least much more fair and just society. To them, it’s a very nice and pleasant thought. But that’s where it stops for them. They don’t want to think about what it takes to get there. They want to treat a potential better world like a Barbie Dream House; something that’s basically just escapism from the hell we live in now. This is especially easy for libs in the imperial core to do because while we are in hell, our hell is much more comfortable than that of say, the Palestinians or many other people in the periphery. It’s Utopianism, in other words.

And that’s why they hate tankies, because our focus is on how to actually get there. We support China or support Russia’s and Iran’s anti-imperialist actions because it moves the ball forward. They are concrete actions that are necessary to get to that better world. But focusing on the works involved spoils the happy little dream the libs have. Socialism is supposed to be something that will spontaneously appear without struggle or bloodshed. Being told otherwise spoils the dream for them.

and the great march of return was an attempt at non-violent protest, and the Israeli response was to kill a couple hundred people and seriously injure thousands more.

The Grubstakers pod used to offer a $250,000 Patreon tier for billionaires, promising they would never do an episode on you if you joined that tier.

I am generally anti-slop but I think this is actually something we should be talking about. There are a lot of libs in the US who are angry, scared, and looking for answers. More than I’ve seen in maybe 15 years. Because the Democratic Party and their sycophantic influencers (like Natalie) sure af don’t have any answers for what’s happening all around us right now. Highlighting Natalie’s pettifoggery around a fucking genocide really does give the libs who are open to actual leftist thought something to think about.

Replies from her stans on Reddit are even worse, a whole lot of “you tankies would get a lot more people on the pro-Palestine side if you just toned it down and tried to focus appealing to people who just so happen to think precisely the same way I do”.

I mean, if we’re being real here at day 1 Zionism had the support of many non-opportunist communists too, Stalin being the one who comes to mind. Not his best moment.

I've been thinking about this a lot recently. I try to avoid cheap plastic toys and yet my house is filled with them. I have parents and in-laws that will still buy them too much stuff, there's birthday party goodie bags, etc. Throwing it away doesn't help the environment and charity stores don't want most of it (can't blame them). It's both a quantity and quality issue for me. It reminds me of when Marx talks about how distant societies cannot avoid capitalism - it's a global system that must expand everywhere. It feels like amassing all these plastic toys feels on some level like an extension of that; constantly expanding commodity production that has to go somewhere, environmental degradation be damned.

@[email protected] I meant to reply to you in last week's chat but never got the chance. You mentioned that your daughter was excited to join the military via mandatory service, but otherwise her politics were good. My kids are much younger than yours, but I obsess (a bit too much) about how they will turn out. If she's got generally good politics, do you have any advice, maybe some things you did that helped point her in the right direction?

I do think he said something, but admittedly I was also working while listening so I may have missed it. The thing is, it sounds like what the Zionist entity and Jolani are planning is a war of conquest - actually taking territory away from Lebanon. If they were to specifically target Hezbollah then maybe the army could try and look the other way; but if Syria and the entity are annexing Lebanese territory I don't see how the army could possibly stand on the sidelines and retain any credibility. I am admittedly not a Lebanon expert by any stretch.