I don’t remember what it’s called, but in Japan there is a tendency to repair things rather than replace them; and further than that, a repair made properly can be see as enhancing the beauty of an object. I like that.

You know those plastic ball pits that they have for kids to play in at places like fast food restaurants (moreso pre-COVID)? My understanding from working in the industry is that there is a machine that can quickly clean and sterilize those plastic balls. It’s a machine made by one old man, and it’s the only practical way to clean those plastic balls. So any place across the entire planet that wants to not let those ball pits get gross has to buy one of these machines from this one guy.

(And yes, I know I’m inviting people to think I’m making this up because “ball-washing lol”… but I’m 100% serious).

For Zionists, this is a feature, not a bug. They want Jewish people living outside of Israel to feel unsafe and unwelcome in their home countries, so they consequently consider moving to Israel.

Obama’s mom was CIA.

Tesla has been clearly overvalued for years. Had you tried to make money off shorting the stock - despite correctly observing this stock has to collapse at some point - you would have lost your shirt.

I’ve found it to be the most concise and straightforward (and yet thorough) primer on dialectical materialism that I’ve come across so far. In particular I liked how the book split dialectical materialism (the philosophy) from materialist dialectics (the tools of analysis).

I mean I’m a communist so YMMV, but I’m re-reading the Vietnamese textbook on Dialectical Materialism that Luna Oi translated. I’m re-reading it because I also have the second textbook she translated (on Historical Materialism) and I wanted to brush up before diving in to that one.

Putin came to power in… 1997? So almost 30 years. In that time, the invasion of Ukraine is I think only the second or third time Russia has attacked another country? The other two are Chechnya and Georgia IIRC, and both of those were quite a bit complicated (and the former was only like a few days).

Impressive… very nice… now let’s see America’s card.

Seriously, America is poised to attack as many countries just in the first half of 2026 as Putin has in nearly 30 years.

I think the “exported food during a famine” part deserves some examination. Because doing this in itself may or may not be justified.

For the Soviet Union, I have heard this as an anti-communist talking point for both the famine that occurred during the civil war in the 20s and the famine of the early 30s. In both cases the Soviet Union was totally justified in exporting food during a famine. Why? Because having food in itself doesn’t necessarily solve a famine. You need inputs (like fertilizer) and capital (like farming equipment). For the Soviet Union, agriculture was essentially still pre-modern. They were seriously lacking both in both famines. The decision to export was not “let’s make some side cash by starving our people”. Rather it was recognizing that selling X units of food today would yield X+Y units in the future by using the proceeds to improve your agricultural situation. Food was swapped for inputs and capital. It’s an incredibly difficult decision to make, but it’s the rational one and in the end saves more lives.

But the British in Ireland in the late 1848? That was just allowing the invisible hand of the free market to do its thing. Produce sold for more in England so they shipped it off, because England was significantly richer than Ireland. You can say the famine wasn’t the intentional result of the British government perhaps, but you can’t say it’s not the expected and natural outcome of free market capitalism.

And then the British in Bengal? I’m not quite as familiar I’ll admit but IIRC that was just the Brits needing more food for themselves so they took it from India, consequences for Indians be damned.

https://bdsmovement.net/

FYI HP (and Dell, but not Lenovo) are priority targets on the BDS list. Please do not support them even if they support Linux.

Drop Site News

Food, energy, and currency sovereignty is the trifecta that nation states need in 2026 if they want to maintain real sovereignty. Nukes are useful too, but I would posit that having the three things I mentioned above has better prepared Iran to defeat the US empire despite not having a nuke.

Personal property is respected under communism. Your possessions are yours. Countries like China, the DPRK, Vietnam, and Cuba have some of the highest home ownership rates in the world, for example. It’s productive private property - the means of production - that are limited. That means things like factories, farmland, etc. But even with productive private property, what we have learned over the last century is that socialism is a transition from the old to the new. And practically speaking, trying to completely eliminate any sort of small business emerging isn’t particularly helpful in the early stages of that transition.

Regarding self-expression, I don’t see why that would be limited under communism. Go to China now and see that people express themselves in just as many ways as other places, for example. I guess if you are talking about collective versus individualist values… we already have some fully capitalist societies that are more collectivist than others (say, Japan versus the USA). It appears to me in those instances, collectivism is not mutually exclusive with self-expression, no?

Vol 2 is great! I mean there’s definitely some dry parts (the chapters on Smith and Ricardo were absolute slogs for me to get through) but Parts 1 and 3 have some of my favorite stuff Marx has written!

Now that everyone buys everything off Amazon, even inside houses I am noticing people are owning a lot of the same first-that-came-up-in-a-search items.

My Neighbor Totoro

I’m hopeful that this attack on Iran will have the long-term beneficial outcome of accelerating the move to renewables in the Global South. What’s happening to Cuba right now should be a warning to everyone: if your country relies on fossil fuels, the US can and will cut you off from those fuels if it doesn’t like the cut of your jib. I think that’s the real reason Trump is going so hard against things like windmills. He wants to see everyone dependent on oil - and is positioning the US to control global oil flows in order to force the world to bend to the US’ will. Any country that wants to preserve its sovereignty needs to be looking into getting off oil dependency yesterday. And thankfully, China is building out the capacity now to satisfy that demand for renewable energy.

I needed a Bluetooth speaker for my work PC (I work from home). I got one with a radio tuner as well. I’m fortunate that I have several radio stations in my area that play music I like. I prefer having some music on in the background while I work, but I was getting tired of having to actually think about what I wanted to listen to next. So I’ve been listening to OTA radio quite a bit, and it’s a nice change of pace from streaming music. And it’s not like the radio bits added much to the cost of the speaker.

Edit: also eyeglasses (sure, I’ll count that as a “gadget”). I hadn’t been to the eye doctor in probably 20 years. Hadn’t really noticed any problems but wanted to get my eyes checked since I had just gotten insurance. Doc recommended a prescription and now it’s like seeing the world in HD instead of standard def. If you’re in your late 30s/early 40s and haven’t gotten your eyes checked, it’s possible your vision has slowly degraded over time and eyeglasses will help more than you realize.

Trump is objectively a greater threat to attack another NATO country than Putin is.