The latest update improved performance a ton for me

Depends what’s in season. Where I live: crabapples, blackberries, Japanese Silverberries. There’s probably a ton more, but these are the things I feel comfortable eating whenever I find them at a park etc

There were not two states in Korea at the time, a “North Korea” and a “South Korea”. There is one nation - Korea - and it’s Southern half was occupied by a foreign force. Literally - South Korea was not liberated from Japan at the end of WWII, Japan transferred it’s occupation to the United States.

Amber Volcel Police Whataboutism

Marxism is a materialist worldview, not a moral one. I could give my personal opinion, but Marxism can never answer a question that begins with “Is it moral/ethical/permissible to…?”

A tractor is a means of production. Owning a tractor would make you a member of the Petite Bourgeoisie - a person who owns their own means of production, but does not own enough to get by without also working, typically self-employed. Leasing the tractor to others doesn’t change this, but it is an example of Rentierism - something that will not exist under Communism. If you owned a thousand tractors, and could live comfortably off of the rent you charged others to use them, that would make you a Capitalist, a member of the Bourgeoisie.

Different people will have different thresholds over whether they think some Rentierism is acceptable. I believe it is fine as long as you remain small-scale and have affordable prices. Others may disagree, believing that either all Rentierism is acceptable until Socialism is achieved or that Rentierism is never acceptable. Marxism cannot give an answer to a moral question, and so the answer is personal.

It does make sense, it just has slightly abbreviated grammar - in the traditional style of a newspaper headline.

While “Biden is going to lose the election” is “proper” grammar, abbreviating it to “Biden to lose election” is also completely valid, within certain contexts (such as a headline).

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One thing that people seem to take for granted is that these government-hosted instances would be open to the public for account creation, while this doesn’t necessarily have to be the case. Not everyone can get a statedepartment.gov email address. Not everyone needs to be able to get a @statedepartment.mastodon.gov handle. Just leave it to public officials only.

I spent too long looking over this picture for little hidden details the artist might have added before realizing there is like a 90% chance it’s AI generated and there are no little hidden details

I don’t know Lawful Neutral or Neutral Evil

One additional suggestion I might make is to allow you to report the post to your own instance admins but not the host admins. This would be useful for when you want a post to be hidden or an instance defederated and you don’t want to also send your identity to the instance you’re reporting.

This might be used for:

Reporting spam coming from an instance that is unlikely to delete it.

Reporting CSAM on an instance that supports it.

Reporting hate speech on instances that believe hate speech is covered by free speech.

Etc.

China bad, updoots to the left

Couldn’t you have left this braindead bullshit on Reddit?

There’s a word for this, the promotion of leaders based on merit instead of popularity - Technocracy. And it’s not a distinct ideology but a syncretic one that has been adopted by many groups with differing politics. The most prominent example would be the Technocratic faction of the People’s Republic of China, which was opposed to the Maoists back in the 50s and 60s; they argued for society to be led by experts instead of Democratically with a strong emphasis on Peasant participation (the standpoint of the Maoists). China today follows a moderate path taking from both factions.

In the West, however, Technocracy is mostly associated with Liberals; however, I would argue that the modern Liberal view of Technocracy is fundamentally flawed, since it relies on Capitalism distributing wealth meritocratically (which Socialists understand is not the case).

Lmao amazing

Fake news, thinking about baseball would make Sisko misfire instantly

I thought it was the dentist scene from Little Shop of Horrors, but I think that one has another actor that looks kind of similar

I think you’re being overly simplistic - sure, ideas and debates have a place in politics. And “political power flows out of the barrel of a gun” doesn’t mean “Whoever has the most guns wins” (though this is the case most of the time) - but it does mean that a group with no guns has no power.

Like the other commenter said, the quote is partially metaphorical - it just means that force is the basis of political power. The people willing and able to apply the most force will almost always win in the end.

Think about in America. If, tomorrow, 75% of Americans were in favor of abolishing the police, would it happen? Maybe, but probably not - because the people with political power, the people with guns and the will to use them (cops, troops, fascists, small business tyrants) support the police.

History is shaped by material conditions; ideas play a part in this, but material interest is the primary driving force.

Mao Zedong; his quote was “Political power flows out of the barrel of a gun.”

The quote is not a moral statement or a call to action, but a scientific analysis of Historical Materialism: the Chinese civil war was not fought with ballots or debates, it was fought with guns, on both sides.

Ultimately, the people with the guns hold all political power in society.