A frog who wants the objective truth about anything and everything.
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Alt lemmy account: Cafefrog@lemmy.cafe
As others have mentioned, the Flowfold is a good option, in particular their model made from upcycled sail cloth (not all models are).
There’s also Couch Guitar Straps, who make some of their wallets out of upcycled vintage NOS 70’s car upholstery, which is extremely hard wearing, and very thin.
Unfortunately it is :/
If you have a VPN and use a US server you may be able to get around it (maybe Mozilla’s free VPN in Firefox would do the trick?)
Otherwise, there’s always yarr 🏴☠️ :)
Fantastic book. Archive.org has a good audio book version of it for free.
The creator of Babylon 5 has recently begun uploading every episode of the show to YouTube to watch for free, they release a new ep every 3 days
For anyone who wants to give it a try, here’s the season 1 playlist: https://m.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLGTv90eS-e4I
I can point to sources which show the Anarchists were using the profits of the Catalonia transit system to fund sending any excess vehicles to neighboring impoverished provinces which ran at a loss.
Indeed, alongside a railway line shown in black, 8, 10, 12 red lines represented that number of companies and road transport services which were competing with the railways and among themselves. It was a useless duplication which was to be found especially on the Mediterranean littoral, in the densely populated and prosperous province of Barcelona.
By contrast, on the chart showing means of transport for the province of Lerida, in the interior of Catalonia, there were great expanses, whole cantons without regular communications. Huge areas which, because they were impoverished, were condemned to stagnate in isolation, ignorance and poverty though an improvement in the means of transport could, as often happens, favour some aspect of development of production. And my comrades, who always put social interest, viewed in its global aspect, above corporative self-interest, or of narrow syndicalist outlook, decided that some of the lorries and buses in overabundance in the province of Barcelona should be sent to the province of Lerida. At the beginning, at least, the services would be run at a loss, but profitable services in the Barcelona area would more than compensate for these losses. What was required was to ensure to all the inhabitants of Catalonia then, and later for all the people of Spain, the same chances of well being and happiness. Did not the Collectives in Aragon, the Levante and Castile act in this way?
Source: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/gaston-leval-collectives-in-the-spanish-revolution#toc34
And how the Anarchists organized access to universal healthcare across much of the eastern part of Spain (not just Anarchists controlled Catalonia), including hundreds of impoverished villages who previously had little to no access.
in Valencia, then the third largest city in Spain, was the headquarters of a Mutua levantina or Mutual Aid Society of the Levante, founded by libertarians whom this writer got to know in his youth, and who brought together many doctors with different specialities, professional people with experience in the different fields of public health. More than a simple society for mutual aid, it was, basically, an association of practitioners of medicine which extended over the whole region of the Levante and in which the spirit of mutual aid dominated in its most human implications. [135]
Much more details in source.
You have made confident assertions that Anarchists in the civil war had no military, barely functioned, contributed nothing to Spain, and spread fear amongst the populace, and continue to assert this despite being provided evidence to the contrary, and in fact seemingly dismiss it without even looking at it.
If you’re not a Marxist-leninist, then I have no idea why you have such an extreme negative view of the Anarchists of Spain to the point where you’re not even willing to look at any evidence that may contradict your vendetta against them.
This will be my last response, as I’m not sure further responses will be productive, unfortunately.
(And that gold the Anarchist were considering robbing to finally get the supplies they needed? The pro-stalinist government, who controlled the gold, ended up just sending it all to the USSR, so they really should’ve robbed it, honestly)
The Anarchists were only considering that option after repeatedly requesting needed supplies and constantly being stonewalled by the then pro-stalin Republican government, who were in all likelihood hoping to weaken the Anarchists before their betrayal, despite how doing so weakened the war effort dramatically.
Your extremely harsh characterization of Anarchists as unruly chaotic vigilantes who cannot be worked with is very much in line with USSR anti-anarchist propaganda 🤨
(i.e. whatever chaotic vigilante nonsense the CNT/FAI were doing in Catalunya)
Calling it ‘chaotic’ is a bit absurd considering how well the 3 million+ Anarchists were able to collectively organize and run Catalonia, including public transport, food, weapon production, and universal healthcare (during a war with extremely limited resources), as was well documented in Collectives in the Spanish Revolution by Gaston Leval.
they were literallly refusing to raise a proper army to contrubute to the war effort
The Anarchists quickly formed a voluntary militia of 150,000 men and women (making up 33% of the Republican military forces) with a coordinated bottom-up structure, where the soldiers themselves would elect someone to lead their squad, and all the squad leaders would elect a commander to lead the squad leaders, etc. Every leadership position could be recalled by a vote outside of combat if the people below them felt they were not performing to expectations. They did this to be in-line with anarchist principles, and they likely believed if they became an authoritarian top-down military force, it would introduce the possibility of going the way of the USSR.
This structure was doubted and questioned at the time by a military advisor to Buenaventura Durruti (at the time, the effective leader of the militias):
One day Pérez Farràs stated his criticisms to Durruti directly: “You can’t fight like that,” he declared. In reply, Durruti said:
I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again: I’ve been an anarchist my whole life and the fact that I’m responsible for this human collectivity won’t change my convictions. It was as an anarchist that I agreed to carry out the task that the Central Committee of Anti-Fascist Militias entrusted to me.
I don’t believe—and everything happening around us confirms this— that you can run a workers’ militia according to classical military rules. I believe that discipline, coordination, and planning are indispensable, but we shouldn’t define them in the terms of the world that we’re destroying. We have to build on new foundations. My comrades and I are convinced that solidarity is the best incentive for arousing individual responsibility and a willingness to accept discipline as an act of self-discipline.
War has been imposed upon us and this battle will be different than those we’ve fought in Barcelona, but our goal is revolutionary victory. This means defeating the enemy, but also a radical change in men. For that change to occur, man must learn to live and conduct himself as a free man, an apprenticeship that develops his personality and sense of responsibility, his capacity to be master of his own acts. The worker on the job not only transforms the material on which he works, but also transforms himself through that work. The combatant is nothing more than a worker whose tool is a rifle—and he should strive toward the same objective as the worker. One can’t behave like an obedient soldier, but as a conscious man who understands the importance of what he’s doing. I know that it’s not easy to achieve this, but I also know that what can’t be accomplished with reason will not be obtained by force. If we have to sustain our military apparatus with fear, then we won’t have changed anything except the color of the fear. It’s only by freeing itself from fear that society can build itself in freedom.
Source of that quote.
From historical records available, the Anarchists forces were surprisingly effective considering they had the most limited resources of any of the Republican factions due to the Stalinists and liberals withholding weapons and supplies much of the time, as well as preferentially withholding the better equipment for themselves. That happened so much, the Anarchist’s were seriously considering robbing the republican bank to acquire the gold needed to finally purchase weapons and supplies on the open market, but decided against it when the Liberal/Stalinist government promised once more that they’d buy supplies for them, but they ultimately did nothing again, screwing the Anarchists for the last time until the war was lost.
For anyone else curious, there’s a very detailed 6-part documentary on the Spanish Civil war that’s quite excellent, and goes into the military and battles aspect as well.
They would likely repeat the USSR’s propaganda that the POUM (marxists) were Trotskyists engaging in counter-revolutionary behavior along with the Anarchists, and that they had to be put down/imprisoned since the ‘only’ way to to win the war was if everyone simply allowed themselves to be totally under the command of the Stalinist faction.
The Zapatistas in the Chiapas sell their coffee, which helps support them and fund their schools. I’ve never tried it since I’m not a coffee drinker, but I imagine it’s pretty good.
(It looks like there’s ways of getting it in Europe, too).
On a related note; George Orwell (1984, Animal Farm) actually traveled to Spain to fight in the Civil War on the side of the Anarchists, where he got shot in the neck and then had to flee the country after the Stalinists betrayed the Anarchists and Marxists and began rounding them up to imprison or execute them as ‘secret fascists’.
He wrote about the experience in his book Homage to Catalonia. There was also a movie mostly based on the book called Land and Freedom.
One of the owners of Mullvad donated a vast sum of money to a Swedish Nazi political party, accounting for 70% of their funding, which resulted in boosted popularity there.
This is the leader of that political party:
https://www.friatider.se/markus-allard-om-andra-generationens-invandrare-de-ska-ocksa-ut
Örebro Party leader Markus Allard goes to the election on expulsions. He opens to withdraw citizenship and also expel second generation of immigrants – even if they were born in Sweden.
“I’m prepared to cross corpses,” he said.
One suggestion that he has is that citizenship and permanent residence permits can be torn up – with reference to “Sweden is the country of Swedes”.
In a section of Yoshi’s Podcast, Allard develops his view on expulsions and explains that he prepared to “go over corpses” to bring home unwanted immigrants. The host notes that there will be no beautiful sight when, for example, immigrant mothers who have been on maternity leave for 15 years are to be deported together with their children. “It’s not going to be pretty to send these people home,” he said. Markus Allard agrees, but says: I think you can handle that optics. Even the children will need to be deported, he explains.
He further explains that many of the problems relate to second-generation immigrants. They are going out too. Even if they were born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedes. They have not become Swedes. It says Sweden in the passport, but they have not been interested in becoming part of Sweden. There’s a difference. It’s a qualitative difference," Allard said.
They are nationalist racists trying to cloak themselves with populist leftist ideas. This is the leader of that party:
https://www.friatider.se/markus-allard-om-andra-generationens-invandrare-de-ska-ocksa-ut
Örebro Party leader Markus Allard goes to the election on expulsions. He opens to withdraw citizenship and also expel second generation of immigrants – even if they were born in Sweden.
“I’m prepared to cross corpses,” he said.
One suggestion that he has is that citizenship and permanent residence permits can be torn up – with reference to “Sweden is the country of Swedes”.
In a section of Yoshi’s Podcast, Allard develops his view on expulsions and explains that he prepared to “go over corpses” to bring home unwanted immigrants. The host notes that there will be no beautiful sight when, for example, immigrant mothers who have been on maternity leave for 15 years are to be deported together with their children. “It’s not going to be pretty to send these people home,” he said. Markus Allard agrees, but says: I think you can handle that optics. Even the children will need to be deported, he explains.
He further explains that many of the problems relate to second-generation immigrants. They are going out too. Even if they were born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedes. They have not become Swedes. It says Sweden in the passport, but they have not been interested in becoming part of Sweden. There’s a difference. It’s a qualitative difference," Allard said
Remember; the Nazi’s did the same thing by strategically calling their party the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, despite them not being socialist nor a working class party. This was chosen because Socialism was gaining popularity, and thus the Nazi’s thought it would help their chances of getting votes and public support.
For anyone else scrolling by, you can read The Dispossessed here for free! :D
They are nationalist racists trying to cloak themselves with populist leftist ideas. This is the leader of that party:
https://www.friatider.se/markus-allard-om-andra-generationens-invandrare-de-ska-ocksa-ut
Örebro Party leader Markus Allard goes to the election on expulsions. He opens to withdraw citizenship and also expel second generation of immigrants – even if they were born in Sweden.
“I’m prepared to cross corpses,” he said.
One suggestion that he has is that citizenship and permanent residence permits can be torn up – with reference to “Sweden is the country of Swedes”.
In a section of Yoshi’s Podcast, Allard develops his view on expulsions and explains that he prepared to “go over corpses” to bring home unwanted immigrants. The host notes that there will be no beautiful sight when, for example, immigrant mothers who have been on maternity leave for 15 years are to be deported together with their children. “It’s not going to be pretty to send these people home,” he said. Markus Allard agrees, but says: I think you can handle that optics. Even the children will need to be deported, he explains.
He further explains that many of the problems relate to second-generation immigrants. They are going out too. Even if they were born in Sweden, because they have no natural connection to Sweden. They are not Swedes. They have not become Swedes. It says Sweden in the passport, but they have not been interested in becoming part of Sweden. There’s a difference. It’s a qualitative difference," Allard said
Remember; the Nazi’s did the same thing by strategically calling their party the National Socialist German Workers’ Party, despite them not being socialist nor a working class party. This was chosen because Socialism was gaining popularity, and thus the Nazi’s thought it would help their chances of getting votes and public support.
Thanks for going to the effort to find that, much appreciated!
So not as bad as it could be, but I dearly wish they’d taken a firm stance against it, as literally every DE and 99% of Wayland compositors/window managers use AI now, all save for the handful of WM projects on this list.
The Wing Commander movie by Chris Roberts (yeah, of Star Citizen scam artist fame).
It’s loosely based on his older Wing Commander games, and I think he funded it with some of the money Microsoft gave him to develop Freelancer.
It’s a deeply mediocre movie, but the soundtrack, in particular the main theme, was pretty darn good.
I have a pretty dim view of LLMs.
Simply using an AI that’s run on a corporate data centers encourages the construction of yet more data centers, with all of the environmental/climate negatives they bring, as well as local harms they induce on the people living near them, such as increased electricity rates.
Using corporate AI directly helps the financial situations of those giant corporations (by boosting usage/user numbers, they are able to attract more investment capital), most of which are ran by right-wing CEO’s who are more than willing to collaborate with and fund fascist governments to ensure that they are not regulated in search of both maximum profits. Some of these companies, such as Nvidia, Palantir and Oracle, genuinely appear to be seeking to use these tools for what would previously be considered crackpot conspiracy theory levels of public control and surveillance.
I’m wary of the potential effects of AI usage resulting in declining or stagnating critical thinking based on some preliminary studies (example 1, example 2).
I do not think LLM’s can be “just a tool” as many claim.
99% of LLM’s (the ones virtually everyone use) are trained on copyrighted code that is incompatible with GPL licensed projects. LLM’s have a 3 to 10% chance to unknowingly reproduce the copyrighted code perfectly, introducing legal plagiarism into an open-source project, which could easily open up the developers to being sued in the future if companies scanned open source repos for copyright violations.
Many courts are ruling that LLM generated code cannot be copyrighted at all, meaning that it also cannot be legally made GPL, losing the protections from corporate exploration the GPL normally grants. https://fsfe.org/news/2026/news-20260825-01.html
Interesting, hadn’t heard of this, though they don’t seem to have a stance about LLM contributions.
They don’t actually care if they are popular, they just want power. Watch Mussolini: Son of the Century to see how they actually think.
Deltachat and Jabber/XMPP are good decentralized/federated alternatives to Signal.