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quarrk [he/him]

@ quarrk @hexbear.net

Posts
9
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358
Joined
4 yr. ago

  • It's frankly, disgusting to suggest communism

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  • I hate when people vicariously assume another person’s supposed victimhood and argue on their behalf. Why should I care about some Aussie’s third-hand impression of communism in Germany several decades ago? Colonial mindset, let’s put our own words in other people’s mouths in order to justify our own worldview

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from May 25th to May 31st, 2026 - Mounting Protests Against Paz in Bolivia / Iran Deal Remains Out of Reach / Sahel Holds Firm Against Foreign Aggression

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  • All frames weaken over time. Carbon fiber in particular has a shelf life and has to be scrapped. Aluminum can be welded, but that takes a higher technical skill. Steel is steel, steel is awesome.

    In a Mad Max scenario, you want reliability and repairability over slight weight reduction

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    Bulletins and International News Discussion from May 25th to May 31st, 2026 - Mounting Protests Against Paz in Bolivia / Iran Deal Remains Out of Reach / Sahel Holds Firm Against Foreign Aggression

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  • Friendly reminder to buy steel frames over aluminum or carbon fiber. Steel is much more repairable

  • Moment Blue Origin rocket explodes during test in Florida

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  • What does being left mean to you?

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  • It means retaining your humanity, or rediscovering it.

    Capitalism teaches you to rationalize walking past a homeless beggar with the belief that either they had it coming, or that the problem is too complex and not solved by direct aid. More and more you are taught to see human beings as abstractions, because in capitalism we are abstractions, representatives of our narrow class interests. The role of capitalist, the role of worker — these roles have more reality than do the individuals performing them.

    Capitalism teaches you to rationalize not merely animal suffering, not merely speciesism, but their industrialization and indefinite expansion. Capitalism did not invent these things but secures their basis. In the abstract it might be possible for any society to end its exploitation of animals, if there is a popular will to do so. In capitalism it becomes impossible because animal exploitation is profitable.

    Capitalism teaches you to view nature as an external resource separate from yourself. There is no intrinsic value in a forest except its economic value. In the era of mass production, each material product contains less and less economic value; therefore we perceive less and less value in nature itself, as the material substance of these products. We view nature as disposable by the same degree that we see products as disposable.

    Being left does start at anticapitalism, because capitalism alienates people from their own morality and human development.

  • I’m a landlord with six homes – I’m hiking prices 30% due to new renter rights

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  • Edit: I focused too much on US here but I think the same applies to UK

    There is no independent landlord class in the US. It is finance capital which speculates on land, with the aim to extract economic rent. But the distinction has vanished between speculation on this or any other financial asset; the speculator is indifferent to the asset itself and cares only about the yield derived from it.

    There is a meaningful class divide between industrial capital and finance capital. It’s just that finance capital won years ago especially in the US. Whatever is left of industrial capital in the US has no ability to fight against finance capital, and is gradually bought up and hollowed out by finance capital via corporate takeover, offshoring, and outsourcing. Industrial capital in this way is transformed into finance capital. In the name of “cutting costs” the physical locus of productive labor is moved to global south, with only a kernel of bean-counters left in the home country to “manage” the “investment”. This is the main kind of “work” that occurs in the imperial core. It is why it is called neocolonialism, because formally it is not very different from the “management” by colonial powers over their colonies.

    Spitballing here, but I think the primary contradiction in US political economy is finance capital opposed to itself. The entire world economy, including China btw (although this is changing over the past two decades), depends on export to the US for consumption. By extracting too much monopoly rent, it undermines the consumer class that necessarily must purchase overpriced shit. If no one can afford to buy their overpriced shit, it all falls apart. Up til now this contradiction has been papered over by imperialism, by exporting the effects of this monopoly rent extraction to the Global South, through inflated wages for imperial core workers to cover the inflated prices.

  • THE GREAT AMERICAN STATE FAIR

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  • Freedom 🫧 | THE GREAT AMERICAN STATE FAIR

  • How DARE Martin Niemoeller ignore 2020's Amerikkka back in the 1950's

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  • it’s only existential to you when it’s your ideology on the line

    The twithead doesn’t realize how ironic it is that they say that, as they refuse to care because it’s not them. Almost like it’s the whole point of the poem.

  • Featured

    Bulletins and International News Discussion from May 25th to May 31st, 2026 - Mounting Protests Against Paz in Bolivia / Iran Deal Remains Out of Reach / Sahel Holds Firm Against Foreign Aggression

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  • They wanted him under his house, taking a rest

  • Full time China bad youtuber has opinions on language learning

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  • 😗🙏

    ⚠️Trade Offer ⚠️

    I receive: Chinese-speaking population diminished by 1/1,400,000,000

    You receive: AI bootcamp

    Do we have a deal?

  • Featured

    Bulletins and International News Discussion from May 25th to May 31st, 2026 - Mounting Protests Against Paz in Bolivia / Iran Deal Remains Out of Reach / Sahel Holds Firm Against Foreign Aggression

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  • While it is quite clear that Booker is an imperialist, what I take from this is that he stands for literally nothing. He is bereft of anything resembling a principle. He’s saying this because it is the opposite of what Trump is doing, because Booker is an empty husk of a person whose mouth algorithmically and indifferently blabs whatever is in his electoral interest.

  • Terry Prachett said it better.

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  • You, yes you, [username]: read Capital chapter 24, the section on bourgeois Abstinence Theory.

    the capitalist gets rich, not like the miser, in proportion to his personal labour and restricted consumption, but at the same rate as he squeezes out the labour-power of others, and enforces on the labourer abstinence from all life’s enjoyments.

    …

    [According to the vulgar economists] All the conditions for carrying on the labour process are suddenly converted into so many acts of abstinence on the part of the capitalist. If the corn is not all eaten, but part of it also sown — abstinence of the capitalist. If the wine gets time to mature — abstinence of the capitalist. The capitalist robs his own self, whenever he “lends (!) the instruments of production to the labourer,” that is, whenever by incorporating labour-power with them, he uses them to extract surplus-value out of that labour-power, instead of eating them up, steam-engines, cotton, railways, manure, horses, and all; or as the vulgar economist childishly puts it, instead of dissipating “their value” in luxuries and other articles of consumption. How the capitalists as a class are to perform that feat, is a secret that vulgar economy has hitherto obstinately refused to divulge. Enough, that the world still jogs on, solely through the self-chastisement of this modern penitent of Vishnu, the capitalist. Not only accumulation, but the simple “conservation of a capital requires a constant effort to resist the temptation of consuming it.” The simple dictates of humanity therefore plainly enjoin the release of the capitalist from this martyrdom and temptation, in the same way that the Georgian slave-owner was lately delivered, by the abolition of slavery, from the painful dilemma, whether to squander the surplus-product, lashed out of his [slur]s, entirely in champagne, or whether to reconvert a part of it into more [slur]s and more land.

    Footnote 28

    It has never occurred to the vulgar economist to make the simple reflexion, that every human action may be viewed, as “abstinence” from its opposite. Eating is abstinence from fasting, walking, abstinence from standing still, working, abstinence from idling, idling, abstinence from working, &c.

  • Terry Prachett said it better.

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  • Capital ch 25

    [P]rimitive accumulation plays in Political Economy about the same part as original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, and thereupon sin fell on the human race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of the past. In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the diligent, intelligent, and, above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals, spending their substance, and more, in riotous living. The legend of theological original sin tells us certainly how man came to be condemned to eat his bread in the sweat of his brow; but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass that the former sort accumulated wealth, and the latter sort had at last nothing to sell except their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but itself, and the wealth of the few that increases constantly although they have long ceased to work. Such insipid childishness is every day preached to us in the defence of property.

  • Terry Prachett said it better.

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  • Yes, and it contributes to the aesthetic of leather in general when even vegans use it

  • Scientists create largest-ever cosmological simulation, opening new window into universe

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  • Cool stuff. Right now the early evolution of galaxies right after the Big Bang is a big question mark. The James Webb space telescope has found enough galaxies that are “too” old according to our current models (and assumptions). PBS Spacetime had a very good episode about this 3 weeks ago. Hopefully these simulations help the astronomers develop the galaxy formation models.

  • Jeff Bezos Claims 'You Could Double the Taxes I Pay' and It Won't Help Anyone

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  • I agree with you. It’s still important to demonstrate to working class how billionaires really think of themselves and of society.

    Where I live, I see graffiti every day that says “TⒶX THE RICH” complete with the anarchist A. That’s the level of thought among the most “radical” here. Gives me a laugh every time.

    In the US especially, there is no direct line from tax revenue to national public spending. The purpose of taxation is to reclaim some of the dollars out of the economy; the national government can print money or take on unlimited debt, as needed, if they want to fund their budget. Taxation is essentially a monetary policy used to manage inflation etc.

    At state and local levels, like Mamdani’s NYC which Bezos was talking about, taxation is what funds public programs. Tax revenue that Bezos pays to NYC does actually pay for the schools in NYC. I agree with you that this isn’t the entire solution, from a Marxist angle, but Marxism is also about class struggle. This is part of the class struggle just as much as the struggle for better wages or a shorter working day.

  • Jeff Bezos Claims 'You Could Double the Taxes I Pay' and It Won't Help Anyone

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  • The facial scruff is too uncanny. You can’t convince me he wasn’t killed and replaced by a robot

  • Slop. @hexbear.net
    quarrk [he/him] @hexbear.net

    Jeff Bezos Claims 'You Could Double the Taxes I Pay' and It Won't Help Anyone

    www.commondreams.org /news/jeff-bezos-taxes-cnbc

  • Mao if he was alive: “I am quite fond of yaoi and Yuri”

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  • Discussed in a post from yesterday and also in the news mega. Appears more unofficial, but does originate from the Supreme People’s Court, so that bodes well for where things are headed.

  • Brb gonna add those stationary pedals for hyperactive kids to my minepit truck

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  • If LaCroix made a bicycle

  • Movies & TV @hexbear.net
    quarrk [he/him] @hexbear.net

    Trying to make sense of the themes in Villeneuve’s Dune movies.

  • memes @hexbear.net
    quarrk [he/him] @hexbear.net

    Is it really worth it?

  • Science @hexbear.net
    quarrk [he/him] @hexbear.net

    Chinese scientists create world’s coldest alloy. It may surprise DARPA: new rare earth alloy so cold and efficient it could upend decades of reliance on helium-3

    www.scmp.com /news/china/science/article/3346452/chinese-scientists-create-worlds-coldest-alloy-it-may-surprise-darpa
  • Slop. @hexbear.net
    quarrk [he/him] @hexbear.net
    CW racism liberalism

    Casually Explained: The Global Military Superpowers

  • Slop. @hexbear.net
    quarrk [he/him] @hexbear.net

    Hitler particles thru the roof in Finnish rag comments

    www.facebook.com /Iltalehti.fi/posts/lapin-rajavartiosto-ep%C3%A4si-viidelt%C3%A4-ven%C3%A4l%C3%A4iselt%C3%A4-matkailijalta-maahantulon-vaikka/1298121849026543/
  • news @hexbear.net
    quarrk [he/him] @hexbear.net

    Finland's track gauge is changing: "We are starting from the north, and we have strong support from NATO," says Minister Lulu Ranne

    yle.fi /a/74-20161549
  • Lemmy @lemmy.ml
    quarrk [he/him] @hexbear.net

    Add "mark as read" option for posts and comments

  • Comradeship // Freechat @lemmygrad.ml
    quarrk [he/him] @hexbear.net

    Greetings from Hexbear