The Dredge Tank NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

Mastodon "leftists"

Went both looking for fellow tankies and seeing who I should be blocking on Mastodon by looking at the hashtag #tankies. It gave me brain damage and I also found a few of these "lemmy is made by tankies, ewww can't use it"-posts that I had never seen before. So sharing these for our mutual enjoyment:   Also just the general vibe of the posts with this tag is just so hostile. We really live rent free in these peoples heads. Interesting how so many of these were ukraine flag or isntreal flag profiles too, also a few anne applebaum replies, because of course. The vibe is pretty much whatever this drivel is by a true communism understander: 

covid NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

The postcovid stuff is just scary

I am in my postcovid phase again. This is the third or fourth time and every time I've lost more of my overall health. The first time was the worst and longest, ended up in the hospital that time. After the Omicron one I developed plantar fasciitis and pains so bad that my running and jumping has ended for good. There's been so many weird issues, even teeth breaking. Also flared up my sciatica that has been fine for a decade or more. But the thing that disables me the most is the nausea and gagging, the GI stuff and POTS I get from it. And it's back again. This time no bad coughing and thankfully not too much mental stuff, but oh man the heart/GI symptoms suck! I spend months gagging on the side of the road when leaving for work after I get it every damn time. It is always worse in the morning and I was just rid of it when I got infected again by my "living like it's 2019" family, for the second time within a year. I am four weeks in this time and I have a high pounding heartrate after eating and on standing up, some nights I wake up to my heart pounding. Also very hightened stress response, feels like I am just wired all the time. This has happened to me every time, the first time it even gave me the worst panic attacks ever that came fully out of nowhere, it was wild and felt 100% physical. Oh and interesting new pain stuff along with the foot and joint pains: Yesterday I did a bit of foam rolling to my back and neck to see if it might help with the nausea ans stress. I have done this for years with no issue. Today I feel like someone rolled over my spine with a truck. It's like my entire back is inflamed. This post covid inflammation is hell. I wonder if I'll still make it, if my heart will. Just a bit of rant, I am just scared and tired of this. My life is pretty good atm otherwise, I finally would have steady work and income after decades of poverty, I even like my work. Life is more secure and I am just happpier because I know I am audh now and have gotten rid of a lot of brainworms. But this virus feels like it will end me and it feels like there is nothing whatsoever I can do to truly prevent this. We are and have been very cautious, but extended family keeps bringing it to us or we are forced to get it from work/studies. I am not sure my body can keep rolling this dice even once anymore. And we can't even get boosters here, they just aren't available to us. My partner who was high risk to begin with has developed diabetes after the infection we got for Christmas 2023. And after this time he is just very very brain foggy and has been irritable, not at all himself. I don't know what I'd do if I lost him to this.

chapotraphouse NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

The EU says: sign this petition

www.tax-the-rich.eu

For the people who still believe the EU is anything more than an union for the interest of capital they have now put up this site as a promise of maybe possibly considering taxing the rich if we just sign a petition. This is European "democracy". Many of these peoples petitions have been implemented so they can say there are mechanisms of straight democracy, but in reality these rarely impact anything. I find it patricularly ghoulish that it is the economic union itself promoting this petition, it's the same playbook as in all the environmental things. Gives people false hope and an image that something is being done when in fact nothing will change. But a few more years of status quo is secured with things like these.

covid NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

My partner has it again. I'm so affraid and tired.

I posted after Christmas on how my "it's just a cold" wing of the family came to Christmas dinner sick and gave my partner and me covid. My partner was almost hospitalized and developed type 2 diabetes after. I spent months almost throwing up every time I started to move more, daily nausea and GI issues and lots of back and joint pain. Also palpitations and brachycardia, so much shit. My partner just got his fitness back up so he was able to run his beloved easy 5k runs again and I was rid of the nausea and pain mostly. Doing stairs at work without feeling like death and winded after felt pretty good. We were so happy about this, just talked about it last week. That we might get our lives back, one more time. We have been down the covid/postcovid road too many times now. Then we had a birthday party last weekend for my family. My dad has just been on an IV antibiotic and he was also there. I thought beforehand that surely nobody comes sick this time because our dad and surely Christmas was a lesson. But nope, the "you ruin our vibes if you mention covid"-team came to the party with illness in the family. One of their voices sounded off/congested and I was like, oh no. I didn't dare ask because last time I did, I got yelled at. Today, two days after this party my partner gets a sore throat. By evening he has a 39 C fever that isn't responding to otc meds and red bloodshot eyes. We do a test, it's covid.

chat NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

Venting, nordic country crap

Been seeing "Finland has eradicated homelesness" posts a lot from typically "socialism is when the government does stuff"-leftists or some AmeriKKKan Bernie lib and it has become such an angering thing for me. It is all neoliberal country branding. That is all it is. Our shitty pseudo-leftist nato loving "modern left" party has gone around flexing about their progressive housing program. The party has no power, zero. It means nothing. I work with homeless people, in Finland. Where almost all housing has been privatized. Where the state support has been cut to a level no poor person can meet. If ones rent goes over this state mandated limit, people are forced to move. This leads to movement into rural areas where there is no work or services, factually creating segregation. If you have a mark on your credit, nobody rents to you. I spend my time trying to house these people and every time I see this meme/info floated on the internet I become more annoyed. The next time anyone goes "oh look at that socialist finland eradicating homelessness" you can say that this neoliberal austerity hell has nothing whatsoever to do with socialism, never really did and they definitely have not eradicated anything.

Early autumn loot is really getting started where I live. Chantarelles have been abundant for weeks now and these guys are just now starting to surface, about three weeks earlier than last year. And looking at how much small ones there were, it's going to be an epic year for mushroom drying. This truly is the poor mans truffle.

chat NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

What the f can I do? (CW: hate speech)

Ffs been listening to the yelling of a pathetic little nazi next door for over a year now at least two nights a week. As I sit here on my couch on a Friday, brain fried from work, this fucking guy just yells his hate into the void and never shuts up! It's like an endless rant from this poor mans Alex Jones that is just constant. He hollers and yells about "the immigrants" endlessly. Last week he did this shit with his window open so I recorded it. Went on an on about how he sure lives on welfare, but HE has a right to it because in his mind welfare is for WHITE PEOPLE. And he makes sure to constantly mention how immigrants are all rapists etc. How they all came hear to steal jobs. Also thinks Trump is amazing. And we aren't even in AmeriKKKa. It's vile, constant, disgusting hate speech and this is like max a 20 year old guy who has never held a job and yet lives in good housing, has a car and is secure, meanwhile the people I work with are homeless while driving doordash for shitheads like him. I cannot find in me any solidarity for this person whatsoever, I have tried. He proudly proclaimes how he doesn't even want to work and how the benefits he gets are too small because of, you guessed it, immigrants. He hates women and queers deeply too and I know all this because I get to enjoy this show every single week, several nights a week. This loser does not shut up even for a second, who the f listens to that!? Somebody clearly does. There is no point in reporting this anywhere either, because the only place I can do that to is the cops who are fash and basically agree with this asshole. Isn't it funny how the place that should handle hate speech is the literal fash central itself, such nordic country justice... I have made like ten complaints to our housing manager, this is social housing. It has done nothing. I am at the point where I want to go do something stupid and I just need to vent. I can't with the hate this guy is spewing, it's unreal. It scares me, it makes me so incredible angry and most of of all it makes me feel entirely helpless because there is nothing and no-one left who would care or do something to stop this. His views are basically the popular position now and it is making me panic. And I can't confront a guy who talks about killing people. I am not brave enough for that. I don't know what to do. All I know is that when the snow comes I will write NAZI on his shit car every day when I walk past it.

askchapo NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

Who are these guys?

chuangcn.org

Saw this posted online. It's uhm, very interesting. Also uses the word "tankie". Found info of a New York based ngo from the site, but anyone know what this is about?

I don't even know how to start unpacking this, but I just need to vent about it. I am late self-diagnosed audhd afab, gen X who has learnt a lot of unhealthy hustle culture and looking busy brainworms over the years. Been down the burnout path a few times too before I realized my neurotype around 2020. I am currently working in a client facing, but also laptop touching position where I am constantly "out of work". I am always on top of the things I should do, because I always do them right away or otherwise I know I would forget them. I have constant "impostor syndrome" and question myself on whether I am doing enough, because I always end up with all this downtime. The work has no set structure and we very much manage ourselves. I have secretly compared my calender to my coworkers and I tend to have more client appointments than most, yet for example this week I have just been bored out of my mind for days. And questioning if I am somehow doing this wrong. I am having a remote day today and am just here posting. I don't know why I feel weird about it when rationally I know that I very much earn my wage and just do the work differently than others. I for example write very fast. And solve things very fast. But my question remains, do neurotypicals just fake it? Or do they think they are busy all the time? I for one do a lot of remote work and at the office I introvert it. I am always about the work, not socializing much, so my worktime never goes to those things. I eat at my desk while I work too, I tried the neurotypical style of taking breaks, but it just doesn't work for me mid-task. My breaks are the bus drives to clients houses or slacking in the morning pretending to be online in Teams. But I am having to do a lot of pretending and I think that is the part that is draining me. I actually really like my work and am probably pretty good at it, but this keeping up appearances stuff is exhausting and causes all kinds of self doubt. I did teaching previously and the daily structure in it with the shorter day was a lot easier to handle. But I can't find things to do for eight hours in my current work. And I know nobody works eight hours in the office, but why is the pretend so hard for me? I feel weird listening to audiobooks in my worktime and I want to stop feeling that way, but I think it's the autistic lawful good that makes me feel kind of bad about it.

chat NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

Travel plans to China

So, I haven't done much travelling in my life because been poor, but am now in a position to maybe plan a trip for myself and my partner. To China is where we would love to go. I love train travel and dislike flying, did not enjoy the one trip over the Atlantic I have been on, so I was thinking about taking the trans-Siberia train to Peking, but it looks like I can't actually get to it now from Finland. I also don't really want to fly for climate reasons. There used to be a train straight to Moscow from Helsinki, but the warmongering started and now there is nothing. Also I keep getting 404s when searching for flights to Russia, the flight to Moscow to get to the train wouldn't be so bad. Is it really not possible to go do this train trip from Europe atm? Anybody know? Been searching the internet and there is very little info on this or other train access to China from Europe. I found freight trains. I am one of those who is both adventurous and seeks planned things at the same time, so would have to have a good premade plan and bookings for the trip. I was thinking we could do the highspeed rail in China to sort of travel across the country from Peking to Shanghai. Would be a month long thing at least, after I finish my masters and current work contract. But looks like it isn't easily doable.

chat NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 95%

I hate the stuff I have to read for my exams

It's all like this. I don't even understand where the stuff in this page is coming from, but "coercion and violence of communist rule" is once again just thrown in there. Also this book seems to really be looking down on the working class from my reading, although I suppose it tries to highlight some issues. Not to mention all the discourse about social capital or other types of capital, but never actual capital. This also reads like a weird sort of celebration of neoliberalism as inevitable, but then again I am just so tired of reading stuff like this that I am probably not giving it much credit. Book is called "masculinity, labor and neoliberalism".

chat NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

Labour Day plans

So what are your plans for May Day 2024? I am thinking we will go visit a Red memorial and watch the ceremony there, then maybe some marching and singing with comrades. 

doomer NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

How to keep hope alive?

www.ku.fi

Yesterday I boosted a post over on Mastodon that was a sort of meme about all the ridiculous ways the US thinks China is spying on it. It was then commented on by a comrade, a Vietnam refugee who has almost died of polio back in the day in a refugee camp. To this then a "Finnish leftist" follower of mine had the nerve to descend and started sealioning and schooling this other person on all the lib talking points about China, like Uyghur genocide. Threw in Russia and "our brave smol bean country struggle" of fighting Russia for centuries. Then today I got the latest edition of our Left Alliance newspaper. It opens with an editorial headlined: "Russia is still warmongering, alone". This is saying that Russia and Russia alone is and has and will do all the pushing for war. The link is to this, but its paywalled and in Finnish for which I am sorry (can take a pic of the editorial later if someone wants it, will still be in Finnish though and its really not worth anyones time). Then we have a presidential election here, also strikes going on. In my uni none of my lecturers took part in the walkout, the only measure the labor aristro union got together, they were all like "can't disrupt a legally chosen government". The two presidential candidates are both turbo level neolibs. Basically Macron, times two. They perfectly embody our situation here and if you don't vote for either you are a bad person for democracy. If anyone is familiar with the history of Finland and the very strong fascict project we had and have here it is both scary and depressing to see the level in which this liberal thought and rewriting of history has saturated most minds in my lifetime. I remember as a young adult when the capitalist takes on things like finlandization still got pushback. It feels like it all fell apart as the Soviet fell and neoliberalism was made hegemonic. The takes I see today about this country and its history and on world politics and history are all ahistorical carbage that is so hegemonic you can't even start to debate on it as what people think they know, is so far removed from what actually happened, the gap would need years of re-education to breach. I sometimes think about all this and feel like here the fash have already won. They did win originally too, but we had some progressive forces and the Soviet right there that kept them in a sort of leash, but not a day went by without them pushing their right wing anti-communist propaganda on everything. Media, entertainment, arts, public discourse. Everything. Even comics were brought here with the capitalist mission in mind as the capitalist class wanted to re-educate the working class fully after the civil war. The nationalistic rise in the beginning of the 90s was when they reframed the ww2 war time in its entirety and we all bought the winter war myths and other crap.The nazi soldiers that Germany trained for us were framed 100% as heroes for example. There were an endless parade of teary eyed veterans and Karelian refugees talking about the scary Soviet and the price of our independence. I bought a of it at the time too. There was never a mention of the nazi question. Not in school, not in public discourse. This has sufraced just in the last few years and has mostly been swept under the rug, but there are some good studies and writing by the petty bourge academics on how leftists were treated here during the war. None of this reaches the mainstream though, our media is all controlled by the capitalist class. I think a part of why making people see the fascism here is that if they did, they would have to admit to themselves that we were and are on the wrond side of history and for all the wrong reasons. This makes for one lonely place to be a communist. Even though I have my kid and partner who are also comrades, the rest of my social surroundings mostly feels hopeless. I look at the endless liberal whining about this and that on social media or listen to it in real life, and all I want to do is yell to them to read even one book outside the isle of "How to be the most obnoxiously privileged & clueless, but confident Nordic person." We do have a communist workers party, I get that newspaper too. It's like a handful of peoole who are very stigmatized and shunned by being comrades. This took the capitalist about 100 years to reach, but they got there. There is no Left left here now. How do we come back from this?

chapotraphouse NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

Circular economy

Been thinking about the weird embracement of all the circular economy solutions by the capitalist class. This framing has enabled them to sell the same commodity many times over and then recycle it into even more commodities while maintaining an image of "being Green". Due to this the second hand market for things has become a lot less accessible and expensive. Also donations and giving out stuff you no longer need seems to be disappearing as a practise. This might also be because nothing we buy lasts more than a year anymore. This post is inspired by me trying to find a few rocks or pavement stones for our backyard that a few decades ago you could just go source from the dumb or some construction site. Now those places are reselling the trash and have barbed wired fences around them. Also feels like these systems have removed the slack aka maximized and optimized profit on food items, making the food given out to the poor and homeless disappear or become way too scarce.

chat NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

The liberal mindset

Currently have covid, so does my partner, vaccinated and boosted as we can be in the country we are in. My partner is not doing so well. We got covid from my ultralib vaccinated relatives who bullheadedly want to do normal, whatever the cost. They announced the coughs they were sporting at the Christmas table were just "lingering symptoms from past colds". This as the background to a post I saw on social media today stating that someone had avoided their anti-vaxx relatives for five years and this year went to see them and got covid. Like that is the sole reason they got it. The comment section was full of libs lolling at the stupid anti-vaxxers and wishing well to this vaccinated hero that was sick. Not one mention of masks, of barriers to vaccination. Of the fact that to visit someone people sit in crowded planes unmasked without a care in the world, risking everyone who is immunocompromized for example. But yes, the anti-vaxxers are the only problem... (not saying it isn't a problem) All this made me think on how "vaccinated for covid" has turned into a kind of VOTE! Once that bit is done, the liberal mind can turn its attention back to all the important consuming and status maintenance it needs to sustain its relevance. And the blame of everything is handily placed on a new outgroup, one that gets stereotyped and Othered much the same way all forms of perceived deviance have. I mean has anyone been able to aid with the obvious trust issues that people have in institutions by ridiculing them? I don't know, the anti-vaxxer discourses have started to wear thin on me, just like the endless laughing at Trump supporters did. They seem to repeat a pattern that is just hard to overlook.

movies NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 96%

Movies from Palestine, Middle East, non-Westoid entertainment?

What are your best recommendations of movies from for example Palestine? Or just generally outside the imperial core? Ones with English subtitles available. I am finding some with search engines like a title called Lemon tree, but would prefer those who know better to point me towards some. Also interested in documentaries, watched the Mayor not long ago and it was great.

chapotraphouse NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

Wake up babe, a new diet is here!

I can't even... Trust the Ghouls to bring fat phobia even to war. This is peak neoliberalism. Not to mention equating weight with health. Then again this has come up as a justification of starving Cubans too, more than once. Are you ready for your stressed out heroin chic body? It's good for you, trust me.

askchapo NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

Milgram experiment

allthatsinteresting.com

Discussion with a lib today and this came up, again. This experiment where people will just kill each other on command and how this in their worldview partly explains why the world is shit. I was able to explain a bit about the way our surroundings shape us from the moment we come into the world and how this experiment would likely give different result if done in a society less driven like our Western hellscapes, but am not sure if I am talking bs on that. However I think psychology is in general very sus and the way human behavious has been explained by it is also sus, so I just don't buy this. It becomes a problem when these Late Stage Capitalism Libs use things like this to hate other people and turn this "it is known because science" into misantrophy and nihilism. And it helps them not see any alternatives to the way things are, because if humans are shit then they must be shit in all circumstances. We know this isn't true, just by looking at the societies indigenous peoples had. So isn't this just another way to use "human nature" as an argument for riding humanity of the cliff and be complicit in it? Is there any critiques of these experiments you know about. Thoughts on the whole Milgram experiment thing? It's very popular lore in the West after all.

askchapo NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

Iran and womens rights

I am taking part in a uni course about the Feminist revolution in Iran. The lecturer has been going over the Iranian revolution in 1979 in a very, shall we say, interesting way. I do not want to discredit their pov on this as I am obviously a Westoid, but the way this is being framed is that before the revolution things were better for women. The lecturer said the revolution happened because people disliked the Shah having more than others, but she did not elaborate this in any way. One would think the complaints of people were pretty big for them to start a revolution? But I know very little about this. After the revolution women were to have equal rights, but over the next years the dictatorship which is named as Islamic removed them and things like the hijab became mandatory. She stated that people were given false promises and betrayed and this is why the people sided with the revolution. Where does this framing come from? Was it the same people going for revolution that ended up in places of power? Now my understanding is that the social democratic movement there was destroyed by the West in the 50s and the following twenty+ years under the Shah led to a sort of pseudorevolution that wasn't entirely progressive in nature. Is this correct or wrong? Also how did the revolutionary force become so deeply conservative? The lecturer told us that before this there was no national religion as such and things like wearing a scarf were personal choices. This was then turned into a mandatory thing starting from workplace dresscode to eventually all public life, however at home people to this day do not follow these norms. The Women Life Freedom movement is then a result of the way these last decades have eroded all womens rights. I will include the following questions as well: If this reactionary tendency in societies is always high, how do we make sure our revolution does not lead to something like this? Or was this all external influence? If we accept that there always tends to be external influence, what can we do to make sure the reactionary force does not get on top and be in a position to dictate things like womens rights? (I am spesifically thinking of Hamas in Palestine now being the force that is driving change, if they stay in power, won't that easily result in a second Iran when it comes to Islamic nationalism/minority rights?) How then can we engage in critical support of operators who have a high chance of creating systems of oppression? Any history on Iran, feminism and ML and other thought very welcome.

news NoLeftLeftWhereILive • Now • 100%

Oh look, a new spy balloon just dropped

So meanwhile in the Natohawkzone. There was apparently a rupture in a pipeline. Experts immediately called it "clearly sabotage" and then went on to state that nobody else but Russia has a reason to do this. After one sleep, it turns out it may well have been a ship anchor that has hit the pipeline, possibly by accident. But that is not stopping the war mongering. I wondered how they will justify bringing nato troops here, there has already been all sorts of collaboration between cops and such since we sold ourselves out to amerikkka. It's wild. I hate it here now. https://yle.fi/a/74-20054699