Never used arch, but I do recall having problems with the more “streamlined” stuff like flatpaks and the like. It’s not like hopeless to use, but some of these modern linux conveniences seem to depend on some part of systemd. I’m no linux expert anyway, I’m using Debian 12 right now. You’ll probably have to do some figuring out. That being said, Antix’s forum is very nice, and whatever questions you may have will probably be quickly answered there. (The dev, anticapitalista, posts all the time).

In Debt, David Graeber suggests that in modern societies this only happens in situations of collapse, i.e. when currency becomes so worthless as to become essentially irrelevant, or when currency disappears from the streets. He gives the example of the post-soviet countries which, under shock therapy effectively became barter economies (a historical anomaly, for as Graeber argues, barter is very rare in most, if not all societies). As for a country effectively giving up on the use of currency, it would essentially be impossible under global capitalist conditions.

Antix is pretty nice (and communist). Kris de Decker has some ideas about that, might wanna check out: https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2020/12/how-and-why-i-stopped-buying-new-laptops/

The comrades at Cosmonaut sometimes write about the experiences of AES. Maybe something there can be of interest. Their podcast is quite good also. https://cosmonautmag.com/

I’ve haven’t read them myself so I can’t confirm, but I’ve heard Sheila Fitzpatrick’s books are good sources about life during the period under Stalin.

Red Sails is just the GOAT. Thanks for the share, the article looks super interesting!

It’s a damn fine website. I’ve found no other place with such critical thinking, keeps you on your toes. I particularly like Corbishley’s Third World posts, he’s always very exacting in his research, and brings attention to things which normally fly under the radar.

I suppose this is true. I’m not a military fellow myself. I guess I’m just not used to the idea of the military putting ads everywhere targeting just random civillians, but then again I’m not American so maybe things are different there.

Do they have a chance of winning? No. The counteroffensive has shown that decisively. So they should cut their losses and stop the bloodshed. Anything else is just pointless murder.

Pardon me, I’m a bit overly touchy with people dismissing sources out of hand. You’re right, your comment was not at all out of place, though I disagree with it not on the grounds of “liking Russia” or “liking it’s government”, per se, which is clearly not at all communist, but on the grounds of “it is a gain for the Third World if the US loses”, as well as the simple fact of the reality on the ground showing that time and again US/Ukrainian claims have been proven false (not always, as in Kharkov), and not grounded in materialism (such as the shell amount disparity, which is insurmountable).

insert “damn they had us at the first half, ngl”.gif

Frankly one of the least convincing astroturf campaigns by far. Looked totally forced from the start (not to mention really cringe).

Which is why I made sure to include:

If what Karchaa says is true

In any case, when it comes specifically to this conflict, time and again Western sources have been shown to be utterly delusional, whereas Russian ones have been far more sober (sometimes to the point of becoming delusional again, such as when before the offensive some Russian telegrams were spelling doom and gloom, expecting the Ukrainians to roll into Moscow any day). Clearly this nuclear disaster hasn’t happened (as of yet anyway, and hopefully will remain so), but it was worth bringing it to attention so people could critically engage with it.

I thought this was the point of the World News community in this particular instance: to engage seriously with news, whatever their source, and thus be able to have a more complete look on world affairs (ironically far less biased than the one from those that obsess non-stop about “news bias”). If you don’t want to engage with Russian sources that are places who make a point of ignoring them.

but rather explains a trick that is used by propagandists all over the world

Looks like you officially got the “propagandist” badge, congrats!

Also, he pretends “aid” is an entirely innocuous word, as if all the good canadians want is to be nice, instead of putting it in context of the history of colonialism, where “aid” far too often meant chopped hands and burnt villages. But expecting a liberal to consider history might be a bit much.

Libs just handwave any real inconsistency with their worldview by saying “well, it’s a trick! A magician’s sleight of hand! I don’t need to consider whether maybe my beliefs are wrong or incomplete, I can just declare it so, pull the wool over my eyes and go about my day!” Must be nice not having to consider reality.

Well, if you spend your time repeatedly insisting that the enemy is incompetent, as the West has done, the actual material truth can only come up as a totally unexpected surprise. The problem with basing your worldview with racial thinking (well, there are countless problems) is that it simply is bullshit and doesn’t really work. So repeatedly the racists get humbled by “Vietnamese peasants”, or “Afghan goat-herders”, or “Russian orcs”, or whatever else racist nonsense they can come up, since they must ignore the fact that their enemy is in fact entirely human and will learn from your mistakes, take advantages and press on however they can. Their major advantage, though, is that they know they’re human, and facing a powerful foe; so their preparations and precautions must necessarily be that much more well-made. Which inevitably gives them the upper hand, at least during the long run, since their strategies are based on actual material reality, instead of phantoms inside liberals’ heads.

I hadn’t considered this possibility. What’s stopping the Ukrainians from steamrolling all the way to the Atlantic, given all of Europe’s tanks and artillery are currently in Ukraine, and there is no army with even a tenth of the experience of the Ukrainians around? As has been pointed out before, they should be the ones training NATO, not the contrary. Russia is clearly a tough nut to crack; can the same be said for Germany and Poland? I sure wouldn’t want to be next to a bunch of vindictive nazis full of guns, looking for easy prey.

In my experience it at least tastes better. As for the toxic chemicals, I think there isn’t much one can do, sadly.

I find this posturing by liberals very interesting. They complain when a Chinese source says anything about the US, since “of course” it would be biased against it, yet they have no such compunction when it comes to what a source like the New York Times or the Washington Post says about China. Given their own logic, it would stand that such a source would be biased against China (given the US has a vested interest in discrediting China), and thus wouldn’t be reliable at all (in fact, the only reliable source in such a scheme would be a totally disconnected third party, something which clearly doesn’t exist).

I personally really like Naked Capitalism, which though it is not communist per se, all the writers are very skilled and the guest posts are very good indeed. Sometimes the posts are more complex economic theory, but in general it’s very approachable; and the daily “links” post is an excellent aggregate of general news on all sorts of topics, and the commenters there are not braindead but extremely insightful (for example, Michael Hudson comments there every now and again).

For military things I like b from Moon of Alabama, he’s not left-wing exactly but he seems to be a fellow traveler sometimes. Cory Doctorow has good tech insights in Pluralistic. Michael Roberts has good marxist analysis of markets, especially focused on falling rate of profit.

On geopolitical/military things some right-wing sources are quite decent, if you can ignore the bullshit (mostly inane ravings on gender and wokeness), like Simplicius or Andrei Martyanov. Big Serge also has eventually some very good breakdowns of war stuff, but most of his posts are paywalled.

I’d mostly just check out Naked Capitalism’s daily links pages and then pick and choose whatever interesting websites catch your eye there.

How do you even retaliate against something like this? What kind of red line is being crossed by literally irradiating enemy territory? Is Kiev gonna be nuked or something?

I’m pretty sure the Koreans want to make peace. Can’t find a source right now, but a few years ago, iirc during Trump, there was an actual rapprochement between the two Koreas that got completely scuttled by US intervention.