Opossums are essentially immune to rabies and eat ticks.

They’re just getting them younger and younger, aren’t they?

I had a professor who explained this (as well as I can remember so long after) that the people over-reported yields because they wanted to please Mao (not out of fear of punishment, but out of gratitude). Is that what you mean by poor reporting, or was this professor off-base?

You may not believe in classes, but that doesn’t negate their existence.

We will continue to support AES states (current and those sadly no longer extant). Go advocate for utopianism somewhere else.

I think USian communists are at a disadvantage, given how little foreign languages are taught in our schools. Not that it’s an excuse, but it does mean finding free time on our own as adults (a less ideal time for learning languages) while working to support ourselves.

I hope to at least eventually brush up on the ones I learned in school. Learning Mandarin would be really useful, but I don’t know when I’d find the time if I’m being honest with myself.

Agreed. The DNC is bought and paid for.

Edit to add: I think I was unclear. In my previous comment “them” referred to the general public, not the Democrats.

I think you may be right. I just hope we can get them to move left instead of right. Nate Bear’s recent post really gave me pause, because I know a lot of people who want to maintain their treats above all else. I want to have some faith in humanity, but we’re definitely going to have our work cut out for us, I think.

While that’s true, I do think that neither of those camps is willing to so much as slide back into a welfare state (even with extra imperialism on the side). The DNC doesn’t want any more Mamdanis (even though he’s a socdem at best), and if they think this’ll prevent that, they’ll let it happen, no matter how much they claim to oppose it. If there were any possibility of an actual socialist being elected, we’d see way worse than this.

American politics is kayfabe. If it hadn’t been Lieberman, it would’ve just been someone else.

If they thought we could vote our way into socialism, they wouldn’t let us vote.

Oh, sweet summer child. The Democrats don’t even have an interest in reforming the system, which is why nothing changes even when they have a majority in congress. Reformism is dead. Only a revolution can save the working class from the stranglehold of capital.

Now, is a revolution in the US forthcoming? Unless conditions change dramatically, I would say not. But we have entered the weeks where decades happen and left the decades where weeks happen. If you want to be prepared, organize and read theory; having a reality-based perspective will help you regardless of where we’re headed.

Covid. I’ve read studies showing the cumulative effect that repeated infections have on the immune system, and it’s not good.

Posteo markets itself on being green, if that’s important to you.

IQ is not a proxy for education, though. Raising intelligence without changing education wouldn’t accomplish much. People are kept stupid by means of propaganda, regardless of their intellectual ability.

So long as the chaos is in service of empire, it’s fine. But give even the smallest hint of possibly doubting the machine, and well…

The average westerner has their entire concept of reality built upon the idea that capitalism is “as good as it gets” and that people are divided roughly 50/50 into two separate camps, therefore a government with broad approval is impossible. They can’t see that their culture wars are manufactured precisely to keep them from ever questioning that system. They throw aside any high approval rating as manufactured. (Nevermind the fact that those states that do have manufactured approval ratings are imperial puppets and China is obviously not one of those.)

To those libs who love to talk about the 99%, I posit the following: if a government actually were made by and for the 99%, wouldn’t you expect it to have high approval ratings?

I’d add:

• Drop Site News

• The Grayzone

Politics isn’t a sport, and the political compass shit is just the sorting hat for (Western) Poli Sci majors.

I am a Marxist-Leninist with a lot left to learn (and read). I was a sort of ultra-left “Marxist” (firmly in compatible left territory) until I started lurking on here and reading comments by Cowbee and other comrades.