Some weird, German communist, hello. He/him pronouns and all that. Obsessed with philosophy and history, secondarily obsessed with video games as a cultural medium. Also somewhat able to program.
https://abnormalhumanbeing.itch.io/
https://www.youtube.com/@AbNormalHumanBeingsStuff
To everyone who might not have heard about that before: It was an attempt to introduce it as a bill in Indiana:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Indiana_pi_bill
Could it be that you encountered a bug in Jerboa? I had images load cropped on top and bottom a few times now.
Life itself, the propagation and continuation of it, the creation of conscious structures capable of experience, reflection and influence over their nature - and ultimately defiance against a cold and dead, seemingly endless universe.
Or, for people that like the cold universe, there’s a quote I forgot who it came from: “The purpose of life is to waste the energy of the sun”
Spring. Not too hot, sun is out, things are green, lovely time of the year. Autumn is also nice, similar stuff to like, but overall, I don’t like the muddy ground and weather as much. Winter is nice temperature-wise, but the lack of sun messes with me. Summer is… unavoidable, unfortunately :/
Oh, true, I did not realise “Best Before” exists in that way, due to English not being my first language. But yes, that makes a lot of sense.
The expiration date - unless it’s a different legal definition where you are from - is not really about being edible, but just signifies the guarantee the producer gives, basically “up until this date we will guarantee this product will maintain the expected quality”. In this case, I think it will be them not guaranteeing that the salt won’t have drawn water from the air and clumped up or something like that.
By now, Lemmy, hands down. I do sometimes end up on reddit from searching for stuff, and I check every now and then if I got any messages on my old accounts just in case someone wants to reach out, but overall - even without niche communities, Lemmy is just the better experience for me, personally.
I can basically go wth any kind of jam, blackberry is really good. Something like Sriracha or a similar kind-of sweet chili sauce can also be amazing. Oh, and honey is also a really good taste experience.
Hey, just be glad I changed it from asdf_test_3, okay?
Satohi Kon’s “Paprika” is still my favourite movie, and there is a lot to discover and reflect on, on second and third and umpteenth watches.
Some sort of humanist atheism/existentialism? I guess…
As a teenager and young adult, I used to be very interested in cosmology and astrophysics, to the point I wanted to study it at uni. The vastness of the world and existence seemed like a beautiful enigma. I was also always interested in philosophy, which ended up more lasting than my interest in physics.
After growing older, the vastness of nature and existence seemed more and more haunting than beautiful. If there was something like a God, it had to be a mad idiot god. I actually kind of sympathised with Gnosticism and similar thoughts for a while, but I could not believe in a metaphysical, perfect entity waiting even further behind everything. I could not believe in some sort of salvation, that could just come to us by giving up on materiality. It seemed like an empty self-delusion. Similarly, I respect Buddhism a lot, and think there is a lot of good ideas within it, but it’s ultimate life-nonaffirming philosophies and focus on avoidance of suffering did not resonate with me.
Looking at the history of our planet, our universe, and humanity, it seemed clear to me, that existence just stumbles along. We are a “mistake” in a vastness of empty, dumb, boring clouds of hydrogen and dust, nuclear furnaces and holes in reality, devoid of meaning. Life felt more and more to me, like a great rebellion against a vast, seemingly all-encompassing nothingness. No aliens in sight either, that could relieve us of our burden. Just humanity, as the one lifeform so far known to us, that at least has the potential to not fall into the traps of self-annihilation and lifelessnes that permeates our past and present. Just humanity with the responsibility of getting our shit together or life eventually being just reincorporated into the vast, dumb nothing of the “idiot god”, so to speak.
All the mistakes of humans felt to me more and more like just extensions of the same stupidity that is also manifest in all of nature. And our struggle against it, feels like a sort of “sacred duty”. Those loaded words to illustrate, that I’d think of myself as actually having strong faith in a weird way, even though it is not rooted in the supernatural as such.
It’s also evident to me, this faith has at least partially persisted for me as an anchor for myself. I have not been suicidal ever since I felt that way, even though for most of my life I have been struggling with trauma and a variety of mental health disorders, and have been suicidal before. I could not think of that anymore, suffering seemed almost meaningless to me, now, and it feels better to endure it than to give in to the vast nothingness without a fight, without trying to create as much good as possible in this small contingent miracle that is life, that has been brought forth by so much struggle and so many seemingly impossible coincidences, chance and “mistakes”.
I have a big aversion against beliefs that put faith into higher powers, be it nature or God or some sort of transdimensional aliens or whatever. I try to analyse beliefs like that not with disdain, though, but as results of how we are caught in the world we are, in our circumstances, and how life itself has had to “trick” existence itself into allowing life to exist, by follwing its rules but also emergently transcending them, creating something new from it, that is more than the sum of its parts.
Politically and philosophically it lead me to Marxism and Hegel respectively. Marxism with it’s focus on changing our material foundations and dynamics, in order for us to be able to develop our humanity and be able to act more rational in the grand scheme lends itself well to it. Hegel, with looking at the development of ideas and humanity dialectically, developing something until it reaches the limit of its own contradictions also appealed to me.
Sorry for the wall of text, the question caught me in a somber mood and caused me to monologue.
Yes, they really are the heartbreak pet. My best friend had some for most of her adulthood, and the recurring heartbreak, feelings of responsibility for them and also just vet bills both took a toll on her. All of them were awesome, intelligent, full of character and cute, but it is an emotionally taxing pet to have, for those reasons.
And already the first instance I personally encountered for myself of a problem with the branding.
When scrolling and seeing the top half of the meme, in no way did my mind assume, in the first moments, that this was going to be about ex-twitter. It parsed X as “generic thing”, a placeholder, a variable.
I’ve had conversations with one of my friends during some of my lowest points, and I remember him saying once: “I wonder how many mental illnesses could be cured by just giving people enough money to live comfortably.” There is some great truth there.
Hang in there, if not just for yourself, then for loved ones and for all the people that share your frustrations and struggles, there always is the possibility of change, there are years in which weeks happen and weeks in which years happen, and behind every strike lurks the possibility of revolution - as soon as opportunity arises, your frustration and helplessness can be directed towards change.
That’s at least one thing that keeps me sane.
Only if I can use it, too, not because of communism but just because
I am blessed to have two friendships that I have been able to maintain even through times of depression and paranoia, mostly because they are stubborn and forgiving enough to stay with me and reach out, even when my delusions of having to isolate from everyone because I am too horrible and bad to deserve friendships kick in. It’s a privilege I know isn’t guaranteed in life and I am so damn lucky that the mess I have comes with them.
If you are going through tough times and don’t have anyone at the ready, I know it can be hard, don’t give up. There’s the professional stuff like therapists, emergency hotlines, self-help groups and, yes, sometimes even strangers on the internet can be enough to give you a necessary mirror to at least lessen any delusional self-hatred and hopelesness that can creep up. Reaching out can be hard and seem impossible, but it is possible, and it is worth it - you are worth it.
I know, I know, it is just a silly meme, but still, Marx spent an immense amount of time and thought to explain that equality is not only not the goal of communism, but impossible in principle.
It’s about coordinating our socially necessary labour and recourses rationally - in a way, that each person can have the maximum possible amount of freedom, time and resources to develop their own humanity. Basically, using the immense production potential capitalism created in a way that time and energy used up in labour is reduced, overproduction and waste is avoided and the division that came with class society (where slaves are needed for one class to have leisure and time to develop their thoughts) is overcome.
Just some nitpick, basically, communism is already about sharing with filters, equality does not really exist.
Let’s do an EU4 Dithmarschen world conquest run from here on out.