German Social Democracy and the Rise of Nazism by Donna Harsch.

This is typical anti-Tesla propaganda from another short seller.

Where are all the articles writing about the bits that don’t fly off while a Cybertruck is barreling down the highway?
Where are all the people talking about the parts that do work on the Cybertruck?
Where is the running count of all the days where there hasn’t been a Cybertruck recall?

Discusting!!

This is a tangent but I came across some small-time politics streamer recently. They were trash-tier, probably SocDem or Destiny-esque (or maybe of the same calibre of a Vaush orbiter like Demon Mama.)

Whatever the case, they were doing the typical railing against tankies and shit.

But the things that really stuck in my craw about this streamer were:

• They did some postgrad degree in politics and they were constantly waving this qualification around as if it made them immune from dogshit takes on politics and that it made them the smartest person in the room.

• They referred to anarchists as “fellow travellers of the left”. MFer, do you realise that anarchism is older than Marxism and it’s probably older than whatever bullshit pseudo-left ideology you cling to is??

• They accused an anarchist of being, I shit you not, antisemitic and of “thinking like a fascist” because they said that anarchism cannot be achieved under the current circumstances due to outside imperialist forces that will destroy an anarchist revolution. There was zero mention of anything to do with Jewish people or coded antisemitic terms like “cabal” or “lizard people” or anything of the sort.

• They claimed that Marxism is outdated because these days everyone is a mixture of bourgeoisie and proletarian.

Imo SocDems are some of the worst people to deal with on the political spectrum outside of the part that is circa-fascist. Most people will listen at least a little bit. Most people aren’t utterly convinced of the fact that they have achieved a level of moral, political, and historical enlightenment that borders on apotheosis. In my experience, SocDems almost invariably tend to have this towering superiority complex that means anything that advances their political objectives is justified and that they can claim a monopoly on everything.

As an example here, I recently had an exchange with a reactionary who was spouting anti-Marx nonsense. They said that Marx was disproven because his predictions were wrong. I asked for an example of a prediction that Marx made. They said “that socialism can be achieved through evolutionary means” (lol). I responded telling them that the first page of chapter one of The Communist Manifesto completely debunks this fallacious claim they made.

Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.

They shut the fuck up because they got called out in the most embarrassing way possible, as they rightly should have. But when I told this streamer SocDem that the terms bourgeoisie and proletarian are mutually-exclusive and that they should be embarrassed by their lack of understanding of basic definitions of these terms, did they shut the fuck up? Did they ask why I thought that I was in the right? Did they go and check? Nope! They just doubled down on it and started calling me an idiot because they knew that their political insight is both unsurpassed and infallible.

Of course there’s always going to be people from any political persuasion that are really arrogant and that believe their politics is the only good one but for some reason it’s always the SocDems who are utterly intransigent and imperious in their beliefs. I’ve legitimately had more fruitful exchanges with Jordan Peterson fans on the reality of Bill C-16 than have ever had with SocDems about anything.

I can almost guarantee you what sort of response a SocDem would say to hearing that I find it easier to have a genuine discussion with some Jordan Peterson fans than I do any of them. They would be incensed at the mere suggestion that they would be compared unfavourably to an inferior group such as Petersonites and they’d attempt to gaslight me by saying that this experience is indicative of the fact that my values are more closely aligned to Peterson fans than they are to the “real” left because of course SocDems cannot fail, they can only be failed.

Also

Let’s see Paul Allen’s legacy

But on a serious note, this sucks to hear. It’s a real shame that he didn’t create some sort of charitable trust to ensure that this museum continued operating into the future. Feels like a big loss to the world that it’s being sold off like this.

I’d be looking at South America, especially with Liberation theology, so that’s going to be the FSLN and Sandinismo in Nicaragua as well as in Brazil in particular.

Assange was being held to American laws without being “protected” by the American constitution because the American repressive state apparatuses are not bound to uphold the highest laws of their own country.

There is no squaring that circle. It’s just pure, uncut hegemony.

The only good reasons for not killing Hitler are:

1. Because someone less drugged up and more competent would have taken his place at the head of the Reich

2. After the destruction of the Nazi war machine, imprisoning him so that he can be subjected to an endless struggle session so that victims of his crimes could achieve some degree of closure by yelling at him and/or spitting on him

I’m not entirely convinced that the second option would be worth it but if that’s what was decided by the community, I wouldn’t waste my time debating whether or not it’s a good reason to keep him alive.

Go ahead, Gunther. Arm the Chechens. Kadyrov will appreciate the support.

I’m more interested in knowing the percentage of people who were certain that they do have shells.

Desktops are always going to be better bang for buck.

They are far easier to repair or replace parts with if something craps out, and you’ll get more value for money and future-proofing with a PC. If you have the desk space, I’d recommend opting for a desktop gaming PC hands down.

With that and a stable network connection you’ll be able to stream to a laptop that is lower specced. Or you can stream high-end games to a handheld unit like a Steam Deck.

Unless you’re moving house a lot or you don’t have permanent desk space, imo the best option is to invest in a desktop PC and then get a lightweight laptop, maybe a Chromebook or similar that offers you basic functionality with good battery life (maybe running Linux if you are so inclined) either one that has specs to handle Steam Link, if you want the flexibility that gaming using a laptop offers, or whatever covers your basic portable computing needs. Then get a Steam Deck or ROG Ally or similar if you really want go all-in on portable gaming (especially if you wait a while for the Steam Deck 2 release which should cause the price of the original to drop.)

Overall that would be a lot of money to drop on IT gear but you don’t have to do it all at once and for the price of a good gaming laptop you could get a decent gaming PC and a cheaper laptop that will be better all-round.

Keep an eye on Ozbargain because refurbished laptops come up pretty frequently.

National Insecurity Agency

outright CP by Labor Day

Last year’s news, well ahead of schedule.

Imo perfectionism is a defence mechanism. A complex one that is very interesting and it can yield impressive results at times, and there’s this thing that I’m going to call the perfectionist’s paradox but idk if it actually has a name or whatever.

What you describe does fit with the perfectionist archetype. Throw in being highly intelligent and/or an overachiever in school and you’ve pretty much got all the key ingredients for ending up with perfectionism being a major source of distress in your life.

There’s a few ways of tackling perfectionism but I’ll try and focus on the fast fixes since that’s what you’re looking for.

If we presume that your perfectionism is a defence mechanism then the deeper work is to address and resolve the feeling and/or the belief that you are facing threats.

For quick ways to achieve some shifts in your degree of perfectionism, on an individual level you can try to find an activity where your enthusiasm or enjoyment outweighs your perfectionism. It might be playing a video game or cooking or arts and crafts or leaning a language. This is a very personal thing but there’s likely to be at least a couple of activities where your perfectionism takes a back seat and you just find yourself just enjoying the process. Spend some time reflecting on how much enjoyment you get from one of these activities, how you don’t feel the need to be perfect at it, how accidents and imperfections can contribute to the end result positively oftentimes, and how you have improved at this activity without the pressure of needing to be perfect at it.

You can wrestle with this on a cognitive or intellectual level and consider how your perfectionism inhibits your ability to practice, learn, and grow thus perfectionism becomes its own barrier to achieving perfection. Things like weighing up whether it’s more important to you to learn and improve or to be perfect, because you don’t get to choose both options, as well as considering how perfectionism continually raises the bar so even when you satisfy its initial standards it inevitably shifts those goalposts in response, stuff like that.

Observing kids can also be therapeutic. (Don’t get the cops called on you or anything though.) But watch kids, if you get the opportunity to - they suck at everything. They still do stuff. They still enjoy stuff. They fail at things and they tend to dust themselves off and give it another shot. It’s okay for you to suck at things too.

This next one can be a lot of cognitive effort but you can try setting the intent to suck at something in order to stake out some psychological territory where you don’t allow perfectionism to encroach. Try something low stakes or something which is of no importance to you and how you see yourself. Mini golf is a good example of something low stakes because it’s got a quaint sorta irreverent quality to it - it’s hard to take it seriously or to invest ego into a round of mini golf. This can be useful for familiarising yourself with a mindset that doesn’t default to perfectionism so that when you approach something that is a bit higher stakes, you can work on maintaining that same mini golf mindset. I’m sure that there are lots of other activities like this where you could practice this but this is just the first activity that springs to mind.

The next thing requires a bit more confidence so it may not be suitable for you right now but you could try playing the rejection game as a way to desensitise yourself to feeling threatened by the risk of rejection from others. Obviously this is not a license to be a creep or to harass people, respecting people’s boundaries is important. But the rejection game is to ask people for things with the intent that when you get rejected, you win. This can be asking people for favours or for objects, that sort of thing. Don’t ask for anything offensive or outrageous but just ask for things and get accustomed to feeling that rejection with the view that you’re going to survive and it’s not a big deal, in this way when you tell a joke that doesn’t land it won’t feel excruciating and you won’t internalise it with shame and self-blame but instead you’ll be more inclined to shrug your shoulders and take it as people either not getting the joke or rejecting the humour and being okay with that.

Maybe an easier entry point is to be that person who is encouraging and supportive for yourself through conscious effort and affirmations. You have to be careful not to allow your habits to turn this into a new dimension for your perfectionism to colonise though, or otherwise it can backfire.

Last of all, to get to the perfectionist’s paradox idea there’s this hazard in dealing with serious cases of perfectionism because you may find yourself reflexively adding an additional layer to your perfectionism by not dealing with your perfectionism “perfectly”. This might look like setting the intention of doing badly at something or of practicing affirmations but slipping up and lapsing into perfectionism unconsciously only to start beating yourself up for making a mistake and not doing “well enough”; to ease off on your perfectionism, you must make your peace with the fact that you aren’t going to immediately find yourself without any perfectionist thoughts or beliefs creeping in, and that’s totally okay. If you’re telling yourself that you need to be perfect at not being a perfectionist, surprise - your perfectionism just outflanked you completely!

With all of that said, I think it’s important to approach perfectionism in a way that doesn’t pose a threat to the perfectionism in you. It’s a bit like a Chinese finger trap - the more you struggle against it, the tighter it seizes up on you. To get it to relax or release its grip, the right approach is one of gentleness and leaning in with curiousity and openness. Challenging the beliefs, ideas, and narrative is fine but approaching it as if you’re going to eradicate your perfectionism is counterproductive imo since that will create an extra level of threat that will only serve to fuel the fire.

Edit:
I forgot but if you’re open to it and if you’re capable of not getting drawn into a sort of socially-driven addiction, sometimes drugs can help. Alcohol is one that is probably used the most ubiquitously in this respect but cannabis, especially high CBD stuff, can be really good for some people to ease up on their anxieties and to relax into social interactions. Just be careful not to use it as a crutch. There’s also herbal options that are still drugs imo - valerian can be good and the same can be said of kava. Beta blockers such as propranolol can also be real good for this, if you can get your hands on them.

Final parting thought, what you’ve described and especially the selective mutism points to the possibility of autism. Just thought I’d mention it as something to consider.

On an organisational level this is a product of insufficient structure.

You can work on addressing matters of culture and individual attitudes but that’s a long-game thing and it may not yield results or it may take a long time to yield results at all.

To address this on an organisational level, you want a chairperson and that chairperson to be an assertive moderator.

An agenda is also important as it will introduce and frame the topic for discussion, giving the chair an opportunity to pull people up if they’re way off topic.

Establishing approximate timeframes for each item on the agenda is also important as it puts a degree of pressure on people to be succinct instead of treating the meeting as an opportunity to yap.

A chair will be able to use these timeframes to rein in people who are talking too much - if there is 15 minutes to discuss an item on the agenda and one person has taken up 5 minutes of airspace, the chair can move the discussion on to another person.

It’s a tricky balance to try and strike and it depends on relationships and awareness and communication ability to navigate this stuff effectively and with sensitivity but as general advice if the chair has to continually drag one or two people back to the topic at hand as well as cutting them off because they’re taking up all the time for discussion in meetings then there’s a fair chance that these people will start developing an awareness of their behaviour and, if things go well, they’ll start making improvements without any escalations or the need for other, more direct interventions.

Somewhere in the comments of this video a user said that he needs to partner with industry and he replied saying that he’s not doing this work so that companies can profit from it, or something to that effect. I’ll try finding it.

When it comes to politics he plays his cards close to his chest but it that comment gives the impression that at least he’s no Wranglestar.

https://youtu.be/bMBsf3njjW4?t=3s

I’m sorry that this is how things are for you and for her. You’re doing your best. I get what it’s like when you know someone needs to get to hospital but they are refusing. I’m hoping for the best for both of you.