Yeah this is one of the best thing about DF. Like, in order to build down, you need to excavate each layer otherwise the whole thing collapses.

Brief and sudden lead poisoning

It’s similar for me. I understand a lot of Spanish dialogue up until I encounter some false cognate like “rango” (trans. “faixa” or “intervalo” and not “dinner”).

It’s also hard to not do the Portuguese abbreviations like “pra” instead of “para la”.

Yeah he’s not that great of a guy (if I’m not mistaken, he’s also a transphobe).

Nevertheless I still think that it’s important to read his work since it helped the creation of Cybersyn.

Also, please avoid trying to learn everything. I know it’s tempting but you have limited time and it’s way more worthwhile to apply your knowledge in the real world. Oppose book worship.

Focus on reading Marxist works since they give you a good eye for reactionary thought. Before reading Trotsky, Kautsky, or some bourgeois history book to find insights and historical context, read Marx, Engels, Mao, Lenin, and Stalin. Do not try to challenge or critique reactionaries before doing the work of learning and applying Marxism.

For any book:

• How to Read a Book, by Mortimer Adler (1972 edition or later)
• Writing To Learn, by William Zinsser

Logic:

• How to Prove It, by Daniel J. Velleman. (Skip the introduction if you aren’t comfortable with math)
• How to Write Mathematics, by Kevin Houston.

Both books are focused on Logic in Mathematics. You don’t need to necessarily understand the math. You can treat it like examples or test-cases of Logic since Math is one of the best places to practice it.

Tropes and Media:

• tvtropes.org

Very lib but very comprehensive. Also has ads.

Western Thought:

• Elementary Principles of Philosophy, by Georges Politzer (good place to start)

Western Thought is a very wide topic. You should avoid non-Marxist philosophers from the 20th century since they tend to be either very hyper-specialized or very non-Materialist.

How structures work:

• Thinking in Systems, by Donella H. Meadows
• At this point you can choose to read books on Dialectical Materialism. See the Philosophy section on Cowbee’s reading list.
• Towards a New Socialism, by Paul Cockshott and Allin Cottrell

I love Rust a lot but I wish it wasn’t so hard to compile its compiler.

Speaking of languages, imma try learning spanish. it’s kind of embarrassing for a brazilian to not be able to talk to comrades in latam.

Thanks for the suggestion!

I’ve been thinking about how did revolutionaries organize during bourgeois revolutions. Obviously they didn’t adhere to any Leninist organization method, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they had something similar to Democratic Centralism (democracy for the rich, of course). I might write a follow-up about this in the future.

Recently, I read that the Jewish tradition of reading the Talmud and understanding the Talmud through Rabbi commentary was one of the reasons why the Jewish people had high literacy rates since the 1st century.

The Jewish community has such a commendable record of dedication to literature and preservation.

So thank you for your dedication and for continuing the tradition of your community comrade. And thank you for your research on Fascism.

When China inevitably achieves chip superiority, do you think that the US is gonna retaliate in any way?

When I’m in a capping-own-knees competition and my enemy is the US

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Agreed. I don’t think the US has lost the ability to project power in Latin America for example. It’s still their home turf.

Small pain point about living in a neoliberal hellscape is that we can’t have a Pokedex-style encyclopedia app about everything.

Wikipedia comes close, but it only explains “relevant” things (so no specific documentation for a niche program), it’s horribly biased against material reality in anything politics, and there’s no manuals or how-tos in it.

A while ago, a soldier from the USA did self immolation to protest against the Palestinian Genocide.

Even though he was literally screaming “Free Palestine”, the reporters said that his protest was for “unknown reasons”. The audio of the video of his self immolation was muted.

I won’t disrespect this man’s choice, but it simply wasn’t effective.

I used to be friends with a guy that thought that anti-monopoly laws against Google and other Big Tech companies was unjust because they were the first “innovators” and that all-day public education was bad because schools become open grounds to “drug dealers”.

It doesn’t help that he’s also a massive homophobe and denies that evolution happened.

He lost a business and is stuck doing gig jobs for now. Petit Bourgeois brainworms are hard to kill, I suppose.

I think only you can decide that. But isn’t the US National Anthem played? Doesn’t the flag get displayed? Would you play in the US team if you were a professional football player knowing that you are representing the nation?

Note that we aren’t going to abide by some religious dogma. I would be okay with cheering Jesse Owens at the Olympics, for example (not for the US, but for him). But the fact that the US is hosting the games does change the moral calculus a bit.

The wall in question. Not to scale.

True. That decision really paid off. Honestly, I think that having a sovereign internet ecosystem is gonna be on par with having nukes as a prerequisite for a sovereign nation. We’ll have to see if other great powers are gonna ditch Statesian services in this century. Iran and Russia seem to be heading towards China’s path, at least.