Lmao I literally came here to make this comment

But you have seen it.

Have you located a suitable product-human hybrid of your choice, unit #1406192244?

But without capitalism we would have nobody to put in gulags and that would be boring.

Maybe it was made to appeal to the same mainstream demographic that could otherwise buy into Kurzgesagt proposed solution of "Vote²" and not the diamat-savvy tankies watching it from our bunkers. At least I would be able to share this video to two people whose brains would short circuit to dismissal if it talked about a more heads-off hands-on approach to making it happen.

I was more joking about how social relationships built around game modding surpass capitalism at first yet very often get corrupted and dragged back by private ownership, both that which modders bring with them (a.k.a. drama) and ones tangled with some platform rights (like Bethesda's paid mods and this CF bullshit).

Though hey, people say modrinth can filter by both game version AND mod loader. Crazy features in open-source competition.

Though I've stopped playing MC for now too. I feel like I can't break away from the very same progression line in modpacks, and in vanilla there's only so much new stuff I can experience. Sticking to my 6 years old pirated Sims 3 save currently, but I'll probably do a more Botania+Create+Ars Nouveau focused playthrough some time later.

Sounds like perfect day to learn vanilla

Liberal news reality ofc

While being poor I had a lot of fun from games. It's called piracy. And once I stopped being poor, I largely stopped pirating. I have no hesitation torrenting The Sims or The Witcher (since CDPR refuses to take my stinky Belarusian money), but I see no problem paying for anything else if it's sufficiently convenient. And even when I didn't have time or just wanted quick fun, there was a way to do so. It was known as "cheats".

"Free to play" incentivizes a certain game design where a game is so terrible you want cheat codes, and then selling those cheat codes to the player. Additionally, it preys the most not on the people who have money to burn but on neurodivergent folks predisposed to addictive behaviors (like I am but thankfully I dodged the worst of it and learned to just never touch the stuff at all). Hell, that's why the game is not sold — the point is to probe the market for vulnerable people with the free first dose. This is immoral, predatory behavior, and while nobody would argue that a developer needs money, it's this particular way the developer skills are used to make said money, and from whom, that people rightfully find repulsive.

Pro tip: put a hammer and a sickle onto your flag so it's easy to tell if it's upside down :)

Can confirm anecdotally, my mother and my uncle both have several shelves full of books bought during late USSR times.

Damn that gotta be the second hardest blow to the international communism after Khrushchev.

It only takes 10% of workers to initiate a Fair Pay Agreement in an industry.

Don't like the sound of your pay and work conditions being taken out of your hands?

Then join them for fuck's sake. Your boss is only hiring you because he gets more in profits than spends in your salary. The more of you are squeezing them capitalist pigs, the more coin you get to take back for yourself. Why tf are you still here?

Aye, thanks for advice and support, comrade.

Business generates work that someone should do

Okay so let's just kill all businesses and then there won't be any work left?

I actually work out 4 days alternating muscle groups (today it's the core + legs) and then rest for a day, so I was wondering if I'm not actually overdoing it. Trying to get a bit more muscle and generally stronger and flexible since I've neglected myself in past years almost completely, and even got back to obesity levels during pandemic.

It actually refers to a certain political ideology and party by Alexander Dugin and Eduard Limonov that popped up and existed on fringes of Russian political sphere after the collapse of USSR. The shortest and very shallow tl;dr is it's a form of fascism where you glorify USSR and take the liberal fakes about Stalin at face value but say that it was good.

BTW I was meaning to ask, do you work out every day? Is it a good idea to?

And my major gripe with CPRF is that has over and over failed to do anything that would notably improve the standing of working class in Russia and it's totally fine with being a springboard to power for the class enemy while higher officials spreading right-wing-ish idealism raking in millions of rubles yearly to personal account. While I'm not advocating for "throwing the whole party away", and I would want to point again that many of lower ranking members are actual MLs and at some earnestly try to use the parliamentary system and the deputy rights for the social benefit and not the personal, I don't see them being a party of proletariat in their current form — which too is subject to change based on material conditions.

Ok, what happened is that I looked for sources describing events as I remember it since I don't store the links regarding every single news piece, and it happened that this site provided an outline that seemed decent at a glance. I've replaced it with the statement on CPRF official site now as they describe the same events making the same point, though I would have to go through dozen of articles to give an equally decent outline which I won't.

And yeah, I do think US, EU and Russia all have state political repression, and none of them is "democratic and free". I'm concerned particularly about Russia starting to openly attack labor organizers and fledging communists in past years.

But also, I don't enjoy communicating with you, and at this point I'm happy to resign to history having to prove one of us wrong.

Good thing we don't have any more time to waste on each other then.

CPRF gets up to 89% of its funding from Russian state (152 RUB yearly per vote per RF Federal law N95 Article 33 pt. 5-6) and there are grand bourgeoisie donors who then get elected as CPRF deputes (CPRF had "sold" the most of deputy places of all other parties in 2021 election lmao).

CPRF doesn't shy from dissatisfied electorate through populist opportunism like engaging with anti-vax protests. Meanwhile when low-ranking members have been arrested in anti-fraud protests* after the 2021 State Duma election, Zyuganov shortly went to denounce them and deepthroat Putin's boot.

Also not buying the criticism talks. Case in point: CPRF was the only party allowed to organize anything on this May 1st in Moscow where Zyuganov with militaristic fervor echoes Russian imperial/fascist theories blaming "globalist Anglo-Saxons" for attacks on Russian world and pays homage to solidarity of labor and government as the defining factor of the Soviet's victory in WW2. Nice class analysis there, just a few days after the arrest of "Courier" labor union organizer Kirill Ukraintsev (not a good last name these days) that he decided to ignore. Though that's not particularly surprising from somebody who straight up praises the now-infamous philosopher of Russian fascism, I.A.Ilyin in his book.

The folks who prefer other philosophers aren't so lucky. A CPRF deputy was fined for reposting Sartre quote saying "Every anticommunist is scum". Though that's nothing compared to how five members of a Marxist reading group in Ufa have been arrested and accused of terrorism, including a CPRF deputy. Somewhat totalitarian hellholish, according to the western propaganda outlet that is the official site of CPRF.

Then again, I've been watching Russian political sphere for about a decade and apart from minutae feuds and shedding light on some abuses of Russian power, CPRF seems to have done nothing significant during all that time. Sure, there have been rallies (some pro-Putin though) but it amounted to the same as Democrats in BLM movement. In 2011 CPRF and "A Just Russia" parties had enough mandates that they could refuse to participate and thus strip the parliament of legitimacy, Bolshevik-style, but they chose not to. Even in local cases where UR was in a minority like in Tomsk in 2021 somehow the city Duma had both supported the speaker to be from UR and then acted in favor of construction monopolist against the wishes of local populace, according to local ex-secretary of ideology in CPRF who left the party. I also haven't particularly seen them supporting organized workers specifically.

I doubt I'll be changing your mind with any of this, but I'll leave this for other readers to judge as to what informs my opinion as long as they bother to use translators. I wouldn't also debate anything based on talks and not action, and there's a lot of positive light about individual CPRF deputes one can find. Even so I think CPRF as a whole, today, is communist in name only.

[*] - I swapped the source from this, which I still believe provides a decent outline of protests development, to official CPRF site that contains just a short statement.

I have no doubt that Putin would have been able to win the last election without resorting to fraud, but I welcome you to think as to why bother then.

I mean that while CPRF may look like an opposition, is not a treat to the capitalist order of contemporary Russia. When it comes to action, they have long abandoned class grounds or revolutionary thought and at first had simply capitalized on Soviet nostalgia. That did get *somewhat *changed fairly recently, when in 2018, after the increase of retirement age in RF led to mass protests and bottom push for a stronger opposition that focuses on social issues, and a lot of lower-ranking members have been using their power as deputies or region leaders like you'd expect from half-decent socdems, but that's also the kind of people that got both attacked by state and party officials. To date CPRF successfully resisted several attempts to push the party leftwards, though there are still a lot of honest decent people among the lower-ranking members. Ofc that's just my opinion I've formed watching Russian politics for the past 15 years, and I'm more interested in actions and dynamics than theory since politicians are typically all cock, but no cum.

Russia lacks a serious left-wing organization and class consciousness is way lower than it has been in 1917, so I would expect social upheaval under current circumstances to result in nothing good, though in the upcoming years the repeat of February-October isn't completely out of the question, especially if western sanctions actually hit harder, or the Russia fucks up in Ukraine somehow. I do think the chances are slim but hey, Lenin thought he wouldn't see a revolution in his lifetime.

As for non-revolutionary means, remember that Russia is still a dictatorship of bourgeoisie who still have some serious capital they plundered from Soviet workers, and all parliamentary parties including CPRF are controlled opposition, and the elections seems to become more fraudulent year on year (though now they have uncontrollable electric voting system, so I think they've reached an apex of fraud potential). Most historical communist parties coming to power through elections have come to be in a very different circumstances with weakened local bourgeoisie in a multi-polar world shortly after WW2 when prestige of USSR and Red Army was very high.

Looks more like former socialist countries often have a mix of shitlib and reactionary BS in political mainstream. Ukraine or Poland are obvious example, but there's a very significant public presence of anti-Soviet thought in Belarus and Russia too, including even in school curriculum.

Well I was an ancap in my 16, sooo...

Sounds like the spectre of communism has changed their diet to brains.

A common point of liberal propaganda in ex-USSR countries is that the Soviet Union economy was so defunct we are still unable to recover, and also the fucks from KGBNKVD have been killing the enterprising entrepreneurs who would make us the greatest country in Eurasia, leaving only apathetic sovki with slave mentality.

Folks, come on, a 17 years old from an upper-middle-class family that was able to emigrate to US and who has received education there can totally be expected to have reasonable criticisms regarding both theory and practice of socialism.

Actualy Kurzgesagt replied in the comments and they only opted to address the point about the funding lmao.

But who's to judge the right from wrong? When our guard is down I think we'll both agree that MGR OST kicks ass.

1. Morrowind. I spent like 7 years playing mostly it in my school years.
2. Doom probably, I still play it modded from time to time
3. Space Engineers. I love sandboxes and this one has me building stuff that actually moves around. 4-5. The Witcher 3. Played the first two years ago but was so burned out I never gotten to 3rd. Had to torrent that one since I'm from Belarus and CDPR doesn't want my money anymore.
4. I have a PC and a laptop, but I emulate a ton on my phone with bluetooth controllers too. Played a lot of console games on my last 3 phones that I never got the chance to play while I was younger. I also have an old Sega Genesis at mother's place but that thing hasn't been turned on in over a decade.
5. I don't remember because some games are not "bad" but just mediocre stuff I lose interest for. Maybe one of those Famiclone fakes like Super Mario 16 I played in a classmate's home in my yonger teens?
6. It Has To Be This Way

I'm from Belarus, actually. Our anti-soviet westoid nazlibs, too, believe Soviet era has been the worst time of Russian occupation! They are not in power, however, but Lukashenko's government has largely let go of the ideological front for decades, while libs have had a really well organized and strong media presence and at least some cohesion and they gained a lot of credibility by talking about things that have been going to shit.

And frankly, the state kinda lays the groundwork for anti-Soviet sentiments — for instance, my school history education had a lot of Perestroikaesque anti-Stalin sentiments that violate historicity principle like "Stalin earnestly believed Germans would honor M-R pact so he did nothing but purged high rank officers and ignored multiple reports about impeding attacks on June 22th". Another odd, but notable case is the Kurapaty mass grave which are believed to be NKVD and/or Nazi victims. Lukashenko allowed a monument to victims of Soviet purges to be installed, but had the related documents classified and banned further examinations, so the distinctly anti-Soviet narrative can't be challenged by historians and such.

Does Fortune work on data in the latest patch?

Literally every ex-USSR country except Russia.

Remember folks, exploitation is when the government promotes education to a point your country has prominent scientists and culture so you get books and movies in your native language for the first time in history. Also stares at Ukrainians apparently it's when a person of your nation is a leader of a whole multinational state.

What if it's simply the only chance their writers get to use the phrase "at what cost" without loosing their job? Like, imagine how the US version would look like:

"Jeff Bezos flies a giant penis into space, but at what cost?" ($5.5bln) "America sticks with covid zero policy strategy, but at what cost?" (~1mln lives) "A shooter is let loose onto the school while police tases parents, at what cost?" (21 lives, lots of trauma and 40% of municipal budget)

LPR and DPR have started from a genuine popular uprising as a reaction to Euromaidan coup. The wave of social explosion have pushed people with, well, more or less lack of consistent political ideology, to the leadership positions, and in first years most of the popular leaders have been assassinated (some expressed anti-oligarch views, even though there has never been a proper socialist movement), leaving only the likes of Igor Strelkov (who is a known fan of White movement and has long and deep history with Russia) in control. Additionally there's, like, fishy election manipulation wrt. organized communist movements. Like, DPR's communist party (ignoring the question of how communist they are) was banned from elections in 2018 by a backdated state decision of its dissolution in 2016 that nobody in the party knew about.

Like, the only way in which you can consider them any sort of "leftist" is that some forces use Soviet flags as cumsocks for bourgeoisie interests.

There haven't been, and couldn't have been, women like these in the old times — J.V.Stalin.

Sorry if I didn't make myself clear. What I'm asking about is theory and not the current situation. Marx defines exploitation of workers as appropriation of surplus-value produced by them, and that it's structurally embedded into the nature of capital as self-valorizing value. If there's no appropriation of surplus value, the "capital" can't grow, and thus it's not valid to call it capital at all, in the Marxist sense. Hence, if capital is by definition a cycle that involves exploitation, capital export must involve exploitation export.

This is a different matter than more colloquially used piss-in-bottles exploitation of workers (that's means to extract more surplus value from workers, but aren't structurally embedded), or certain Western hegemon country learning their foreign policy from a spoiled elephant in a glassware store; nor am I trying to make any sort of moral judgment about good and evil capitals.