Yeah it’s definitely the Vladslav Zubok Collapse that they’re talking about. Brace has mentioned it in passing at least once or twice in other episodes.

The full audiobook of it is available on TankieTube btw.

In a majority brown country, places like R*ddit talk about how dystopian and cult of personality-like this image is:

“I don’t know why but just looking at this gives me the creeps.”

“Let me get this straight, their government has money to distribute all of this material right across their country while their people starve?”

“Wow. Just wow. And they try and convince us that they’re a democracy?”

“This feels like something straight out of 1984.”

I kinda expected airing my grievances with the DSA and the CPUSA might open up an arena for infighting but I genuinely don’t want this to happen.

There’s plenty to be discussed about the DSA leadership but I think I’d only really do this face to face with people because the internet really doesn’t need yet-another unproductive slapfight.

At the end of the day there’s a lot of comrades and even just progressive libs in the DSA who are putting a lot of energy into fighting for a better world. I might not always agree with their strategies or the DSA leadership but this is where critical support isn’t some trope for me but it’s a very real thing; I largely support the DSA’s efforts, I have criticisms of the DSA (especially the leadership) but I would rather direct my energy against capitalism/imperialism/colonialism/the bourgeoisie and the DotB than putting it into attacking the DSA. Especially in a space like this one.

I’m gonna give some different advice to the rest of the comments:

I think the most important thing is to consider what you want to achieve out of joining a party. On the face of it this sounds like opportunism but hear me out before you jump to conclusions prematurely.

Do you want to develop your skills with activism in its many forms?
(Creating agitprop, making speeches, recording, making effective social media posts, and of course the pointy end of activism like hardcore protest strategy)

Join your local affiliation groups that are doing stuff like climate activism, Stop Cop City, anti-war protests, Palestine solidarity groups etc.

Do you want to develop your understanding of theory?

Join a local reading group or a larger national one like the PSMLS (did they have a split or something? I don’t keep up with the drama…)

Do you want to do mutual aid work?

Generally your local orgs are the best (and often the only) option.

Do you want to learn how to canvas and do the more formal party organising work?

Here I’d tentatively recommend volunteering for a campaign like Bernie/Jill Stein/Cornel West/the current PSL candidate. This will likely require you to hold your nose at least to a certain degree but if you want to learn the ins and outs, getting irl experience by rolling up your sleeves and doing the work is the absolute best way to do it.

Do you want to build connections and networks?

There are a lot of good options here but I’d recommend aiming for the stuff that is closest to the labour struggle/similar types of unionism (e.g. tenant unionism, radical prison outreach orgs, etc.) or to join a national organisation (assuming it has an active branch in your local area) such as the DSA(!) or even the CPUSA(!)

Remember that if it’s about building a network, you want to leverage the reach of the organisation you choose to affiliate yourself with so the bigger the org on a national as well as a local level, the better.

Do you want to form a vanguard?

This one is a little bit tougher. I’d recommend a good local reading group as the starting point but the other option would be to play the angles and drive a split in a larger organisation that is terminally revisionist like the CPUSA or the DSA (sorry CPUSA and DSA members, I know that your local people are probably really solid comrades but the top end of your orgs are absolutely dismal - I know you know it too and I don’t intend to shit on your local branch).

The ethics of causing a split are a very big discussion that is kinda tangential to the purpose of this comment. In cases like the CPUSA and DSA, I’d argue that they are already very much in motion (especially in the case of the DSA) so this is significantly different to joining a unified party and acting like some Trot wrecker within those ranks; a split where it’s only you splitting is the same as getting booted from a party. A faction of malcontents is a necessary precondition for a split and while you shouldn’t go fomenting disunity within a party, if one already exists then so be it.

There are probably some other aspects of development that I haven’t given attention to here but this is just a quick rundown off the top of my head for you to consider and to use as a point to spring off from.

Note that these things don’t have to be mutually exclusive; your local mutual aid group might also be deeply involved in activism and it’s likely to be a decent place for developing connections in too. You get the idea.

Party-hopping is poor form, generally speaking, so do commit to a course for a good while unless you have genuine cause to leave (corruption, gross mismanagement of the org, the org goes dormant or is disbanded, serious misconduct from org members, irreconcilable ideological differences etc.) although you can also pick and mix, depending on what your involvement allows so you might be able to be part of a national org while dedicating some time on the side to local unionism or solidarity/mutual aid work etc.

I guess in a sense what I’m trying to impress upon you here is that it’s okay to treat organising work in a similar way that you would a career. Obviously it shouldn’t be about ruthlessly selfish personal advancement at any cost but considering your own personal strengths, your passion, what areas you want to develop, and where you want to take your organising work is actually really commendable imo, especially if you plan to be a leader of some sort or you want to become part of a backbone of an organisation because you have critical skills and experience in certain domains; anyone can join and org and just follow along but almost invariably there will a desperate need for more niche skills like public speaking, skilled artists or organisers, and stuff like administration. So think about what you want to get out of joining a party/org and consider what you want to get out of a mutually-beneficial arrangement with them as well as where you would like to end up focusing your organising efforts on.

I vote Alevi. Feels like nearly everyone would get offended by an Alevi revert lol.

All The Shah’s Men by Stephen Kinzer is a good place to start to form the backdrop of contemporary Iran

Is it my fault for being a bad prime minister?

No, it is the transes who are to blame!

Honestly it was pretty gruelling to work my way through this book. Doesn’t help that I was extremely depressed at the time.

Zubok is neutral to positive in his assessment of Gorbachev and his reforms imo but for me it painted a picture of a very strategic dismantling of the USSR, mostly on an economic level, which seemed very cynical and calculated so that even if Gorby got ousted or someone assumed his position the reforms would have already gained enough momentum to basically ensure a capitalist restoration regardless of any later efforts to prevent it. Imo it was a counterrevolution established via policy. It makes my blood boil to think of all the immense sacrifices made just so Gorby could piss them up the wall. The book is definitely a fascinating autopsy into what happened and I definitely recommend it but at the same time it’s a very grim case study for a communist to delve into, for obvious reasons.

Anyway if you’re interested, there’s this Werner Herzog documentary Meeting Gorbachev where he interviews Gorby. Might make for an interesting way to close things out once you finish the book by getting a retrospective from him in his own words.

Nobody talks about the interregnum inherent to dual-boot

I’m stuck in it right now. There are niche utility apps I need for performing various tasks and I really don’t have the brainpower to learn and remember the terminal commands, so I am stuck being a low-T beta GUI user (the T stands for Terminal). Often I switch back to Windows and immediately I go ewwwwww but then switch back to Linux and realise that idk wtf I’m doing or how to do it, and I need to invest a good amount of time and energy learning how to use different programs just to achieve simple outcomes (that I can mostly do intuitively on Windows which leads to a sort of sunk-cost fallacy).

I really wish there was a hour or two YouTube tutorial that just ran through the Linux replacements for Windows features in a 1:1 sorta way. For example I was having trouble with certain apps’ stability and not having a native shortcut for the Linux task manager equivalent, or even knowing what it was called, was infinitely frustrating. I get that Linux is its own set of OSes and that it shouldn’t be expected to be a 1:1 replacement that mirrors Windows in every way but also it takes a while and it requires a bit of effort just to figure out basic things that are sorta essential which you don’t realise you need until you don’t have access to them.

I mean who’s gonna proactively research the task manager equivalent in Linux and create a custom keyboard shortcut for it just in case an app is fullscreen and it bugs out and stops responding but doesn’t allow you to switch away from it? Not a new user or a newly dual-booting person.

Personally I’ll be fine; I know enough and I have the determination to muddle my way through but there has been a couple of points where I’m like “Yep, this is exactly where people drop out and revert back to Windows.”

All of this is tangential to your post but since we’re airing grievances about transitioning to Linux I just wanted to vent my own frustrations.

It’s gonna be down to the wire imo.

Kamala has lost steam and there’s such desperation from the voteshamers that I think most of her supporters have at least some degree of latent awareness that she isn’t capable of drawing in support outside of her base, either to the right of her or to the left.

Donald is low energy but almost all of his base is willing to hold their nose and vote for him, which drives the Blue MAGA crowd wild with envy. I really don’t look at that end of US politics much at all because it’s gross and I don’t have the stomach for it, plus it achieves nothing whereas there’s a chance I might be able to peel off the occasional progressive whereas conservatives are low yield per input so my take is that it’s a waste of time focusing on them. (Don’t get me wrong I’ll agitate anyone opportunistically, even a diehard Trump supporter, but I’m really not focusing my energy on honing my rhetoric and hooking in to their primary concerns because there are much easier targets out there.)

I think in it being such a close race it’s probably going to come down to one of those key states falling to one side or the other and who really knows which way the chips are going to fall in that situation?

If Trump wins I think he’ll lose the popular vote though.

If this happens, I’m going to blame the Dems for how they had the opportunity to abolish the electoral college, to make the presidential election a popular vote, and establishing ranked-choice voting to instead push through military aid and financial relief to support the genocide in Gaza as their top priority which means Joe Biden chose this and now we have to respect that choice and live with the consequences of it because Biden and Harris didn’t want to listen to the voter base.

When they blame us for the loss, remember to ask them this: if we are such a powerful, important voting bloc then why did Kamala choose to speak over us rather than recognising that the most important factor in politics is to make crucial compromises in order to achieve progress and to prevent Trump from seizing power?

Use it to defend West Asians from the inevitable hate that will be directed at them for “making” Kamala lose as well, please.

Of all the people aside from uncle Ted, I would have assumed that Tolkien the arch philologist would have gotten the eat your cake/have it too phrasing the right way round. Apparently not.

This is one of my favourite Nina Simone moments

Here’s a TankieTube link to a documentary about the Bhopal industrial disaster.

Lots of anti-dandruff shampoos can be used for jock itch. You want something that has selenium sulfide or zinc pyrithione in it. The higher concentration the better (as long as you’re buying it off the shelf in a grocery store anyway).

Apply the shampoo to the affected area. Leave it to sit for the time stated on the bottle or longer because that really is not going to do you any harm. If you really want to knock it on its head apply the shampoo before you shower so it doesn’t get diluted by the water and let it sit on your skin for a few minutes and then jump in the shower.

Rinse off. Dry your skin thoroughly, paying close attention to the affected skin areas. I’d recommend using a hairdryer or a fan to dry your skin in these areas completely before you get dressed. Repeat this daily until the itching and skin discolouration is gone then continue with the treatment for at least a couple of days longer.

Keep the shampoo bottle in your shower and if you notice any itching starting up again, apply another round of the shampoo as a maintenance thing and you should be good.

If this doesn’t work then see a doctor/speak to a pharmacist and bring out the heavier stuff. But you might be surprised at how effective antidandruff shampoo can be and you can get a huge amount of treatment for only a couple of dollars. Probably less if you can find antidandruff shampoo in the dollar store where you are.

I’ve worked in the NGO sector. Obviously it will vary between countries but by and large the experience of interviews with NGOs leaves you scratching your head wondering if they’re a serious operation.

Thing is though, it’s the really slick NGOs that give a strong impression of being serious that are the ones to avoid, at least most of the time. Sure, the poor quality interviewer NGOs come with plenty of their own flaws but if the NGO is slick and corporate then most often they are the worst of the for-profit world with being ruthless and cutthroat while also paying like a non-profit and expecting workers to do their jobs (with plenty of unpaid overtime) because of their passion or dedication to a social cause.

The other NGO is the militant sort. Those ones are rare and they’ll mean business in a completely different way to a corporatised NGOs. Hard to find, hard to get into but if you’re good at what you do and you don’t fuck around then they can be really good places to work. Or they can be toxic as fuck but because everyone’s so single-pointedly focused on achieving outcomes, nobody rocks the boat and the culture of the NGO becomes worse each year.

It’s a weird corner of employment tbh.

I keep quiet about which one because I’m a bit security conscious and I don’t want to put out more info about myself than I already do.

The government of the country I’m in. Some shithole western country. But it’s a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie here so it’s a rich man’s government not my government.

If you think it’s doable then I’d say go for it.

Maybe give it a shot and see how you feel about it 6/12 months down the track. You might be able to climb the ladder if you like the job and the organisation enough. But even if you don’t and you hate the job or the location, you’re going to be in a much better place to land a job if you’re currently employed so maybe think about it as a stepping stone to get somewhere better either internally or externally.

Hey, I know a soundtrack for this!

https://youtube.com/playlist?list=OLAK5uy_lJFv4JA-ZgLp4iFf6l9Gfa7wIB3CKko1A

It might be a bit of an acquired taste but the name of the album fits.