Comradeship // Freechat

I live in Belgium, originally from The Netherlands. Both countries are essentially build up like this: city center - suburban stretch - city center with farm land in between. There is virtually no real nature to be found in both countries with the exception of a small part of southern Belgium. What natural parks we have are basically large artificial plots of nature. Every single inch of these countries is managed beyond belief.

Want to enjoy the few plots of land that are deemed 'nature'? So do the 30 million other people living here. The most remote part in The Netherlands is a point at which you are, hold your hats, 11 km removed from the nearest road. A two and a half hour hike at best.

It's suffocating. There are people everywhere, all the time. You can hear cars at any point in these countries. There is no natural silence. It drives me nuts.

La enfermera que me atiende en dicha unidad trans me contó que está haciendo todo lo posible para que yo tenga cita con el endocrino antes de que termine el año o a principios del año siguiente.

Si hay suerte en la cita con el endocrino y añade el tratamiento hormonal de hombre a mujer a mi receta médica, finalmente podré quitarme de encima gran parte de mi disforia.

Quería compartir eso con ustedes camaradas porque desde que me dieron esas noticias estoy muchísimo más feliz y menos deprimida. Cada vez estoy más cerca de ser mi verdadera yo. 🥹 💖

As someone who was bullied by a racist white teacher, this hits hard. When she felt that she went too hard, she faked niceness to me so that I wouldn't report her. White people are the masters of faking niceness.

But it's easy to peer through their thinly veiled racism, and thirst for blood against minorities (such as Asians). They accuse us of being two-faced, famously the Siamese Twins which is taught as propaganda in every school. It's just projection in the end. The Native Indians were right about white people and their tongues.

You're constantly on guard when dealing with whites, and it's tiring as hell. They have perfected the art of backstabbing.

As an asexual, I've already talked about how frustrating it is to see how everything's sexualized, but I wanted to talk about other specific stuff and I'm sure other aces will agree with me.

It's honestly so annoying that 2 people of either gender can't be close together without other people thinking that they're totally married or in a relationship and shit. This happened to me personally already, some absolute sickos paired me and my sister after seeing us for the first time just because we were sitting together. I've also had many friends of opposite gender and same thing happened to my brother also, we couldn't even hug our friends without getting the looks

My mother(who is straight and also finds this annoying) talked to us about this and said that this became even worse during recent years and that especially before people used to be a lot more closer with each other in friendly relationships, kisses and hugs were normal friendly gestures. Also for example, she slept(key word: slept) in the same bed with her friends of both genders during high school on sleepovers and she isn't bi, same thing with me as an ace.

Eastern Europe is another special case for close relationships and gestures in terms of hugging, kissing etc (cough Fraternal kiss cough) and some older people especially are so used to it and is completely normal for them.

Allos are generally so annoying about this, they'll watch a movie and see 2 completely random characters and then talk on and on about what would be if these 2 got in a relationship, even if the characters just stood in the same room next to each other or the media is not related to romance at all.

I mean, they sexualized fucking vampires over time, as someone from Balkans, this irks me on so many levels because these things were disgusting non-rotting corpses which spread plague, transformed into shit like bats, insects, rodents etc and drained people. Like no sir, if they were real, they wouldn't be interested in any kind of relationship with you, they'll see you as bloodbag and drain you dry if you didn't already die of plague they brought beforehand.

Same thing goes for many other things which allos sexualized or see in sexual way, be it friendly gestures, closeness with family and friends or just generally normally being together or spending time with someone. Real life isn't a drama TV show where everyone's cheating everybody and sleeping around with anyone they know or meet.

I never knew just how much walking around outside improved my mental health until I lost the ability. While going through this benefit appeal, cancer treatment and recovering from a stroke, everything has been so hard but being able to walk down to the beach and spend some time outside with my landlady's little dog each day, made life tolerable. Then I got stuck inside for a while due to my foot surgery, and this other one coming up on Thursday. Being stuck indoors has made life much more frustrating and stressful and given me nothing to look forward to, but at least this had an end date. After recovery from the surgeries I would be able to walk around again. But now I have developed achilles tendonitis. It's the second time I've had it, the first time I was in a plaster cast for 10 days and couldn't walk properly for months. This time who knows how long it will last. Google says it could take a year to improve, or it might never get better. I'm a lot older and sicker than the first time I had it, at best I could be stuck indoors for a year, at worst, forever. I just feel like this is the final straw. It's too much on top of everything else. Potentially spending a year stuck inside doing nothing, staring at 4 walls. Getting more frustrated every day. And all for what? It's not like I'll even have a good life to look forward to afterwards. I feel like I just don't even care about anything any more, not even whether or not I win my benefit appeal. I don't even have a friend in the world to talk to or spend time with, everyone abandoned me when I became disabled. What is the point of even struggling on with this shitty life any more?

Hey there

I sincerely hope all me comrades are having a nice day

I've been in a somewhat not amazing situation for quite some time (not best mentally, in transitioning and unemployed again), thought I'd ramble a bit and ask for a little advice. I despise almost every job I get and years of constant stress are ruining my physical and mental health to the point where I struggle to keep on going at all. I don't want money from anyone here but I'm trying to figure out how I could fill my budget before I stabilize a bit more and will be able to keep a job which should happen later in the summer.

A friend suggested a free psychological counseling available here where I live which might be a good start.

I'm getting a little bit of income that pays for ~40% of my room rent and receive some help from the family (mostly food). I generally stick to intermittent fasting and get ready to sell some music gear I don't use much. I used to make some small money doing side gigs (physical labor) or constructing a tiny website here and there but I'm not an experienced developer and it shows so can't do it professionally. I found learning python and c++ fun btw (clears my head from worries (: ) but it seems I have to sort out adhd stuff to think about rebranding seriously.

Generally if anyone has any ideas how I could earn or save some extra cash to deal with a small crisis, I'd be very happy to read some advice.

Hugs

I gave up completely on working in school, it was pointless graduating because my life will still be shit regardless if I graduated, My ADHD was neglected and my deaf right ear was the scapegoat for my poor performance. And I gave up working in school and just surfed the web and listen to music on the school laptops. The only reason I stayed because I thought my parents would use my lack of education and employment as an excuse to kick me out of the house.

I kept lying to my family that I was doing good in school until they find out. When my grandmother found out that i was failing she interrogated me about it I told her the reasons. Then she took me to school to officially dropout and had cried.

Fortunately I didn't get kicked out. Now I'm trying to find a way to leave my family. And I am thinking of living in an rv

So i have been thinking more and more about how stupid it was for the west to willingly deindustrialize. And ive had a realization about why they did it.

If you go back to when capitalism began to really take off a lot of the time different companies and capitalists acted very violently towards eachother. We can see how things like stocks and financial markets were used as a way to reduce inter-ruling class violence by providing an outlet for them to compete inside a legal framework they controlled. The gamification of it.

This seems to have worked for them for awhile. Allowing them to accumulate wealth at an insane rate without much risk of just being assassinated by some rival industrialist.

I think though this has ultimately poisoned their world views and will be what destroys them. In the current era rather than capitalists wealth being based on actual capital, factories, industrial output of their companies, etc. Its more and more based on market speculation. Even the ones who do own factories their wealth comes from stocks whose value is highly speculative.

They have forgotten that it is a game. They have lost touch with the material reality of power. So they willingly hand the means of production over to a communist nation in pursuit of more speculative value without realizing theyve handed the keys to the castle over to the people.

China basically joined their game, and let them feel like they were winning. Allowing them to become rich in the market while China accumulated actual wealth and power via industrial capacity. China seized the means of production without firing a single shot. Or technically, China tricked the west into handing over the means of production willingly.

I think there is now a small faction of them that realize theyre screwed. And its why your seeing so much insane behavior from empire. Its flailing about in a panic.

Because China has already won. The fight between capitalism and communism is already in its final stages, and the communists control most of global production while capitalists are incapable of catching back up.

China played them for fools. The hubris of western capitalists made them think they could simply use financial markets to control the world. They can't.

So whats going to happen now? Well the camp in the west who realize that they lost sight of reality will try to force reindustrialization. As they are now. But the majority of western liberals still dont get it. So theyll fight back to keep doing their financialized games. Sabotaging their own efforts to reindustrialize in the process. You can see this in how Trump and his goons are using tariffs to play the market or how the CHIPs act failed since the companies used the money on stock buy backs.

They are like addicts. They cant stop sabotaging their own system.

China knows this. Its why you saw Xi courting international investors recently. He was basically saying hey keep up the financial games we will make you rich. Like waving a beer in an alcoholics face when theyre trying to quit.

All this is to say, rejoice comrades, for our causes victory is all but assured. China has the west in checkmate. No matter what move they make, they will still lose. They may do lots of damage before their defeat comes, but i think that defeat itself is now a certainty.

Do not allow your own circumstances to blind you if you are in the west, or a nation controlled by it. For even if circumstances seem dire right now i think everything is going exactly to the Communist Party of Chinas plan, and their plans do not stop at Chinas borders. They will not be finished until every human being is free from capitalist oppression.

~ In 1922 a bear discovered fire. A flaming torch the bear carried for a generation. From the skies an eagle attacked, and when the bear died to its claws the world thought that flame lost. But a young dragon ate it and fled to the heavens. Today that flame is a raging inferno. Held within the mouth of that dragon. The eagle thinks it owns the skies, and all the earth below them. Soon though the dragon will descend from the heavens and the eagle will burn. ~

万岁中国!

I want to join the Dutch communist party, the NCPN. I've had this idea for a while now but never made it definitive because of some doubts.

Currently I'm a part of a party called BIJ1, which is an anti-capitalist party with a large focus on intersectionality and antiracism. I still think the party does good work, so I don't think too negatively of them. But I still feel like there's not much potential in the party anymore. Because this party attracted people from every brand of leftism from social democrats to anarchists to some MLs there was not a clear vision of what type of socialist society they wanted to work towards.

I joined at a time when I wasn't an ML yet, so that vision wasn't clear for me either. Because of this lack of vision and personal differences fights broke out. This led to people being banned from the party, elected members leaving the party and keeping their seat as an independent or with a new party. This all eventually led to us losing our only seat in the house of representatives in the last election. I'm not sure what we can do to regain that trust. I still feel that we could climb back up and regain that trust but the only way to know is after the municipal elections, which are a year away.

I feel like that lack of vision makes them unsure of their strategy. We call ourselves a party for the streets, but I feel like we focus the most on electoralism. We don't work that much with unions, we don't organise strikes or protests. BIJ1 WILL be absorbed by the system if this continues. I heard calls for governing in coalitions with socdem parties when we're big enough We did succeed though, in stopping our racist house of representatives speaker from appearing at an anti-slavery remembrance. There needs to be more of a focus on class struggle in BIJ1, otherwise they'll lose the socialist views. And to be honest it is a problem since the beginning of the party.

Like I said there were social democrats who joined the party who liked the intersectionality but not the socialist views. Some joined thinking it was only an anti-racist party. Some of them were elected members, like the municipal coucil member who left the party for the christian zionist Christian Union. The electoral candidates aren't screened that well, with a very short list of questions that don't reveal too much about their ideology. There's also no background checks. We've had electoral candidates who are cops, who were transphobic. But it's hard to screen when you don't have good vision what you want your party to be. We don't school our members, like other organisations either. We don't have a book club or something like that.

I thought that maybe I could help change all this by steering the rest of the party towards Marxism-Leninism but you can't do much on your own. I'll have to be upfront about being an ML, which I haven't yet for some reason. I've come across some people who say very anticommunist things, including the story about the Trotskyist I shared a couple months ago and I feel like I could never be able to push back against that. I know that a lot of other MLs have left the party and have joined mostly NCPN. I feel like BIJ1 should work together more with parties like NCPN but it doesn't make BIJ1 suddenly communist. BIJ1 also never uses the word communist, only socialist. And even then they mostly opt for using the word anti-capitalist instead.

At this point it makes more sense to join a communist party. They know what they strive for, focus a lot on extraparliamentary work, vet their incoming members, and has a lively youth organisation, which I want to join. BIJ1 is pretty old now and their youth organisation is abandoned. With BIJ1 I sometimes feel left out because a lot of the time I'm one of the only young people. And I feel like I can't do much for the party and what I do isn't that useful.

Like I said, I've been thinking about this for a while now but a few things were holding me back. I firstly didn't want to join another party until I was fully out as a trans woman so I wouldn't deal with coming out again. But then I also didn't want to join until I was on hormones for at least a couple months, since I don't want to look like a man to them.

I still have some good connections from BIJ1 and I don't want to dissappoint them. Last meeting I felt really included and I'd love to keep working with them. And I don't know anybody from the communist party and my social anxiety makes me fear that I'll become lonely. I kinda feel like I have to connect to someone who's already a member before joining to stop this feeling. But I actually think that I could make more connections, also with people my age. But there's still a fear that I won't be admitted to NCPN so I would leave for nothing. But I could always join another organisation like RSP.

The only thing I have left to do is think about how I'm going to leave the party. Does anybody have some ideas how I should do that?

For those who didn’t know, I am a 28-year old gamer and college student. I was diagnosed with autism since early age.

I am very dependent on my pension and my aunt on my budget, however most of it went for food. So I have set this fundraising to help me cover college-related fees, free tuition couldn’t cover beyond intended purpose.

PS: My goal will include funds to buy a new phone, my five-year old Realme 6 still survived with broken volume buttons.

PPS: My big brother might give up support for me, so I raised the limit to $1000

Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/ahriboy/goal

Please if you can spare anything, Thank you!

(For more information,questions, Or for any other ways to send donations/gift cards/etc. if any of the above options don’t work for you, please DM me!!!)

Commodification of news under capitalist model creates barriers to access in form of paywalls, ads, data harvesters, and so on. Western media, driven by profit imperatives, increasingly treats news as a luxury good rather than a public utility. Paywalls lock critical reporting behind subscription fees, while ad-driven revenue models bombard readers with intrusive trackers and disruptive marketing prioritizing profit over access.

On the other hand, Chinese state-supported media model sidesteps these barriers by decoupling news accessibility from commercial pressures. I find myself reading outlets like Global Times or China Daily precisely because they provide clean, accessible articles without the junk. These platforms ensure information reaches a wider demographic, including marginalized groups who are priced out of Western media ecosystems. The structural advantage here is undeniable because Chinese media is unburdened by the need to “sell” audiences to advertisers or shareholders.

The west champions "free press", but the reality is that access is often restricted through financial and technological gatekeeping, while China’s approach leads to practical accessibility that's not possible under capitalist model. As a result, I expect that Chinese media will become increasingly more dominant globally due to being easily accessible.

It might not take off in the west where there's too much propaganda against China for people to turn to Chinese sources, but that's not the case for the global majority.

I was listening to a podcast and the guy was making a point that the Jedi were just like the janissaries of the Ottoman empire because they "stole children" and I just... got so annoyed that I couldn't listen to it anymore, even though I kinda wanted to due to the other host.

I know where the argument about the Jedi comes from, which comes from the days of the old EU and Karen Traviss and all that stuff, but I just sort-of had a flash of anger. It's just a pop culture franchise, right? It's literally just a story. Hell, The Acolyte was pretty rough on the Jedi's portrayal and I enjoyed it.

Anyway, I just found it pretty dumb, but for some reason, I found that I couldn't continue. It's like I had a mental block.

I paused for a moment but then the Spotify episode remained paused.

I wasn't even that angry, but I... just found myself not interested in this spiel even though I'm normally interested in the podcast.

It just makes me feel so... Idk, silly? Thin-skinned?

To be fair, there were a few things in the podcast that annoyed me; they berated a person that asked a question in good faith, or so it seemed, and they never seemed to challenge each other all that much.

I don't even like the Jedi that much! By the Clone Wars era, they had clearly grown dodgy and conservative. Mind you, Anakin Skywalker is or was an abuser who killed Indigenous Tuskens, but, well, you know, some of the rules and how they were implemented in the Jedi Order probably didn't help his mental state either, though that's probably more the Council's doing.

Anyway, I don't know what came over me and why my anger "paralyzes" me sometimes. I haven't watched it in a few weeks but might again. But I feel somewhat ashamed because it seemed so, err, small.

USA: "China is sending Uyghurs to death camps!"

Also USA: sends brown people, LGBTQ+, and other people they don't like to a death camp in El Salvador

So, as it is, in Belgium, after you have reached a certain amount of worked days, you are eligible for unemployment benefits. These benefits are unlimited in time and you can theoretically work the aformentioned days, get fired and get benefits until retirement.

Unions also play a big factor in the unemployment industry so to say as they are the ones taking care of the files for the workers to get the maximum out of their rights versus the government.

This system, while it has its flaws, makes sure that the workers of Belgium are protected from falling into poverty, giving them at least some money to get by.

The new neoliberal government will now make an end to this, citing the usual crap like lazy people taking advantage of the system, the need for budget cuts, whatever. They will limit the period of benefits to a maximum of two years. You will get one initial year if you have worked for one year in the three years prior to your request, with an option to get an additional month of benefits for every 4 months worked outside of that year, up to 1extra year.

This means that in order to get the maximum period of benefits, you need to have worked at least 5 years WITHOUT interruptions.

The vast majority of people getting benefits are hopping from one shitty interim job to another, barely getting by with benefits as their only safety net from extreme poverty. Because poverty is already what they are experiencing. The only options left beyond benefits is state welfare but the rules for that are so strict that most people currently unemployed will not be eligible for that, meaning they will have NO income.

These new measures are absolutely insane, threatening many people with dire poverty, and it will have tragic results on this country, believe me.

I will fight until the end for this. Not only because this affects my job as well, but because I cannot live in a society that deems this to be normal. Where is the solidarity man?

I went to Sainsburys today. As I got to the self-checkouts, I could see there was a much bigger queue than usual. I soon found out why: they have just updated all of the self-checkouts, and the new software is glitchy. About half the people there checking out were requiring assistance from the staff, and the three staff members could barely keep up.

For a while now all of the self checkouts have had screens above them that record, or at least watch you while you scan. You can see yourself in the screen, I assume it's to deter theft. I started scanning my items, and immediately I found out what the new software is. On the first item, the screen snapped an image of my face, and kept the image on screen above me, while the screen in front of me that shows the scanned items got a big warning flashing up on it, declaring that I had bagged an item that I hadn't scanned.

Both screens froze like this, my face on the screen above with a message in huge letters on the screen below declaring to the entire shop I had bagged something without scanning. Declaring me a thief to the entire shop, even though I hadn't done anything. Because the staff were so busy with all the glitches I had to wait there like this for about 10 minutes until someone would deal with it.

As I waited I watched the other checkouts and saw that this glitchy new tech was doing the same thing to other people. It seems ridiculous, it's made the process longer, caused a bigger queue, and is wrongly accusing everyone of stealing. It seems counter-intuitive, they want more people to use self checkouts but this is going to put me off using them in future.

I dread to think what they'll come up with next. Maybe they'll eventually get rid of all cashiers and when the machine accuses you of stealing there will be no one to check your items and see that you haven't. I wouldn't be surprised if they have robot police waiting to arrest you for supposedly unscanned items soon.

And let's not forget this is to stop starving, poverty-stricken people from accessing food in the only way some people have.

And if not, if Burkina Faso fully unites with them under AES, will it mean a loss for socialism?

[62% of 100% complete]

For those who didn’t know, I am a 28-year old gamer and college student. I was diagnosed with autism since early age.

I am very dependent on my pension and my aunt on my budget, however most of it went for food. So I have set this fundraising to help me cover college-related fees, free tuition couldn’t cover beyond intended purpose.

PS: My goal will include funds to buy a new phone, my five-year old Realme 6 still survived with broken volume buttons.

Ko-fi: https://ko-fi.com/ahriboy/goal

Please if you can spare anything, Thank you!

(For more information,questions, Or for any other ways to send donations/gift cards/etc. if any of the above options don’t work for you, please DM me!!!)

Amid capitalism and patriarchal socializing, some of you may have a difficult relationship with emotions. You may come to view them as a kind of inconvenience or flaw in the way of being a well-oiled machine. That when others talk of processing emotions, it means you need to process them like one might oil a squeaky gear on a machine, so that you can go back to running smoothly.

But this understanding of emotion has it backward. Experiencing and processing your emotions is itself a part of what makes you human. When you do this, that is what is "running smoothly" in human terms. The nature of a human and a machine is not the same. We are judged by our humanity and a machine is judged by its efficiency. For us to compare, a broken gear is not equivalent to a broken arm, but instead is more equivalent to a broken morality. It is when you repress, distract, and otherwise deny yourself the time and energy to process and experience emotions that you are becoming more comparable to the squeaky gear of a machine. You are denying yourself a part of your humanity, just as the squeak is denying the machine a part of its efficiency.

Remember to understand yourself as a human, judged by standards of humanity. I know there are many metaphors out there that frame humans as similar to [whatever the latest technological advance is], but you are still human doing human things, whether you see yourself that way or not.

Body-wise, I was feeling weird when I had a sudden burst of energy and "heart flutters" and that may already be the answer to my question as to what was ailing me or what I felt physically "bad."

Thing is, I couldn't tell you otherwise what was bad and why my mood dropped when my energy rose.

It may be that, when I get energy, I feel angst or anguish over realizing the state of things as my mind becomes clear or perhaps I'm feeling my own body or lack of depersonalization for the first time (it's happened multiple times but you know what I mean).

I don't want to be unscientific so I thought I'd ask others here with the hopes that someone will have the valid answer (of course, I'm using Google or Bing so it's not like I'm just relying on the opinion of random people, though maybe the search results aren't that good either).

After some months of seemingly being free of anxiety I feel like it has returned in the last few weeks, which sucks. I probably will never be free of it because it seems that I am wired to be prone to anxiety though I can now recognize that I most of the anxious feelings are just inside my head and I am not in actual danger or whatever. Yay for progress, I guess.

Working out helps. I actively rejoined the gym months ago after my running period and some dude told me: 'well you'll see the results in around 6 months', which seemed kinda long at the time. Lo and behold some six months later and here it is: I am seeing the results. Which is nice and motivating.

Gardening also helps in calming it down. I am growing a window sill herb garden and my basil is already coming up. Still waiting for the parsley, pepper, thyme and the lemon balm but they will take some more time. On my balcony I have spinach, chamomile, salad, green onion and chives coming up soon. My native flower set up is doing great to with daffodils blooming and a wild hyacinth coming up, which is sadly rare these days.

Thanks for making it through my rant. It feels good to ventilatie and while I have people to talk to in real life it is nice to write down thing once in a while so that I can visit it at a later time when I feel down.

the thing with being a father is that is not like programming an AI...

Hello everyone.

I started to post audiobooks of The Culture series on Tankietube, split into 15-ish minutes bite size parts. And I just posted part 1 of chapter 1 of The Player of Games (Yes, I know it's the second book, I'll be posting the books in an order I've seen recommended instead of publishing order). I already have 5 of these ready that I will be posting ASAP, and many more on the way.

I tried my best to cut in places that wouldn’t be too awkward and I put some pretty background as video just to not have just nothing or a static image. What do you think?

If you haven't noticed in recent times, liberals have been accusing the Trump administration and basically anybody who criticizes Biden/Kamala/liberalism of being a Russian agent or puppet! (Or sometimes a Chinese or Iranian puppet, but Russia is the most common)

It can't be the fault of the United States themselves! It can't be that liberal capitalism would eventually degenerate into fascism! It can't be that people are genuinely furious at the government independent of foreign powers!

It's all the Russians!

It's especially infuriating when they accuse leftists (particularly pro-Palestinian activists) of being "just funded by the Russians!" It's like liberals refuse to take responsibility for their own ideology's atrocities and think that their precious liberalism can never be wrong and all the haters are just fake.

Are the Russian bots in the room with us right now?

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/4575304

A friend of mine told me today that they forgot to update their social security status after naturalizing (US). I guts me to know how worried their family is about deportations. I don't have advice to give, so I wanted to ask the community here of you have any advice I could pass along.