Apple.

I uses to be a huge Apple fan pre-2010. Everything worked, was smooth, wasn't Windows, and it was fun trying out the terminal despite it being pretty useless for most things on Mac.

At the new decade is when it felt like Apple was becoming what it is today: a walled garden with priority of mobile devices at the detriment of Macintosh. Started to really look at Linux as an alternative (only tried Ubuntu in a VM around the time of Unity coming out) early 2010s, but didn't make the full leap until around 2013 when I installed Linux Mint and got a Raspberry Pi to begin to mess around with. Now I solely run a mix of Debian and Void on all my machines and I couldn't be happier.

I'd recommend conduit if you're self-hosting, especially on limited resources. Very easy to set-up and fast, and although not on feature-parity with Synapse, it does now have Spaces and threading support which is huge

Rio's been hitting some astronomical temps so it makes sense, but it would definitely suck if this was your show. It's only postponed until Monday at least and despite the last-minute delay, better to be safe than risk more injury or even death :/

http://liberationschool.org/feed/

https://www.liberationnews.org/feed/

http://multipolarista.com/feed/

http://mronline.org/feed

https://www.mintpressnews.com/feed/

It's an incoherent mess, I was just compelled to share my misfortune with lemmygrad when I found it (sorry lol). And I briefly thought of refuting all the shit he spewed, but honestly my time is better spent doing anything else!

I adore Void; it's been my daily driver for about 5-6 years now. Simple, fast, easy to configure, and the Void Handbook does a great job of detailing Void-specific items that you wouldn't necessarily be able to find in the Arch Wiki, for example.

the package manager's command to install stuff is kinda hard to remember but does its job well

xbps is incredible and very fast, but if you're having trouble remembering the commands or just don't want to have to type the chain, I'd recommend looking at vpm. It's a very apt-like way to manage it e.g. vpm update vs xbps-install -Su and vpm search vs xbps-query -Rs

Plus their sidebar gives away what kind of people they are.

We currently have a Mastodon account you can follow for major updates: @beehaw at fosstodon.org.

From what I've gathered on Mastodon, a lot of instances have blocked fosstodon.org for being full of libertarian techbro takes. It's always a waste of time interacting with them. Plus I'd rather not lemmygrad be a shitposters instance, leave that to the chapos on hexbear.

Raddle is the distillation of the anarchist into the most concentrated form of brain-wormed online anarkiddie that spews the most toxic, vile, and backwards bullshit seen in any realm of "leftism".

Thank fuck they're contained in their echo chamber.

And we're the ones who want to exist in self-affirming spaces? Liberals can't see the hypocrisy of decrying the far-right yet acting exactly like them.

Even more reason to use Linux now 😎

Yes, both are run by the devs who are of course communists. These were the two original lemmy instances: lemmy.ml was the "standard" flagship to show what lemmy was capable of, while lemmygrad was the communist space

Unfortunately the more invested and "hardcore" Redditors still tend to be libertarians, although a lot of run-of-the-mill liberals are now included in that group.

So what happens when you get tons of them leaving a platform en masse? They'll bring their reactionary toxicity with them, claiming "no hatred" or "bigotry-free", while enabling pro-rulling class rhetoric and blanket-banning/defederating with communists. At least this split on Mastodon isn't as heavy as it was already filled with a lot of "leftists", and as there aren't really any explicitly ML instances available, a lot of communists are intermingled in left-leaning spaces.

Here though? They can push all their ire onto lemmygrad.ml, alienating a pretty big chunk users if they defederate, even worse if they eventually do so with lemmy.ml given the admin crossover.

Democrats we call your bluff, voting blue is not enough!

here's a list of public searx & SearXNG instances

If anyone has good experiences with any of them, definitely share!

Besides towing the state department line like Trots usually do, they don't seem to do much. Granted they had a pretty good campaign in getting Sawant into the Seattle city council, but that seems to be their biggest claim. I don't really see them doing much in my city or hear about them nationwide. I know of a few other parties other than mine that have galvanized around both the pandemic and BLM, but SAlt is kinda absent.

SAlt are so fucking cringe. How can any org be taken seriously when it decides to pick up on online fights?

This has big vibes of PCUSA making statements about leftbook or the anarchists I've met in-person who've come up to us and asking, "are you the tankie party?"

They do! Applications right now may be quite slow depending on your nearest branch's resources and/or priorities - huge influx of interest due to BLM and the pandemic - but it all depends. If there's no branch in your city or nearby, you can apply as an at-large member and the party will support you in creating a new branch. As far as I know, the focus then will be on recruitment.

So definitely try and get in contact with your closest branch, and if it isn't difficult, attending different PSL demos (online or off) will always help as the party will get to know you better.

"So essentially there is not much democracy in this group."

The critiques on Becker end up in dead ends, whether it be on PSL being a "Becker party" or this that somehow always gets brought up despite it always being debunked.

Becker has been a member and has held a role in national leadership for a while, that's really all there is. He isn't some overarching leader consolidating power, and it seems anti-PSL rhetoric just ends up getting pointed to him from other communist tendencies. It's like saying Lenin or Stalin had some iron-rule over the party and everyone had to listen to them.

“PSL doesn’t mention their ideology as Marxist-Leninist, not even in their constitution (which is a private document, abnormal of ML orgs). They instead prefer “revolutionary socialists.””

I'll admit that I was confused about this when I first got in contact with the party, but the reasoning is sound. Outwardly we don't present ourselves as communists or MLs, which I touched on above, for the reason that doing so in the US at this time would pretty much end PSL becoming in touch with the masses. Communism has been the US boogeyman for over a century at this point, not going mask off was a decision made by the party specifically in order to be more approachable. Outside of the internet, it really isn't a good idea to approach strangers by shoving Lenin in their face.

I don't have the exact quote, but Lenin did say to judge a party not by its slogans and names but by its actions. And even if you're not in the party, reading the more in-depth analysis and party-line statements on Liberation School and even the usually shorter articles on Liberation News will show we keep to a strictly ML line. Internally we view ourselves entirely as ML and party discussions etc. show that, although every once in a while we'll let it slip in an article or something that yes, we are Leninists :smirking face:

Resident PSL member here who obviously recs PSL.

PCUSA is fine enough. Their split from CPUSA seems justified due to the massive revisionism and anecdotally don't seem at all the serious party they once were. But PCUSA really isn't that either and I can't see them as a potential vanguard party. Can't complain much about their line as they specifically call themselves anti-revisionist, but that also seems to be their biggest downfall, typical of most staunch "anti-revisionists" (at least in the West).

I won't make shots against their size as they're still very small, but they come off as LARPers for the most part; they're looked on as Hoxhaists for a reason. As cool as it is to be unabashedly ML in their image, it does nothing to meet the needs of the people in any way. They seem more preoccupied with that "pure" revolution idea than with relating to the masses and being with the people. Now is not the time to be waving around ☭ flags when the vast majority of America is still so staunchly anti-communist in any way. You have to meet people with how you will help them materially first and foremost while following a Leninist line, not throw Stalin at people (as fun as it is) and be more preoccupied with shitting on "leftbook" than you are with being a professional Marxist revolutionary party (regarding the leftbook article, a few of my comrades know her IRL and she was literally a Nazi until like a year ago. Like why does that article even need to exist? It's not like the substance is bad but just what's the point of making an article bashing leftbook as something that needs to be said by a communist party striving to be the vanguard?).

Edit: Also their most recent line on BLM is absolutely awful. They spend more time buying into the bourgeois story of "anarchists" having caused the riots than they do supporting an anti-police rebellion. No matter how imperfect the whole of the recent BLM protests have been, it 100% deserves our support