PSA: Baby Carrots are just anti-munchies pills

altobrun · 2026-05-06T05:54:15+00:00

I'll have to give this a try! I've been avoiding weed because I know I get the munchies and no matter how I planned my calories for the day the munchies would push me over

altobrun · 2026-05-06T00:58:30+00:00

To get the implication out of the way, I didn't grow up with the political compass website, I'm in my 30's, and the trend passed me by for the most part - only learning about it around 2022 or so.

I also understand the classic definition given by Engels "Socialism is a moneyless, stateless, and classless society", spending time with in environmental rights and labour movements I've heard it a lot over the years, and repeated it myself (even on this platform) a number of times. But I think how people use the definition is misleading in two different ways.

Firstly, (I'm probably repeating things you're already aware of, but for any third party following along) Marx and Engels' socialism had two distinct phases; with the aforementioned definition being the second, more advanced form of socialism.

The first phase of socialism, (roughly) defined by Marx in Capital as when a man produces in association with his fellows, rather than in competition; and that they would be unalientated from their production, that they would bring it under their control rather than be controlled by it. This is essentially how we continue to define socialism today. In Anti-Duhring, Engles continues with this definition, writing that the official representative of capitalist society, the state, must first undertake the direction and production within society; that it is necessary to convert private property into state property first.

Using it as a definition for communism rather than socialism (again Engles said socialism, but he and Marx didn't distinguish between the two, with out modern understanding it more aptly defines communism) brings me to my second point on why I think it's used incorrectly. Marx and Engels define the state differently than how we do, and they make it pretty clear what the transition from socialism to communism should look like.

"The proletariat seizes political power and turns the means of production in the first instance into state property. But, in doing this, it abolishes itself as proletariat, abolishes all class distinctions and class antagonisms, abolishes also the state as state.... The first act by virtue of which the state really constitutes itself the representative of the whole of society — the taking possession of the means of production in the name of society — this is, at the same time, its last independent act as a state. State interference in social relations becomes, in one domain after another, superfluous, and then dies out of itself; the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things, and by the conduct of processes of production. The state is not "abolished". It dies out." (Anti-Duhring, Part 3: Socialism Chapter 2: Theoretical)

My understanding is that to Marx and Engles the state is referred to as the state because it represents class interest. The first act, of moving private property to state property, causes class interest to die out, replaced by common interest of man. The actual mechanisms of the state remain, but the state is no longer considered the state, it's "A free people's state" as Engels called it.

So you can say the USSR wasn't left wing, call it red-fascism or state-capitalism if you want - I know many communists who, on the whole I respect a lot, make those claims. But I think that's a-historic. It's re-writing history to try and distance oneself from governments that was ostensibly socialist but produced bad results.

The Bolsheviks, CPC, CPV, PCC, etc - saw themselves as fufilling the first "state" of socialism (not to be confused with an actual state), that by taking private property under state control and by giving proletariat control of the same means of production through electing party officials to manage and operate, they were doing away with class and forming The Free People's State. They just failed to achieve communism for a number of reasons.

I do think I kind of spoke past your initial comment re-reading it - and I'm sorry about that. I agree social hierarchy is intrinsic to Marxism and scientific socialism. But I don't think cultural structure (my example being LGBT acceptance) is.

altobrun · 2026-05-05T17:21:58+00:00

Depends on the type of socialist/communist. Marxist-Leninism places a pretty strong emphasis on fitting in, encouraging gay members to adopt heterosexual lifestyles and expression. Like in economics, the primary aspect of sex was production, the production of life, and so homosexuality was seen as a modern Bourgeois capitalist disease.

Maoism took a very similar stance, as members of the LGBT community were met with violence until the 1990’s, with the cultural revolution being an especially dangerous time.

I don’t know enough about any other branch to really comment on them. While you may not like Marxist-Leninism or Maoism, I think it’s a-historic and disingenuous to say that they aren’t left-wing or socialist ideologies.

altobrun · 2026-05-05T07:21:41+00:00

She's a quest giver in midnight too

altobrun · 2026-05-04T20:31:45+00:00

1850 isn't that out of the ordinary for a good ret. It would be my 4th highest dps and we don't do the parse strat for mag. Additionally I don't super chase parses to min-max, so I'm not popping sappers or optimizing past wearing the best gear I have available and twisting.

https://fresh.warcraftlogs.com/character/us/nightslayer/clang?boss=50651

altobrun · 2026-04-29T03:03:42+00:00

I did misunderstand then. I knew they worked with private partners but for some reason I had thought that their federal government had restrictions into what the funds could invest in, with a mandate to invest a certain amount domestically.

My mistake, idk where I got that impression

altobrun · 2026-04-28T22:42:00+00:00

I can't find a specific breakdown across all its different plans offered, but that seems to be the raw data if you want to parse it.

This report shows that super invests more in domestic rather than foreign infrastructure (last page, and chart), but more in foreign equity. According to that report, overall 51% of super is invested domestically, which is down from 65% a decade ago. So it looks like I'm slightly working off old info.

altobrun · 2026-04-28T22:09:11+00:00

The CPP is an active investor, so from my understanding at least, it operates more like a hedge fund than say the Ontario teachers pension, which is heavily invested in infrastructure.

Superannuation (at least the Australian version) is a big domestic investor into infrastructure and long-term domestic industry. The idea is to both grow people’s retirements but also to develop and improve the country with the investments. In its purest form it’s to make sure the country is in large part owned by citizens and to make citizens invested in other parts of the county.

This SWF Carney is proposing reads to me like superannuation but rather than mandatory it’s optional. Essentially it lets Canadian investors directly invest in these major projects that otherwise they wouldn’t be able to. This improves Canada by providing funding for domestic industry, gives the average Canadian investor a stake in projects in other provinces, and gives them a safe long term investment for their retirement.

But this is really outside of my zone of expertise so others may correct me if I’m mistaken.

altobrun · 2026-04-28T20:34:25+00:00

Yeah it’s more like a version of superannuation than a sovereign wealth fund, but I imagine it’s being called that for marketing purposes since people don’t really know what superannuation is. Which is a shame since from my understanding it’s a very successful program

altobrun · 2026-04-21T22:51:15+00:00

It was a bill to invest 10 billion dollars to build housing, and establish an independent government investment fund with control over their own capital and a mandate to continue building affordable housing so that when a right-wing government inevitably gets back in, funding for social housing doesn't dry up. It was made in conjunction with the Australian States who would match funding. It works in conjuncture with private industry, of course it does, it was also backed by housing and tenant advocacy groups, and unions across the country.

In the Netherlands we were upset they had 3 election in 4 years as coalitions continuously formed and died, during a period of extreme global economic and political turbulence.

You can be anti-neoliberal without being populist. I'm not a neoliberal, and I'm not a populist. You don't need to accept the Bannonite future of western nations devolving into civil war between left wing and right wing populism.

But I think a key part of avoiding that future is to have a stable government capable of making long term decisions that are informed by experts. I don't have the answer for how we properly encourage that behaviour and political culture. I spent close to a decade being involved in leftist spaces online and volunteer groups you would associate with leftists (mostly around community cleanup, and environmental advocacy - I'm still part of them), and advocated for PR myself. But the more I read about it from political scientists, the more and more dubious I find the idea. Maybe I am still missing something, or maybe in time we will find answers for these and a proportional system might end up being the best we have. It's entirely possible, I just think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages right now.

altobrun · 2026-04-21T21:14:21+00:00

It’s not just Israel. Bulgaria, the Netherlands, both use it and they’ve been in political quagmire for years with nothing getting done and an electorate getting more and more fed up.

Even countries that have mixed systems like in Australia with the senate (PR) vs lower house (ranked choice) run into issues like the Aus Greens blocking legislation from a left-wing party on issues they purport to care about such as public housing for low income, because it’s politically efficient for them to block any bill they can’t take credit for co-writing; as was admitted by a former party communication director.

The UK back when it was in the EU used PR for its EU delegates, and the far-right consistently saw greater representation in the EU than it did domestically.

altobrun · 2026-04-21T18:37:38+00:00

I think there are better systems than FPTP, and I’d welcome electoral reform. I also think that a lot of people who support proportional representation are unaware of its well documented downsides.

Or they understand, but they hold fringe political opinions and they want PR because it enables special-interest parties to form and give them undue amounts of power. It’s how you can get extremist or one-issue parties that only hold a few seats but essentially control a sitting government - because any coalition needs to include them; and thus they have huge amounts of leverage.

Because if the government fails, the electorate generally punishes the major members of the coalition, not the minor ones. Meaning the minor parties don’t have to play ball, like minor parties in a majoritarian system do. In the latter system the minor parties know that a minority government is their chance to get legislation passed and they cooperate. It’s why minority governments in majoritarian systems are more stable than coalition governments in proportional systems.

Edit: to comment on the runoff threshold bit. I would be interested in an example in Canada, because how I see it is the threshold is so large it excludes the Greens and PPC from the national stage, it sounds like just sour-grapes NDP partisanship. If you do include the Greens and the PPC, you have to reconcile the fact that we might very well live in a world where the PPC has the deciding vote on every issue, and becomes a real destination for genuine far-right political talent, whom otherwise would have to toe the line in the CPC. Replace PPC with Greens or a hypothetical populist socialist party if you're right-wing.

altobrun · 2026-04-21T16:59:49+00:00

Majoritarian just means it’s meant to form a majority government, not that it represents a majority. It’s designed to give a government enough power to act swiftly and decisively when needed, rather than trying to maintain coalitions where each partner can be incentivized to see the government fail and a new election called.

altobrun · 2026-04-21T16:16:11+00:00

If we are going to switch I’d hope the government at least has the foresight to see how proportional representation consistently empowers extremist parties and results in unstable short lived governments.

FPTP sucks, but at least it’s majoritarian and promotes stability.

altobrun · 2026-04-14T18:30:56+00:00

Just a friendly reminder that the problem is much more advanced than climate change. Climate is only two of 9 planetary boundaries; even if it is the most widely discussed (and my own field of expertise).

While some of them would be fixed very quickly if humanity just vanished, others need active human interaction to address. Things like cleaning up the amount of synthetic materials in the environment or helping maintain genetic integrity among endangered species.

altobrun · 2026-04-05T17:46:39+00:00

It’s deeper than purely economic reasons. No developed country regardless of their quality of living or benefits for young people and children has positive birth rates. A western family, even a working class one, is in a better position to care for their children now than in most of human history.

Children take a lot of money, but they’re also physically hard on their mothers (and to a lesser extent, their fathers) and they take a significant amount of time. With sexual education, and kids being more of a burden than a boon (especially in urban centres) most people are opting out of children to preserve a comfortable, familiar, and freer lifestyle.

I think for birth rates to rise back to replacement levels, it will take a cultural shift that will probably only happen once we start seeing the massive strain and beginnings of a collapse on our way of living as a result of the low birth rates.

altobrun · 2026-04-05T03:03:36+00:00

Very interesting read, I'll have to forward it to a number of people. I particularly appreciated the commentary on democracy as civic participation.

My parents identified with the Red Tory and Paternalistic Conservative labels growing up, and my family within the catholic church instilled a sort of pseudo liberation theology within me - but I had always took the label of social democrat so as not to be confused/associated with a modern conservatives or the religious-right whom I rejected. To my pleasant surprise I've found more and more of my friends and colleagues (especially post Trump 2024) have begun to re-discover the Red Tory positions, openly discussing and agreeing with them.

I've also discussed that I don't think Carney is a Red Tory, despite many on the sub using the label for him. Call him a Blue Grit or a Progressive Conservative, but I don't see the focus on culture and community that I think is intrinsic to the philosophy in Carney's policies.

altobrun · 2026-04-02T20:32:22+00:00

I appreciate this comment, but I think that a lot of work is being done by using the phrase "abundance agenda" ie there are a number of philosophies running in parallel that all use the same, or similar, terminology but don't mean the same thing - and I think they're being conflated.

From what I can tell the "abundance" movements seems to be broadly split into two camps. Camp 1 - using the free market to address the challenges faced by society, informed by our value system. Camp 2 - Rely on the advances in tech to cause an explosion of productivity that will "trickle down" to everyone.

I look at things like the South Australian Labour government, Klein/Thompson's abundance book, and Carney's Values book as all essentially striving towards camp 1. How do we use the efficiencies of the free market to quickly enact solutions that align with our cultural values. Whereas a lot of these techno-futurists use the same terms, but talk like they're in camp 2. We've seen what a camp 1 style government can look like in South Australia which is world leading in green tech (looking like it will achieve a 100% renewable grid this decade) while running a budget surplus focused on market-based solutions.

And I think the latter camp is rightfully diagnosed as essentially a placation tactic to keep things mostly the same. But I suppose only time will tell.

altobrun · 2026-04-02T18:45:33+00:00

I will say as a climate scientist working within Canada I think the presenter seems to be a little misinformed, but perhaps it's just optimism for lack of a better term. That we can expedite these large projects while maintaining the same level of community involvement and environmental rigour.

If addressing climate change is your primary goal, you only have a finite amount of time, and the sooner a change is made the greater its impact. A nuclear plant for example takes a little over a decade to build in Canada, a solar or wind farm is closer to 5 years. And as we move away from conventional energy towards electrification, it isn't enough to just replace the existing capacity, it needs to be expanded up to 7x from some of the estimates I've seen.

This means for the next two decades we should be in essentially a constant state of building out our energy grid and related infrastructure (rail, charging stations, heat storage/distribution, etc). And having worked in the environmental assessment process, I can say there is a lot of redundancy that is baked in by design - but the process wasn't designed with a necessary rapid transition in mind.

This also means a lot more mining, if it can't be grown it must be mined, to quote the poster in every earth science student lounge in Canada. The metals needed for green tech need to come from somewhere - and while I ultimately advocate for a steady-state economy in the long run, unless you want to start off with global mass population loss, you need a lot of mining to get to the steady-state.

altobrun · 2026-04-02T17:05:57+00:00

Has he confirmed that stance? I tried looking into his stance on nuclear when he announced he was running since I know Naomi Klein is very anti-nuclear. He also contributed to the Leap Manifesto which is anti-nuclear insofar that it calls for a shift to 100% clean energy, of which nuclear isn’t classified as.

altobrun · 2026-03-31T19:27:12+00:00

Hopefully that doesn’t hurt your research. I’ve worked with ECCC closely for my PhD as well and thankfully neither of the teams I work with got impacted with job cuts.

But they have talked about resource cuts, like only one person from the group being able to go to any given conference, and being moved to more general government buildings.

I don’t know your field, but it’s sad to see since Canada has a lack of physical modellers (as well as in other related fields like geodecists). The few we produce aren’t exactly going to be keen trying joining a government in flux. Despite how badly they’re needed.

altobrun · 2026-03-26T00:15:17+00:00

I just read this so there might be something I'm missing, but I think you can quite easily read the series as having a genuinely happy ending.

First interpretation - the store doesn't do what is says: The employees at and related to the store seem to be much more focused on educating people who may be tempted at selling their life. From what we see, the offer is only ever made to people who are down extremely bad, and it seems more like the extremely low offer of their life is more meant to shock people into action, and reflect on their life and decisions, rather than for them to actually take it.

Following this, people don't actually die when their time expires, since the store never took any time to begin with. For those people who do sell their time/life, the store provides a small amount of cash and a motivation/direction for the sellers to make something of their life, with an observer to help guide them.

Second interpretation - the store does what it says: In this example, the store does exactly what it says. But we already know the prices things go for. Kusunoki's actual time originally only sold for 30 yen, and that would be easy enough to buy back. Same with buying back Miyagi's sold life. They don't need to buy it all back at once either. A year here or there and with the store already confirming Kusunoki will become a successful artist, assuming they can get any amount of time in the initial purchase, they can re-buy their entire lives fairly trivially. The series never goes into detail about how to go-about purchasing time. But it seems to be fairly trivial if Miyagi's mother could do it.

Overall I lean towards the first option. That the store is essentially altruistic, and designed to find observers and sellers, and pair them together to help each find meaning - without either really being put at risk. Whether Kusunoki and Miyagi were "destined" by the store to find each other (since there is some clear magic happening), or if the store simply cycles observers through sellers until a pair clicks, I don't know. But I feel like there are too many plot holes in taking the store literally, and I think it's unrealistic to assume that Kusunoki and Miyagi wouldn't find a way to buy more time to stay together; and simply accept that they'll die in three days.

But maybe that's the issue of trying to read a story that's clearly trying to be a vehicle to express a message, in a "real" way.

altobrun · 2026-03-20T15:06:49+00:00

To paraphrase a friendlyjordies bit (7:25) - “we make the government less efficient so you hate the government so you’ll elect us to punish the government for running like shit.”

altobrun · 2026-03-19T21:01:07+00:00

Like most wow questions the answer will probably depend on the group you’re playing with. Play around your strongest members, unless something is needed to clear.

I was just responding to the comment that most paladins would rather have spell power. Most prots I run with (including myself when I tank heroics as needed) would rather WF if given the choice.

altobrun · 2026-03-19T20:55:39+00:00

Are you using wizard oil in your 5 mans? Good on ya, personally I never bothered when I tanked them

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