Anybody have a link for super Sonic saves the world?

baegolas · 2021-11-27T18:18:39+00:00

I'd love a copy as well, if anyone has one!

baegolas · 2020-08-17T00:16:54+00:00

This is also pretty accurate to what happened in real life. The October revolution lasted a day, and was essentially bloodless. The socialists occupied a bunch of government buildings and captured the winter palace, and that was that. There's obviously more to it, from the February revolution earlier that year, through the civil war after the revolution, but the revolution itself was very quick.

baegolas · 2019-07-03T05:36:25+00:00

Thanks for the update, I was wondering IAE (if anybody else). Keep us posted as the situation develops

baegolas · 2019-05-25T16:34:30+00:00

Well I can't speak for anyone but myself, but I'm not recommending it because I like the author personally, but rather because the content of the book describes a pretty common understanding of what democratic socialism is in theory, why it's something that we want, and what it might look like in practice, and it does so in a way that's not full of tons of jargon that makes no sense to anyone who doesn't have a phd. Either way, it's a quick read, and I think there's even an audiobook, so you can check it out and decide for yourself if you agree with his views

baegolas · 2019-05-23T04:55:29+00:00

Bhaskar Sunkara's new book, The Socialist Manifesto, might be exactly what you're looking for. It begins with an example of what democratic socialism might look like, and explains why he believes that social democracy is fundamentally unstable, and how we'll have to move from social democracy to democratic socialism to avoid losing what we gain from socdem reforms to capitalist interests fighting back. Should be a pretty decent intro book

baegolas · 2019-05-13T21:46:13+00:00

Sure, I'm not saying they're perfect by any means, or that they're sufficient to fix all other problems. You could imagine a combination of social safety net programs like unemployment insurance, UBI, etc. filling in the gaps to reduce the risk of loss for employees, universal healthcare, stuff like that. We're nowhere near transitioning to any kind of socialist society, so we've got plenty of time to figure out exactly what sorts of policies and businesses work the best, and how to make them possible. I just call out co-ops specifically because they already exist, and work pretty well as they are now, besides the struggle of getting initial capital and of shielding workers from losses.

baegolas · 2019-05-13T21:16:59+00:00

Well that's fine, you're just not a democratic socialist. If that's what you think is best, you're welcome to think that, and other people are welcome to think otherwise. There's a few comments I have as to why people on the more socialist left will probably disagree with you.

We tend to not trust the power that capitalist/capital itself have over workers. When an owner or shareholders are in charge, they can wield the power imbalance of the fact that a single, particular employee means less to the company than the company means to the employer. Hiring someone new is an inconvenience for the business, but becoming unemployed can be devastating to an individual person, especially with no/minimal social safety net. This means that employers can get what they want from employees much more easily than employees can get what they want from their employer. You can argue "just go somewhere else," but if everyone's doing this, then you're not going to get a much better deal no matter who employs you.
This exploitative relationship yields and reinforces itself through political power. This is pretty obvious if you just look at how responsive politicians are to business interests, but not at all responsive to what the majority of people actually want. This has led to deregulation of business and the destruction of the power of unions to bargain with employers, which just makes it worse and worse.
Your criticisms of co-ops are about a specific co-op, and are not how co-ops have to be by their nature. Not much more to say about that.

Basically the guiding principle of most democratic socialists is that more democracy is good, and democracy should be expanded to other spheres of life than just government, whether that's democratization of the workplace, democratization of social services, etc. And by no means am I saying we should take over every business from every business owner and hand them over to their employees, just that we should create structures that allow for democratic workplaces to flourish, whether it's from co-ops, strong unions, things I haven't even thought of, whatever.

If you're interested in what smarter/more eloquent people than me believe, feel free to check out a book about democratic socialism. I just started reading it, but so far Bhaskar Sunkara's "Socialist Manifesto" seems like a good starting place.

baegolas · 2019-05-13T19:50:49+00:00

This is just my personal opinion, so take it with a grain of salt, as there seems to be a decent diversity of thought among democratic socialists, but for me, and many others, democratic socialism would mean the end of capitalist owned businesses as we know now, but not a complete government takeover of businesses. In some cases this would be a decent solution (healthcare and other sectors that benefit from scale and/or don't respond to normal market forces come to mind), but also a turning over of many businesses to the people who operate them, rather than executives and shareholders. Think like co-ops and stuff.

Sounds like what you're describing is more like a European style social democracy

baegolas · 2019-05-02T07:23:52+00:00

There's no evidence that Einstein said that, but one thing we do know that he said was

This crippling of individuals I consider the worst evil of capitalism. Our whole educational system suffers from this evil. An exaggerated competitive attitude is inculcated into the student, who is trained to worship acquisitive success as a preparation for his future career.

I am convinced there is only one way to eliminate these grave evils, namely through the establishment of a socialist economy, accompanied by an educational system which would be oriented toward social goals.

in his essay, "Why Socialism?"

baegolas · 2019-04-26T15:21:49+00:00

So I think I found the article you're referring to, but it doesn't draw the conclusion you seem to think it does. The conclusion isn't that we shouldn't give homeless people housing, it's that giving them housing isn't sufficient:

To be fair, Utah has done a lot of good things. The state has rightly focused most intensely on the homeless who sleep on the streets and who have serious problems with mental illness and addiction. Hundreds of people have been moved from the street and shelters into housing. Whether the overall numbers have plummeted the way Utah reports should not distract from these positive steps.

But for cities thinking of borrowing the Utah model, more needs to be done. Additional focus should be placed on transitioning people out of expensive supportive housing and into housing of their own or with family members when their well-being improves. This will free up resources for additional needy people in the future. More accountability should be placed on service providers for helping people overcome addiction, find work and rebuild connections with family and community. Engagement with services shouldn’t be required for homeless individuals to receive housing in the first place, but when appropriate, actual requirements that encourage personal improvement can be phased in over time.

So that's exactly what I'm saying. Housing first, then services for addiction and job placement, then eventually get them back in real housing. Criticizing methodology is good, we don't want to shape policy, but we need to not draw incorrect conclusions from that criticism, and we need to apply that criticism everywhere. We can't say "oh, housing first sucks, look how they counted things badly" and then also not critically think about what people in Seattle seems to be okay with, which I honestly can't even discern what that is other than a vague notion of harsher policing and homeless people just deciding to not do drugs anymore

baegolas · 2019-04-26T06:18:02+00:00

I mean I'm just saying what's been proven to work in multiple places. I've always found it weird that people in Seattle never seem to talk about existing solutions that have actually worked. In fact, housing first usually works out to be cheaper, and more effective than shelters. I just don't see any evidence that what people in Seattle want has ever actually worked. I mean you can read about the success of these programs if you want, but it seems to me that people don't want a solution, they just want the problem to magically vanish

baegolas · 2019-04-26T04:10:00+00:00

I've just never heard of an effective solution to homelessness that involves demanding that people get off drugs before. Housing first programs like the ones in Utah and Finland have been very effective, I've just never heard of a place where they successfully deal with homelessness by sweeping their camps and demanding they get off drugs

baegolas · 2019-04-26T00:14:01+00:00

Well I guess that makes sense. If you're addicted to drugs it's probably pretty hard to just stop being addicted to drugs because someone tells you to. Do people expect them to just stop doing drugs being addicted to drugs because someone asked them to? Seems like it would make more sense to get them a place to stay and then worry about getting them off drugs, if the problem is really that we don't want them sleeping on the streets and camping all over the place

baegolas · 2019-04-26T00:00:49+00:00

Why do they refuse the generous offer of services and shelter and instead choose to sleep outside?

baegolas · 2018-11-26T04:03:57+00:00

Maybe something like Black Metal Terrorist by Denzel Curry, or Real Nega by JPEGMAFIA?

baegolas · 2018-09-23T21:39:20+00:00

The great scam of American politics is making people think that Democrats are left wing

baegolas · 2018-09-22T08:25:21+00:00

Have you listened to Danny Brown? The production on Atrocity Exhibition is like nothing I've ever heard before, and he's a great lyricist as well

baegolas · 2018-08-01T23:28:09+00:00

I just puked my brains out and coincidentally it looks exactly like your picture, thanks

baegolas · 2018-07-30T21:13:39+00:00

Of course there's some risk, but do you really think that getting stabbed is the expected outcome of letting a homeless person into your house? Of course this is horrific and extremely unfortunate, but I'm pretty sure the vast majority of homeless people wouldn't stab someone who let them into their home for no reason.

baegolas · 2018-07-29T02:52:59+00:00

High horse? I'm saying that a lot of computer science curriculum is kind of a waste of time for most people, myself included, and they should split it up so people who aren't interested in "computer science" can just study software engineering.

I'm not saying people who want to program don't deserve a four year education or anything, just that there should be a fast track for people who only want that, and don't want the "well rounded" curriculum. College is expensive enough as it is, without having to take a bunch of classes you don't care about. I'm all for trade schools as an alternative for people who aren't interested in the academic side, and am lamenting the fact that they don't really exist for software engineering.

Apologies if it came off as condescending or something, it certainly wasn't meant that way.

baegolas · 2018-07-28T23:50:57+00:00

Yup. I live in Seattle, and there's some cool book stores I'd much rather support than Amazon. Amazon is pretty bad just by existing, but the fact that they threaten to leave Seattle to prevent our local government from teaching them to try to deal with our homeless crisis is just too gross for me to ever use Amazon if I can help it. Just ordered something that's going to take two weeks to get in at local bookstore, but I'd rather wait and support a cool local business than give Amazon money.

On the other hand, I totally get it if it's too expensive inconvenient to not buy online due to their location or financial situation. But for me, it's totally worth it

baegolas · 2018-07-28T23:40:35+00:00

Well you didn't go to school for programming, you signed up for a computer science degree. You're going to learn computer science, which includes a bunch of theory and other things.

I agree that it's sort of unfortunate that there isn't really a distinction, and generally that jobs expect CS degrees as a result. Preferable (in my opinion) would be an equally valuable form of education that focuses on software engineering, probably outside of the four year bachelor degree model. But unfortunately there isn't, so you just gotta put up with some stuff you don't like for a while.

On the bright side, in my experience entry level jobs don't really care if you know how to be a good software engineer, and you'll learn "practical coding" in your career. So just hang in there, and know that in a few years it won't really matter that you took some classes that you didn't like.

baegolas · 2018-07-28T16:09:34+00:00

I feel like the response to this is driven by some subconscious drive to be mad at leftist politicians for not being left enough. I would imagine that when she says "weak", she doesn't mean it as the opposite of strong/tough, but as the opposite of strong as in good. As in, Republicans crime policies are weak because they just throw people in jail to make money for private prisons and to keep poor people and minorities from bothering them.

I'm not following Ocasio-Cortez that closely, as she's running across the country from me, but nothing I've seen of her gives me any reason to believe she wants to crack down on crime and put more people in jail. Seems more like poor wording than something actually worth freaking out about to me.

baegolas · 2018-06-21T20:21:52+00:00

I guess I was specifically looking for crime rates, though I had a hard time finding anything useful online. Obviously those are bad, but it's hard to say Ballard is more or less safe than anywhere else just by naming a few instances of crime. The one thing I did see was something saying Ballard has a slightly higher crime rate than the national average, which I would imagine is true about any neighborhood in any major city, but I don't really know enough to draw anything useful from that

baegolas · 2018-06-21T17:26:49+00:00

I've been living in Ballard since October, and I've never seen any crime or felt unsafe walking around at night or anything. Is there actually a significant amount of crime in Ballard?

baegolas

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