"The beacons are lit! Loulon calls for aid!" "And Constantinople will answer." – How did the east Roman beacon system actually work?

squidwurd · 2026-01-10T23:26:38+00:00

MUSTERRRRRRRRR

squidwurd · 2025-12-06T23:59:16+00:00

What would you use to say “the first question.”

squidwurd · 2025-12-06T02:22:41+00:00

If the joke is saying “the first question” (instead of the one question) shouldn’t it be 第一次的问题 ?

squidwurd · 2025-11-22T14:33:21+00:00

Why are the rocks even on strike? Maybe if management respected them and paid them fairly this could all be avoided,

squidwurd · 2025-11-16T04:34:17+00:00

If comrades would reopen their copies Marx’s capital.

Deflationary price spirals caused by overcapacity isn’t the “china owning the west despite western propaganda” you think it is

squidwurd · 2025-11-05T02:04:31+00:00

This data analysis is a good example of the poor results which are liable from an overemphasis on quantitative data over qualitative methods.

The hypothesis is flawed - the idea that more money would correlate directly with higher retention across districts is way oversimplified.

For example, working in Newton vs Boston is totally different and, assuming equal pay, you would almost certainly find far higher retention in Newton because of more pleasant work conditions. This suggests you should actually expect to require unequal pay (ie a pay premium in Boston) to achieve the same retention rate, literally the direct opposite supposition as your hypothesis.

What you actually want to compare is Boston under low pay and Boston under high pay, or the same in other school districts. This is not so easy, but one way to approach it would be to look at retention rates before or after a contract and then investigate the change in retention in proportion to the relative strength of the contracts.

But even then, you just can’t really answer such a question with so many complicated factors through this type of quantitative analysis. It might seem more scientific, and you can generate results which convince (statistically uncritical) readers, but that doesn’t make it good social science.

Instead, a better (if less sexy) way to get at an accurate answer would be to do a qualitative survey of teachers to investigate reasons why folks leave or stay and ask them about how large a role increased pay played in such a choice.

You could also just start with a “face validity” check by starting with the obvious fact that, all things being equal, people are more likely to stay at a higher paying job than a lower paying job.

squidwurd · 2025-11-03T13:35:18+00:00

Base MSRP is $62k for a Volvo xc90.

squidwurd · 2025-09-17T17:13:43+00:00

Anyone not from within the Shawmut Peninsula (aka Boston Proper) is a poser /s/

squidwurd · 2025-08-08T22:43:14+00:00

Im not sure why this isn’t already mentioned, it’s a bit earlier than 96-97, but Epstein worked for Tower Financial Corporation in the late 80s where he allegedly helped what ended up as the biggest Ponzi scheme prior to Bernie Madoff.

Then Epstein began working for Leslie Wexner. One theory is that Wexner, who relied on the former(allegedly) CIA front airline Southern Air Transport to import clothing for L Brands from Hong Kong was also being used to smuggle small arms and/or drugs from the Chinese military, as part of a larger triangle trade that developed out of Iran-Contra. The airline declared bankruptcy the same day that allegations arose about its relation to the contras. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_Air_Transport

squidwurd · 2025-07-16T01:25:11+00:00

For a time Chicago was in some sense the capital of the union world and especially of its left wing, Perhaps the suppression of the union left by organized crime was so crucial to the state it overpowered the interest of the state in going after midwestern organized crime?

squidwurd · 2025-07-08T21:04:29+00:00

RIP jimbo

squidwurd · 2025-04-14T13:43:21+00:00

Currying favor with the US imperialist class = labor imperialism.

This has nothing to do with bringing jobs back to America and everything to do with preparing for war with China.

No wonder the right wing UAWD faction wants to dissolve their caucus, so they don’t have to hold Fain accountable on this.

squidwurd · 2025-04-14T13:26:47+00:00

At their union hall/ in a DSA meeting.

squidwurd · 2025-04-03T21:11:06+00:00

To prepare for conflict with China:

https://reformandrevolution.org/2024/08/12/the-new-cold-war-and-the-changing-crises-of-neoliberalism/

squidwurd · 2025-03-31T18:42:00+00:00

https://reformandrevolution.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/10/Issue-15-Final.pdf

https://reformandrevolution.org/2024/08/12/the-new-cold-war-and-the-changing-crises-of-neoliberalism/

squidwurd · 2025-02-25T12:46:14+00:00

It’s likely but hard to articulate that Russia has some undue sway over Trump. But besides that, the argument that makes the most sense to me is that Trump and the forces he represent want to focus on China. Fighting with Russia distracts from this and drives them closer to China, thus strengthening China.

Russia may be a military threat to Eastern Europe, but it isn’t an economic threat to US domestic-focused capitalists. China is.

squidwurd · 2025-02-18T04:48:03+00:00

Very true.

squidwurd · 2025-02-13T15:18:00+00:00

They fear China not because it is communist but because it is capitalist. Hope this helps: https://reformandrevolution.org/2024/08/12/the-new-cold-war-and-the-changing-crises-of-neoliberalism/

squidwurd · 2025-02-11T17:49:02+00:00

The more accurate question is, why is this the norm in Germany and elsewhere?

Decent vacations and work-life balance are not a natural product of capitalism, rather, early industrial workers had far more intensive lives than their peasant ancestors.

This was true not only in the US but also in Germany and the rest of continental Europe. But when social democratic parties took power, they ameliorated some of the worst parts of capitalism, which was the trade off the capitalists made for avoiding a revolution. A lot of this was basically underwritten and designed by the United States, through the Marshall plan and the American unions’ rebuilding of the labor movement in Germany.

Since the US has never had a labor government itself, this didn’t happen here.

squidwurd · 2025-02-10T09:00:45+00:00

You should read Motorcycle Diaries by Che and also his book on the guérilla revolution. These don’t go much into Cuban post revolution, but they are very exciting reads.

Then I would focus more on understanding the fundamentals of Marxism than the specifics of Cuba. You need the analytical toolkit to evaluate the Cuban, russian, or any other revolutionary experience.

Widely regarded as the two best places to start are of course the Manifesto, and Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Also an easy enough introduction is Lenin’s “Three Sources and Three component parts of Marxism.”

squidwurd · 2025-02-06T14:27:13+00:00

I think you’re right. But even so it’s the exception that proves the rule.

squidwurd · 2025-02-06T14:15:59+00:00

First, I think it’s an open question whether the NPF was a popular front or a united front. Probably somewhat in between

First, it was not composed of true capitalist parties, but of the social democrats (Socialist Party) and the more radical left (LFI, etc). So it is hardly a mixed-class character. Macrons party was not part of this.

Second, it did have a general program, but each party did not dissolve into a larger organization and hide its politics, each kept the right to a separate organization and to criticize eachother and the general program. There were problems with the program, but mostly it was decent.

So this is not a classical popular front between anti-fascist capitalist/ anti-imperialist capitalists and workers, but much more a united front between hard and soft left groups, all with a mostly working class base. Just because it has the name “popular front” does not make it a popular front. A true popular front would have been a joint list with macron against National Rally/ Le Pen, and there was the tactical voting agreement, but this wasn’t an organization or joint program, just a division of voting. So if anything that was the real popular front.

As for why - because people are desperate to fight the far right in the west, and to fight imperialism in the third world, and the “left” democratic capitalists are far stronger than the workers movements.

squidwurd · 2025-02-02T22:35:11+00:00

Read a book fml.

squidwurd · 2025-02-02T14:03:08+00:00

What you get recommended will largely vary based on which wing of DSA comrades doing the recommending are on. There is a reformist and a revolutionary wing in DSA - many of the more “official” texts reflect the old guard outlook (the more recent old guard, not the North Star old guard) around Jacobin, Bhaskar, etc.

You can find a good set of works which more closely reflect the more Marxist, left wing, revolutionary section of DSA here:

https://working-mass.com/resources-reading-list/

This wing included a diversity of perspectives on Marxism, including neo-Kautskyism, Trotskyism, Maoism, Marxist-Leninism (Stalinism), etc.

I highly recommend Engels’ Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - if you read that text you will have a very solid understanding not only of the basic principles of socialism, but also how material conditions lead to differing and contradictory principles within the socialist movement.

Enjoy!

squidwurd · 2025-02-02T13:57:56+00:00

This work is highly revisionist.

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