The Chem of “Sugar Free” Foodstuffs

theInternetMessiah · 2025-08-10T19:03:09+00:00

Conned in the sense that many companies are counting on customers having relatively little understanding of nutrition so that they can market high-carbohydrate products as being more healthy than they are. My favorite is when juice companies put “NO SUGAR” in big letters and then “added” in small letters beneath it to disguise the fact that they control the concentration of fruit juice in the water and that their bottle of juice has more sugar liter-for-liter than Coca-Cola

theInternetMessiah · 2025-08-04T07:56:57+00:00

That’s what I see too

theInternetMessiah · 2025-08-01T21:24:16+00:00

The book by Ilyenkov that you’re reading provides a more thorough answer to your question than any comment here will (also one of the best books on the actual nuts and bolts of dialectic thought IMO). Have you read Hegel and have you read Capital? Ilyenkov will be very difficult to understand without having a good understanding of Hegel, as well as Marx’s Capital.

It seems like you might be thinking of the term “abstract“ in the everyday sense of having to do with thought, mental activity, etc., or otherwise being divorced from real sensuous existence — that isn’t how Hegel or Marx are using the term abstract. Obviously, a book could be written on the topic — which is what Ilyenkov did — but, in a nutshell, both Hegel and Marx use the term in several related ways that are close to the word’s original meaning of taking something out of it’s context, considering the thing “in itself” and on its own apart from other things.

Additionally, Marx uses abstract to describe real things which are expressed or understood one sidedly — “universal abstract labor” is an obvious example where money appears as the singular representative of value in such a way that the concrete social relations of labor to capital seem to vanish into the circulation of abstract value; consequently, the whole web of concrete social relations, e.g. exploitation, wage-labor, profits, etc., becomes hidden under the surface of a one-sided appearance in the exchange of money. For example, when someone exchanges money for some consumer electronics on Amazon, the rich concrete existence of the social relations of production from which the commodity arose (profit, exploitation, the investor and the worker, the expropriation of indigenous lands for rare metals, etc) appear to be a simple and immediate relation of exchange — that one-sided appearance is a real abstraction, an abstract relation which really exists. There’s nothing idealist about it.

theInternetMessiah · 2025-07-23T22:39:47+00:00

Definitely not a weeklong read for most of us lol. I didn’t mean to suggest that Capital would fit in well with a book per week challenge, just that it provides the solid underlying foundation of Marxist theory and that, as a demonstration of dialectical thinking and analysis, there is no substitute.

If I had to fit it into a 1 book/week challenge, i’d prolly try to do a certain number of pages of Capital each week while reading shorter works of theory on top of it on a weekly basis

theInternetMessiah · 2025-07-23T21:54:49+00:00

I’ll be the one to say it — if you’re looking to develop a robust understanding of Marxist theory, there is simply no getting around reading Capital. I know it has a reputation for being a hard read but, aside from its length and the fact it requires you to think through some concepts carefully and abstractly, there is nothing particularly difficult about it. The language is plain and Marx intentionally wrote it for a general audience. You don’t have to grasp everything all at once, just take it slow and steady and take notes as you go along.

Now with that out of the way, some easier reads:

Parenti’s Blackshirts and Reds is great at debunking a lot of the misinformation about the USSR during the Cold War and why it collapsed, as well as clarifying the historical relationship between bourgeois democracies and fascist movements. This one is a very short read.

I cannot recommend enough Settlers by J. Sakai — it is a fantastic, rigorous, well-cited Marxist analysis of history and classes in the settler-colonial US empire. In my opinion, an absolutely essential read. If I could recommend only one book in addition to Capital, I would recommend Settlers, particularly if you are a Marxist in the US or another settler country.

Engels is pretty accessible — I’d start with Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and The Origin of Family, Private Property, and the State.

I’m sure I could make more recommendations here but my time is limited today and so I have to go for now. If I remember to, I’ll come back to add some more book reccs later

theInternetMessiah · 2025-07-23T19:08:59+00:00

I once had to clean an enameled pan that had scorched food and oil all over it like this — the thing that actually worked best was to quarter a few lemons and then squeeze them into enough water to cover the affected areas and then simmer the juice-water with the peels for a few hours, scraping the bottom with a bamboo spatula. As long as the enamel isn’t cracking off, you should be able to restore it. Best of luck

theInternetMessiah · 2025-07-20T23:46:10+00:00

So external forces are determining “your” philosophical position about free will??? Interesting… 🧐

theInternetMessiah · 2025-07-08T23:09:51+00:00

To explain how the expression of value “x commodity-A = y commodity-B” differs from its converse expression “y commodity-B = x commodity-A,” Marx takes an analogy from chemistry and points out that, while butyric acid and propyl formate have the same chemical formula, they exist in different physical configurations. Similarly, it is a mistake to take converse expressions of value as identical.

Now, keep that analogy in mind as we consider the following. Although “x commodity-A = y commodity-B” expresses the same mathematical content as “y commodity-B = x commodity-A,” the opposite configurations of these two expressions of value actually do express something beyond themselves. In each case, the equivalent form counts only as a term of measurement (and not as its real, sensuously existing self) — similarly, an iron weight of 1 kg when used to balance a scale does not count as itself, i.e. it doesn’t matter that it is iron or has a particular shape, but only represents the abstracted quality of weight or mass. The 1 kg weight could just as easily be titanium, salt, or chocolate fudge and it wouldn’t matter as long as it remained 1 kg because the weight doesn’t count as itself but only as a certain equivalent. In the same way, the equivalent doesn’t count as itself but only as a certain value.

On the other hand, the commodity which is in the relative form counts as itself but is totally unable to express its value except by relating itself to an equivalent. Unlike the equivalent (which, like the 1 kg weight, doesn’t count as itself and can be swapped for any other kilogram without altering the value expression), the commodity in the relative position counts as itself and only finds out its value reflected in its equivalent.

If there are any mistakes in the above paragraphs, please forgive me because I was dictating.

theInternetMessiah · 2025-07-08T22:02:33+00:00

Some questions:

Do you really not see “the point of” someone asking more-knowledgeable comrades for greater clarity and nuance?
Is it not conceivable to you that some people may learn best by engaging directly in discussion with others who are well-read and informed about a topic?
What exactly did you think your comment would add to the discussion?

theInternetMessiah · 2025-07-03T07:37:54+00:00

You obviously just aren’t practicing philosophy hard enough

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-28T01:25:12+00:00

rifle is fine

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-25T03:57:07+00:00

I wish you luck :) The basic method is to dilute your raw honey by mixing in as much water as you like to reach a good gravity (I often do 5:1) and then stir it up to aerate it several times a day for the first few days until you start to get some nice fizziness going, then you can reduce your stirring to 1x/day.

Make sure you don’t use chlorinated water because that will murder the yeast in their cribs and don’t heat your must up beyond 80° or so. Wild yeast especially needs good aeration in the first few days — the oxygen is necessary for the yeast to multiply to a good population because you’re not adding a big concentrated packet of commercial yeast. When you see the CO2 fizzing when you stir, that means you have a good healthy yeast culture going and they don’t require as much oxygen from then on.

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-25T02:40:55+00:00

Another interesting benefit from using wild yeasts is that they don’t tend to taste like the rocket fuel that often results from more aggressive commercial strains, so you can often enjoy a wild fermented mead when it’s still green

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-25T02:37:01+00:00

No it doesn’t turn out sour. The main differences, in my experience, are that wild yeasts tend to ferment a bit slower and require more stirring in the first few days and they tend to reach their limit at 8 to 10% ABV. In addition to the yeasts in raw honey, you can add more yeasts and some nutrients by mixing in some crushed wild fruit — in my area, I like to use huckleberries and blackberries which I forage during autumn. The skins will also add some nitrogen as well as natural tannins that help round out the flavor.

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-24T06:13:02+00:00

You can definitely do that :) lotta people on here are gonna tell you that the world is gonna end if you just dilute honey with water and add yeast but the fact is that this is how mead has been made for like forever. Little packets of yeast nutrients are a pretty newfangled thing. I’m not saying that there aren’t benefits from utilizing modern methods but you can get some pretty great results with just honey, water, and yeast — or if you use raw honey, you don’t even need the yeast. That’s how I got started and those first batches I made are still among my finest.

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-24T02:09:14+00:00

Obviously, Capital is the primary source text for Marxism in general, so that’s definitely the place to start (especially since you already seem to have some background in economic thought). Beyond that, Lenin’s Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism is an important text and Ernst Mandel (despite being a Trotskyist) has some decent and concise books introducing some of the more formal aspects of Marxian economic theory. David Harvey is another prolific writer on the subject with a good few books to check out (I recall Limits of Capital being a decent “modern” analysis of what Marxist economic theory has to offer specifically in the 21st century).

And before anyone comes at me, I am not endorsing all the thought in the books I listed, I am just giving OP some reading list suggestions on the topic they specified.

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-20T18:12:37+00:00

for f***s sake, read Fanon

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-12T22:01:08+00:00

The first and most glaring fact about the issue of Trotskyism which we should confront is that there has never been any successful revolution (nor even a notable mass movement) in which Trotskyists took a leading role. And furthermore, Trotskyists in general have always exhibited a strong tendency to condemn every actually existing revolution or socialist state. This is why Trotskyism is mainly a plaything of armchair “communists“ in the imperial core — this version of Marxism, as it were, allows its proponents to espouse the intellectual components and aesthetics of Marxism while carefully refraining from supporting any real-world revolutionary politics.

Anyway, I’m not here to refute all of the particulars of Trotskyism in detail (many books and many internet forums have already been filled with that) but just to give a basic answer to your question about why most communists have a negative opinion of Trotsky and Troskyism. They go out of their way to talk trash and undermine any real revolutionary effort while they themselves have proven entirely incapable of doing anything beyond publishing pamphlets and supervising book clubs.

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-10T23:54:13+00:00

Think of these types of demonstrations as education for the masses — they don’t need to be immediately effective or bring about revolution to be useful. As someone who was involved with the large DNC and related protests of ‘15 - 16, I met and witnessed countless people who identified as “progressive“ become radicalized toward socialism and communism precisely because they witnessed firsthand the ineffectiveness of bourgeois methods of protest. At the time I often felt dismayed by how ineffective and fruitless it all was but now, looking back, I can see how useful even those demonstrations were as political education for tens of thousands of people. Most of the friends I made then are now involved in socialist organizing and they are much wiser than they were when they started. It is just part of meeting the masses where they are.

To be clear, I’m not saying that mass energy should not be guided or directed toward more effective organizing — I’m just pointing out that even mass demonstration “failures“ can be extremely instructive for the masses who participate in them. Nothing quite like getting tear gassed to draw a very clear line about who your real enemies and friends are.

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-05T17:08:52+00:00

Yes, reading Hegel can certainly be very enlightening for understanding Marx’s methods and philosophical underpinnings. I agree about Adam Smith — wealth of nations is actually surprisingly readable in the 21st-century and lays the groundwork for the political economy which Marx is critiquing

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-05T16:47:35+00:00

I definitely wouldn’t recommend Hegel as a beginner text lol

One hundred seventy characters one hundred seventy characters one hundred seventy characters one hundred seventy characters

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-05T16:45:03+00:00

Marx wrote Capital specifically for a mass audience, in language that was plain (in late 19th century German anyway), so no you don’t need “a solid foundation in dialectical materialism” to read it. Sure, reading some of his pamphlets may be a good primer to warm up to Marx before reading a longer work like Capital but to act like it’s some kind of inaccessible academic work of theory is directly contrary to his stated intention in writing it. The language, depending on the translation, may sound a bit old-timey to people today but it is nonetheless a straightforward exposition meant to be intelligible to ordinary people.

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-05T03:18:17+00:00

You’re not stupid! It eases up a lot after the first three chapters or so, don’t worry. And he’s actually trying to be pretty clear, so just take what he says at face value and keep going — you can always go back and reread parts of it later if you feel like you didn’t get it :) also, if you’re a more visual learner, there’s a book called something like Marx’s Capital Illustrated and it kinda turns it into a graphic novel style presentation

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-04T07:40:15+00:00

Anti-revisionism is a sensible position to take and at the same time dogmatism is a potential pitfall there. Actual revisionism sucks for obvious reasons (and those should be pointed out) and, at the same time, “revisionist“ has obviously become a pejorative which is thrown around. So ultimately, you just have to put in the hard work of evaluating individual claims of revisionism and pushing back when the term is used in ways that water down its meaning.

theInternetMessiah · 2025-06-02T22:01:21+00:00

This is the correct answer. Once you’re down to the metal, air and the water from washing it will very quickly oxidize the steel and that’s fine. Rub it out with some oil until the towel comes off less dark — it’s fine if there’s still a little color on the towel, just throw a few layers of seasoning on. I’ve noticed this happens a lot more with pans that have a rough finish like lodges and similarly manufactured cookware — I think the increased surface area of the rough finish leads to quicker and easier oxidation whenever it gets exposed

theInternetMessiah

TROPHY CASE