Habit mostly. It takes time but you get used to it. Also depends on the intensity of your work. Might also be affected by your sleep pattern. If you are a heavy sleeper, you rest less, and you get tired more easily.

Walking/Running/Treadmill is one of the best exercises you can do if your aim is to stay fit (along with paddling and bicycling), so don’t worry too much about the gym if that’s something that suits you. As long as you are consistent.

If you are overweight, then I’d suggest switching to cycling instead. It can burn more calories than a treadmill, and it goes far easier for your knees, ankles and back. That might be an additional factor why you get tired easily.

I think we’re spending too much time trying to argue with wolfs in sheep’s clothing

Absolutely. One of the reasons fascism and pro-US imperialist-cheering are on a meteoric rise in recent decades, is that they get a monopoly on selling their ideology. Especially fascists are extremely proactive at reaching out to the common people and convincing them to support them. In Europe, all left parties either decided to insulate themselves from all outsider contact, for fear of putting off people, or they decided they wanted to act like responsible “adult politicians”, making themselves appear another part of the system. When the economic crisis hit Europe, the fascists were running around blocking banks from confiscating properties, distributing food and clothing to the poor, finding jobs for the unemployed, and supporting families in need.

Literally was told this a couple days ago from a brainwashed colleague (in a European country that was a recipient of US “nation building”)

Why is he capitalizing Complete and Total Control? Is this going to be his trademark? Will the next letter have a little ©️ or ™️ at the end of the sentence? Will this be abbreviated in the future (e.g. we demand CTC of Spain)?

I could write a whole essay on how comically written this letter is. And how joyful it is that the Empire is finally eating itself. And how ironic it is, that in some dark underground conference hall, some European deep staters are probably contemplating asking Russia’s or China’s help. But I’m not going to, because this will be just an insignificant blip compared to the next gem this idiot will produce.

This seems to be a general trend (it’s good if you are careful, then goes the other way). I think their algorithm probably goes haywire trying to fine-tune what it believes you like and presents you with things you dislike, to see how much you dislike it, and what can it get away with. These algorithm issues and these kinds of advice (be careful what you click) have existed for at least a good 10-12 years now. They never work. Things just get shittier. Now that they probably handed their algorithm to AI, it’ll probably get even worse.

The idea with bookmarks is to refuse to play with it, and just use Youtube the way you want.

This is how the Youtube sidebar used to work by the way. You could make custom folders and put all your subscribed channels in there, then navigate where you want to go. They would also let you sort them any way you want, and wouldn’t sent “new uploads” to the top of the list. Instead each channel got a number next ro it to show you how many videos they’ve uploaded since last visited. It was a great way to sort out who you wanted to be subscribed to and who to unsubscribe from.

When they started pushing their “new” recommendations algorithm they did away with this feature to force you to rely on your Home Page for channel updates.

So use Youtube the way they originally designed and was unarguably the best functional version we got of it.

If you are interested:

The old algorithm was really effective too compared to what we got now. This is how all the big channels became the big channels. You watched a gaming review video for example? You would get recommended DIFFERENT game reviewers each time. You watched let’s plays instead? You would get recommended let’s players. Etc. If you stuck to a topic for a while, you’d eventually be recommended most creators with the kind of content you wanted at least once, and then it was up to you to pick who to keep watching. Occassionally, certain videos would get recommended out of the blue, but this was usually a result of the daily trends.

Following these recommendations was still fun. Doing a “youtube recommendations dive” was a fun way to kill time. It was what they tried to do with shorts, but less brainrotty. You would end up going through wildly different videos, sometimes really weird personal vlogs with 0 views too. And you usually ended up somewhere that was interesting enough to gain a subscription.

Use Ublock Origin on Firefox, or other Firefox-based forks.

Use Youtube Vanced on Android.

Stop interracting with recommendations. The more you do, the worse it gets. Instead bookmark your favourite channels and visit them directly for videos. Also helps with minimizing doomscrolling.

They’ve destroyed a building. They can’t destroy the man.

The US are either trying to stir the pot and get a civil war going, or they really cut a deal with Rodriguez and she’s just playing her part in consolidating power then selling off.

I’d rather believe the former, than the latter, considering that Rodriguez’s father was “disappeared” by a US puppet regime in Venezuela when she was younger.

Trump has exaggerated or outright lied about the outcome of virtually every military and diplomatic action taken by his administration, since he got inaugurated. He’s desperate for both a personal and a national win. Similarly to the Iranian bombing, he’s done a show of force and is using it to declare victory. He’s likely going to withdraw the fleet from Venezuela’s coast now, and will keep milking “all the beautiful things” he has planned for Venezuela, in the coming months. However, not much else is going to happen. Dissing Corina Machiado probably means he’s not interested in supporting a puppet regime, or he realizes that doing so would be extremely expensive and likely to fail. If the US uses further military force, then the situation will very likely blow up in unexpected ways. Unfortunately, that means that there’s not much hope for releasing Maduro (through diplomacy or war), and he will probably die in a US prison cell, unless China and Russia intervene.

We should be keeping a very close eye on how the Venezuelan government proceeds from now, as that will tell us whether Trump actually cut a deal or not.

Furthermore, we should also be keeping a close eye on what Russia and China will be doing about Venezuela. I find that their responses so far have been slow (to put it mildly) and disappointingly lukewarm. This is not uncharacteristic of them, but I still fear that they might have cut a deal with Trump, especially in exchange for Ukraine and Taiwan.

Although, the night before Maduro was kidnapped, he was meeting at the presidential palace with Chinese delegates, so I’m much less inclined to believe that China cut a deal with Trump, compared to Russia.

Like other countries in the area, relations eith the US are an ideological position probably.

North Macedonia aspires to join NATO and has a very right-wing and anti-communist government. They’ve been wanting to buy weapons from the US for some time now too. Small countries usually will take advantage of these votes to signal the US that they want to get closer relations. Essentially good ol’ boot licking

Also the EU wants to force EU countries to buy all of Ukraine’s grain and other produce. Polish and Romanian farmers must be really glad to be part of the EU and supporting Ukraine to the death.

Redditors when they disagree with something:

“You have no proof! Citation needed! Due process!”

Redditors when they agree with something:

LOUD PIG NOISES

Israelis say “all their legal rights were upheld”. The problem here is that if Israel deems you a terrorist, you have no legal rights.

Though it’s heart-wrenching, I wouldn’t have it any either way. The show is about how societal issues are caused by systemic failures and not by individuals. “Evil” individuals don’t cause the system to fail, they just take advantage of it and prosper. “Good” individuals can’t fix the system on their own or from within. They just replace one “evil” person with another. Ultimately, the system poisons everybody and McNulty serves as the icon of the system chewing you up, spitting you out, then chewing you up again.

It’s not a cop show. It masquerades as one. It’s actually a political show that outlines how corruption and capitalism destroys a whole city. Each season focuses on a particular level: Justice, Education, Employment, Politics, Media and all of it suffused with Poverty.

I think the tragic fate of almost everyone who tries to fix things also emphasizes that ultimately it’s all the “neutral” characters’ fault, who just stand by and watch events unfold, helping in minimal ways sometimes (and almost always are very sneaky about it), but generally just get out of the way to avoid becoming collateral damage. And if we expand this further, every such character also has the valid excuse that they are just trying to survive and support their families. They can’t afford to lose their jobs, so they can’t risk rocking the boat.

What a shit way for the article to present this

From wikipedia on Kim Yo Jong:

She is the Deputy Department Director of the Publicity and Information Department of the Workers’ Party of Korea (WPK). Since September 2021, she has been a member of State Affairs Commission of North Korea

The article doesn’t say any of this. The only qualifier they give her for responding is that she’s Kim Jong Un’s sister, and that the announcement is somehow official. Making it look like North Korea is just a family business.

They can’t help themselves, they have to carry out underhanded subliminal propaganda at every opportunity.

They decided to abolish it, but left it up to member states. The reason being DST doesn’t work usefully in the north, but it works in the south.

TLDR: I went through the whole story, from Hitler joining the German Worker’s Party, to becoming chancellor and tried to be as factual as possible, regarding the events. I steered away (and disproved where possible) the “great man” theory regarding Hitler. I emphasized giving context regarding the social, economic and political situation at the time, the prevalent ideological movements among the Germans, how WW1 and the Depression shaped German politics. I tried to show in a materialist way, why the Nazis developed the beliefs they held and why many other Germans were sympathetic to their message.

The original question was that he didn’t know that Hitler was Austrian and how come an Austrian became Germany’s chancellor. He then asked why the Germans were willing to follow him.

I explained that he was born in Austria but his family were ethnic Germans. Austria-Hungary was a melting pot of cultures, but the state at that time was dysfunctional, resulting in hatred between different population groups. Many Austrian Germans wanted to secede to Germany, viewing other cultures as holding back the rest of them. Hitler was exposed to this rhetoric throughout his early life, especially when he was studying art in Vienna.

I then went through the economic and political effects of the aftermath of WW1 in Germany, and the stab-in-the-back myth (“the German army was going to win, but Marxist and Jew politicians capitulated before that happened”). I find that explaining this myth, is the easiest way for people to understand both how Germans were willing to follow Hitler, and how fragile German politics were becoming before his rise to power. Although, if you use this, you should probably state that it wasn’t the only reason.

I explained how Hitler joined the German Worker’s Party (precursor to the Nazi party), which by that point had already embraced anticommunism and antisemitism, which appealed to him. However, this kind of rhetoric was already prevalent in Germany, following decades of cultivation of German nationalism and jingoism, the Spartakist uprising, and the stab-in-the-back myth being used widely by the right-wing opposition parties.

I talked about the Munich coup, and how the goverment, especially the military, were sympathetic to it, and how the Nazis escaped with easy penalties.

I then explained how corporations and other nationalist entities supported and financed Hitler and the Nazis, as a way to bust unions, dismantle the worker movement, and to stop (violently) the communists from attaining power. His oratory skills and his actions at the coup quickly gained him supporters everywhere, but especially soin Bavaria and Saxony, which led to the Nazis joining the parliament.

We talked a bit about the Nazi paramilitary thugs and how they were used to suppress worker strikes or outright assassinate leftist figures. I also emphasized how the Nazis, by their own admission, were using leftist iconography and anti-capitalist rhetoric to attract workers to their cause, but that they hardly believed much of it. They also gained a lot of popular support by targeting with propaganda, and aiding financially, people in areas most hit by the depression. Especially farmers and war veterans.

Finally, I explained that following the 1929 referendum to annul the Versaille treaty, organized by Nazis and their allies, gave them a lot of support, which weakened the other traditional parties at the next elections. Chancellor Bruhning started ruling by decrees, to deal with the financial crisis, since the parliament basically could not pass anything. Following this breakdown of politics, and taking advantage of the massive financial and political support that the Nazis enjoyed from the capitalist class, Hindenburg was pressured to hand the chancellorship to Hitler.

Wherever possible, I tried to establish how the capitalist class was very much linked to the Nazi rise to power.

During break, a colleague today (at a school) brought up Hitler after watching a documentary about it. We started talking, and he admitted he knew very little about Hitler and how he came to lead Germany, and wanted to know more. I analyzed the whole thing. Other colleagues in the area started jumping in and asking questions. They were appreciative of the way I talked about it and praised me for knowing so much about history and politics, while admitting that they also knew very little.

Now, I’m not saying this story to tout my own horn, but to emphasize what happened next. Bear in mind, nobody at the workplace knows I’m a communist. They know, I’m left-leaning, but that’s it.

Anyway, someone then jumps in and says communism and fascism are the same thing (“communism is red fascism and you have to be an idiot and not know any history to be either one”).

I bite my tongue and laugh inside. Here they are admitting they know very little history and praising me for knowing so much of it, then saying communists don’t know history.

At any rate, I don’t think I’ll reveal my politics any time so. It’s really effective injecting them with historical materialism without using the buzzwords.