Fiction or Non-Fiction, academic or casual, theory or non-theory, feel free to mention books of any genre and on any topic.
Currently reading Khrushchev Lied on chapter five point 31
Finished Losurdo’s Stalin: History and Critique of a Black Legend; started Gerald Horne’s Counter Revolution of 1776; and am in the middle of Rockhill’s Who Paid the Pipers of Western Marxism.
I find that I can focus more if I’m reading multiple books at once, switching texts after a chapter or so.
Finished Losurdos Stalin book today too myself :)
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I’ve been reading The Melancholy of Resistance by Laszlo Krasznahorkai.
This week, my comrades and I started and finished Wage, Labor, and Capital. It was a doozy. I think that the reading was hard but not too difficult. I learned some new things, and I know for sure I missed some things too. All in all, I’m glad my group is finally moving out of philosophy and starting economics, even if economics hurts my brain and it’s not my favorite.
I tried starting “The Problem of Recognition in Transitional States, or Sympathy for the Monster (2024)”. I’ve seen a lot of praise heaped on this article, so I want to read it badly, but sometimes the language is too difficult for me to understand. I really want someone with a higher reading comprehension to sit down and read with me. Sadge.
Unfortunately, Frome’s prose does hold back her writings from a pedagogical perspective. As brilliant as they often are, they are written from a more academic perspective, which often makes them difficult to parse.
- The Furies Arno Mayer
- Arab Spring Libyan Winter Vijay Prashad
- The War Conspiracy Peter Dale Scott
- Exodus Leon Uris
Did the twentieth century end in 1973? Or do those unanswered questions fester?
Personally I’ve been reading a lot of despondent posts on LinkedIn and wanting to lose it on the C-Suite overlords bringing about the AI jobpocalypse, but that’s more of a personal doom-scroll daily event because they got me in October – and not actual literary works. I just ordered “Bullshit Jobs: A Theory” by David Graeber. I’ll keep you posted on if it’s a good read.
There are a lot of rebuttals to David Graeber’s work and the fact that anarchists kept telling me to read it sucks ngl
I’m not reading “Debt”. It’s more a criticism of specific jobs. Different focus.
Eh, okay
I do appreciate you ngl-ing though.
Thanks ngl
this was the substance I came here for…
Finally finished Fraud, Famine, and Fascism. Really informative in understanding where the Holodomr myth came from. It did lead me to wonder: are the Nazis in the current Ukrainian government are the continuation of the OUN the book mentions?
The OUN, UPA and the SS Galicia are practically worshipped by the Banderites in Ukraine and the Kiev regime has declared the OUN and other Nazi collaborationist fascist organizations as Ukraine’s national heroes, built monuments for them and renamed streets after them.
The British and Americans smuggled OUN/UPA and Ukrainian SS members to the US and Canada after WWII and those Nazi collaborationists and their descendants formed the Ukrainian diaspora organizations that pushed the Holodomor myth, spread anti-Soviet and anti-communist propaganda and were behind pushing revisionist history in the 90s in Ukraine, and especially after the 2004 color revolution.
Many members of these groups returned to Ukraine after the USSR dissolved and eventually wormed their way into power. Some of the current Kiev elites are direct descendants of OUN/UPA members, and many others at some point associated with those Nazi collaborationist Ukrainian diasporas in Canada and the US.
So yes, the current fascist regime in Kiev are the direct ideological and sometimes actual descendants of the WWII Nazi collaborationists. The rest of the Kiev elite who aren’t ideological Nazis are mostly former criminals who were part of various mafias and organized crime in 90s and 2000s who have useful criminal connections.
Some articles you can read:
Partnering with neo-Nazis in Ukraine: an inconvenient history
How Nazi Collaborators Are Celebrated in Wartime Ukraine
The roots of fascism in Ukraine: From Nazi collaboration to Maidan
Neo-Nazis and the Far Right Are On the March in Ukraine
And it’s also worth reading from this longer piece explaining the background of the SMO, the chapter entitled “Ideology of Nationalism in the Service of the Kiev Regime in Modern Ukraine”
This is exactly what I was looking for, thanks!
Currently reading:
- Curriculum of the Basic Principles of Marxism-Leninism (Part 1: The Worldview and Philosophical Methodology of Marxism-Leninism), translated and annotated by Luna
- Dialectical Materialism Vol. 1: Materialism & the Dialectical Method by Maurice Cornforth
- Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy by Engels
I recently realized that I’ve never made an effort to specifically study dialectical materialism, so that’s my focus right now as I wait for more opportunities to volunteer with the local PSL. Better late than never, I suppose, and I’m really enjoying it. Eventually, I want to tackle Capital again (got halfway through vol 1 previously). Then I want to revisit Lenin’s Imperialism. After that I’m not sure. H.W. Edwards? Lauesen? Amin? Smith? I also know that at some point I need to look into the national question, but I’m not even sure where to start.
Anyway, I hope everyone is having a good week.
I recommend following Lenin’s imperialism with Fanon’s Wretched of the Earth, Nkrumah’s work on Neocolonialism, and finally Cheng Enfu’s work on Neoimperialism. Africa is largely absent from Lenin’s book, and Fanon helps analyze the class struggle in the colonial context. Nkrumah carries that to the neocolonial era, and Cheng Enfu carries that to the modern day. This gives you a fairly complete view of how imperialism has aged since Lenin.
Thank you, comrade. I’ll add those to my reading list.
No problem!
I think you should jump into the following series of articles and speeches by Lenin before getting back into Imperialism. This is something I wish I had done, as it helped me understand the broader context for how imperialism operates when it comes to underdeveloped nation-states and colonialism.
- Preliminary Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Question (1920)
- Report on the International Situation and the Fundamental Tasks of the Communist International (1920)
- Theses on the National and Colonial Question (1920)
- The Right of Nations to Self-Determination (1914)
I appreciate the recommendations, comrade. I’ll add these to my reading list as well.
As I said to someone else here:
I stopped reading six months ago.
Due to burnout, anhedonia, and depression.
However, I say this all with hope.
I think I’m getting back into the swing of things.
I will read fiction soon (and if you have other recommendations, please give them, but I already have some “to-reads” set that aren’t exactly set in stone)
I will avoid The First Law trilogy by Joe Abercrombie
and the sequel to the Parable of the Sower
I’ll also avoid Dunk & Egg after my previous read-through of A Song of Ice and Fire (first ever readthrough was in 2007 to 2008; last most recent one was in 2024 to 2025)
I need more “uplifting” fictional books.
Not “Bluey” or “My Little Pony” stuff (I know that many adults legit do that stuff now, but I don’t know if the television / streaming stuff like that is for me; I do want to peruse whatever children’s and YA books there are since I’ve been day-dreaming about getting pregnant)
(I’m starting my HRT in September at this point, just gotta get the move to Spain underway.)
erm
Well, I suppose there’s that Digital Magical Circus thing (or Magical Digital Circus? whatever)
I need comedy since I haven’t really kept up with it in years.
Honestly, I’m glad that I may have really reached the point where I may actually dead-ass recover from the over 20 years of narcissistic abuse by my father (and I guess maybe my own narcissistic sibling).
So glad that I’m going to Spain too.
Uhh
eh, I may actually read Tolkien’s poetry since I actually really like The Lord of the Rings recently when I read it (surprisingly, mind you).
Same with The Hobbit.
and The Silmarillion.
Uhh
I guess there’s that new RPG Lit that struck it big recently but i’ll hold off for now; doesn’t seem that interesting to me.
Some BDSM group wants me to get into Baihe web novels but i’ll keep it on the side for now.
I plan to read
Whistler by Ann Patchett
The Iliad
The Odyssey (gee, I wonder why now lol)
that Murderbot Diaries series by Martha Wells
James S. A. Corey’s new series
Red Rising by Pierce Brown (I think? guy apparently turned out to be a dead-ass Zionist in the end but idk I’ll have to verify more of that and do more research on that)
more of James Islington’s stuff, ig
erm, I think that’s it
Otherwise, I want to read more stuff like Nikolai Bukharin’s Dialectical Materialism: A System of Sociology (honestly the best Marxist-Leninist book I’ve ever read ever and nothing really touches it for me)
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Check out my speech to text suite, if you’re not using tools it will speedrun your efforts for your friends. https://codeberg.org/CritBase111/speech-to-text
If you have yt-dlp installed, you can just do:
- stt transcribe youtube.com/watch/etc --target-lang es --format txt,srt
This will pull the video (not just from YouTube), transcribe to a txt and SRT files (subtitles), and translate to Spanish, all locally. Translation has some varying results.
If you have a lot of videos you can pre download them, then run stt with a --batch command on the entire folder containing all your videos.
Or there is also a simple GUI that you launch with ‘stt gui’
Unfortunately codeberg had a server outage and may not be entirely back yet so I’m not sure if its accessible right now. If it’s not back let me know and I’ll upload the files somewhere else temporarily.
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run the install command for your OS in a terminal window! They are located here: https://codeberg.org/CritBase111/speech-to-text#quick-install. So if you are on Windows for example it’s the iwr command that’s followed by a link.
After you have installed stt correctly (the installer will tell you “stt installed, Open a NEW terminal window and type: stt --help”), exit the terminal window and open a new one. In the new windowe, run ‘stt gui’ from your terminal (powershell if on windows). It contains all the options the tool offers. By ‘run from the terminal’ I mean literally just open a terminal window and type the command + enter). It opens a window that looks like this:
So for example, since you are translating videos, you can paste the youtube URL to the video in the input field, then change the Target field in ‘Model & Language’ to the language you are translating to. If you scroll down in the graphical interface, you will see output formats, and you can select ‘txt’ to make a simple text file, or also check ‘srt’ for a subtitles file - a subtitles file can be immediately loaded into the video.
Then press the Transcribe button in the bottom left. It can take a while, but it will work. It will save the files on your computer, transcribed and translated!
It’s still a few instructions but I tried to make the app as user-friendly as I could 🙏 the hardest part is installing it - when it’s running it can’t destroy anything on your computer, at most it creates files (the transcriptions) that you can delete.
if you want to use the terminal version, do ‘stt transcribe --help’ and it will show you the commands you can use. But the graphical interface is the exact same as the terminal version, you’re not missing out on anything if you use the interface.
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which operating system are you on? I can provide more specific instructions.
The difficult part is installing the program, using it will come naturally once you’ve done it once or twice.
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Okay, so, I had to look at the windows flow a bit more in-depth. Winget was a good tool but it’s actually unmaintained and people have been reporting some possible malicious packages. So I redid the entire install script to not use winget anymore. It’s much easier to install stuff on Linux, there the install script would have just done everything for you 😭 but no worries, it is what it is.
What you will need:
- Install the latest Python version here: https://www.python.org/downloads/windows/. Python now offers the ‘install manager’, and they said this is how you will install Python from now on. So it’s probably better to use the install manager, and install the latest 3.12.x version of Python from it. Add it to your PATH if there is a checkbox for it, otherwise it will be pretty much useless (it should just be checked by default but it is what it is).
- ffmpeg: ffmpeg is required for STT to work. On its own website, ffmpeg links to this website: https://www.gyan.dev/ffmpeg/builds/. Scroll down and download ffmpeg-release-full.7z. This is a guide that explains what to do with this zip file afterwards: https://www.wikihow.com/Install-FFmpeg-on-Windows. I’m sorry that ffmpeg is such a mess to install on windows but they don’t provide an installer unfortunately.
- yt-dlp: https://github.com/yt-dlp/yt-dlp/releases. The latest as of writing is yt-dlp 2026.06.09, and the file is simply called yt-dlp.exe. Click on it in the list to download, then run the .exe to install yt-dlp on your computer.
- Pandoc: You can install pandoc from here: https://github.com/jgm/pandoc/releases. The latest as of writing is pandoc-3.10-windows-x86_64.msi - it’s also an installer that you just run to install pandoc.
Then you can run the install script provided on my codeberg repo. In Powershell (not cmd):
iwr https://codeberg.org/CritBase111/speech-to-text/raw/branch/main/install.ps1 | iexThe install script is very simple; it just sets up a folder called stt in C:\Users\YourUsername. Everything that STT sets up by itself stays within that stt\ folder. When stt is installed correctly, the installer script will tell you with the words “stt installed. Open a NEW terminal window and type: stt --help”
Open a new cmd or powershell, and simply run the command ‘stt gui’. It will open the user interface in a new window, which is probably easier to use. I find that when I was on Windows I preferred user interfaces, and on Linux I prefer command-line tools lol.
The first time you actually start transcribing or translating a video, stt will automatically download the models. This happens automatically, you just have to wait. But it means the first transcription will take a bit more time to finish.
If you ever want to uninstall stt from your computer, run this in PowerShell:
# Windows (PowerShell) [Environment]::SetEnvironmentVariable("Path", $env:Path.Replace("$HOME\stt\.venv\Scripts", ""), "User") Remove-Item -Recurse -Force $HOME\sttffmpeg, yt-dlp and pandoc are pretty nice tools to have on any computer. ffmpeg can convert and compress any video file. yt-dlp allows you to download videos from any website by just running ‘yt-dlp https://link.com/’ in the CMD, and pandoc can convert any text format to any other text format, so you can convert . So they are dependencies, but they are generally good tools to have. Python as well is pretty nice to have as a lot of open-source software uses python. You only install it once then most open-source software is available to you.
Wait
Wait wait wait…
This does translation from English into Spanish?!
For subtitles in a video, correct?
Hopefully, I am following this convo along well enough.
Anyway, a translation tool, preferably one I don’t really have to pay for, is what I want for my YouTube and TikTok channels, and one that can put subtitles I the video and put the subtitles or lines basically where they should be as the video goes along lol
yep, it does everything.
stt transcribe 'file.mp4' --target-lang es,fr,pt,jp --format srtwill transcribe the audio from the video (auto-detects language), then translate the result into their own .srt (subtitles) files. You can chain arguments together such as es,fr,pt,jp -> it will create a different file for each combination. so one .srt for spanish, one .srt for french, etc.stt translate 'file.txt' --source-lang en --target-lang --format txt,srtwill only translate a previously existing text file. you can chain --format (or any argument, including the input files) to output the translation as plain text file, and another .srt fileif you have pandoc and yt-dlp installed, the app integrates with them to provide more input and output formats with pandoc, and yt-dlp to download the video automatically from a web page (so instead of ‘file.mp4’ you can provide a youtube link). It automatically uses them, you don’t have to do anything special.
it also needs python 3.10 or higher and ffmpeg to work. It downloads the models on first use, expect about 5-10 gigabytes of download. Needs I would say around 4GB of Vram at the minimum to work.
translation can be hit or miss in terms of quality, some language pairs work better than others. If it’s bad, just open deepseek web, switch to expert, paste the original subtitles, and tell it to ‘translate these subtitles to [language], output within three backticks for code formatting’.
incredible
🫡
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You need to break your anhedonia and depression too.
Be weary of the burnout.
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I grew up in a mostly Catholic household but never really learned about Islam that much despite father being Turkish.
I have religious trauma, especially since around 2013 to 2014, linked to my OCD. I am currently doing ERP after “toughing it out” for so long.
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I have read the Qur’an but not the hadiths except maybe a few excerpts.
Also, my dad is literally a Kemalist and hates any Syrian, Qatari, Saudi, Lebanese, Omani, UAE, etc. immigrants to Türkiye.
He is not Catholic lol he is actually pretty atheist last I checked, even if the Ottoman aristocratic nobility that he ultimately hails from (no, I shit you not about that part lol) had at least ostensibly Muslim adherents.
My Mom is Catholic. She is Dominican. My family treats her like shit. 💀💀
Also, I only really “like” (or I guess am somewhat interested in again now) Catholicism due to Pope Frank and now Pope Leo (especially with what he wrote recently)… but honestly? Most Catholics, especially the born-again variety like J. D. Vance, really suck. Tbh, I did really like the baroque stuff and other aesthetics of Catholicism throughout the centuries… but that’s because Protestant churches are so drab in comparison.
Also, Protestant churches have a big problem with not only pedophilia and sex pestery like the Catholic Church but also millennarianism too and other really bad apocalyptic belief systems, especially nowadays.
Tbh, I don’t know what to think about the Catholic Church at this point, but honestly, I look at the Unitarian Universalist church near me and have even thought about attending some events to see what social clubs they have (which I feel like I should at le4do since I may never come back to Virginia).
They also tend to be leftwing or even kinda leftist depending on the area.
And I kinda think “Damn, kinda wish most churches were a bit more like that one.”
But honestly, I am really anti-religion at this point.
I might actually prefer Khruschev’s policy towards religion over Stalin’s ngl 😭😭
And the religious trauma I experienced back in around 2013 or 2014 DURING EXAM WEEK MIND YOU honestly fucked me up more than even I seem to really know.
Filled me with dread, anxiety, raw fear, panic, etc.
Anyway…
I guess I should also say that my Mom is also kind-of a “New Age-y” lapsed Catholic and literally loves the Cathars lol
Ahhhh…
Yes…
Those damn Cathars…
At first, when you read about them in some history book, you’re kinda like “Oh, very cool”
Then one of your friends, your Mom, someone you know, etc. can’t shut up about them and you’re all like:
“Girl, we don’t even know that much about them!!” 😭😭
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yeah, i heard about atheist pagans
I am deeply interested in paganism now
especially since paganism never really dissappeared from 19th century or even 20th century Europe at all.
It’s still there.
The Druidic order in England seems interesting
But honestly, the Turkish groups kinda fascinate me
That said
I agree on the church bit
but I do kinda want a “religion” or “spirituality” or whatever the fuck we call it now
just to experiment
nothing more
Just finished The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho and am mildly frustrated. It has an interesting philosophy, that has some parallels to dialectical materialism, but if you look at it in more detail it falls apart into empty platitudes and made up mysticism. It was good enough to pass the time, but i will not recommend it.
Today i started A Court Of Thorns And Roses by Sarah J. Maas. I wanted something easy to read and engaging, so i chose a popular romantasy book. Two chapters in it is definetly interesting, but the worldbuilding – especially the economics – is infuriating! It is a weird mix up of capitalist culture, medieval customs and the assumption that peoples behaviours won’t change through economic change (ignoring base & superstructure!!!). I’m hoping this gets better throughout the book or better yet resolves into a critque of some kind. Also the filler words are sort of annoying, adding nothing and sounding weird. Also i am trying to not judge the book for something irrelevant to why i’m reading it.
I might read The Alchemist
The opening always moves me
but I never read past the first chapter when I was a child
and when I listened to the first chapter on audiobook, I was somewhat moved as well
About to read this sick stuff https://archive.org/stream/propaganda_2504_librivox/propaganda_2504_djvu.txt
Corrected. Also can this be added to Books?
