Mathematics student who upon completion of his degree was ripped from the university’s caring bosom and cast into the ghastly cold world of employment

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Joined 4 years ago
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Cake day: February 2nd, 2021

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  • The DDR Museum is actually cool, it is mostly just a lot of finds that were unique about everyday life in East Germany. There are small lib exhibits about prison, the Stasi, and the Berlin Wall, but these are stuffed away in the corners and no one cares about them. People go there for the Plattenbau replica, the Trabant and Wartburg cars, and the thousands of collector items. Be advised though, it is packed.

    Absolutely do not go to the “Cold War Museum” that promises to tell “two sides of the same story”. It doesn’t, it’s expensive as hell, there’s barely anything in there, and you have to scan QR codes to see what the exhibits are about. You can have a lot more fun in the Espionage Museum and the Deutschlandmuseum.

    As a communist, it is mandatory that you go to the Soviet monument (Sowjetisches Ehrenmal) in the Treptower Park. It was built by and in commemoration of the Soviet soldiers who fought against fascism in the Great Patriotic War. Just a few metres outside, people go running with their dogs, play annoying music, and have picnics. You enter the gate and you are suddenly in another domain, the weight of history overwhelms you like an invisible wall. It is a place of calm, where only the sound of willow and poplar trees rustling in the soft wind breaks the silence. It is a place of rest, mourning those who gave their lives to liberate Europe and honouring their remains. But it is also a place that celebrates victory, with its giant statues and the two red granite flags, the white sarcophagi inscribed with golden quotes of Stalin in Russian and German, and the triumphal mosaic atop the burial mound.

    If you wonder about the location well outside the city centre, it is because Treptower Park is also the place where the already-banned KPD had their secret final meeting in 1933, inside the Archenhold public observatory. This is also a good place to check out if you are interested in astronomy, given that it has a small visitor centre with a free exhibition and that Einstein gave his first lecture about General Relativity there.




  • Parliament isn’t political and it doesn’t govern. It is the marketing front of liberal democracy that exists to represent the ideals of debate and civility on the outside, and on occasion speak in unison to express class interests. They may “decide” that a matter is to be dealt with once in a while, only to immediately surrender the matter to a long chain of civil servants, who decide over how to go about it, to whom to pass it on, or whether to declare it impossible altogether.


  • Look, the problem here isn’t even that you insulted your Jewish grandparents by taking pictures with an SS volunteer. The problem is that you were part of a crowd that would strip naked and take a shit in the Chamber if everyone else did it. The problem is your boundless conformity to the crowd, your inability to stop and ponder, and your tendency to impulsively react to any stimulus whatsoever as if you were a squirrel on speed. Fascism doesn’t succeed because of some sexist truckers from the Yukon. It succeeds because of people like you.




  • Homesteaders are like kids that fling pebbles at the bulletproof glass of the tiger pit. No matter how hard they keep trying, they fail to fully escape the guardrails of modern science and the workers’ movement that protect them from a life that is nasty, brutal and short, they don’t realise that to regress to living “off the grid” is neither possible nor desirable, and they think they are being brave or smart when they are really just a minor nuisance to the rest of society


  • If you look at any modern revolution, 9/10 of the people needed to carry it out have not been involved in any physical fighting. We are not just talking about culinary or medical workers who are active during the actual revolution, we are also talking about workers in infrastructure, communication, or administration who organise beforehand and then just refuse to carry out their bourgeois or feudal masters’ orders in a strategic, coordinated manner. Before the Civil War and the Intervention, the October Revolution actually overthrew the transitional government in a bloodless coup, because it was well-organised. The majority of fighting happens after the revolution when reactionary splinters of the army revolt against the new government and have to be subdued by the faction that is loyal to it. If this faction is sufficiently large and well-organised, it will not need to drag civilians into the fighting.

    Collapse is a different story. Especially in the first few months, depending on how bad it gets, you will be on your own, and you will need to get physical to procure your own food, clothing, and other necessities of life. Sadly, this seems to be the more probable route right now.