Here’s the original link, not sure why the instance is blocking you: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rtG9cs163M0

What’s wrong?

I have wanted to put original content on PeerTube as well, but it’s hard with my computer situation and being busy all the time. I hope to see more comrades posting content on alternative platforms, especially exclusively. I’m worried about loss of educational digital media on private platforms like YouTube and Reddit as enshittification continues. I’m also worried about archive.org. I depend on it greatly. I hope we archive and preserve media as much as possible on other platforms before we inevitably lose them.

Kinda wish I spent more time with my coworkers and tried to work towards union, even though I was a contractor. Not sure if I would have been successful because my coworkers were pretty right-wing and anti-union. Perhaps after trucking and I eventually save for school and become an electrical engineer, I will try to talk to my coworkers more, organize board game nights or help support my coworkers when they need help in their personal lives, try to build solidarity and community, and eventually educate them and push them towards unionization.

There were some good tips in this blogpost I hadn’t thought of, and it would have probably helped me in the past.

First, I am only meaning to provide my perspective, even if it turns out to be not perfect or 100% accurate to reality, and I am willing to be corrected or to learn from others. I’m not just some first worlder set in their ways.

I think you misunderstood some of the points I made, just as I interpreted freagle’s point about AI wastefulness to be in a broader sense than it was. I don’t believe AI as it exists now in the global capitalist system will liberate the third world. My guess is the ruling class’s use of the AI will probably have a greater impact against the working class’s interests than the impact the working class will have to counter AI through its own use. We have no control over AI’s existence. It’s a reality we have to live with. The only way AI would have an improvement on the working class’s lives across the entire planet would be for a socialist system to become dominant across the world and the global capitalist hegemony to be overthrown.

I’m not denying the ruling class’s use of AI is a much greater detriment to us than any gains we get from the weakening of the labor aristocracy. However, I believe as those people start losing their jobs, communist parties will need to start reaching out to them, educate them, and bring them to our cause so we can develop the numbers and power to overthrow the ruling class, which I believe is the upmost importance. I honestly don’t believe most labor aristocrats, especially in the West, will be radicalized until they become proletarianized and their material conditions greatly worsen.

I was just implying after revolution and when we live in a socialist society, we would use AI for productive means and not for these wasteful projects. Your list above are mostly projects in a capitalist society that serve the ruling class’s interests.

The only real potential benefit of AI in a capitalist society, besides potentially using it to make tools, services, and content for workers and communist parties to fight back against the system, is the proletarianization and hopefully radicalization (toward socialism) of labor aristocrats as the deepening contradictions of capitalism lead to more unrest amongst the working class.

Wasteful for sure, but I can see it saving someone a lot of time.

Many degrowth proposals call for some aggregate reduction of energy use or material throughput. The issue with these proposals is that they conflict with the need to give the entire planet public housing, public transit, reliable electricity, modern water-sewage services, etc., which cannot be achieved by “shrinking material throughput”. According to modeling from Princeton University (this may be outdated), it suggests that zeroing emissions by 2050 will require 80 to 120 million heat pumps, up to 5 times an increase in electricity transmission capacity, 250 large or 3,800 nuclear reactors, and the development of a new carbon capture and sequestration industry from scratch. Degrowth policies, while not intending to result in ecological austerity, effectively do so through their fiscal commitment to budgetary constraints which inevitably require government cuts.

The reason for the above paragraph is to give an analogy to the controversy of “AI wastefulness”. Relying on manual labor for software development could actually lead to more wastefulness long term and a failure to resolve the climate crisis in time. Even though AI requires a lot of power, creating solutions faster (especially in green industries as well as emissions reduced from humans such as commuting to work) could lead to a better and faster impact on reducing emissions.

Despite apparently hailing from STEM backgrounds they are typically very unscientific in any take that is not their discipline and latch on to any idealistic nonsense to defend Western Hegemony

Ah, so basically the tech libs in lemmy.ml (especially from other federated instances).

https://tankie.tube/w/9coNT19Q6hT8vLJN93NeNN

I prefer to post invidious links for people’s security and privacy. I know it’s annoying if it doesn’t work for you. Maybe try a VPN or just change the link from “inv.nadeko.net” to “www.youtube.com”.

https://lemmygrad.ml/comment/2927106

It’s essentially the opposite of an ultra. An ultra oversteps the political consciousness of the masses where a tailist caters to the reactionary elements of the working class. A communist vanguard party needs to lead, elevate, and unite the masses with integrity while keeping in mind of the masses current political consciousness in order to gain their overwhelming support.

https://en.prolewiki.org/wiki/Library:On_Coalition_Government

Commandism is wrong in any type of work, because in overstepping the level of political consciousness of the masses and violating the principle of voluntary mass action it reflects the disease of impetuosity. Our comrades must not assume that everything they themselves understand is understood by the masses. Whether the masses understand it and are ready to take action can be discovered only by going into their midst and making investigations. If we do so, we can avoid commandism. Tailism in any type of work is also wrong, because in falling below the level of political consciousness of the masses and violating the principle of leading the masses forward it reflects the disease of dilatoriness. Our comrades must not assume that the masses have no understanding of what they themselves do not yet understand. It often happens that the masses outstrip us and are eager to advance a step when our comrades are still tailing behind certain backward elements, for instead of acting as leaders of the masses such comrades reflect the views of these backward elements and, moreover, mistake them for those of the broad masses.

—Mao Zedong. “On Coalition Government” (April 24, 1945), Selected Works, Vol. III, p. 316.*

This is your brain on Linux.

eBay (sometimes you will order stuff that ends up being purchased from Amazon unfortunately) (also, I typically research the product I am looking for and then find a better deal on eBay), craigslist, Etsy (eBay takes less margin from sellers), ordering from small and local shops (local Asian, Mexican, etc. grocery stores tend to have really good deals), food banks tend to have food available for anyone of any income, going to garage sales and local estate sales, finding cooperatives or “ethical” companies to purchase from (Costco pays their employees a decent wage, Aldi lets their employees sit down and also have better deals than even Walmart), thrift stores (avoid The Salvation Army), farmers’ markets, etc.

Also, find a CSA to get food (which you can discover at your local farmers’ market, and Europe seems to have many open source tools dedicated to CSAs), and sometimes they will deliver to your place.

When looking for products, I recommend looking for recommendations on reddit, where you will find good advice about a product that people have experience with, especially in hobbyist and professional subreddits. Also buy older things (sometimes this is a bit more nuanced and there’s certain models from certain years for a certain product that are better than others) as they tend to not be built with planned obsolescence.

Niche reddit wikis tend to also have links to various products and small online stores that are highly recommended. For example, r/VacuumCleaners and r/MechanicalKeyboards.

There’s many good recommendations on r/BuyItForLife.

You can find an online specialized store with better deals and often products not available on Amazon, for example, I have ordered a lot of watercooling equipment from here: https://www.performance-pcs.com/

This is a good place to get hardware for cheap and great quality (I purchased alloy steel screws from here to mount my heavy monitors): https://www.mcmaster.com/

RockAuto is an online store where many mechanics will order parts to repair vehicles, and they have very good prices there if you ever need to fix your vehicle and can’t afford a mechanic.

I hope to one day get a classic trackball mouse and headphones from Ploopy.

You can also look for hobbyist and professional YouTubers and see the products they reviewed and recommended, and you will find very good tips and feedback. For example, when I was looking for a soldering iron, I found Louis Rossmann’s video that mentioned integrated tips are the way to go. I also decided to get an Atten ST-862D hot air station I found much cheaper on eBay because of Louis Rossmann’s comparison video. I am likely going to get this thermal camera someday, plus I plan to get products from NorthridgeFix’s store, and often you will find professionals/hobbyists/YouTubers owning their own store that you can purchase from. I came across forums that reiterated these recommendations, which typically means there’s a reason why many people buy a certain product.

It’s sort of a skill you have to build when ordering things online while avoiding Amazon, and it can be time-consuming and less convenient, but it’s worth the time and money saved and waste reduced. I haven’t ordered from Amazon for over a few years now, and the last time I did was because I was working at Amazon and decided to use my benefit on Corsair fans for my PC. Before then, I avoided Amazon for another few years. It is possible to do.

Sometimes, I still order computer equipment and electronics from Newegg (has a history of unethical decisions), though. I mostly spend money on eBay, and sometimes Newegg will sell items for a little cheaper there, especially for older, refurbished, or open box items.

Libro.fm as an alternative to Audible

After buying from multiple other stores now, sometimes I look at Amazon and realize they have went to utter doggy doo, and I am glad to never look back. I see many of their products being low quality, and many of their prices are outrageous. The quality of Amazon has greatly sunk.

Many online services/websites use AWS, so you are still not really going to avoid Amazon completely, and AWS is their big money-maker.

There’s no ethical consumption under capitalism, but you can still do a lot to mitigate funding the worst offenders’ lined pockets and save money in the process.

I could go on and on about recommending stores and methods to avoid Amazon. I hope the resources I have given and suggested help.

BTW, if you want a tip to save money, you can buy discounted gift cards at Raise. I also buy discounted T-Mobile gift cards on eBay to add funds to my Pay-As-You-Go plan on my phone, which I use for emergencies or when I do not have internet to contact people via an internet phone or another messaging service, and I only pay $3 a month for 30 min of calls or 30 text messages or a mix of the two, and $0.10 extra for each minute/msg if I surpass the limit for the month. I usually use public wifi and get by with no data plan so I can spend for more speed for my home internet, which I am lucky to have provided by an awesome local cooperative, which I am a member of and have received checks of $100s back just for being one when they have successful years, which has been nearly every year. Plus I get 400 Mbps Download + Upload, and it has been increased multiple times from 100 Mbps with no additional cost to me. I also am a member of my local grocery store cooperative, and I only had to spend $100 one time, I get wonderful deals (still pricey, but food usually comes from good businesses and is very healthy with many vegan options), and if I were to not need the membership anymore, I will be refunded the entire $100. Cooperatives are absolutely fantastic.

I have wanted to make “mirrors” of Marxist websites and port them to different formats and protocols. I will keep this in mind. Sounds like a fun project.

Maybe something like this? https://github.com/muxelplexer/marxists-org-dark-stylized

Tbh, I love minimal websites. This could be my nostalgia speaking, though. Nevertheless, small websites means less bandwidth requirements for our comrades with slow internet.

Plus, text-focused websites tend to be higher quality and actually have meaningful content.