AssortedBiscuits

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AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 3mo ago

Probably through some third-party window manager instead of explorer.exe because a cursory search shows that it's impossible to do it even with regedit. I have no idea about third-party window managers for Windows outside of them existing.

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AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 3mo ago

It's 308 GiB vs 331 GB. Windows misleadingly labels GiB as GB, which causes the issue. In general, there are three patterns:

1 GB = 10⁹ B. This is how drive vendors and MacOS use it. When they say 2TB, they really mean 2 terabytes.
1 GB = 10⁹ B and 1 GiB = 2³⁰ B with the option to pick which one to display. This is how most Linux distros handle it.
1 GB = 2³⁰ B. This is how Windows handles it.

I guess the file manager installed on your Android is using GB as an actual GB, not Windows's mislabeling GiB as GB.

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AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 4mo ago

I mean, in terms of social media, there's XHS like I said earlier. There's also Bilibili, which is Chinese Youtube. You could also find Chinese people posting videos on Youtube for that matter. Besides Chinese people just posting about their daily lives on social media like every other person who use social media, there's also domestic tourism. So you could find videos of someone who's from Wuhan visiting Guangzhou. Stats and charts are one thing, but as they say, seeing is believing.

Front page of Bilibili has this video: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1pevzBKEBx/ You don't have to understand Chinese to see that the person is filming at a small village and that it's a rural environment because she's seen feeding vegetables to calves on top of just seeing fields of crops in the video. In terms of infrastructure, it's obviously less developed than somewhere like Shanghai, but nothing's particularly rundown. Some of the buildings look like they've been recently painted. The road is old with some cracks, but it doesn't have any potholes, which is more than what I can say about the roads I have to drive through on my way to work. And those residential roads are through suburbs with nary a cow to be seen.

Here's another interesting video I found on the front page: https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1tBvsBTEdc/ I have no fucking idea why Katy Perry is on Chinese social media, and she's apparently on Chinese social media enough that she has a Chinese nickname 水果姐, which literally means "Fruit Sister" and this nickname is apparently well known enough that there's even a Wiktionary entry of her nickname on Chinese social media: https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E6%B0%B4%E6%9E%9C%E5%A7%90

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AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 4mo ago

First and foremost, I think people should consume media that is not from the West. You really can't claim to be an internationalist if your media bubble (I'm including social media as well) is entirely situated within the West. To be an internationalist means recognizing that Western thought isn't the end all of human civilization. What constitutes the West is actually pretty small. It's only through imperialism that the West has a very oversized presence. But the West is only one of many viewpoints. At a bare minimum, you have to read what non-Westerners say.

But it's not just a case of picking any random non-Western country since many of their news media has been captured by the West through NGOs. Personally, I find news from Anglophone non-Western countries (India, Nigeria, and so on) to be bad overall as far as echoing what has already been said on Reuters and the BBC. The easiest way is to get out of the bubble is to pick news media from countries that are hostile to the West. That's one of the reasons why you see Russian/Chinese/Iranian/Venezuelan news media cited in ML circles. It's an easy way to pierce through the Western bubble even if you must be cognizant of the geopolitics at play. It's not the only way by any means. In many ways, social media by non-Westerners can be superior even when accounting for botting and censorship. There's a reason why the US wanted to get rid of Tiktok and I strongly suspect they will move to do the same with XHS, which actually has authentic Chinese people (of a certain demographic) on social media.

When you step outside the Western bubble, it's very obvious that the vast majority of criticism of China comes from a broader Cold War 2.0 strategy by the US to attack China. Whatever is not wholly made up is put an exorbitant emphasis on. There are numerous problems with Chinese society, of course. Many of them are actually pretty apparent if you consume Chinese social media made by Chinese people in China. However, you're not going to find this in any article by the BBC unless it's to push some ridiculous narrative about how Taiwan is going to be invaded or Tokyo is going to be nuked by China. You have to step outside the Western bubble.

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AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 4mo ago

So you support neither the Allies nor the Axis during WWII because both sides comprise of state actors? Non-state actors didn't exist in any meaningful capacity during WWII. Even partisans and underground resistance groups were affiliated with the Allies.

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AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 4mo ago

You say this, but I bet you and almost everyone here support the Allies during WWII even though most of the Allies had colonial empires and had already committed multiple genocides to build those empires. I do not think people here would seriously think that the principled socialist position is to hold "neither Berlin nor Moscow nor London" signs while the Blitz was happening or to hide in a cave while the Nazis were exterminating people in death camps because the British were also starving Bengalis to death.

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AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 4mo ago

They deserve credit for this, but they also deserve blame for their earlier cooperation with fascist Germany

The Soviet Union had a non-aggression pact with fascist Germany because it was already at war with fascist Japan. It then had a non-aggression pact with fascist Japan while it was at war with fascist Germany. The entire pact was just the Soviet Union not wanting to fight in two different fronts against fascists.

The Soviet Union was already waging war against fascists in 1935. Can't say the same for the rest of the Allies outside of the Republic of China.

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AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 5mo ago

"It's only going to get worse." - Me when Windows 8 didn't come with the start menu

AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 5mo ago

how white liberals think fascism works

Chad voting in a UN resolution condemning Israel's treatment of Palestinians in Gaza

you're finished

Official portrait of Benjamin Netanyahu

no, pls

AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 5mo ago

Okay analysis. Awful solutions. All that just to say what someone far smarter than him had already said: political power grows out of the barrel of a gun. Fascists seize state power once they believe they have enough political power (ie the means of dispensing organized violence through a military or paramilitary formation). They are only stopped at the local level by antifascists willing to get their hands dirty, on the national level by the state military that refuses to go along, and on the global level by state actors.

AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 6mo ago

Communal society: Electoralism is cringe.

Slave society: Electoralism is cringe.

Feudal society: Electoralism is cringe.

Liberal society: noooooo, electoral democracy portents the end of history elections are based nooooo

Socialist society: Electoralism is cringe.

Communist society: Electoralism is cringe.

AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 7mo ago

I disagree. Feeling a strong emotion for a nation is a perfectly reasonable and human thing to do. Not that I’m trying to change your mind… just saying I don’t feel that way. :)

I’m an anarchist who’s only lived in VERY blue places (including angry blue places, like Oakland). I imagine if I’d had a lot of exposure to that kind of environment, I’d have some pretty different feelings about the definition of patriotism too.

Beyond parody

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AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 7mo ago

The mod at beehaw probably thought you were a Trump supporter or something because who the fuck cares about some politically irrelevant loser who lost a presidential election to some professional wrestler almost a decade ago. They were not willing to see your joke in good faith. Seriously, this joke is some shit that some Catholic Trump voter would say to themselves right before voting for Trump for the third time. It's a Facebook boomer joke that would fit right in with "jokes" about how California is too hot and needs more ICE to cool off. This is a joke I would expect to here from some drunk uncle I only see every other Thanksgiving before he goes on a racist tirade about all lives mattering aktually.

AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 7mo ago

I still don't fully understand what "tankie" means. I've heard it means authoritarian (as in, you're like the tanks rolling over people's rights) but I've also heard it can be sarcastic. So I ignore that in any context since it seems there isn't a clear consensus on the term yet.

In 2025, it just means "person who opposes the West." It doesn't even mean authoritarian or fake socialist anymore. India is technically a socialist secular democratic republic going by the Indian Constitution, but when's the last time you've heard people call Modi supporters tankies? Why do Assad supporters get called tankies while Modi supporters don't? The only meaningful difference between the two is that Assad and his supporters oppose the West while Modi and his supporters don't.

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AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 7mo ago

I will reply to your DMs.

Please don't. No offense, but I greatly dislike communicating through DMs.

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AssortedBiscuits [they/them] @hexbear.net 7mo ago

So there is some missing context. The posters I was replying to had the position that voting was completely worthless. So much so, that even discussing it was a waist of time.

It really is in the US. If you don't live in a select pool of like 5 states, your vote doesn't mean shit. This, of course, pertains to the presidential election, but that's what your posts are all about. Parts of Hexbear were hyped about Mamdani. The biggest difference is that the office he's running doesn't count their votes through something as thoroughly undemocratic-by-design as the electoral college. And Hexbear in general is far more receptive of other elections outside the US. Most people on Hexbear were initially hyped about Corbyn's new party or how the French left won the most seats in the 2024 French legislative elections. So it's not even particularly true that Hexbear is against electoralism as you're characterizing as.

My argument isn't that Democrats will make things better. It is they will make things worse at a slower pace compared to republicans. Giving more time to organize.

Various people on Hexbear have also made this same argument. In other words, Democrats are not the lesser evil, but the weaker opponent that's easier to topple should they be in power. But it falls apart since most US progressives do not recognize the Democrats as the enemy, so people do not organize as readily under the Democrats as you yourself have admitted. This is the tragedy of the US left: they recognize the Republicans as the enemy, but they do not recognize the Democrats as the enemy. Consequently, they will always be blindsided by the machinations of the Democrats.

When Trump was in power, people rightfully saw his administration and the US government in general as the enemy, saw the carceral system for what it was, and cheered the masses of people taking to the streets and burning a police precinct to the ground. Even white people were beginning to warm up to BLM.

But then Biden came to power and people let their guard down. When their guard was down, the police "reform" was enacted where police departments got record funding and cop cities began popping up to make sure a George Floyd uprising will never happen again. And now that Trump is back, people have their guard up again.

Why do you think that ICE monitoring app only came about when Trump is president? ICE existed under Biden and there has been no technological breakthrough that would've made an ICE monitoring app impossible in 2020. It's because Trump is president which lit a fire on many people's asses, including an otherwise apolitical app developer who told himself, "I can't just stand on the sidelines and watch ICE brutalize my friends and neighbors. I have to do something." Had he been more politically conscious, he would've know that ICE was already brutalizing his friends and neighbors under Biden and would've been part of a political organization which would've steered his app development to not make terrible design choices like making it only be available on iPhones because he has a false idea of Android development and doesn't understand basic FOSS concepts in general.