/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>The view of biology often presented to the public is oversimplified and out of date. Scientists must set the record straight, argues a new book.
>For too long, scientists have been content in espousing the lazy metaphor of living systems operating simply like machines, says science writer Philip Ball in How Life Works. Yet, it’s important to be open about the complexity of biology — including what we don’t know — because public understanding affects policy, health care and trust in science. “So long as we insist that cells are computers and genes are their code,” writes Ball, life might as well be “sprinkled with invisible magic”. But, reality “is far more interesting and wonderful”, as he explains in this must-read user’s guide for biologists and non-biologists alike.
>When the human genome was sequenced in 2001, many thought that it would prove to be an ‘instruction manual’ for life. But the genome turned out to be no blueprint. In fact, most genes don’t have a pre-set function that can be determined from their DNA sequence.
>Instead, genes’ activity — whether they are expressed or not, for instance, or the length of protein that they encode — depends on myriad external factors, from the diet to the environment in which the organism develops. And each trait can be influenced by many genes. For example, mutations in almost 300 genes have been identified as indicating a risk that a person will develop schizophrenia…..
https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-024-00327-x

Genetics is pseudoscience.

You gotta have thick steel barrier to your brain if you ever wish to become a communist. You must be able to see right through bourgeois ideology and mystification. Ask yourself the very simple question: does their analysis start of from the world as something existing outside us, or does their analysis suppose some idea outside the material world influencing it?

To combat bourgeois ideology you need to be a proper materialist. Read the philosophical works of Feurebach, Dietzgen, Engels, Lenin. Become a dialectical materialist - never fall into metaphysics or eclecticism, товариши.

San Francisco board open to reparations with $5M payouts
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/nbcblk/san-francisco-decide-black-reparations-plan-5m-person-rcna74873
Cope and seethe CHUDs anti idpolers kek

https://www.billboard.com/pro/reggaeton-lawsuit-copyright-infringement-entire-genre/

<When the case was first filed, few people took notice. But the lawsuit quickly grew. By September 2022, the lawsuit had ballooned: More than 150 total defendant-artists, accused of releasing a staggering 1,800 infringing songs. In the most recent version of the complaint, filed in April, it takes a full 25 pages to list out all of the defendants

<“This case is jaw-dropping — the plaintiffs are suing over a hundred artists for over a thousand songs, 30 years after the release of their song,” says Jennifer Jenkins, a professor at Duke University School of Law who has written a history of musical borrowing and regulation. “If they win, this would confer a monopoly over an entire genre, something unprecedented in music copyright litigation.”

Tldr: there's a copyrape lawsuit where 2 copy-rapists are trying to copyrape a rythm. There aren't that many possible permutations for rythms in Music, so copyraping something like that can grant legal terror against an entire music-genre.

This lawsuit would at first only kill a genre called reggaeton, but if the precedent is set it might infect the rest of music as well. Worst case scenario is a single copy-rapist claiming most permutations of musical rythms and thus copyraping all music to death.

I wonder if this behaves like a rubber-band, and if they stretch it to far it will snap.

Does anyone have that salvation council general milley meme, I can never find it when I wanna use it. Figured I’d make a thread in case anyone else has any other memes they can’t find either

I just heard about the resume of the newly named CEO of NPR, and it has to be seen to be believed. I've never seen someone with a resume that glowed this bright.

>2002-2003: The American University in Cairo, Arabic Language Institute, Arabic Language Intensive Program (ALIN)
<2004: Intensive Arabic Program at the Institut français (Ifpo) in Damascus, Syria, a university funded by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs
>2004-2005: Council on Foreign Relations
<2005: Eurasia Group, whose leadership include Gerald Butts of the WWF and Cliff Kupchan, who worked in the State Department during the Clinton administration as deputy coordinator of US assistance to Eurasia
>2005-2007: HSBC, International Manager in London, Germany, and Canada
<2007-2010: Founding member of UNICEF "Innovation and Communication Officer" in communication, advocacy, and youth organizing
>2010-2011: "Information and communications technology (ICT)" Program Officer at National Democratic Institute (NDI) in Washington, DC
<2012: Security Fellow at Truman National Security Project
>2011-2013: "ICT" specialist at The World Bank in Washington, DC
<2012-2013: THINK school of leadership, a school for "developing creative leaders to solve global challenges", funded as a partnership of the Dutch government, Vodafone, McKinsey & Company, KLM Airlines, and other private entities. Its leadership includes Esther Wojcicki of Creative Commons. Esther Wojcicki is the mother of Susan Wojcicki, former husband of Google founder Sergey Brin and owner of DNA company 23andme, whose stated mission is to harness personal genetic information to advance research.
>2013-2014: Advocacy Director at Access Now, an organization discussed below
<2014-2022: Wikimedia Foundation
>2020: Council on Foreign Relations
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I'm really enjoying all of the videogame journalists pissing and shidding themselves over the gold rush game publishers are in over NFTs.

Practically every major publisher is promising to integrate NFTs into games and some like Sega, are already selling them now.

One legitimate criticism of NFTs are their environmental impact. But every media talking head that brings this up never spoke out against the Iraq War that irradiated entire cities with depleted uranium munitions, or the Pentagon, who is the number single emitter of greenhouse gases.

So I'm with the crypto bros on this one say this is sour grapes on people that missed out on the ground floor of this get-rich-quick scheme.

I also see this as anger from the burger settler class who are now really getting priced out of the middle class lifestyle in earnest to the point where their steady diet of new videogames may soon be out of their reach. As someone who grew up poor and was always priced out of these type of consumerist leisure goods I relish their anguish.

Another example of this is when Settlers (read white people) shidded themselves over Disney's new $2000 a night Stars Wars themed hotel. As they rightfully saw this as a new trend in Disneyland Theme Parks where they will soon only cater to the 1%. I never got to go to Disneyland when I was young and was told by these same Settlers that I shouldn't be upset because I can live without it. Ironically, it's them who will now live without it while I can actually still afford to go.

And game journalists are particularly hypocritical because we've seen none scarce digital goods sold for 20+ years now, first with iTunes, and then with Amazon with books, and later Steam with games. No one every questioned the environmental impact of these systems.

Overall I think NFTs will be a net good for the proletariat, it will provide a second hand market of digital goods that proles have already spent billions on, and put a lot of equity in their pocket.
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Prologue
Noam Chomsky has a principle that he will only criticize his government (the US government in his case). His reason is guarding against co-optation, he doesn't want the chorus of reactionary intellectuals that manufacture consent for the powers that be, to be able to use anything that he writes or says for their sinister purposes. I think the Chomsky principle is largely correct but it's too strict, i think that you can criticize other governments as long as they aren't on the official LE-BIG-BAD list. So based on that you can criticize countries like Saudi Arabia or Israel, but for example Russia, China, and the DPRK can't be criticized, because they are the ""axis of evil"" in the mainstream narrative. I'm following this weaker Chomsky principle because i don't want to say anything that might be appropriated for an argument that supports a new cold-war or worse. Keep that in mind when you read this.

Main topic
I'm trying to get a materialist view of liberties. Usually people consider liberties to be timeless conditionaless absolutes. In some places of the world owning a gun is considered a liberty. In order to have that liberty you do need a government that doesn't try to disarm it's population, but far more importantly you need to have invented sophisticated metallurgy and gunpowder. So in conclusion liberties are conditional to development, in this case technical development. Tho not all conditions for liberties must be of a technical nature.

Many people are criticizing China for lacking certain personal liberties, and a big chunk of that is made up horror stories that never happened, but not all of it is wrong. For example China lacks technology privacy.

A considerable section of the Chinese population is not plugged into the techno-social information infrastructure. Since China has only beaten absolute poverty but not yet uneven development. That means if china were to move ahead and improve the tech-rights for Chinese citizens at this point in time they would benefit only the wealthier sections of society that can afford all the information services. That section of society could potentially seek to pull up the ladder behind them selves and prevent the rest of society from gaining access to beneficial information services.

So I will speculate that once China has leveled the uneven development, it will become politically viable for China to advance tech-rights. Politically viable in this context mePost too long. Click here to view the full text.

No wander leftypol spazzes out at the mention of him

>PROVING LEFTISM IS A RIGHT-WING IDEOLOGY.

>On the face of it, it seems completely contradictory to call leftism right-wing. The midwits responding to this will definitely try and remind you of that.

>But at some point in the course of Western history, people forgot about the actual historical tradition of left-wing politics entirely, confusing it for a newer ideology: Leftism.

>The key distinction lies in the 'ism' part of Leftism. In contrast to left-wing politics, leftism is itself an ideology rather than a political position. Jacobinism, Sandinismo, Mao Zedong Thought, etc. for example, can be called ideologies, which are left-wing in political content.

>Leftism, by contrast, is only left-wing in form. In content, it is actually right-wing. And this can be proven easily.

>Instead of referring to any actual concrete left-wing politics, leftism should be understood as a comprehension of the historical left taken in a purely abstract way - a meta-narrative of left-wing politics, if you will.

>This is what makes it outside the actual left-wing: In order to turn left-wing politics into a total IDEAL, you need a necessary conceptual distance from it which is only possible if you are, in fact, a right-winger.
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I couldn't think of anything specific to say, and I just wanted to share this fantastic recent exchange between Richard Wolff and Michael Hudson on the subject of China's imploding housing bubble and recent global political economy. Enjoy, anons.

https://inv.vern.cc/watch?v=uS4ewq1R9ps