There’s no contradiction here.

With high value art you definitionally buy a story not the content. Without a certificate of authenticity or a story that goes with it there is no story and no value to it.

With K Dick’s example the two lighters would become of different but equivalent value, perhaps the new value is in the story of how two identical copies and yet different came to be.

You could 3d scan the statue of David and reproduce it down to its tiniest detail. And yet the copy is only worth as much as the cost to make it or even less, while the original is invaluable.

You can see the Mona Lisa on your phone any time you want and yet millions will take the trip to the Louvre to see what is most likely not even the original.

The story and the history of an object is what you purchase when buying art or antiques of high value.

Thanks for the trip. Any recommendations for best value for money hardware?

Maybe related to massive mail voting - just speculation haven’t seen breakdowns.

Forget about the nominally right wing media, look at how the NY Times have covered every threat to democracy, ever. From Hitler to the business plot to Trump.

You cannot arrive at a true communist state through violent revolution.

It’s possible that what you say is true but Marx himself in poverty of philosophy thought you couldn’t arrive without it.

I guess my overall point is that Marx was a man of his time with similar failings and sensibilities of men of his time - amongst other things he was homophobic, he was considering people in groups wholesale in a way that’s rather distasteful, and in a way that allowed later supposed followers to use these writings to fuck over whole populations.

I’m not sure why people are rising up to whitewash these things - they don’t negate the other insights anymore than Newton’s insane occult obsession negates calculus or the theory of gravity.

I mean while i agree with the premise of that argument this sounds a lot like ‘no true Scotsman’… which instances do you see as being in the true spirit then?

what

I’m not sure what you had trouble grasping - I explained the thought in detail in the paragraph following.

And if I quote him saying the same things about the peasant class

I don’t see how making the same horrible comments about another whole class of people counteracts the horrible comment about others.

“Your honour, and if I show that my client stole from other shops, not just the one he is being prosecuted for, wouldn’t you concede that that negates the theft from this shop?”

First I think what he wrote goes beyond them lacking the revolutionary potential and specifically being an active obstacle - I think the words were “significant counterrevolutionary force” and “more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues”.

But either way, to be honest I don’t see a functional difference between Marx’s beliefs and every implementation of the communist manifesto known to date.

That is, it doesn’t matter what he wrote or believed in his heart of hearts if it can be interpreted in such broad strokes as to allow the implementation of the dear leader mindset with his writings as a touchstone without fail.

And it doesn’t matter what he thought should be done with the lumpen elements if he thought of them as less than, disgusting, parasitical, and even objecting to the cause, (his writings certainly show disgust in my opinion) - true believers to the cause will see them (as they have) as obstacles and will do whatever needs to be done to remove them - as they have.

Well - here’s the thing with “lacking revolutionary potential” and a dear-leader mindset… anyone dear leader deems lacking is labeled lumpen and thrown to the furthest gulag or has their rights removed and confined.

Eg in Stalinist Russia certain groups like the Roma, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Koreans or homosexuals were labeled as such wholesale.

In modern times the Uighurs need reeducation etc.

But he did write quite extensively on Lumpenproletariat.

vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves, swindlers, charlatans, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, procurers, brothel keepers, porters, intellectuals, organ grinders, rag-pickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars; in short, the entirely undefined, disintegrating mass, thrown hither and yon, which the French call la bohème.

That is quite a few groups he considered subhuman, where half the ‘cleansing’ operations under communism have derived their theoretical excuses from.

Seems unlikely given that ascetic hermits around the world are known for living to a ripe old age.

Impossible, they know that’s electoral suicide

Indeed. Today’s nyt poll has trump ahead in some battleground states. No time for complacency.

People that want to be able to yell “fire” in packed theatres without consequences and own nuclear weapons at home are truly the most oppressed ideology.

The focus mode ui is another bugbear - how scattered the ui is for this.

I can alter it from the bottom middle of the notification shade once set, but I can’t enable it from there - why?

At least put a line with date and time at the bottom of the notification shade so I don’t have to roll it all the way down.

Also, I’ve set triple back tap to turn on the flash… well, it only works (inconsistently) when the phone is unlocked. Why?

Advertising wouldn’t work if there was need to wait for generations to pass.

I don’t mind Ubuntu server, though you’re right you need to clean it up a bit by uninstalling snap and killing the login ad of managed k8s, the LTS versions have been quite consistently easy to deal with and stable, but then again so has Debian.

It’s also a mistruth that people don’t change their minds. Look at the rise and fall of any brand, religion or cult - some people had to change their minds.

By making him sound like an insane conspiracy theorist instead? Nah. He could have given a plausible answer like “it wasn’t going far enough” which would have been sufficient.

A convicted rapist literally claimed that you’re allowed to murder babies - then we put them side by side and double check if Harris said something that was slightly exaggerated. What’s so weird about it?