There are enzymes in your saliva that actually dry your lips further when you lick them

Could be a compact tape measure

I was mistaken, the original nickelodeon was a movie theater where admission that costed a nickel. For some reason I had the impression of a machine like this that took nickels.

Ah yes, the original nickelodeon

It sounds like you’re speaking from experience

Yeah I figured, I’ve seen a lot of accurate accounts of history get derided as being “tankie” or worse without any legitimate challenge to what was said. It’s such a powerful thought-terminating cliche around here that I almost never venture into the .world-sphere anymore.

Fair enough, I was only looking at the dates and lining them up with the limited Russian history I am familiar with. I mean the alternative was still potentially complete Nazi occupation of Poland, if those lines weren’t drawn (Of course it’s a foregone conclusion that the Nazis were going to invade Poland) or to go to war with the Nazis and Poland as the battlefield in hopes of ending up with full Russian occupation, but I guess the distinction is important. I don’t claim to be an expert though, feel free to correct me or expand upon anything I’m missing.

Edit: also the Russians didn’t invade until 16 days after the Nazis did, when Poland was already effectively defeated. Again, feel free to fill in the blanks. Cause to me it seems to me that the pact served as reassurance that the Nazis would stop their invasion at the line drawn, so that Russia could allow the invasion to play out (on the off chance of a Polish victory); rather than invading simultaneously and practically guaranteeing Polish defeat; without risking all of Poland becoming Nazi territory.

1939? You mean when Poland was being occupied by the Nazis? Also, everything up to 1907 would have been done under the empire that was toppled by the Russian revolution in 1917. The formation that resulted is the one that poland would have been attacking in 1921, before they had officially formed the USSR in 1922, which altogether was dissolved 35 years ago in 1991. You realize geopolitics is about more than just monolithic masses of land?

Highest praises to her autobiography, absolute must read. Rest in power Assata ✊🏾

You could have just said that, it was more your language than anything.

Some kids genuinely need it until they’ve formed the ability to self-regulate. My little brother wouldn’t have been allowed to stay at school if he’d been unmedicated. Impulsive, distracted, having meltdowns where he’d literally bang his head against hard tile floors, generally making his teacher’s job impossible and alienating him from the other kids. At age 10 him and my mom are giving it a shot without meds. Hard to say if it changed him in any way other than giving him the space to develop the tools he needed to take on school like the other kids in his class.

I don’t know your cousin, but I do know most parents don’t go around getting their young children diagnosed with learning disabilies just for the fun of it.

First, Adderall isn’t meth. Stop calling it that.

Second, if you don’t have ADHD then this doesn’t apply to you. Misdiagnosis does happen, and I’m sorry you had to live through that in order to realize you were misdiagnosed.

I’m glad you’re doing better and found a way to manage your mental health that works for you. Please don’t use your experience to erase ours.

For anyone else reading,

Everyone reacts to medications differently, especially when it comes to brain chemistry. There are a number of treatment options for ADHD besides Adderall. Other stimulants, non-stimulants, even non-medication options like behavioral therapy and exercise. Most people will mix and match to eventually figure out what works for them specifically.

Adderall didn’t work for me either, and I spent a long time trying to make it work before I switched to a non-stimulant that was great, until it eventually stopped having any effect on me aside from intense nausea. After losing my job, I went off meds entirely; it was too much hassle to get on another controlled substance, and what was the point anyways if I wasn’t working.

Long story short, I’m working again and taking a different stimulant now that I pretty much owe my life to. Trying to keep up with basic life stuff; not just work but chores, bills, projects, getting up in the morning, etc; is hard enough for me even on medication. Doing it with only talk therapy as treatment was a living nightmare, like seriously put me in a dark place.

My take on it is that it’s just a tool, and as with most tools you can use it in a sensible way that’s positive, although many people choose not to.

I mean sure a screwdriver is “just a tool”, and you can use a screwdriver to pick ice; but it’s not the most efficient tool for the job. It was designed for something else entirely, which makes it awkward and finicky to use as an ice pick. This is why so many people use screwdrivers for their intended purpose, rather than manipulating them to fit into a different workflow.

(The intended purpose here is disrupting creative professions, making creative labor cheaper and more efficient in order to maximize capitalists’ profit from it. Not to make artists’ lives easier or increase their effectiveness as laborers and business owners, although yes it can be used that way and, yes, that is arguably a limited side effect of the original intention.)

hahahahaaaa stay mad fascist

Are you saying the Republican party and their mouthpieces are not far right authoritarians?

Most Nazis were “regular people” “just right wing” until the opportunity came for them to commit atrocities.

You sure are having fun being mad over a single word when you still compared humans to controlling the population of dogs. The word “sterilize” does not improve the ethics here in the slightest. Euthanasea is not a very far leap to make once you’ve done the work of, I repeat, reducing human beings to the level of dogs. But nevermind that. Nevermind the indigenous people, blacks, immigrants, and so on, that have been sterilized against their will. That was actually to reduce suffering, you see, and not fascist at all!! Nevermind the 8 other paragraphs I wrote about why that’s unnecessary in the first place and is more an expression of your contempt for humanity than it is an actual solution to anything.

What a weird thing to gloat about and not think about the real world implications of in any way whatsoever! I am the one who cares about words, my words say absolutely nothing about me at all! Soothe your ego and backtrack because you have been called out and bested in debate! Bet you feel real bad right now!! Lmfao you fascists are so funny sometimes.

Anyways, I’m busy fighting fascists like you in real material ways. Kindly fuck off and have the day you’re very clearly already having.

lmfao project harder fascist

and while you’re at it, pick up a fucking book. Your reading comprehension is atrocious.

That’s wild of you to think that not wanting kids is facism.

That’s an insane reduction of my argument

I’m merely emphasizing the ridiculous of your claim that one can only improve the world by birthing kids and raising them to do good. You don’t have to birth kids to do that, just fuckin do it yourself.

That’s also not what I said, and “just fuckin do it” is the point I was making. I was saying that having kids and raising them in that way had relatively better potential to reduce suffering than not having kids at all, not that it was the only or most effective way to do it.

You clearly didn’t read or try to engage with what I wrote. You’re the one that compared human population control to euthanizing dogs, as if that would actually solve anything, and refused to elaborate when I pointed out that it wouldn’t. I’m not the one in bad faith here and I’m done responding to this thread. No, I don’t care to learn about ideologies that seek to “improve” the human condition by removing humans from the equation that aren’t even materially responsible for these conditions in the first place.

I’m not talking about “birthing the next Einstein” or “nobel prize winner”, types who again, likely had above-average means that contributed to their positions and therefore are less likely to fundamentally question the system that afforded them that. There’s a certain level of arrogance in assuming that only a “great man” in a great position could come along to change things. There’s even more arrogance in acting like you’re taking on some noble cause to “reduce the world’s suffering” by simply deciding not to have children.

I’m talking about collective struggle. You don’t need to be anyone special to engage in that, it just doesn’t work that way. No, that is not the world we have, and it won’t be easy, but is it not one worth fighting for? Does it need to be “instant” to be worthy? Population control isn’t some quick or easy fix either, by the way.

The system is able to adequately distribute resources, that’s what I’m saying, it simply lacks interest in doing so. It’s not the number of people that is straining it. Even with fewer people, it will be strained, because that strain is by design and necessary to the system. The people in power, the ones who design the system, are the ones that design it to fail in that way because they benefit from doing so. The more of our class who are conscious of the class war raging around us, to fight with numbers rather than capital, the better.

Other places like cuba, china, and the USSR have had revolutions that created what they could of that world on a national level, under worse conditions. Haiti was a literal slave colony under one of the most powerful nations at the time of its revolution. It’s on the rest of us to learn from their examples and bring our corners of the world to meet them, to complete their revolution. It won’t be overnight, but we can make revolution in our lifetimes. In the grand scheme of things that is not a long time, at all, and each successive generation can build on it if we only teach them our struggle and enable them to have greater power over their own lives.

You’re definitely showing on full display here, some commenters’ points about eco-fascism and “giving up” on improving the world because you’re too small-minded to imagine a better one and and acknowledge your own role in fighting for it. So might as well just cull the working class population, who use the fewest resources but who you personally find less worthy of life; including your own potential children; to make it more comfortable… (for exactly the people who cause the suffering you seek to address.) Up to and including literally putting them down like dogs, apparently. Real classy thing to gloss over btw. Yes, this is a fascist ideology.

The world is beyond overpopulated and there is no ecologically sound reason to have more kids.

This is just wrong. There are more than enough resources to go around. More homes than homeless, more food production than food insecure, more clothes than anyone could ever wear in a lifetime; things like transportation, energy, and production could be greatly optimized via collectivisation; and so on. The problem is endless profit-seeking and exploitation, not overpopulation.

The people that have access to these resources, many of which are extracted from the global south, consume way more than their fair share because of the infinite growth drive of capitalism. There is never “enough”, regardless of population; because to stagnate or to shrink is to fail under capitalism. Overconsumption is a problem that could be solved, quite comfortably I might add, if we were enabled collectively to put our minds to it.

You would do more to lessen suffering, by having kids and raising them to fight for that world; because that world is in fact possible; than to prevent their personal suffering by simply not bringing them into existence. Assuming anti-natalism is the only thing stopping you from having kids, of course; not everyone wants or needs to reproduce and I completely agree with destigmatizing that decision, but at least be honest that you just personally don’t want to be a parent. Don’t introduce new stigma for people that do want to be parents.

I take issue with this universal suffering idea. Sounds eugenics-ey. Cause it’s reasonably predictable which children will struggle more than others simply based on material conditions of their parents. It’s less of a “gamble”, for certain people who, often enough, just so happen to be directly responsible for some amount of suffering in the world. Even if I grant you that suffering is universal even in the most optimal conditions, it’s not like someone with optimal means is questioning the ethics of becoming a parent. And if they are, it’s most probably in the hyper-natalist, “populating the world with my superior spawn” direction like the musks of the world. Doesn’t anti-natalism kinda indirectly suggest leaving the world in those kinds of hands?

Also, humans are not cats and dogs and any ideology that leads you to make this comparison, especially w/r to population control and euthanasia, should be rejected just on the face of it. Point blank period.