IIRC, there are Maoist groups who are said to take orders from Beijing

This is untrue.

One of the things that makes Maoists Maoists is that they don’t like the modern PRC. They believe that Deng Xiaoping and his successors were ‘capitalist roaders’ who ended socialism in China.

Compared to Marxist-Leninists who generally believe that China is still on a socialist path of development, and that the Reform and Opening Up initiated by Deng Xiaoping is akin to the Soviet New Economic Policy, or other instances of socialist States courting foreign investment.

Meanwhile, China has a broad policy of “Non-interference”, where it doesn’t engage in backing non-state actors. The one notable exception to this, isn’t any communist insurgency, but the United Wa State Army, in Myanmar. They get Chinese backing because China sees it as beneficial to its interests to have a well funded proxy on its border, to act as a buffer between itself, amd a volatile neighbor. Not because of any ideological affinity.

There are a number of Maoist movement in southern Asia, and they all have a pretty antagonistic line against the PRC, because the PRC as the major geopolitical player in the region, is doing business with the governments they’re fighting, instead of them.

The situation was similar in Nepal, though after the monarchy was overthrown in 2006, the Maoists, or at least their leadership, only half-completed the revolution, by entering into a liberal Parliamentary power sharing system which as done fuck all to govern for all that time.

Perhaps, since the ML and Liberal parties are the ones taking the fall for this, the more radical elements of the Maoist movement rearm? That’s not a foregone conclusion though, and it certainly won’t happen with the help of Beijing.

Even then, Jerry was always the weakest link on Seinfeld

He got shot at a school, while debating some guy about what minorities to blame for gun violence.

Realize what you have, babe! You can do fucking stratigraphy with that many layers of irony!!!

in for

I think we’ve been in one. After Trump got shot, I predicted that political assassination would be the “cool thing” among the stochastic terrorism types, and that seems to have been true, between Luigi, That guy who killed those legislators in MN, and now this.

Likely just ordinary US instigated riots

Ehh, the US definitely has an interest in meddling in a country on China’s border.

But Nepal hardly needs help to stir up these protests, after the Nepalese Civil War ended in the overthrow of the monarchy, the Maoist movement effectively betrayed the revolution, and entered into a power sharing agreement, within a liberal, parliamentary system.

That system has been deeply dysfunctional since 2006, with every major issue being punted by the constitutional court until some nebulous later date.

That coupled with economic stagnation, and the contradictions finally boiling over.

Check out ProtoWeb! It’s kind of like a more advanced implementation of the Wayback Machine.

I’ve having tons of fun with it recently, just bouncing around random old websites

All of those things, save for the MRI, are valuable life skills.

I don’t need to know everything about an engine, but I have basic competency in changing my oil or replacing my air filter.

I don’t know everything about the structure of my home, but I know enough to install some shelves or blinds.

If a problem is outside of my knowledge or ability? I call someone who can fix it for me.

A computer should be the same way. People should have a base level of competency in technology, and that technology should lend itself to people fixing problems themselves.

Everything being a proprietary, closed source, magic mystery box, that spies on you, and can only be fixed by the company that made it, is very bad, actually.

What an absolutely brain dead take on what people should and shouldn’t be doing with their time.

Farmers have to waste time hacking their John Deere tractors, just to be able to start fixing them. OP isn’t the one dictating what people should or shouldn’t do with their time.

Yeah, putting a queer person on the front of an article about robots doing sex crimes feels irresponsible at best, and actively malicious at worst, given the current climate around LGBT issues.

The DSA has everyone from reformist soc dems, to anarchists, to MLs, to Maoist Third Worldists

That’s the DSA’s ultimate goal, my guy. Use DNC infrastructure to its advantage, and use that as a spring board to breaking with the Dems. At what point that happens is debated within the organization. But this guy will get his wish, sooner or later, especially if the DNC continues to have zero sense of self preservation

Somehow it still exists

I’ve been bouncing around a theory in my head that the big, mainstream, social media sites are kind of too big to fail at this point.

Back in the day, a change in moderation or ownership on a forum site would lead to a user revolt or an exodus to an alternative, and the old one would die out.

Now, these sites are so big and load bearing that alternatives struggle to get off the ground, and people just sorta stay and take it.

I found myself on reddit the other day, and came across someone complaining “now we’re all trapped in this corporate hellscape! I miss forums, BBS, and all that stuff”

Lemmy is right here, and a hobbyist community for old communication platforms like that, could really thrive on a place like Lemmy. Where it’s not just about nostalgia for a bygone era, but actively on a platform that can carve out, an alternative to the corporate hellscape this guy was complaining about.

But no, they’re still on reddit, yearning for the past, and blinded from seeing a future with any alternative

My use case is that this Mini PC acts as a living room console, and I like the Emulation Station front end, and that Emulators, controller setup, etc. more or less work out of the box.

But my big issue with it, is that Steam has effectively been broken on Batocera for a long time now. So, if I could run all of my ROMs and more modern stuff via Steam, all on one OS, that would be great

How would Bazzite fair in a living room console kind of use case? What is setup like? Especially for emulators. Could I have it boot straight into a front end, like ES or Lutris?

Time to fire up Protoweb!

I have a mini PC running batocera, which has been great! It’s hooked up to the TV and can run up to PS3, and even Switch, though I haven’t been able to get a Switch emulator running yet.

And I can technically do Xbox360 too, but 360 emulation is in a sorry state, in general. And it’s even worse on Linux, because there’s no native Linux version, so batocera has to run the 360 emulator through Wine.

Other than that though, it’s great! Considering dual booting Steam OS to play more modern stuff, as well.

Really use your noggin for this one.

Why would the Russian and Chinese governments want to influence a small collection of web forums with no real influence on the wider world?

No, they’re not here, they’re on Reddit. As are the US and Israeli governments, for that matter. Online influence campaigns are carried out by governments in places where they’ll be most effective, and by more than just your spooky oriental despotisms.

Now, why might .ml users, in general, be generally pro-china? The people who made Lemmy as a platform, and the folks who were first to adopt it (instances like Lemmygrad and Hexbear), were ideologically Marxist. Specifically, Marxist-Leninist. Marxist-Leninists, generally, support the existence of actually existing socialist States, as being socialist.

Contrast that with a Maoist position which rejects these States as not being socialist

You can take that ideological position or leave it, it doesn’t really matter to me. But what’s the more likely explanation here?

That the people who made, and first adopted, Lemmy as a platform tended to have a certain ideology, and so the early instances, like .ml, have people with a broadly shared opinion on a certain topic?

Or that the Chinese government, who probably had no damn clue what Lemmy is, is actively devoting money, and hundreds of people to influence a tiny speck of a Web forum where some nerds circle jerk about Linux, instead of focusing on influencing Facebook or Reddit.

I’ll say it

Ok, but you shouldn’t

Not to mention the continent-spanning genocide that the US is founded upon

In the 1950s, in the UK, “Tankie” was used as perjorative among members of the Communist Party of Great Britain, to describe those in the party who supported the Soviet invasion of Hungary.

The term has been so warped that now the people who coined it would also be considered Tankies by the liberals who love to throw the word around

Neocolonialism is an actual term, coined to describe a specific phenomenon

you cannot really get much smaller without starting to limit the games that can be played on them

Games should probably be shorter, with worse graphics, if I’m being honest ¯_(ツ)_/¯