It should just be a combine harvester. The machine itself is an impressive product of ingenuity, engineering, and labour, as well as symbolising agriculture. It is also a symbol of progress and prosperity.

Yeah, that’s understandable of course. It becomes very difficult to find anything to trim once we get to this level. The only thing I can think of, and I would pose this as a question rather than a suggestion, is “Value, Price, and Profit” absolutely necessary for the basic course? The “Political Economy” section would certainly feel quite thin if it’s excluded.

Aside from that, I don’t think much can be done in terms of cutting things out. Maybe if there are shorter alternatives to works such as “Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism”, or a couple essays to replace “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific”, but at this point we’re resorting to quite extreme measures.

I believe the only way to go beyond this, which is completely out of scope of this project, is to create more works such as the Abriged version of “What is to be done” and use those for introduction rather than the unaltered classics.

I don’t disagree. Admittedly, it’s a bit difficult to put myself in the shoes of a lib who’s been exposed to this list for the first time. Different people would be curious about it for different reasons.
I hope you’re right that reading the works in the first section back-to-back would be enough to motivate them to read further.

I would rather aim for 20 hours as the goal as opposed to 25. If I were in your shoes, I would add “Yellow Parenti” at the end of a section (maybe after the checkpoint) as a “strong recommendation” and just not count it to the hour count because it would technically be “optional”.

I like the list for the most part and believe that the decisions for what to cut and what to keep in each section are well-reasoned.

My main concern is with whether too much is being asked from Nia Frome’s 5-10 minute “Tankies” article.

The way I see it is that while the first two sections do more than a good enough job of correcting misconceptions about Marxism, they do not do an adequate job (in my opinion) of addressing the ‘elephant in the room’ for most people, which is AES.

Can we get some fun stats and stuff from Lemmygrad over the years? I think it would be cool to see things like change in monthly active users, when the spikes were and what drove them, which communities became more/less popular, etc.

I think only instance admins have access to this info.

The only public thing I could find was monthly active users using a random website, but it only showed a few months (and I’m not sure it’s accurate).

Don’t feel apprehensive about asking questions. So long as they’re genuine and in good faith, people here have always been more than happy to help in my experience.

I’ll link you a comment thread where I asked similar questions about artisans a few months ago and got great answers from @[email protected] and @[email protected]. I also found the (very short!) excerpt that @[email protected] linked, “Stalin’s Shoemaker”, quite helpful.

Here’s the comment thread: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/9364892/7108472

Yeah, I’m not very well-read on the non-aligned movement as a whole, and I don’t have any material lined-up on my reading list to expand on it.

I’m hoping to find some resources to better understand the context, and potential mistakes that were made during that time and in that region specifically.

Thanks for your input :)

I know, I was trying to get in on the insider trading, but @[email protected] won’t help me out :(

You’ve touched on it a little bit, but could you share your thoughts and analysis more specifically on Nasser’s Egypt and the efforts with Syria and Iraq, etc.?

Or if you have recommended readings on the subject I could delve into it myself.

tells me to ask my GP to refer me for mental health treatment if I’m having difficulty coping wit my life situation

This is beyond what even I would expect from these fascists. What in the actual fuck. You couldn’t make up a more fucked up response if you tried.

I’m sorry you have to go through this bullshit.

Lemmygrad Continues to Show Resilience in the Face of Extraordinary Challenges

11.02.2026

Starting from the 9th of February 2026, many users have reported that images on Lemmygrad have not been functioning as expected. A large amount of older images in posts, comments, and profile pictures have become unavailable across Lemmygrad communities.

This issue was not caused by any failure of Lemmygrad’s infrastructure, rather due to an unexpected and untimely disruption to one of Lemmygrad’s primary logistical partners.

Since its founding, Lemmygrad has had to overcome many unique challenges not faced by projects less hostile to capital. A lot of diligence went into finding reliable hosting partners, a task made considerably more difficult given the project’s orientation. On Lemmy, it has been the target of strategic defederation campaigns, anti-communist propaganda in liberal and anarchist communities, and has been placed on a hard-coded block-list for Piefed, an explicitly neoliberal and NATO-friendly alternative to Lemmy.
At the time of writing, it is not known whether the disruption and reported decommissioning of Lemmygrad’s multimedia host is another deliberate act of anti-communist hostility.

Regardless of the cause of disruption, Lemmygrad has once again addressed the challenge with the utmost urgency and resolve. Respected comrade @[email protected] has managed to establish relations with another logistical partner, minimise the potential damage from the incident, and is working tirelessly to make the transition as smooth as possible.
Whereas many other communities may have faltered and expressed frustration, the Lemmygrad community rallied around their comrades, showing support and appreciation for their efforts in addressing the issue.

Lemmygrad has not only overcome challenges like these every time, but has also never turned down the call to assist its friends and partners when needed. During the notorious Hexbear domain incident, an existential issue for the socialist instance, The Embassy of Hexbear on Lemmygrad was established to provide refuge and an open line of communication and coordination for Hexbear users.
It has also provided a community for feedback, recruitment and support for sister project ProleWiki.

Lemmygrad has shown itself time and time again to be a reliable partner, but increasingly finds itself having to rely on self-sufficiency. It is not yet known what the long-term solutions for such challenges will look like; what is known is that Lemmygrad, with the support of its community, will always overcome them.

i asked for a payraise lmao and instead of them saying no they just fired me like wtf?

I wish I was surprised, but I’m not. A friend of mine got fired from a job for not wanting to work overtime, and another had half their department laid off with 4 days notice. Absolute bullshit.

I hope you could make the best of it, and find something better when the time comes.

I think para-politics can only go so far in explaining things and often leads to conspiracism in ML circles […] but infighting among various factions in the bourgeois class is an explanation that makes sense, is verifiably true, and has happened throughout history.

I’m not implying that there’s some sort of conspiracy or that it’s unexplainable. There was an active decision to release these documents, I’m just trying to understand to whose benefit it is, and why was the decision made to release them.

The released documents implicate a lot of powerful people from across the spectrum in the U.S.

I have been very loosely keeping up with the news these days, and have been skimming through the new Epstein stuff. It’s got me wondering, has anyone here elaborated on why these files are being released to begin with?

If they have to release something, just to keep some sort of legitimacy, what is the benefit of releasing so many files?
I read that some of the files got taken down at some point, but why were they published in the first place?

If someone wrote a comment or post on this before, I’d appreciate a link.

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I also don’t bake very often, but it does not frustrate me. I find baking quite enjoyable. You need to respect the recipes and trust the process. It requires more precise study rather than feeling things out if you want to experiment with your own creations.

It also requires you to be quite familiar with your oven, as they vary more than you might initially think. With experience, you can then adjust certain things according to your taste like the amounts of sugar, lemon, vanilla, etc., without messing with the texture of the final product.

Like you said in another comment, a fun part of cooking is experimenting and improvising on the fly. That being said, I do find a different type of joy with baking compared to cooking.

It can be very relaxing. You have a recipe that you know you like, or a new one you want to try out from someone you trust. You don’t have to stress or think too much about the ingredients and adjustments. Take your time to measure, mix things smoothly, knead, decorate if you want to, turn on the oven, set a timer, and enjoy the pleasant smell of freshly-baked goods. You can look at it from the outside until the crust is just the way you like it, and just trust the recipe and timer to take care of the inside.

I love cooking, I often put a lot of love into it, and use only plant-based ingredients. But still with baking it feels more… wholesome. There’s just something about the process itself, and the joy of taking something freshly-baked out of the oven. It feels peaceful and rewarding.

Not really an activity in itself, but I do find that playing “lo-fi” music makes anything that I’m doing at that moment feel very chill. Whether it’s folding laundry or cleaning, taking notes after meetings, playing video games, whatever.

It’s a bit obvious that chill music gives a chill vibe, but I didn’t really realise how big of a difference it makes.

Funnily enough, I noticed the difference most when I was playing online competitive games, lol. Bad matches, terrible plays and angry comments from teammates, losses, etc. didn’t really affect my mood when I had the chill music on.

Many of them I think see women’s bodies as kind of treats that they’re entitled to access to

That’s a very uncharitable interpretation, I don’t believe that it’s true at all. I will give them the benefit of the doubt, even if they did not afford us any.

Ultimately, I think that their position aligns with the petty-bourgeois aspects of many Anarchist tendencies, which is predictable and expected when you have a “big tent” leftist community.

Rather than the focus on the sex trade as a whole, and the conditions and relations of overwhelming majority of sex workers around the world, their analysis centres around petty-bourgeois sex workers, mainly in the global north, even if they don’t realise it. The concept of “I’m free to do what I want with my body”, and thus abolishing the concept of sex work, of having to sell sexual services for money, is infringing on individual freedom.
They would argue that no one should have to sell sexual services for money, but they should be able to if they want to, and this is the part that shows their indifference to and detachment from the material reality of the sex trade in most of the world.

I’m not going to rehash the entire argument, but this is a much more sober and charitable interpretation of their position. It still does not justify their slander against us in any way, and ironically, I can turn around and call them SWERFS and chauvinists since their position on the issue is harmful to the vast majority of people in the sex trade.
It’s not something I would do, because I don’t believe having an incorrect analysis in good faith makes you a bigot, it just makes you incorrect.

I saw that thread and was quite displeased, to say the least, about the way the users and moderators on Hexbear handled that interaction.

I understand that there is a strong disagreement between various leftist tendencies on this topic. Being accused of being a SWERF and a misogynist for explaining the common ML position on the issue, centring the experiences of sex workers, and genuinely trying to work towards the liberation of everyone who finds themselves as victims of the sex trade is beyond absurd. It’s completely unacceptable.
Not to mention the deletion of comments from people explaining their positions, leaving up only the accusations against them, and the relentless dogpiling.

That post has left quite a bitter taste in my mouth and tainted my view of Hexbear as a whole. I still have appreciation for a lot of people there, but it was really disappointing.

I hope you have a pleasant experience here.

Dominion. Not pleasant, but informative.

If a podcast series counts as a documentary, then ProlesPod’s ~30 hour “The Stalin Eras” definitely tops my list