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

Yes, of course. I already elaborated on that in the post and in various comments in this thread. The most realistic idea would be to use some form of machine translation with specific parameters and have a crowd-sourced review and adjustment approach.

Whether it’s feasible or not depends on how well the machine translation works, but there’s good reason to believe that it’s already good enough these days for a task like this. (and if it’s not quite there, then it’s only a matter of months or at most 2 years)

My only concern is that it could over correct and overwrite theoretically-relevant terms (proletariat, bourgeoisie, contradiction, labour power, work, etc.), which is why I believed it needed to be trained specifically on marxist texts to understand the relevance of these terms.

I’m not sure how much of this would be addressed through training or simply just prompting. In any case there would need to be multiple runs of manual review.

A lot of valid points here. This method you describe is actually quite common for learning languages.

I only take issue with this:

Sadly, you just have to put up with poor translations

Sure, 20 years ago we might have had to put up with them, but why now? Today we have the digital infrastructure and communities to distribute new works without publishing houses. We have the technology to revise and update old translations to more legible modern standards. Why shouldn’t we at least attempt to take advantage of the tools we have at our disposal?

This is quite interesting, but do you think it would be applicable to translation work? So if we use your example, the original version of the text would be the “draft” and it would be able to modernise the language? (not sure what it would be trained on though, maybe modern marxist texts?)

I would assume it’s possible to reign it in so it doesn’t attempt to modify the content itself too much.

Agreed on all points. I also definitely think we should leverage the fact that these works are digitised and available on the internet; we aren’t bound by the limitations of publishing in the 19th and 20th centuries.

In the practical the problem as always will be to correctly convey the material without (inadvertently or not) removing or rewording things. Older editions are not innocent of this btw

We also have the benefit of later works that have built upon the work of those 19th century books and essays. I wouldn’t doubt that well-read MLs today would have a better understanding of the relevance of certain phrases and terminologies than the 19th century translator, and that they would be better equipped to relate and connect it to other relevant theory.

I’d be interested to see what @[email protected] is working on if he chooses to publicise it.

I am neither actually, i just speak fluent German as a second language.

That’s my bad, I shouldn’t have assumed. Though in my defence I’ve seen you comment on events in Germany a few times and Gauss is German, lol.

I definitely agree regarding the history aspect, and having to understand the context in which the works were written and the particular events and currents the authors were referring to.

However, I would like to clarify that I do not mean simplifying the texts, that is, as you said, the job of summaries and commentaries. Here I am strictly talking about the language.

As far as I know, you are German or at least a native German speaker, so I can only assume that you read Marx and Engels’ works in German. This I cannot comment on, since I have not read the original works as I do not speak the language. I’m not sure if any of the concerns I have expressed are applicable at all to the German and French editions (or any language other than English).

My point is that if we were to take the original German text today, for example from “Socialism: Utopian and Scientific” and translated it to English, it would be more legible to today’s English-speaking audience compared to Edward Aveling’s 1892 translation.

To clarify, I’m not claiming that the idiosyncrasies of 19th century English translations are holding the movement back. I’m just saying that they make reading theory more difficult that it needs to be, which might not be a major factor overall, but why not attempt to improve accessibility in this sense?

I would have to say I disagree about the second point. I don’t see the benefit of making theory more cumbersome by keeping around old translations in a language that’s not very familiar to the majority of people. Reading groups are very valuable, but moreso for discussing the contents of the books and explaining the context, history, etc., not for translating 19th century English idioms and phrases.

I wonder if it would be feasible to do with machine translation (such as through an LLM with specific prompting to not mess up the terminology) + voluntary review from some of our members.

Maybe we could have a pilot with a very short work such as “Wage Labor and Capital”, for example.

Usually you’d just briefly mash the beans with the back of a fork or a potato masher.

You can make wraps with a good spread and whatever ingredients you have on hand. Hummus or pesto are always solid choices.
You could use tofu or mock salami or chickpeas, canned beans, etc. and something like spinach or mushrooms or tomatoes or whatever.
In many countries you can find “high protein” tortilla wraps in most supermarkets, which are pretty good.

Another direction you could go is pancakes. I think they’re considered breakfast food in the US.

Thank you for the very in-depth response! This has me even more hyped up :)

I think you have a great read on how to make the list(s) as useful and accessible as possible for different audiences (though I do share your worry on the potential ‘fedbait’ aspect of some sections).

Once you are comfortable with a more-or-less ‘finalised’ version of the list, would you like to see this turn into more of a team or community project?
Less so in terms of changing the content, rather having contributors with different skills and focuses such as localisation, hosting a website or a wiki, collecting and digitising books, ‘marketing’ so-to-say by designing posters, stickers, or even shareable memes, etc.

I wonder if it could become a canonical list for something like Prolewiki as it would already mesh well with things Prolewiki already does such as the library and collecting ebooks, as well as adding editor’s notes to existing works. Maybe @[email protected] could share their thoughts on this.

New edition of the introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list in the works?

Lemmy user Cowbee is well-known for their tireless efforts in educating the wider Lemmy community on Marxist-Leninist positions and theory. They are also the author and maintainer of the renowned “Read Theory, Darn it!” introductory Marxist-Leninist reading list.

The reading list has received much praise from long-time MLs, newcomers, and curious liberals alike, earning the recommendation of prominent users such as Lemmy developer and .ml admin Dessalines. At the time of writing, the reading list has amassed over 320 upvotes on Lemmy.ml.

It was first published on November 12th 2024 and has undergone significant changes since then. It has undergone two major revisions, the latest of which was in August of 2025. For comparison, one of the earliest versions can be found on a crosspost to lemmy.world from November 29th 2024.

We have recently received information from credible sources that a third major revision of the reading list might be just around the corner.

What can we expect from revision 3?

We can only speculate in this section, but Cowbee has previously provided hints as to what changes we might expect. Cowbee has expressed on multiple occasions that they would like to bring the reading time down to 50 hours^[1][2]. The list currently sits around 60 hours total reading time. They have also hinted at possibly splitting the list, creating a separate history-focused list^[3][4]. This idea has however faced some pushback from the community^[5][6].

It is difficult to predict the exact changes that will be made, but in a more general sense, according to Cowbee, the goal of the third revision would be “to make the guide more lean, readable, and remove overlap as much as possible.”^[7]

We have reached out to @[email protected] for a Lemmygrad exclusive preview of the much-anticipated third revision, and will continue to provide new information as it becomes available.

Happy birthday Oppo!

bunny

I assume the user themselves deleted the post in this case. The way the post itself becomes completely inaccessible after that is very unfortunate, but that’s a software rather than administration issue.

I appreciate the clarification.

It happened on a couple occasions before, but I was mainly referring to a post on Ask Lemmygrad that got removed today or yesterday. Though now when I think about it I’m not sure if it was removed by a mod/admin or the user themselves. Lemmy just gives me an error page.