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Joined 2 months ago
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Cake day: June 28th, 2026

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  • I’m glad your personal experience was great, I get where u are coming from. In most other similar situations, that tracks. Some topics do truly have little to no need for an in-depth political angle. And yes, most of my enjoyable classes too were non-political, although not because they were non-political.

    But what is so fundamental to “leftist ideology” (I take that as Marxist economics, to be clear), is the role of labor in the material world. That’s the shortest I can boil that down to. And today, in “2026,” with the prevalence of AI, and based on the post mentioning “leftist ideology” and “teaching an intro to comp sci class,” what else could they be talking about? AI, as we all know, is a labor-cost saver for bosses. Economically, that is what it is hoped to function as. It is (ideally) a profit increaser. That’s just the math that any and all capitalist follows. A teacher that understands that, and is in the position of progressing their students’ careers, yeah, can’t blame them for “seeing it everywhere” and wanting to share that.




  • Typically, historically, it didn’t matter really. Moore’s Law, general positive vibes from the prospect of computer tech in the future of the industry, and why scare undergrads seeking good salaries away from institutions taking donations from said corps? But things are pretty different now. AI is less of a thought experiment than before. What better lens to analyze AI than from labor in economics, i.e., Marxism?



  • Nonfiction:

    First pass: Slow, deliberate, digest each word. A simple annotation system. ! for passages that are thought provoking. Arrow for major details and connections to other details. ? for… Take a guess.

    Immediately after the chapter/section: jot down what u recall (thesis, conclusion, details, dates, names). Summarize. ~10 minutes

    Day or two later: Flip thru your annotations, look thru your notes. Fill in the gaps.

    Repeat if desired! Our neural pathways must be well-trodden, but it can be optimized! Open to revisions 😤

    The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein. Imo, mandatory reading. Incredibly informative, enraging, and educational. Very “readable.”






  • Idk, it’s kinda always going to be propaganda when there is financing involved, no? Not all propaganda is bad, it’s the interests behind it and how that financing is structured, like if it is a grassroots donation based media outlet (Democracy Now!). Correct me if I’m oversimplifying, but in the ideal sense, a PSA by the state for folks to wash their hands with soap is “good propaganda.” When the state is not a tool of the proletariat, when the state tells its citizens to be wary of their own vaccines (that had to pass their own regulations), or when the state spreads the notion that another state is committing genocide (to distract away from the genocides that our state commits/is implicit in), then it’s the bad kind of propaganda. In that sense, I think it would be good to have more anticapitalist propaganda! More art, music, documentaries, etc. Call it PSA if that sounds better lol