Tbh I feel like that’s a pretty likely outcome at the moment lol

I don’t remember the source, but I always think back to that Stalin quote where he said he felt like a cult of personality was being built around him, with the aim that it would be used against him eventually. It seems like his suspicions were true, since that is exactly what happened after his death.

Reading about things like him being referenced in the national anthem, or the naming of Stalingrad, as a couple examples, there’s always a note that he objected to it before it was approved over his objection. Of course that’s usually portrayed as him putting on a show after ordering the things himself, but it seems to line up with the idea that it wasn’t being pushed by him, since he’s noted as disapproving of those kinds of things every time I’ve read about them.

It’s been probably a couple of years now, I stopped in the middle of an episode after Robert or the guest or someone (I don’t really remember at this point lol) went on an apropos of nothing rant against China, and I haven’t listened since. It had been getting on my nerves for a while, but that was the last straw for me. Something about an “anarchist” who makes their living entirely off of corporate sponsorships, enough that they stopped being a journalist and moved into a “compound” (his word, iirc), never sat right with me anyway.

Yeah I’ve been involved with them in varying degrees for the last several years, and I’ve never seen anything questionable from the leadership or regular members. Save for the occasional troll that gets into the Slack just to start drama, and is promptly kicked out

As far as I know, which to be fair isn’t much, it’s more of a landback kind of thing. Same deal as tribes in the US purchasing land in recent times, just involving the government directly rather than buying it from individual owners.

I guess with enlistment numbers down for the military in general, they’re doing everything they can to encourage new recruits. Even if they sit back and don’t talk to anyone the whole time, they’re still “normalizing” the military and planting a seed in the children’s minds for when they’re older.

:same-picture:

If you’re still sending invites, my friend code is 52692266. Thanks in advance!

I’ll have to look into that. I switched to Pocket Casts years ago specifically for the cross-platform sync feature, and haven’t really given it any thought since lol

It’s not quite the same, but Pocket Casts lets you customize how many seconds the skip buttons go forward and back by, which can at least make it a little less tedious

I think it shows how well they do it that I don’t even need to see their logo or anything to know it’s PSL. Just the font alone is enough a lot of the time

I feel like I’m in a tough spot, where I’m close enough to a major city that I can potentially go to events, but far enough away that the time commitment involved means I need more advanced notice than there typically is between the announcement and the event itself. Especially since I have a kid and both my wife and I work, I can’t be gone all day without prior planning.

I was trying to go through the process to join, and did a phone interview with a guy, after which he wanted to meet in person for the next step. He suggested I come to one of their events and we’d meet up there, but I never had one line up where I could make it. We were going to try and plan a meet up, but I needed to let my work schedule settle out first, and at this point my last three messages across the last several weeks haven’t been replied to.

I’m not really sure where I was going with that lol, but I don’t really know what to do from here

You’re welcome, it’s the episode titled “Dialectical Materialism w/ Josh Sykes”, uploaded June 3rd

From what I’ve been able to tell, most if not all of their members are MLs, and it’s generally considered an ML party, but they don’t advertise a specific tendency. IIRC they started more or less as an ML split from a Trotskyist party. (Now I’m not sure if it was PSL or FRSO being referenced lol, but this was about PSL.)

I’ve also had issues trying to join. I did sort of a phone interview, and the guy wanted to meet me in person to continue the process. He suggested attending one of their protests and we’d meet up there, but they don’t get announced publicly far enough in advance for me to make it. My last message about trying to arrange a meeting didn’t get a reply, so who knows at this point lol

There was an FRSO guy on the Upstream podcast recently, explaining dialectical materialism. The host also asked him about the org, so he explained a good bit there

I know Yugopnik posted in the last couple of days that he had just met JT and Hakim in person, so that would explain JT being outside the US at least lol

Lol I’ve been waiting to see some takes on it. I haven’t read too much into it yet, but it seems like it could potentially be a big deal

And the christo-fascist president in Parable of the Talents using the campaign slogan “Make America Great Again”. I wish she had been able to write the third book

Oh yeah that would have been great if done right.

I always thought a movie/trilogy covering the 7 hours war would be cool, but I feel like they’d just try to adapt the games themselves, which I think would be a waste.