o hohohohohoho!

It’s neat that the ant joke’s pun translates into English, good pick.

The Wikipedia page on East German jokes has a few Trabant jokes.

• What’s the best feature of a Trabant? – There’s a heater at the back to keep your hands warm when you’re pushing it.

• A new Trabi has been launched with two exhaust pipes – so you can use it as a wheelbarrow.

• How do you double the value of a Trabant? – Fill it with gas.

• The back page of the Trabant manual contains the local bus schedule.

• Four men were seen carrying a Trabant. Somebody asks them why? Was it broken? They reply: “No, nothing wrong with it, we’re just in a hurry.”

• How do you catch a Trabi? – Place a piece of chewing gum on the road.

Well, I tried looking up videos of this and found one more reason not to: someone brought a bucket of hot water to their car and slipped on the icy driveway, spilling it on their face.

I was clarifying and adding more details, and also restating to make it clear I wasn’t disagreeing at all or trivializing it.

Maybe. It could also be just a general aversion of politics in the workplace, it’s usually not a good place to start (non-work related) political fights.

Is it because of pedestrians, or just heavy car traffic? [edit: just read the road details, looks like it’s a one-way ‘living street’ with pedestrians, capped at 20 mph]

(just posting OSM link for anyone else like me avoiding Google) https://www.openstreetmap.org/way/13526138

For what it’s worth: something I haven’t seen come up (so while this is a pragmatic perspective, don’t pretend I’m dismissing the importance of your relationship and your values! I’m only adding this for variety and discussion)

People can change. Many won’t, but some do. [vid: former white supremacists describing their process of leaving] Whether you think your brother is willing or able to change is your call, and whether it’s worth the emotional and mental strain is your call. You aren’t obliged, but it’s worth considering.

People who have left these ideologies, from what I’ve heard, often come back to two main points - they had someone in their life who cared about them, but was also unwilling to tolerate their bullshit, and they had to want to leave it by themselves. Honestly, I see parallels with people recovering from serious drug addictions and cults like QAnon.

But, again, this isn’t easy and there’s no guarantee of them changing, so do not feel obliged to even try. Your health is more important, and there are plenty of other ways you can help change the world.

In an ideal world, I support one of the opposition parties to Hamas.

But pragmatically, in reality, that’s just not feasible. Palestine’s main defensive power is Hamas. So while I agree it’s an Zionist Regime vs. Palestine conflict, Hamas is to Palestine what the IOF is to the Zionist Regime - that is, their military power. It doesn’t really mean much if someone “supports Israel in the conflict but doesn’t support the IDF”, that doesn’t make sense outside of abstract ideas.

Correct me if I’m wrong: IIRC the feds sent back mock pictures to ‘confirm’ the victims were killed, so I don’t know if anyone was assassinated in reality but, as you said, Ulbricht payed to have them murdered.

I have talked to people. That’s how I’ve found fellow socialists at work, alongside some others who are increasingly (and surprisingly) critical of capitalism and systematic issues affecting them.

Obviously culture changes from place to place, I don’t know your circumstances, but I expected my workplace to be especially conservative.

Someone in that thread you linked to posted this short video, I think it’s worth a watch: There are more communists than you think!

Dr. Strangelove is a surprising adept analogue - immigrant from a white supremacist regime who can’t leave it behind, weird and socially awkward, [supposed] tech expert. Maybe I’m stretching it a bit.

‘Accident’ isn’t the word I’d use to describe a famous, clear, unique and repeated gesture. It’s not something one does unknowingly. I’d lean more towards ‘association’, ‘intuition’, perhaps ‘familiarity’, if it weren’t premeditated. It’s no secret that Musk is frequently interacting with and boosting neo-nazis on their social media platform, the most doubt I could possibly give them is they wanted to do a powerful victory gesture, picked the first one that came to mind and they were too damn ignorant to realize even US conservatives don’t like Nazi symbols.

Some people who were in Special Ed report, like, major emotional trauma from it.

Is that with people also in Brazil? Because your experience sounds very different from the cases I’ve heard in some other countries where Special Ed students are isolated rather than given extra classes at the end of the school day.

Yep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methamphetamine#History,_society,_and_culture

Pervitin is the nonprescription brand name of methamphetamine from 1938 in Nazi Germany, also used by their soldiers.

Desoxyn is a current trademarked name of methamphetamine. It is legal as a prescription drug in many counties including the USA. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_methamphetamine

Pervitin (aka. Desoxyn)

And further, there were German coup plots to assassinate Hitler for the same reason, to try and put someone competent in there.

You know it’s gotten pretty bad when even the anarchist flag usernames are meming about how ridiculous the anti tankie attitude is.

for a service/site/mom-and-pop shop to be sustainable without unending growth.

I’ve been on somewhat niche sites which have lasted decades, with waves of people coming in whenever related sites screw up and trickles of people leaving when an alternative community becomes more popular. It’s a comfy, slow existence, which works for some communities, but not for ones like this which thrive on diversity and chattiness, rather than really well thought-out replies days apart from each other. On reddit-like sites, time penalizes how high a post goes (unlike a forum where years-long threads are very normal to see on a front page) so there is an inherent benefit in having consistent activity. That doesn’t imply boundless growth, but at least sustaining a decent level of activity. We’re not chasing ad revenue, growth for growth’s sake is not what we want or need.

But with that said, a community with no new visitors can only lose them. That can be a slow process, but it’s inevitable. Been there, done that. Again, doesn’t imply that pointless growth is a good thing.