#Ml class analysis

[microwaving-tesilid-argente]

actually now that i think about it, i dont think ill stop writing s class heroine fic even when im done w teshes.... my brain has been rotating hesphael very loudly in the brain the past couple of weeks. i can't believe there's no hesphael content out there in the world.. mutter mutter gotta be the change you want to see in the world

[jcmarchi]

The Future of Cybersecurity: AI, Automation, and the Human Factor

New Post has been published on https://thedigitalinsider.com/the-future-of-cybersecurity-ai-automation-and-the-human-factor/

The Future of Cybersecurity: AI, Automation, and the Human Factor

In the past decade, along with the explosive growth of information technology, the dark reality of cybersecurity threats has also evolved dramatically. Cyberattacks, once driven primarily by mischievous hackers seeking notoriety or financial gain, have become far more sophisticated and targeted. From state-sponsored espionage to corporate and identity theft, the motives behind cybercrime are increasingly sinister and dangerous. Even as monetary gain remains an important reason for cybercrime, it has been overshadowed by more nefarious aims of stealing critical data and assets. Cyberattackers extensively leverage cutting-edge technologies, including artificial intelligence, to infiltrate systems and carry out malicious activities. In the US, the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) reported more than 800,000 cybercrime-related complaints filed in 2022, with total losses exceeding $10 billion, shattering 2021’s total of $6.9 billion, according to the bureau’s Internet Crime Complaint Center.

With the threat landscape evolving rapidly, it’s time for organizations to adopt a multi-pronged approach to cybersecurity. The approach should be to address how attackers gain entry; prevent initial compromise; swiftly detect incursions; and enable rapid response and remediation. Protecting digital assets requires harnessing the power of AI and automation while ensuring skilled human analysts remain integral to the security posture.

Protecting an organization requires a multi-layered strategy that accounts for the diverse entry points and attack vectors employed by adversaries. Broadly, these are under four main categories: 1) Web and network attacks; 2) User behavior and identity-based attacks; 3) Entity attacks targeting cloud and hybrid environments; and 4) Malware, including ransomware, advanced persistent threats, and other malicious code.

Leveraging AI and Automation

Deploying AI and machine learning (ML) models tailored to each of these attack classes is critical for proactive threat detection and prevention. For web and network attacks, models must identify threats such as phishing, browser exploitation, and Distributed Denial-of-Service (DDoS) attacks in real time. User and entity behavior analytics leveraging AI can spot anomalous activities indicative of account compromise or misuse of system resources and data. Finally, AI-driven malware analysis can rapidly triage new strains, pinpoint malicious behavior, and mitigate the impact of file-based threats. By implementing AI and ML models across this spectrum of attack surfaces, organizations can significantly enhance their capability to autonomously identify attacks at the earliest stages before they escalate into full-blown incidents.

Once AI/ML models have identified potential threat activity across various attack vectors, organizations face another key challenge—making sense of the frequent alerts and separating critical incidents from the noise. With so many data points and detections generated, applying another layer of AI/ML to correlate and prioritize the most serious alerts that warrant further investigation and response becomes crucial. Alert fatigue is an increasingly critical issue that needs to be solved.

AI can play a pivotal role in this alert triage process by ingesting and analyzing high volumes of security telemetry, fusing insights from multiple detection sources including threat intelligence, and surfacing only the highest fidelity incidents for response. This reduces the burden on human analysts, who would otherwise be inundated with widespread false positives and low-fidelity alerts lacking adequate context to determine the severity and next steps.

Although threat actors have been actively deploying AI to power attacks like DDoS, targeted phishing, and ransomware, the defensive side has lagged in AI adoption. However, this is rapidly changing as security vendors race to develop advanced AI/ML models capable of detecting and blocking these AI-powered threats.

The future for defensive AI lies in deploying specialized small language models tailored to specific attack types and use cases rather than relying on large, generative AI models alone. Large language models, in contrast, show more promise for cybersecurity operations such as automating help desk functions, retrieving standard operating procedures, and assisting human analysts. The heavy lifting of precise threat detection and prevention will be best handled by the highly specialized small AI/ML models.

The Role of Human Expertise

It is crucial to utilize AI/ML alongside process automation to enable rapid remediation and containment of verified threats. At this stage, provisioned with high-confidence incidents, AI systems can kick off automated playbook responses tailored to each specific attack type—blocking malicious IPs [internet protocol], isolating compromised hosts, enforcing adaptive policies, and more. However, human expertise remains integral, validating the AI outputs, applying critical thinking, and overseeing the autonomous response actions to ensure protection without business disruption.

Nuanced understanding is what humans bring to the table. Also, analyzing new and complex malware threats requires creativity and problem-solving skills that may be beyond machines’ reach.

Human expertise is essential in several key areas:

Validation and Contextualization: AI systems, despite their sophistication, can sometimes generate false positives or misinterpret data. Human analysts are needed to validate AI outputs and provide the necessary context that AI might overlook. This ensures that responses are appropriate and proportionate to the actual threat.

Complex Threat Investigation: Some threats are too complex for AI to handle alone. Human experts can delve deeper into these incidents, utilizing their experience and intuition to uncover hidden aspects of the threat that AI might miss. This human insight is critical for understanding the full scope of sophisticated attacks and devising effective countermeasures.

Strategic Decision Making: While AI can handle routine tasks and data processing, strategic decisions about overall security posture and long-term defense strategies require human judgment. Experts can interpret AI-generated insights to make informed decisions about resource allocation, policy changes, and strategic initiatives.

Continuous Improvement: Human analysts contribute to the continuous improvement of AI systems by providing feedback and training data. Their insights help refine AI algorithms, making them more accurate and effective over time. This symbiotic relationship between human expertise and AI ensures that both evolve together to address emerging threats.

Optimized Human-Machine Teaming

Underlying this transition is the need for AI systems that can learn from historical data (supervised learning) and continuously adapt to detect novel attacks through unsupervised/reinforcement learning approaches. Combining these methods will be key to staying ahead of attackers’  evolving AI capabilities.

Overall, AI will be crucial for defenders to scale their detection and response capabilities. Human expertise must remain tightly integrated to investigate complex threats, audit AI system outputs, and guide strategic defensive strategies. An optimized human-machine teaming model is ideal for the future.

As massive volumes of security data accumulate over time, organizations can apply AI analytics to this trove of telemetry to derive insights for proactive threat hunting and the hardening of defenses. Continuously learning from previous incidents allows predictive modeling of new attack patterns. As AI capabilities advance, the role of small and specialized language models tailored to specific security use cases will grow. These models can help further reduce ‘alert fatigue’ by precisely triaging the most essential alerts for human analysis. Autonomous response, powered by AI, can also expand to handle more Tier 1 security tasks.

However, human judgment and critical thinking will remain indispensable, especially for high-severity incidents. Undoubtedly, the future is one of optimized human-machine teaming, where AI handles voluminous data processing and routine tasks, enabling human experts to focus on investigating complex threats and high-level security strategy.

[starguardianniom]

Yeah Marinette didn't think for one second how it would look like outside of her perspective and knowledge, so she just comes across as extremely mean to the class. And nevers get over it.

So a friend of mine point this, before the piss window reveal the class were pretty justified at that point on not believing Marinette about Lila.

Like using her example from multiplication, while Lila was arguing in defense of ladybug and encouraging the class not to lose faith, Marinette was just glaring at her

Oh yeah no absolutely!

Like just. Let's look at even Chameleon from the class's perspective:

Since they have to move to accommodate Lila's disability, everyone decided to take the time to rearrange. Unfortunately, Marinette is late as usual so she misses out on a first-come-first-serve scenario. Kinda sucks, but unlike Lila she doesn't have a legitimate reason for choosing her seat other than 'I want that one'.

Marinette comes in and finds out that Lila has a disability that means she has to sit in the front. Immediately, Marinette accuses Lila of faking her disability and says she should be the one to sit in the back while Marinette takes the front seat. Lila is shocked and hurt by this accusation, of course!

When Adrien offers to sit in the back instead, both girls scream 'no!'. This shifts the idea that it's not about Marinette wanting the front seat, it's about wanting the seat next to Adrien. Lila's reaction could be taken as either Adrien or as 'I'd like to not sit next to the girl who just accused me of faking my disability'.

Later at lunch, Marinette pulls Alya and Nino aside to try and convince them that Lila is lying. Instead of bringing up any of the things that Lila did in Volpina other than 'went to the park with Adrien', Marinette once again says that Lila is a liar. She then once again tries to publicly test Lila's disability claim in a way that aggravates the injury.

Marinette storms off, and Lila follows to try and talk things out peacefully. A few minutes later, Lila is Akumatized. Marinette ends the day still mad at Lila for 'being a liar' but has at least settled for glaring from the back instead of screaming at her or testing her disabilities.

So yeah I'd be sus of Mari's feelings and intentions as well.

[metamatar]

i have a question and sorry if it sounds incoherent. why is it so important to marxists to distinguish that marxism is not “moral” or “ideological”? i understand that marxism is grounded in historical materialism and that it aims to understand how existing structures and institutions function with the specific goal of abolishing them in favour of a marxist state, but when it comes to understanding how to move forward past capitalism, how can MLs claim that it’s entirely objective and scientific? isnt the fundamental purpose of marxism (abolishing the oppressor class and putting the proletariat in power) a subjective one, given that it to support that you need to believe that abolishing the oppressor class is desirable in the first place? how would ML “scientifically” help people decide where the line is drawn on subjects like the death penalty and incarceration if its committed by a communist party (given that the decision that the cost of killing/imprisoning people is worth the boon it would give in establishing a communist state is still based on subjective goals?)

i don't think modern marxists should claim they're not ideological. im sure some do, but imo the correct claim is marxism is not idealist. i think some of this confusion comes from a popperian view of science as "neutral" or "objective" outside of time. how the political economy affects the propagation of ideology and the process of science as practiced in reality is very standard marxist analysis now. some of the claim to objectivity is something that most people claim belongs to their favourite philosophical project see the rawlsian veil of ignorance in liberalism. marx is also writing in a world where theological and religious reasoning have a lot of primacy in philosophy and he is drawing a clean break from that by hewing to scientific characterisation of his methods.

idealism, in the kantian sense is a philosophy that argues that our ideals (about say, fairness, justice etc) inform how we organise society. marxism, as philosophical project develops in response to kant and hegel to argue that the political economic base, ie the productive relations of society actually inform superstructure of ideals. to quote marx in the preface to critique of political economy: "it is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness."

for clarity's sake the idea that changes in the mode of production (mostly due to technology) transform the relations of production which is the main driving force of history is historical materialism. the analysis of why existing structures and institutions must be abolished therefore has to be grounded in analysis where such structures are considered variously – unstable, internally contradictory etc. if you view historical materialism as true, your theory of change cannot be that you'll change the world because it is unfair (an idea.) you can view the world as unfair as a marxist and talk about it to propagate the necessity of your project but that doesn't actually give you a blueprint on how to change it.

capitalists are oppressors, but marxism doesn't view the problem in their oppressive or evil natures. capitalist economies demand even the most moral capitalist to exploit the proletariat. but! it is desirable to abolish there class relations not merely because they are unfair and exploitative but because these class relationships cause workers to develop class consciousness, recognise their power and abolish capitalism.

on your specific example, i don't think marxism can or should claim their are no moral dilemmas. historical materialism doesn't assert that there are no conflicting understandings of history. walter benjamin's theses on the philosophy of history is imo good reading here.

so i dont think your concern about why it's important for marxists to believe this makes sense, because this is what marxism is. if you don't find this convincing, you're not a marxist. you could be an anarchist, or a social democrat or a radical liberal.

[apas-95]

I've been getting more into ML groups recently, but keep noticing I get called a "moralist" when I speak about where my anticapitalist views stem from. If "moralism" and morality aren't good arguments against capitalism, then are there ANY "good" arguments against it? Capitalism has resulted in unprecedented increases in science, technology, and living standards across the globe. And yet people are still fed up with it, decrying how exploited the lower classes are, and protest against the cruelty involved. Those are all reasons to be anticapitalist, but they're fundamental moral arguments, and I genuinely cannot think of how I can argue for communism/socialism/anticapitalist otherwise, at least in a way that Fully abandons moralism.

I can't speak to your precise situation, but the key point to understand here is that morals and systems of morality are all socially constructed, and all serve the interests of one or the other class in society. It's not to say moral arguments can't be made, but your analysys and basis of thought needs to be deeper than morality, because morality isn't something that exists in itself. If you are making an argument founded in bourgeois morality, you will produce bourgeois errors; if you make an argument founded in proletarian morality, you won't make those errors - but obviously, to be able to determine what moral system you're using in the first place, you need to have a deeper theoretical understanding and understand why these things are against the moral system of a given class, why they are against their class interests. More importantly, moralist arguments aren't the basis for an actual movement to destroy capitalism. Marx and Lenin didn't just write 'capitalism sucks!!! people suffer!!' - any worker living in their times could have said as much - they analysed how capitalism works, how it benefits or harms given segments of society, and how it was inevitably driving towards its own collapse and replacement. Being 'anticapitalist' is not enough, and it is not the same as being communist - again, basically anyone who isn't well-off is going to be anticapitalist, is going to have moral critiques of capitalism of one sort or the other, but that doesn't translate into an actionable and correct understanding of what is to be done about it, and will often have harmful and incorrect ideas due to not analysing their own morality.

[emergency-vehicle]

as like The marxist leninist transformers fan (im literally in a ML political party and do revolutionary activism in my personal time)

im telling all of u rn

it is possible that BOTH d-16 AND orion pax were right. like. im begging all of you to not think about this in black and white. BEGGING you.

i have to literally sit down and watch the movie scene by scene and take notes to write the analysis i want to, but im going to give you something VERY brief.

Iacon City is NOT a fully fascist society. It is, in fact, a colony of the Quintessons. It is the victim of Quintesson imperialism.

Sentinel's leadership is absolutely on the path to fascism, but NOT FULLY fascist. Is Sentinel himself a fascist? Yeah, probably. But his societal development is not. this is not to say he isn't an evil dictator- HE ABSOLUTELY IS.

D-16 represents the proletariat's rage against the oppressor. D-16 represents the quote "Either place yourself at the mercy of capital, eke out a wretched existence as of old and sink lower and lower, or adopt a new weapon [violent revolution]-this is the alternative imperialism puts before the vast masses of the proletariat. Imperialism brings the working class to revolution." (-J.V. Stalin, the foundations of leninism).

Orion, Elita One, B-127 and D-16 represent the vanguard party. Orion is NOT like lenin whatsoever, except in his representation of revolutionary optimism, but the role he takes on is similar to lenin's role in the russian revolution simply because he finds himself as the leader.

NO WHERE IN THE MOVIE DOES ORION PAX TALK ABOUT REFORM.

ORION LITERALLY SAYS "I'm thinking about what WE'RE going to do." he AGREES with D-16 that something ABSOLUTELY has to be done about Sentinel. ORION LITERALLY LEADS A VIOLENT COUP AGAINST SENTINEL.

and, something that ALL of yall with this take are conveniently ignoring, is Orion's line "The rebuilding of Iacon cannot start with an execution."

WHICH, OBJECTIVELY, FROM A HISTORICAL STANDPOINT, IS CORRECT.

Yall remember the Chinese revolution in which they overthrew the emperor (who btw was just as evil as sentinel) and then literally turned him into a street cleaner?????

it IS possible to overthrow a violent, evil dictator and then exact revenge on them, while also building a far more moral society in the process.

[huellitaa]

hello hello huelittaa 👋✨ do u have any tips for someone struggling with motivation to workout? or even to take a simple walk? thank uu 🤍

bee's physical activity handbook: motive 🎀 . ݁₊ ⊹

hiiii ml!!!!!!!! 🫶🏻🩷💗 sorry this has been sitting in my inbox for a few days BUT IM HERE NOW !!!!! honestly this is something i also struggle with myself ,, i am still recovering from depression personally so this is still difficult for me sometimes too but these are some things i do !!!! ♡

🧁𓂃 ࣪˖ 1. prepare urself for the possibility

so since i know i have this problem a lot, it helps me to be prepared for this in advance. i actually have a whole notion page filled with a table of letters to myself in specific situations i find myself in a lot, this included, and have a whole archived stored of cute photos and motivation and things like articles and videos and tumblr posts on the main page and in the letters that make me wanna get up and do shit and its my LIFESAVER. (should i make a post on this?)

but i'd suggest to keep a note or page or document , physical or digital, filled with just motivation for this specific thing, like things you like about it, photos romanticising working out or going outside, songs that motivate you, etc etc etc. the list goes on but you get the point ♡

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ 2. detective chapter: analysis! ♡

figure out why you dont want to. this is the main thing that helps me and its so simple but once u figure out the root u figure out the rest and this applies just the same here too. is it laziness? mental health? exhaustion? overworking? burnout? you won't be able to continue until you haven't found the actual problem. it's like trying to travel with no path to travel on.

💭𓂃 ࣪˖ 3. pep talk!

one thing i do that helps me the most is literally just lay in bed or wherever you are where ur procrastinating and thinking about this over and over and going back and forth whether to do it or not is to force the thoughts out (literally. u can envision it if it helps!) and deadass bully myself into doing it 😭😭

(🗒🎀 note: i've also found it helps for some people to do this in the mirror, just so ur face to face w urself as it were. plus u get to admire urself at the same time so its a win all around)

if ur not into harsh motivation, another thing i love, esp when im not feeling great enough to deal w harsh motivation is pretend ur giving advice to a friend or ur child in this position. this is one of the greatest pieces of advice ive ever gotten i literally cannot stress this enough. do this‼️ p.s. you can do this in ur head or out loud. i usually do some mix of both because i am a professional at talking to myself constantly literally all the time

🧁𓂃 ࣪˖ 4. use gratitude in ur favour!

one thing i like to do is essentially guilt trip myself into doing it. erm. you can also call this gratitude it sounds a lot better. think of how grateful you are to even have the opportunity to go outside safely to go for a walk, to be able to work out and keep urself healthy, because there's always someone who's not going to be able to do those things. it is a privilege to live your life and this should be classed as one too.

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ 5. all about the outlook

another thing i love that falls into the category of motivation is treating it as an act of love and luxury rather than a chore and changing ur outlook on it. for example,

"oh, i have to do this or i'm a failure" or "i really don't want to do it today"

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ into...

"i deserve to do this for myself because i deserve to be taken care of and kept in good health."

and i find this makes me so much more open to it because you do deserve it.

🧸𓂃 ࣪˖ 6. romanticism; obviously!

okayyyy i know you hear this EVERYWHERE but ‼️its‼️because‼️its true‼️ romanticism is my LIFE not a day goes by where i dont act like im a silly girl in a pink girly shoujo world, and i do this even more so when i dont wanna get up and do simple tasks like this.

some things that give me motivation via romanticism is getting dressed up and cute even if i'm just going for a walk and listening to music and appreciating the world (🗒🎀 note: i love taking pictures or going on different routes whenever i go for walks! it makes the experience so much sweeter and more enjoyable ♡), or putting on cute clothes, loud music and grabbing a pretty waterbottle and hyping myself up to do even just 10 mins of pilates because something is always better than nothing!!!!!!!!!!!

🎀𓂃 ࣪˖ 7. something is better than nothing

with the last note from my previous point in mind, try and always do just a little bit, even if it's not the amount you intended. say you wanted to workout for 20 minutes every day, but you really weren't feeling it today? do 10 instead. this way ur still doing something. we always have tomorrow. take it at ur own pace. you wanted to go running every day? just go for a walk. you can always try again. there is no limit on how many attempts you have with these things. this is always better than just doing nothing at all. this is basically finding the middle ground when you do these things. which leads me onto my final point ,,♡

✨️𓂃 ࣪˖ 8. finding the middle ground

the no.1 thing in all of this is please don't beat urself up for it if you don't feel like it sometimes, but still keep to it as best as possible. say for example you really didn't want to one day but you had no real reason not to, you should still do it. but if your emotional or physical health or anything like that is in a bad place right now, then allow urself to skip for a day or two. dont beat urself up over it, but keep to it when and where you can because i know its difficult sometimes ♡

all my love, and u got this!!!!!!!!!! 🩷🫶🏻💬💗🎀

[science-fiction-is-real]

(I’m hoping not to start drama with this ask but I saw you ask someone what’s wrong with Solarpunk and they gave a horrible answer to what Solarpunk is) so Solarpunk is about being against capitalism and consumerism. It’s about being able to have the right to repair, repair your electronics, repair you clothes, and trying to help lower our impact on the Earth. So like stopping plastics, and instead use things that are truly biodegradable if we are to continue that way of convenience. It’s about stop using fossil fuels so the climate crisis will slow down to a stop so ya know. We would stop living in a major extinction event. Solarpunk is being able to merge our technology and nature so we’re being to live in coexist while still having our advances. It’s about community and being able to grow our own food and share it with others. May it be with community gardens or buildings in cities with vertical farms. Genuinely it’s not just an aesthetic and people are trying to fight against capitalism (hence the Punk) but people do create art and write literature about it as people can imagine a better future when it’s being created in art. (Like seriously automatic doors weren’t created until after people saw it as a possibility on Star Trek when it first aired.)

Again just wanted to clear up what Solarpunk is.

For those trying to follow the conversation at home, this is in response to a question I submitted to ML blogger @forevergulag about why they dislike Solar Punk. I think the answer I got from them makes a lot of sense. So I will simultaneously be running defense for their answer while offering some of my own opinions.

On to my response to this ask.

All those things you describe are well and good, but if your goal is to fight capitalism, it isn't enough to be punk. It isn't enough to be "anti-consumerist." You need to begin with a solid class analysis. You need to put our current forms of production and consumption in the context of historical development. Actually dismantling capitalism is not "punk." It's boring and difficult and it takes many generations. The first steps in building a non-capitalist world often end up looking a lot like capitalism itself.

I think a lot of what you are describing is finding alternative forms for food production, which is certainly a useful exercise... there are a lot of problems with modern food production. It would be great if there were efficient ways to incorporate food production into urban environments, find ways of growing food that don't rely toxic pesticides and fertilizers or acres-wide crop mono cultures.

However, I feel like a lot of what you are describing seems to revolve around DOWN SCALING food production, a terrible idea, and bringing a lot of non-farm workers into food production, and taking them away from their other jobs, also a terrible idea.

When you say "Our community should be able to grow our own food" I can't help but imagine the sort of small scale community I often see fetishized in some anarchist spaces. I would point out that the farmer sitting on a tractor 300 miles away from you growing your food is also part of your community. And a giant industrial farm that produces more corn than you could ever possibly know what to do with, that too is your community growing its own food.

We can't fight capitalism simply by urbanizing agriculture or bringing it down to a more local scale. And in fact, localizing agriculture and downscalling agriculture is going to have the effect of reducing food production so I am not sure that's really what we want.

[txttletale]

So I'm a leftist because I can plainly see that capitalism sucks, but I have a really hard time pinning down what I think we should replace it with because I have "agrees with the last theory I read" disease. (Or, more embarrassingly, "agrees with the last Post I read.")

Something I've been wondering about recently is what's the point of planning and arguing over what happens after the revolution anyway? The chances of a successful worker's revolution in my lifetime, let alone the next few decades, feels vanishingly small. The preconditions just feel so far away.

Is there really value in committing to a specific ideology right now, or is it sufficient to say the anarchist future and the ML future (and even, like, the DemSoc future) sound better than what we have now, and require many of the same preconditions, so let's work towards those shared goals now and figure out what comes after in a few decades when the groundwork is actually laid?

i agree with you that i don't think a genuine revolutionary situation will arise (at least, not in the imperial core) within our lifetimes. i also agree that there is a meaningful degree to which the theoretical differences between marxist-leninists & anarchists are far enough from being present and pressing concerns that they should in almost all cases be working together and employing similar tactics and action.

however, i do think there is a value to having an ideological framework: it keeps you consistent. if your ideology is vague and empty, you're liable to (intentional or unintentional) opportunism--you will fill in the gaps or approach new ideas with the default positions, the ones that require the least divergence from hegemonic cultural norms and values.

that sounds a bit ideological-jargony so i'll phrase it another way: if you grow up in a [joker voice] society, you're going to grow up with a lot of assumptions! like, 'cops reduce crime', for example. and if you don't have an underlying theory of capitalist society and how it functions, then it's entirely possible to realize (through experience or analysis) that capitalism is bad and that our society is inherently unjust, but continue thinking 'cops reduce crime' because that's just the default cultural position you grew up with. these two things are pretty impossible to reconcile, right--because of course the actual purpose of cops is to enforce private property rights and maintain the capitalist system of economic relations--but if you don't have a full theoretical framework of capitalism & society that you can use to analyse things, that incoherence is very easy to let slip by!

i also want to say that while i think that anarchists & marxist-leninists (and all other revolutionary) communists share common goals and functionally very similar political projects for our forseeable lifetime, there is a meaningful difference between these two and the 'demsocs' you mentioned. not an uncrossable gulf by any means in terms of working together and forging political alliances--but the steps one takes to agitate and organize the working class in anticipation of a future revolutionary situation, however distant, are imo very functionally different to the steps one takes to advocate for social reform within liberal legislatures. rosa luxemburg put it well when she said there is nothing reformist about supporting trade unions, welfare legislation, as a vehicle for revolutionary class struggle--but when you take these things as ends themselves, i.e., as viable methods for resolving the contradictions of capitalism, you become unable to use them as such a vehicle.

but, yeah. tldr; i think it is far from the most important thing (the most important thing is to be a principled anti-capitalist & anti-imperialist--these are the two litmus tests for whom i can consider a political ally), but it is useful to have an underlying political framework rather than a collection of individual positions, because the latter can lead to contradictory and self-defeating worldviews and political programs

[tanadrin]

I've seen people (mostly MLs) say that the reason so many people think the economy's doing shit is because they're finally personally feeling the death of the middle class. What are your thoughts on that?

ehhhh if that were true i think you'd need a very strong narrative and decent evidence for why the pandemic + recovery period triggered that sudden disjunction for what has (by people who posit this decline) a very gradual trend

but, as far as i can tell, "middle class" is defined very nebulously, and depending on the measure you use it's really not at all apparent that the american middle class is declining. it's certainly not the case that the post-pandemic period has accelerated that trend--if anything it's begun to reverse slightly as the american economy has substantially improved in a pretty broad-based way. so i don't think this analysis has much explanatory power.

[blmpff]

✨2023: A Summary✨

Post your most popular and/or favourite edit/gifset/analysis for each month (it’s okay to skip months!)

Tagged by @lurkingshan, and also @colourme-feral and @troubled-mind as I was working on it, thank you ❣️

My two main ~things~ are uploading actors' photos, and doing my own favorite X posts from shows I'm watching, and considering I've uploaded 5593 posts in 2023, in this essay I'll focus on my own.

disclaimer 1: I started posting my edits in March, so the first two months of the year will be just actors' pics to not skip them disclaimer 2: as for favorites the answer is always my favorite shots posts because each and every single one of them is my precious baby disclaimer 3: I added SHOWS to each month for my compilation posts for them

JANUARY:

- most popular: First Kanaphan from their trip to Japan I think - favorite: ArmyJoe stills from gmmtv twt

FEBRUARY:

- most popular: Fluke and Thor TWE bts - favorite: this MosBank

MARCH:

- most popular: Our Dining Table promo picture - favorite: Midnight Museum ep5, The Eighth Sense ep2, first Shared Location

APRIL:

- most popular: P'Jojo explaining the use of thai soap opera cliches in Our Skyy 2: Never Let Me Go - favorite: T8S x train ride, Jaewon calling Jihyun his boyfriend, shadow kisses, Midnight Museum moon shots 4/4, the post where I save links to all the shows/movies I make posts about - shows: Our Dating Sim, The Eighth Sense, Destiny Seeker, Midnight Museum, Blueming, Bed Friend

MAY:

- most popular: P'Jojo posting about Only Friends getting the green light - favorite: Man's hands, this Between Us scene, this ONHCT scene, OS2 x Win's Adventures - shows: OS2: The Eclipse, OS2: NLMG, Happy Merry Ending, ABAAB, Love Mate, ONHCT, Dear Ex, Please Tell Me So, A First Love Story 1, A First Love Story 2, Step For You

JUNE:

- most popular: Cooheart in a bridal dress at Bangkok Pride - favorite: Fluke's hair poll, IQ subber in House of Stars, ODT Tane - shows: Star Struck, Our Dining Table, Love Tractor

JULY:

- most popular: NeoMark Only Friends Q photo - favorite: these two Tokyo In April Is parallels, this Semantic Error scene - shows: Step by Step, La Pluie, House of Stars, My Ride

AUGUST:

- most popular: P'Jojo talking about sex scenes in Only Friends - favorite: ML Shin being Shin, this scene in SMC - shows: Tokyo In April Is, Sing My Crush, Egoist, Low Frequency, Stay Still, Sonnet 18

SEPTEMBER:

- most popular: the epic journey that was Red Peafowl cast announcement - favorite: Leehyun repeatedly calling An his boyfriend, Joohyuk x Sungmin, hyung, EarthBank - shows: Laws of Attraction, Love Class 2, Marry Go Round, Minato's Laundromat 2, Hidden Agenda, Bon Appetit

OCTOBER:

- most popular: P'Jojo roasting Boston - favorite: IFYLITA dream dancing, bloody Papang, bloody GG kiss&murder - shows: My Personal Weatherman, Only Friends, Grand Guignol, Semantic Error: The Movie

NOVEMBER:

- most popular: new YinWar show Jack&Joker pilot - favorite: this Mermaid's Jade scene, this The Devil Judge scene, these Playboyy posters - shows: I Feel You Linger In The Air, Mermaid's Jade, Kiseki: Dear To Me, Pure Vanilla, One Room Angel

DECEMBER:

- most popular: Babe causing Billy to malfunction - favorite: JellyfishBolster compilation, this AobPuen, DFF I've been impaled - shows: Sweet Home 2, Shadow, To My Star s1, Absolute Zero, Bake Me Please, Moonlight Chicken

Tagging everyone who wants to do it and haven't already, this site helps!

[gummoboost]

There's an element of the ultra/leftcom mentality that I do charitably respect, a sort of undivided focus on class analysis at the cost of all else. That being said, the seeming inability of any sort of international tendency to show up in a material way isn't lost on me. A lot of my irl interactions with trots specifically have left a sour taste.

AuSAlt despite its size seemingly leans into adventurism, it's members celebrating their presence at marches, despite the tone of the protests being that of anger and/or grief. The recent protest in Naarm seeking to disrupt arms shipments was met with a pretty fuckin severe police response, as was expected by organisers and protesters alike. AuSAlt decided it was a good place to boost membership, collecting full names and phone numbers, just like they do at every rally.

SAlliance is a slightly more radical Greens party, the CPA and CPA-ML don't materially show themselves besides simply attending, bodies in spaces style. I've experienced as much solidarity with either of those orgs as with the ICP or ICT, neither of which have a proper presence in this part of the world.

I have no grand conclusion, no goal in writing this. Simply ideas and thoughts I've been trying to put to the page for a while now, and I'm enough drinks in to give up on coherence and doubts. Read theory, show up, do the work.

[purrincess-chat]

4, 12, 19

4. A story idea you haven't written yet

Lol, so I have this one that I think I've talked about once before, but basically it's the premise of Glaciator 2.0 where Marinette is practicing her love confessions with Chat Noir, but Marinette actually tells him that she's in love with Adrien, and he ends up getting roped into a scheme with the girls as Chat Noir to help Marinette ask Adrien out on a date. And he's like shit fuck what do I do? Do I like her? I can't break her heart, she's my friend. But she's so nice and is doing all of this just for me wow. Shenanigans ensue.

I also still have a premise where Gabriel gets their miraculouses and throws away the butterfly in the process, and Marinette uses it and makes Adrien her companion to fight Gabriel. I wrote a chunk of it a while back, I may be able to find it. I literally have the whole thing outlined just haven't written it.

12. A trope you're really into right now

Idk if it's a trope but character analysis and meta? That's the basis of Adrien’s Playlist and Under the Moths Wings. They're character studies of Adrien. But hopping over to LoZ, I'm a sucker for shared trauma, heavy devotion, bed sharing, socially repressed nerds who want to hold hands but society, hurt/comfort, tending each others wounds. You get the gist. Basically Zelink has me whipped.

19. The most interesting topic you've researched for a fic

Hmm for ML I usually just do a lot of French culture research like what kind of classes they take at school in certain grades, how they celebrate certain holidays, that sort of thing. I don't think I've looked up anything so scandalous that I'd be on an FBI watch list yet. I have been coming across more mid century stuff lately in doing research for LoZ since they're like knights and castles and princesses but also magic and some tech. But I've been looking up different things about royalty and practices and daily life of that era. It's interesting and gross sometimes.

[apas-95]

I think you are riding on the coat tails of the communists that have come before you, Often times you are just posting images and paragraphs about them and those from your mutuals instead of resources and opportunities to meaningfully engage with communism in the present day. A historical and theoretical understanding must be had but that is not very effective if people do not have a foundation to know how to utilize it, especially when there are many organizations across the world which claim to be communist or ML but are just selling merch, or are sitting on dues, or submitting to electoralism, or have some weird sexual assault or money scandal, and which rope people into them

the fundamentals of marxist theory are generally applicable to capitalist society at large. the specifics of how to engage with your local labour movement are extremely conditional. like, should I tell you to join the young pioneers, like I did? the foundation here is the class consciousness and dialectical- and historical-materialist methods of analysis, those are what need to be used to carry out an investigation of the local conditions, understand what groups are acting in the interests of the proletariat, and what is to be done. if the issue here is that I don't post analysis of the imperial core revisionist sect du jour then that issue is going to continue unaddressed

[wirefoxedterrier]

I feel like I’m far too left unity for this website sometimes. I have seen both anarchists dunking on MLs for not understanding not understanding material analysis or being working class or something and MLs dunking on anarchists for being dumb and not reading a book ever apparently . And like idk maybe I’m out of the loop but in irl activism circles I don’t massively care to argue abt what the person I’m working with specifically believes in leftist theory idk there’s just shit I wanna deal with . Actual full though out critiques and discussions of theory you disagree with or believe is harmful is different but I’m just seeing posts where it feels so removed from that pfft . I’m just kinda disconnected from online leftist spaces en general so may just be that

[pencil-urchin]

Doodle of my Mirialan OC, Iria. She's a scholar--Peofessor of Cultural Anthropology/Archaeology, with a minor in Art History: all centered on what she calls "The Culture of Warfare" and how it defines and shapes those cultures which engage in war.

She also put herself through school as an exotic dancer in a not-very-nice place, like you do.

(Hold on because I'm about to word vomit)

***

She has a list of other skills and knowledges, but I don't want anyone crying "Mary Sue!" so a quick note:

All but a handful of her knowledge and abilities are skills I currently have or had at one point, and I promise I am not anyone's idea of a "Mary Sue."

These skills and achievements include:

-Multiple Advanced Degrees (I have an Associate's, a Bachelor's, and 3 Master's degrees)

-Art (I am a professional artist, and although I have a long way to go and a lot of room to improve, I have worked hard to get where I am, and obtained both an MA in Visual Development and an MFA in Concept Art in the process)

-Martial Arts (I stopped one test shy of a black belt when I was 17 because I started college)

-Fencing (I started fencing when I was 21, which is how I met my husband; we were both competitive until and somewhat during grad school, but now we mostly just coach)

-Music (clarinet and vocal primarily, then violin and piano for a short time)

-Writing (creative and academic, my second degree was in Literary Studies)

-Multilingual (I have studied Spanish, French, Latin, and Russian)

-Organization schemes/data analysis and curation (my first Masters was in Library Science, and I was a librarian for over ten years)

-Handling of rare/historic artifacts (I studied special collections, collection management, and rare books in my MLS)

-Cooking (my husband and I love cooking together)

-Fashion (as part of my MLS I worked in a designer and historic fashion archive)

-Metalwork (I have taken metalsmithing classes, worked as a jeweler's apprentice, and even got to try blacksmithing once upon a time)

-First Aid (through my first two years of grad school I was Healthcare Provider certified to offer assistance with CPR, use of a defibrillator, assisting with someone choking, etc)

-Emergency Response (for a while in my late teens, I participated in a program meant to prepare young adults for Firefighter I training, which included a rigorous exercise routine, specialized training in the use of emergency equipment, and learning the most basic foundations of Fire Science)

-Acting (listen I don't think I'm good, but I was in Improv as a kid, love to RP at the game table , and was even a mime once)

-Field Ecology (loved this class, caught so many snakes, frogs, turtles, and lizards: I do not do spiders or insects, and therefore neither do my characters)

Skills I ABSOLUTELY do not have that my OC has:

-social grace (I'm an awkward weirdo)

-physical grace (despite all I have done, I am so clumsy)

-beauty (I am a swamp witch without the swamp)

-confidence (see above)

-dancing (I did dance and drill team when I was in junior high, did swing choir in high school, did the "shimmy" belly dance workout, and took a pole-dance workout class once which was an absolute blast, but JFC I am NOT a dancer, I promise)

***

I'm sure there's more, but you get the idea. A multifaceted character with a collection of experiences that seem disparate isn't different from what we are IRL when we break ourselves down into a list like this. In addition to all the positives, I'm also old (35), neurodivergent and mentally-Ill.

So yeah, not a "Mary Sue."