I always obsess over low tier characters, but Zelda is consistently a favorite. High skill floor, low skill ceiling, but she can also be fucking terrifying to play against a skilled opponent. The drop kick is like the most satisfying shit in gaming history. Once you get it mastered and land it a couple times, the tension goes waay up in the game when the rest of her toolkit makes her a monster in neutral.

I also really like Falco in smash 4 when he was like consistently bottom tier, but he was def my main back then.

Nazi texts are literally just streams of racist consciousness. There is no internal consistency, research or principled criticism, just hate, grasping aspirational clout chasing, and conspiracy theories – throwing shit at the wall and seeing what sticks.

You can learn a lot by just reading the introduction to books. Since you’re reading some anarchist texts, check out Errico Malatesta, whose best works are short, concise, and rigorous.

I was just recommending this to someone else so its fresh on my mind, but Rick Roderick’s The Self Under Siege philosophy course is an amazing primer. He gets into the subject matter while being very relatable.

IMO less important than reading theory as an individual is finding a theory group to have discussions with. They can influence you to read more, and what to read, but having people who can direct you through some major pitfalls can get you up to speed in weeks, better than listening to podcasts for years.

But if reading is really what you wanna do, try Ten Days that Shook the World by Jack Reed. Its one of the most exciting books ever written, and its a first hand account of the Russian revolution.

The “left wing activist organizations” link in the top comment links to a Newsweek article about left wing violence.

Get a grip.

I think that it means autistic. I was in Venice last year. My wife is an intervention specialist who works with autistic students, particularly non-speaking students, and we were talking to some Venetians about it. They weren’t like acutely aware of autism like in the USA, they said that support and services were growing there, but that it was still pretty grassroots. So the context/meaning of the word could be different than other places, while still having the same basic meaning.

RE4 was good. I wasn’t sure how I’d feel about it sans all the campiness, but removing all the creep shit and sexism was pretty fresh

on the outside

on the inside

There’s an art/science to relating to progressive liberals, and a lot of times I just try to get people to talk about their own observations and thoughts. I’m very much a proponent and practitioner of critical pedagogy.

But when people come to the meeting I am chairing, in a group I helped organize, and then hypervigilant police every word I use for how it wont relate to their white affluent neighborhood, like even if I am convinced that they are legit there in good faith, it can be really disruptive to say the least.

Like, I learned leftism from a bunch of grumpy Trot union organizers, i’m a worker who came to this shit, sorry I don’t conform to the public university masters in social sciences dissertation review style guide

Just as I learn to spell it, I get surrounded by progressive liberals who (CW: gross)

whenever I use it in a sentence

Strangah!

There is no way somebody this dumb can spell boogiewargziee

There are a ton of debates constantly happening inside the org, and lots of public-facing internal stuff getting published all the time. Practically every caucus publishes stuff on their website, and more independent outlets like Geese magazine and Cosmonaut (oh shit Cosmo publishong a criticism of Geese on the front page, cant wait to read it) also offer tons of great insights, without having to like join a caucus or even be a DSA member.

I’m not a Seattle comrade, hell, most of the people I know from the Sawant campaign moved away from Seattle since then. But I have been in some discussions about her with Seattle comrades.

Seattle DSA did not endorse her, and wrt Sawant, at least Sawant never wavered in her support for Palestine, unlike Wilson. I understand her endorsement survey form was incredibly weak, esp wrt support for BDS.

Interestingly, from what I understand, Seattle DSA had to send out a memo to their members threatening disciplinary action after coordinated campaigns by Wilson, and then Sawant, tried to do entryism to gain the chapter’s endorsement. I actually have a copy of an email from Wilson’s husband, who used member lists form Seattle Transit Union, which KW served as director, to encourage STU members to join DSA in order to vote for endorsing her. Gotta love politics. MUG organized hard against endorsing her.

Even so, Seattle comrades I have been in touch with who were opposed to SDSA endorsement, still critically supported her and voted for her.

Then again, there is always

It’s a shame, I think there’s a much more interesting analysis to be had, but instead just deranged hand-wringing.

Its so bad I might actually start a substack.

Thank you!

Under capitalism what is good and makes sense to the workers is bad and makes no sense to the capitalists. Our interests are fundamentally opposed. I’m all for electoral campaigns as a tactic, since it builds engagement and develops consciousness. But the strategy is to build for power, which means a mass movement and a worker’s party.

Okay, I’ll edit out what I can’t verify with hard evidence and try a self post!

What kind of post? I usually comment, and I might want to check some of docs to make sure my facts are straight.

I’m not good at like making up posts but I can write pretty well

Wow, what a trip. Let’s talk about what absolutely, positively, did not happen.

As the editors of Left Voice reminded us, Sawant was a member of the ultra-left Trotskyist group Socialist Alternative, which splintered over the irrelevant question of endorsing Bernie Sanders in 2016.

Whatever Left Voice says about it, the split did not come from a debate over endorsing Bernie. The split came when Sawant’s faction purged a large number of their most active members, including her own campaign manager from her Seattle city council race, from Socialist alternative. Why were they purged? Because they wanted to dual card in DSA. The CWI, which is SAlt’s tradition, stems from the “deep entryism” of the British Militant faction of the labor party in the 80’s. In carrying on with that tradition, a large group of SAlt’s leaders surmised that entering DSA in order to build a Marxist tendency within it, was an important task to combat the reformist nature of DSA. The Sawant faction disagreed and purged them, calling them opportunists, liquidationists, etc.,

The purged faction did join DSA and formed Reform & Revolution caucus, which succeeded, along with other caucuses that emerged around the same time, to establish a left wing majority on the NPC and many central committees. The former SAlt faction published a rather good book on DSA, which gathers views from all over the org and is being used in education programs all over the country.

Like okay, its a criticism of the sectarianism of Sawant, and I agree, she is a sectarian crank. Her campaign was run like a fucking cult, which we discovered when we met a group of very well meaning volunteers for her campaign, who she purged for working with DSA.

But I find it interesting that there is then this long diatribe against Trotskyism which makes up the majority of the article. And I’ve read almost this exact article before, several times in fact: when the purged SAlt faction tried to join DSA. All of the sudden, these DSA rightists become the most stalwart defenders of Stalin. And to be clear, R&R currently has two members on the NPC, and was deeply involved in, not sectarian ultraleft opportunism, but instead, organizing the first NPC majority in 2023, passing the anti-zionism and partyist resolutions in '25 (actually the R&R partyist amendment took a much more confrontational posture toward the Dems, but MUG’s “party surrogate” orientation won out, still a partyist direction though) , and co-writing the Workers Deserve More program which is stirring up political discourse among the working class in the media in a way we haven’t seen other than with electoral wins. Always pushing for a more revolutionary message, and a break from the Democratic party.

Hardly sitting on the sidelines and complaining. This is the same tradition as Sawant, different approaches, but two very close strains of American Trotskyism. But does the author care about any of these very real dynamics in DSA? No, instead he decides to call PSL Trotskyist (LMFAO, what is credibility even), and spin a yarn of abstract doom and gloom portent about Trotskyism and ultraleftism.

Also important to note that Trotsky never appeared at the Dies commission, and rejected the commission’s offer to send a rep to visit him in Mexico.

Any valid criticism of Sawant gets lost in his utter derision for accuracy, opportunistic left gestures, and incurious agenda. And frankly, that’s just how deranged the DSA rightists are.

Stalinism is objectively the moderate wing of social democracy