Brian Thompson, UnitedHealthcare CEO? The one that Luigi allegedly took out.

Eating Trump’s chode? Sniffing coke? Both?

I want the SAS variant with the Vickers machine guns attached. I don’t think I’m allowed one.

12 hours or so. Drove to the shop to get a few things.

I’ve never bought into the accusation that communists uncritically support Russia. It’s a bit more nuanced. They still recognise that Russia is capitalist and that the events that happened after the fall of the USSR were incredibly bad, such as the selling off of state assets creating a capitalist oligarchy. I have seen these views expressed by communists.

Personally though, I think some communists need to be more willing to put forward criticisms of the Russian state for the purpose of demonstrating their commitment to socialism. To me there’s an issue with the messaging, leading to a common perception that communists are fully and uncritically supportive of Putin.

This particular company no longer exists so I guess that makes me feel somewhat vindicated! They folded around 2017 which was a few years after I was there.

Don’t even need captions

Nope, I should have clarified that I got fired on my first day of actually going live on the phones. Prior to that, me and the group of new people I was placed in got 2 weeks of training. For whatever reason, I struggled with it and never fully got to grips with what they were expecting of us.

In my defence though, I did warn the supervisor that I wasn’t feeling confident or ready to get started. He was one of those cringe overenthusiastic supervisors who was all about pizza parties and “smashing our goals”. He insisted that I would be fine. I really wasn’t lol

I got fired from a call centre on my first day because nerves got the better of me.

We were on a very strict schedule for taking breaks and making outbound phonecalls. I stumbled my way through a few calls until my break time (we started late in the day to help ease us in). When I came back, I delayed for about 5 minutes because my nerves were shot. Stumbled through another 3-4 calls and then my supervisor came up and told me to grab my stuff and follow him.

He took me down to the managers office where I was ripped into for taking too long on my break. I admitted to this, saying that I was nervous. He also accused me of not even greeting people on a few occasions and failing to say the important part about calls being recorded. I found it incredulous that I would forget to even say hi to a person, but I genuinely couldn’t remember so I couldn’t really argue with it.

I was fired there and then. Had to give my pass back and leave the building immediately. I was stunned when it happened, but I quickly got over it and realised that it would have been a really shit place to work anyway. I wasn’t even given a second chance or the benefit of the doubt.

That manager fired me believing that my actions were malicious and that I was lazy, he didn’t believe that I was a nervous teenager who made genuine mistakes. That was the part that pissed me off.

Yep you’re probably right. It would likely be an even bigger issue for Ukraine if there was more widespread global support for Russia’s cause. If that were the case, they might be able to amass a significant foreign volunteer force to fight against Ukraine.

In my opinion, the relatively small amount of pro-Russian foreign fighters speaks to the weakness of Russia’s argument in favour of the invasion. If it was a genuine crusade to de-nazify Ukraine and free oppressed people, I think there would be a much larger contingent of people going there to fight for Russia.

They can and have been asked.

The problem with this argument is that you’re looking for some idealistic version of communism without any regard as to it’s actual feasibility. You want communism with western liberal democratic packaging, a communism that explicitly rejects any kind of violence or force against class enemies, afraid of being accused of repression, and that leaves the door wide open for counterrevolutionary forces to seize back control. You want something that works better as protest than as practical implementation. It’s just Eurocommunism for the 21st century. There’s a reason why this kind of communism only exists in the developed western world. It clings onto the notion of western superiority, and regards communists of the global south to be barbaric, authoritarian, and oppressive.

There’s also a reason why this ideology is not the platform of practically any active and actually existing communist party in the world. It’s the communism of idealists who haven’t read theory, or understood theory. It borrows heavily from the “marketplace of ideas” where the opponents of the revolution can be defeated purely by a good argument.

A defector is going to have an inherent dislike of the DPRK because they… well, defected. If someone is happy there, they’re not going to defect are they?

Bull$hitters like Yeonmi Park don’t make me inclined to believe defectors.

I accidentally stumbled across a picture of a dick covered in maggots. What made it worse was some of them seemed to have gotten into the flesh.

It’s amazing how seeing an image for half a second can burn it into your mind. One of the worst things I’ve ever seen.

So far this is how I’ve been doing it:

I just listed the alphabet A-Z. Then I went through every artist whose name begins with the corresponding letter, and downloaded their albums. I’ve already checked off every letter from A-S.

Still working through it, it’s tedious I will admit, but should be worth it in the end.

Thanks for the suggestions all :-)

I do wonder though how many foreign fighters on the Russian side went there out of genuine belief in Russia’s war, as opposed to those who went for money or who were coerced/tricked into joining the Russian army. With the way Russia operates, it makes sense that they would attract those with a self-interested mercenary mindset, that have no regard for the politics of the conflict. Or desperate people who can be easily manipulated. It’s probably also easier to recruit from countries that already have a favourable view of Russia.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-68949298

This article from last year suggests that it’s largely personal gain that has motivated Cubans to go to Ukraine to fight on the side of Russia. To be honest, I don’t know whether it’s a good or bad thing that people are fighting for personal gain rather than belief in Russia’s nonsensical reasons for invading.

I’m so glad I discovered Linux

AI?

For sure. Morgan McSweeney is the lesser known architect behind everything that is wrong with the Labour party now.

seems to be trying to court right wing and far right voters

Totally agree, and the people who would be inclined to vote for Reform will vote for Reform and not a crappy version of them.

Personally, I’m a big fan of Zack Polanski and I’m glad to see the Greens surge in the polls. They have to be the party to fill the gap on the left that has been abandoned by Labour. There’s also Jeremy Corbyn and Zarah Sultana’s “Your Party”, but they’ve had a very iffy start to life as a political party. I hope both parties work together to try and stop Reform.

Genuinely I think this would be more enjoyable than pineapple on pizza. It’s not that I hate pineapple on pizza, I just hate pineapple in general.