It's always cool to make socialist connections irl!

for me the arguments would be mostly negative because:

1. using it does not train your research skills
2. using it does not train your creative and academic writing skills
3. it is often just wrong when synthesizing text

so to me those are major cons in an educational context some positives would perhaps be:

1. it is useful as a phrase bank, as it can quickly give ideas on how to put words together.
2. it is alright at giving direction when starting research, sort of like wikipedia

thats all i can think of so far

I can answer some of these from my perspective.

1. The way I see it, it is impossible to ignore the contradictions of capital for the human psyche, so something must be used to explain them. Because of the lack of education, corporate funded media etc. etc., the blame falls on immigrants and poor people. Also because of the widespread notion of the "middle class" nobody really sees themselves as the lower class.

2. I am not born in the empire but i do live in it. And i really don't like the exceptionalist attitude. Being ML doesn't make you a "chosen one" or the lucky few. In terms of common thread, it's material conditions necessary to be dissatisfied with status quo+ interest in history/politics.

True, I do enjoy reading more. Any literature you can recommend on the topic? I'm mostly relying on my understanding of nuclear famine, and the logical consequences of destroying vast amounts of infrastructure and population.

Japan had the infrastructure left to rebuild those cities. If a full nuclear exchange occurs, there will be no infrastructure, no healthy land for agriculture, no population to rebuild anything, there is just no possibility of recovery. I'm sorry but your take is unhinged.

it was a lot of fun!

I would argue that the destruction of major productive centers would be as disastrous as climate change. Why can’t both be true?

I could also be minimizing the threat of climate change by saying that the world won’t end because of it. It is an unreasonable bar however for us to consider something to be destructive. I don’t think it’s controversial to not want millions of deaths.

I've been meaning to read Socialist States and the Environment, which is an account of the ecological achievements of socialist states, including USSR.

Yeah I had this problem with the literature com

I think at the moment being against the empire within the empire is kind of an outlier situation. Materially, most people benefit from imperialism (in the empire). But then there are areas where capitalism fails no matter the material conditions, even for the imperial core, like climate change or queer liberation. For me personally the gateway to marxism were queer studies. I think with the contradictions sharpening (i know, very cliche), there will be more gateway topics like these to use as anchors for further class consciousness, and with worsening material conditions there of course will be more questions towards the status quo.

Anything by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky. Roadside picnic is quite popular (because of the film), Beetle in the anthill is also an interesting one.

yeah i got to visit a couple of debates! everyone was super friendly and the topics were super diverse

Spiritual values is just stuff like the cishet family, defending the motherland etc. Russia has been positioning itself as the spiritually and morally superior nation compared to the west in their media.

hanged out with PSL folks while I was in the states. very interesting to see their progress as a party!