I think most who would leave have already left.

Depending on how you define merit, it never was.

Chanterelles are the best beginner mushroom to forage. They grow almost everywhere, have only one toxic look-alike (and it’s very easy to differentiate), and a very unique color and shape. The defining characteristic of chanterelles is their false gills, meaning on the underside they are either completely smooth or have small ridges that vaguely mimic the typical fanned gills that other mushrooms have. Their color ranges from pale yellow to red (mostly orange, right in the middle) and most have a distinctive irregular vase shape. The way I would describe the appearance is like sheets or curtains billowing in the wind. The only potentially dangerous look-alike is the Jack o’ lantern mushroom which only grows in the eastern US, has real gills, and glows in the dark (kinda hard to forget and easy to identify, so eating it by mistake is incredibly unlikely as long as you know about it). I recommend finding someone who has foraged before to go with you the first time, but after that if you stick to just chanterelles you’ll be fine.

I think there’s a good bit of variation in flavor by region and species. The small smooth chanterelles have more of the general earthy mushroom flavor, the flavolateritius ones that have more of a curtains shape are very nutty and meaty with very little earthy taste, and the Appalachian chanterelles are even a little bit spicy. Those are the ones I find in my area, anyway.

Personally - and a lot of other anarchists do as well - I make a distinction between a government and a state. A government is any kind of collective organized decision-making, while a state is something more specific; an organization that enforces a hierarchy on a population without their consent by maintaining a monopoly on violence. In effect a state is an extreme concentration of power that both coerces and requires the participation of an entire population.

The anarchy that I envision isn’t simply the abolition of the state, but its replacement with a non-hierarchical, horizontal form of government, which would also require - but not coerce - the participation of an entire population. There are many forms such a system can take, and there are some examples in today’s world that show a glimpse of how such a system could look, like the autonomous region of north and east Syria (AANES or Rojava) which is practicing what they call Democratic Confederalism, or the Zapatistas in Chiapas Mexico with their federated local autonomous governments. There are also less totalizing organizations that practice horizontal decision-making and which could perform the various functions of government, and occasionally do in situations where the state is slow or fails to respond such as natural disasters or when a community is a victim of violence perpetrated by a state where no other state intervenes. Organized decentralized power is capable of countering, disbanding, and even preventing the concentration of centralized power.

Would you rather have a billion people with the ability to throw rocks or one person collect all the rocks into an asteroid and chuck it at the earth? Power is only an issue concentrated. Distributed it is the solution.

Chiming in to say this appears to be a quote from David Graeber’s Bullshit Jobs.

I also do yardwork, snow removal, maintenance, and I pay out of my ass when anything breaks because I have an obligation to provide for my tenant and I take that seriously.

You’re right, it is the system that is the problem. The relationship between you and your tenant is unequal. There is nothing forcing you to do right by your tenant by performing all of that maintenance work because you have not entered into an equal agreement with your tenant. You could stop doing all those things and your tenant would have no recourse because they aren’t paying you to perform any service, they are paying you for the privilege of staying in your property. You may feel that you have an obligation to do those things but you aren’t actually obligated by law, and that’s a problem.

He initially set out to prove Charles Darwin’s assertion that competition is the law of the Jungle and ended up discovering the opposite, and that’s why he wrote Mutual Aid: A Factor of Evolution. It was intended to be a refutation of Charles Darwin’s work.

I was banned from !europe@feddit.org for pointing out the similarities and historical connection between Zionism and Nazism. Germany has been particularly aggressive in its attacks on speech and that has been reflected in the moderation of communities on feddit.org

If you want an unblurred view you have to subscribe to their OnlyFans.

The *arr stack will automatically rename things in a way that Jellyfin will recognize, and they’re no more difficult to set up than Jellyfin itself. I highly recommend using them to manage your media library.

For anyone wondering, this is from Wonder Showzen, and the text is actually what she says in the show.

No one lives there.

This is an absolutely incredible format for introducing anarchist ideas to people who would otherwise dismiss them out of hand. I’d wager that the Good Benn Jordan just awakened the anarchist buried inside of a lot of people with this video.

The Zapatistas mention made me very happy, buy still very sad that it’s over.

People who try to convince you that words are meaningless are never up to any good. I’m sure it makes you feel real good about yourself to pretend I’m too stupid to understand instead of smart enough to see that words that are often misused still have meaning.

I believe that authoritarianism is the origin of class. All that it takes is for one person to draw a boundary, state “this is mine,” and then enforce that with violence. There is no end of history. Even if we do manage to create a classless society, there’s no guarantee that it will remain that way. To maintain such a society will require maintenance, and that means identifying and resisting authoritarianism when and where it inevitably emerges. It is therefore essential to have a word to describe the types of behaviour that can result in the reemergence of class society.

Explain.

Which is authoritarian in nature.

Trying to treat the level of authority employed as a policy choice, rather than a response to existing conditions, delegitimizes the use of necessary tools to defend the gains of socialism.

How you respond to existing conditions is a policy choice, and authoritarian methods are not necessary for defending the gains of socialism.

For example, one existing condition in the US is the fentanyl crisis. The US government has chosen to respond to this existing condition by continuing the criminalization of drug abuse and using the crisis as justification for imperialism in Venezuela. The US could have chosen to respond by funding addiction treatment centers and decriminalizing drug abuse.

Another example, an existing condition in China was population growing faster than their economy could keep up (ostensibly). China chose to respond with a one-child policy, restricting reproductive freedom. China could have chosen to respond by encouraging contraception and creating financial incentives and disincentives.

What you suggest is political determinism, implying that there is only one way that a state can respond to existing conditions, when in fact there is a vast range of possibility.