this post was submitted on 23 Jul 2026
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Lefty Memes

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An international (English speaking) socialist Lemmy community free of "ML" (read: Dengist) influence. This is a place for undogmatic shitposting and memes from a progressive, anti-capitalist and truly anti-imperialist perspective, regardless of specific ideology.

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Version without spoilers

0. Only post socialist memes


That refers to funny image macros and means that generally videos and screenshots are not allowed. Exceptions include explicitly humorous and short videos, as well as (social media) screenshots depicting a funny situation, joke, or joke picture relating to socialist movements, theory, societal issues, or political opponents. Examples would be the classic case of humorous Tumblr or Twitter posts/threads. (and no, agitprop text does not count as a meme. Please post agitprop here)


0.5 [Provisional Rule] Try to use alt text or image descriptions to allow for greater accessibility


(Please take a look at our wiki page for the guidelines on how to actually write alternative text!)

We encourage alternative text (from now referred to as "alt text") to be added to all posts/comments containing media, such as images, animated GIFs, videos, audio files, and custom emojis.
EDIT: For files you share in the comments, a simple summary should be enough if they’re too complex.

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0.5.1 Style tip about abbreviations and short forms


When writing stuff like "lol" and "iirc", it's a good idea to try and replace those with their all caps counterpart

  • ofc => OFC
  • af = AF
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  • lol => LOL
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  • cia => CIA
  • nato => Nato (you don't spell it when talking, right?)
  • usa => USA
  • prc => PRC
  • etc.

Why? Because otherwise (AFAIK), screen readers will try to read them out as actually words instead of spelling them


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The only dangerous minority is the rich.


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We must constructively learn from their mistakes, while acknowledging their achievements and recognizing when they have strayed away from socialist principles.


6. Don't irrationally idolize/glorify previous and current socialist experiments or (leading) individuals.


Notable achievements in all spheres of society were made by various socialist/people's/democratic republics around the world. Mistakes, however, were made as well: bureaucratic castes of parasitic elites - as well as reactionary cults of personality - were established, many things were mismanaged and prejudice and bigotry sometimes replaced internationalism and progressiveness.


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[–] TheMightyCat@ani.social 18 points 5 days ago (3 children)

They do realize we could just make our own electronics right?

Genuine question: how would a semiconductor fab be build in anarchist ideologies?

[–] Little_mouse@lemmy.ca 33 points 5 days ago (2 children)

Same way it's done now, only with the profit staying with the workers. Anti-capitalism is not anti-infrastructure or anti-technology or even anti-commerce. It's just anti-private-ownership of the above.

[–] TheMightyCat@ani.social 12 points 5 days ago (4 children)

I know, that's why I asked how would it be build under anarchism, not under anti-capitalism.

My question was really how could something as logistically complex as a semiconductor fab be build without some organization to coordinate it.

But as @BeatL@pawb.social said if anarchism = no unjust hierarchy then that is no problem. As there is still a organization coordinating things just not an unjust one?

I admit I'm not very knowledgeable about anarchism.

I don't really associate anarchism with the global supply chains necessary to build and run a semiconductor fab. But I suppose I am mistaken then?

[–] A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com 12 points 5 days ago (4 children)

A common misconception is that we need hierarchy to handle complexity. The best way to handle complexity is by increasing the amount of decision makers. Just look at how the open source community can compete with professional software companies despite not having any hierarchy,

[–] sneezycat@sopuli.xyz 7 points 5 days ago (3 children)

The hierarchy is not set in stone, but I wouldn't say there isn't one. Otherwise, anyone could merge anything into any repo. And yes, not one repo needs to be "the official" one, but they de facto are, until some people decide to split out for some reason.

So I don't see it as a lack of a hierarchy, more as a consensual hierarchy similar in some ways to a democracy. But hey I may be completely off!

A opt in hierarchy can be accepted in anarchism, because you are not coerced by it. If there is a project and you want to add your feature, but they dont allow it, you can just soft fork and maintain your feature separately from the main project.

[–] A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 days ago

Not sure if that counts since anyone can fork a project.

[–] diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago)

TCC allows merging anything. There has been vibecode and such but it all seemed to have been either reverted or rewritten, like on a wiki.

https://repo.or.cz/h/mob.html

See also: my other reply on this page.

[–] Cypher@aussie.zone 3 points 5 days ago

The best way to handle complexity is by increasing the amount of decision makers

Spoken like someone who has never witnessed the horrors of design by committee

[–] Auli@lemmy.ca 2 points 5 days ago

That is not true big successful Open source products have a decision maker. Linus for the kernel as an example..

[–] MrKoyun@lemmy.world 1 points 4 days ago (1 children)

OSS has an hierarchy though. They are called maintainers.

[–] A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago

Yeah but thats not a dominance based hierarchy. They cant tell others what to do.

[–] for_some_delta@beehaw.org 6 points 5 days ago

Organization != domination hierarchy

[–] Diurnambule@jlai.lu 5 points 5 days ago

Good specs and motivated people at the right place... As we do now in high complexity IT environments. The major struggle we got in production are people being unmotivated, as it should in this system. But if you only have people doing it for the love systems would be far different.

[–] alapakala@quokk.au 4 points 5 days ago

and without the enslavement.
cc @themightycat@ani.social

[–] BeatL@pawb.social 9 points 5 days ago

easy, anarchy is no unjust hierarchy. So to convert X to anarchy, you remove the subordination principe. If the task need a boss, make it temporary and rotate often. Share knowledge and ideas. Make sure everybody is having the best time it could under the conditions we are in.

Sure you can be a filthy filthy radical and open source the machines, vulgarise the jobs and how to use the tools. Decorate the wall with slogans like "justice for all". Bring diverse peoples to the fab and see solutions to problems you never accounted for emerge. See peoples from around the world challenges themselves to use less and less chemicals and/or reuse them.

If you want to check, open source can cover hardware. A famous one is Prusa (3d printer).

[–] diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de 4 points 5 days ago* (last edited 5 days ago) (1 children)

I've thought a lot about this before. Updoot because it's a good question.

Basically, if an anarchist society still has access to all of the books and such for long enough, someone somewhere eventually will figure it out. Blowing them glass bulbs is surprisingly uncomplicated once you have metallurgy (tutorial), you don't even have to use mercury for the vacuum if you happen to have a regular factory built compressor nearby (will one from a fridge work? nobody knows, nobody tried), which you can then rebuild later. Build some circuits using wood + nail and metal wires as the PCBs, do random things to see how it reacts and learn from it. Now, electricity itself and metallurgy are fun but out of scope for this explanation.

While that is happening, people can reuse existing TV boxes, routers and such. Someone could do a tiny C program or something to distribute data over the existing computers or something, then advertise it over (real life) bullet-in boards. Ironically, I suggest more distributed solutions (whenever possible/feasible of course) over something like this site, or usenet (R.I.P., now just full of piracy). Non-technical people can get their friends to help with using that. People who where previously sysadmins for ISPs and stuff should then probably allow just port scanning IPv4 to discover other people, and/or the v6 multicast (well, hopefully they can figure that out if they haven't been "docker-washed" or whatever). Now, once someone figured something out, they share it with the comrades and "advertise" it using that solution. Or again, just the real life bullet-in boards.

If there are enough good minds, they can then proceed to basically skip "regular" transistors and diodes (and maybe even real PCBs, although some already do that at home) and go straight for the micro fab. Now, it requires many fields of science. Like first, you need to take a few buckets of sand, containing rocks and shells and shit (literally), then purify it. Like, really really really fucking pure. This is where my personal level of expertise ends but I am sure that eventually some talented people in their own respective fields can meet up and think of something over an afternoon. From what I know (probably wrong), this basically involves melting it in a vacuum, unmelting, melting, unmelting and so on, then from the piece that formed you have to cut off the edges where all of the impure stuff ended up. Now, you need to make patterns on it. This guy figured it out but gave in and started a company. Basically, instead of the template you shine light through, you could substitute an office projector for something really shitty scale and really shitty reliability, but functional. The rest is mostly chemistry... idk I don't speak chemistry.

Now, you can go get someone who speaks transistor logic to implement some really shitty instruction set in hardware. I am sure it wouldn't be too complicated to address map a teletype for some I/O. First few programs can be in ROM right inside the CPU (with redundant bytes of course given how shitty the manufacturing is) for testing, until RAM is figured out.

Oh look, my new chip draws boobs on paper!

Then you, again, go share your findings with the society and find someone who still has a RISC-V design or something downloaded. Now, that might get good enough to run a multi user operating system (this will make sense soon). As much as we hate the C stdlib and all of it's tech debt, I am not sure if anyone will be up for redoing all of that (yet). I have been shilling OpenBSD a lot lately, but for something like this I would imagine NetBSD would be more fitting. Plan 9's stdlib is MUCH better (and there's a functional WIP RISC-V port), but to properly use that you will need pointing and CRT tech so it's kind of a circular loop there, and it's also not as accessible due to being mostly GUI and due to having lots of single letter commands/shortcuts to remember across the included programs. Although whatever you can get your dirty hands on (I am being slightly pessimistic (or realistic, even) and assuming not having access to the internet at this stage, the one and only as we know for being controlled by the big IANA). Fork the OS you got. Most tools have been generally designed around some level of hierarchy, although for source control, git and compatibles (got...) remain best (thanks, Torvalds 2005). The reason is sharing patches over plain text, and more importantly applying them, becomes trivial (if you add a signature/checksum, even more so, as you now know it wasn't corrupted or line converted or anything). Allow anonymous editing like for TCC to minimize said hierarchy (maybe invent a better solution later, like something distributed with proof of work for voting if a patch gets in or not... too bad all of this terminology has been taken by crypto bros). Speaking of TCC, that's a nice ass compiler, should probably use that to avoid hogging the tiny brain you've just built for others. "What others", well...

Here's the part where a multi-user OS starts making sense. As soon as networking starts to network, put it right onto the usual networks with existing repurposed computers from before. Let it be like a pubnix, or "shell provider" if you like calling it that. Let people fuck around, find out ("help I deleted authorized_keys"), maybe even discover backdoors and other bugs. While that is happening, go improve, go make more, go offer some units IRL to especially interested people. Obviously, share the hardware designs, so someone also especially dared could do the office projector thing, while someone else is trying to figure out how to replace the said office projector with something more DIY.

And basically, there you go. Now, this is technically possible under de-facto capitalism; although I am not sure if anywhere on this planet right now exists a community of especially dared, IRL connected and unoccupied enough in time people.

EDIT: figured someone might want to use this text.

License

            DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
                    Version 2, December 2004

 Copyright (C) 2004 Sam Hocevar <sam@hocevar.net>

 Everyone is permitted to copy and distribute verbatim or modified
 copies of this license document, and changing it is allowed as long
 as the name is changed.

            DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO PUBLIC LICENSE
   TERMS AND CONDITIONS FOR COPYING, DISTRIBUTION AND MODIFICATION

  0. You just DO WHAT THE FUCK YOU WANT TO.

[–] A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

Hey, you seem to know your way around hardware better than I do. Whats your toughts on collapse OS?

[–] diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 days ago* (last edited 4 days ago) (1 children)

Sounds pretty cool, although it wouldn't bring progress too much forward without networking or anything, although someone might find it useful for calculations and stuff. Once setup, it's like a little Commodore 64 but with a weird quirky programming language. TempleOS is basically the same thing but with God's support. The linked "public domain books" page, although very much incomplete, is pretty useful. I have all of the archive.org torrents for them (although some can't reach 100%, thanks archive.org).

[–] A404@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 days ago (1 children)

I think I would rather leave low level stuff to people like you. This stuff is making my head ache just by looking at it 🥴

[–] diaphragmwp@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 4 days ago

Cool, thanks. Although this is a very surface level of understanding, not enough to do any of that. If it wasn't clear, what I described needs multiple people with deep understandings of the specific parts. Like, I said "implement this shitty instruction set in hardware". How - I don't fucking know. I don't speak transistor logic. Well, I haven't tried much, but still.

Also, I take my words back on CollapseOS, having a microcontroller bootstrap other ones is useful in the sense that you can then use the microcontrollers as part of the fab machinery while also not hoarding the real (capitalist) computer and letting someone else use it.