A huge part of the problem is the whole "burning every Maya book" thing that some spanish dudes decided to embark on. Various ethnic cleansing campaigns over the last two centuries or so, not to mention the impact of disease.
Its a real tragedy the colonizers didn't think to preserve the world they were conquering.
Modern Maya are starting to learn how to read and write their own language again but that only happened in the last 40 years or so. (They never forgot how to speak it.)
Most of their written knowledge was lost forever as you point out.
I'm curious about this mindset. Wouldn't it be easier to reform your system before it has gone "pure evil"? Or do you expect nobody cares enough to do that without the threat of impending doom to motivate them?
I believe people will typically not stand for their rights (even less so for other's rights) unless they are significantly bothered or led to think the situation is dire. This is not great, but it is also natural for the human condition: unless one is well-informed and especially conscious about the issues that come with reduction of rights, they will not even realize what is happening until it is happening.
Maybe its a generational thing, but to me an elite hacker is an uwu catgirl type with lain vibes that knows an unhealthy amount about computers. typically an emacs evil-mode user who would quote weird poems about whatever software they're working on.
It could be a buddy movie where the grizzled guy (who uses emacs) and the uwu cat girl (who uses vim) grudgingly come to admire one another's skills and become friends.
It's not capitalism, it's technology. That can often go together with capitalism, but Russia from 1917-60 and China from 1960-2025, say, are big counter-examples. As are the many poor countries with capitalist economies. Growth in electrification, transport infrastructure, manufacturing and mechanized agriculture will grow any economy, capitalist or socialist
Strongly disagree, you're example is nonsensical as it's normally used to prove the exact opposite. Nearly every quality of life improvement and economic boom in China and Russia during those periods are directly tied to adopting some parts of capitalistic systems.
Those that happened in the USSR and China, no? After the start of electrification and active mechanization of agriculture, more peasants died of hunger there than in the previous 100 years (in Russia more than in the previous 200 years).
That is simply how socialism works. Land as a mean of production is no different from a factory, so naturally, the products created on the land belong not to the peasants (Petite Bourgeoisie), but to society as a whole.
And guess what this bourgeoisie did when they found out that the grain they produced would now become common property (they sharply reduced the amount they producing).
> but Russia from 1917-60 and China from 1960-2025, say, are big counter-examples.
Russia and China are good examples of that.
We have Khrushchev's memoirs about how, before the communist revolution, he, as a simple worker, lived better than workers live 40 years after the revolution. That is, the period from 1917 to 1960 in the USSR was one of complete stagnation, despite all the technological progress.
And in the example of China in the second half of the 20th century, we see yet another confirmation: their standard of living was literally directly proportional to the level of implementation of capitalist mechanisms.
> As are the many poor countries with capitalist economies.
As far as I understand, there is not a single poor capitalist country. Name a single poor country where private property is reliably protected and people enjoy economic freedom. There is no such country. As soon as even the poorest country begins to protect private property and guarantee economic freedom, it becomes rich within 10 years or something.
You make some reasonable points. But you're wrong to discount technology. Consider what Russia and China would have looked like if they hadn't electrified and mechanized.
Agree - I am an ardent capitalist, but a conscious capitalist. I believe the purpose of capitalism redirected can be used as a vehicle for massively changing economies and lives - such as in this case.
Afaik markets predate joint-stock companies. The concept of "raising capital" is much newer than the concept of a market economy. Did capitalism exist under feudalism? How do modern capital markets differ from historical markets under various other economic systems?
I would say it's more of a matter of the level of interference of the fief on trade. When 100% of the economy is controlled by the monopoly on violence I would say that is complete communism, and when 0% of the economy is controlled by the monopoly on violence that is complete capitalism. This is a kind of asymmetric definition of communism/capitalism because "complete capitalism" is a pretty unstable configuration.
Joint-stock companies are not a prerequisite in my opinion; You can have an capitalist economy of merchants that run everything as sole proprietorships. Socialists will try to define capitalism around ownership of the means of production but I am not sure this is a useful definition.
Modern industry is more capital-intensive than labor intensive historical industries. So the sort of pro-labor communist movements that design systems that ignore the value of capital have pretty much gone extinct in the current era.
The "communist" party of china has adopted a number of capitalistic practices since deng xiaoping. At the same time, the "capitalist" american economy looks awfully communist under my definition as a significant chunk of the economy flows through the government, the military-industrial complex and such.
Are you confused by the idea that socialism and market are incompatible ideas, or is this a critique that they're merely selling and not manufacturing (therefore not fully owning the means of production)?
Capitalism is really centralized monopolistic oligarchical control in modern media parlance.
Distributed empowering democratic grassroots level capitalistic allocation of resources that don't provide centralized control and administration is "socialism".
I think this is really insightful definition, username aside, I think forcing the conversation to include "oligarchical control" (the part people usually have issue with) prevents the lazy "but muh free market!" arguments when discussing our modern economic system
If the value is staying with local workers (social ownership) instead of being captured by some multinational, that's closer to a textbook definition of socialism than capitalism. How's that double-speak?
The solar panels are produced by outside of the country with companies applying massive economies of scale. I don't know what about this is socialist.
I guess it is vaguely leftist in the sense that poor 3rd worlders are benefiting. But whether a system is capitalist or not does not hinge on this sort of grievance-based thinking.
You're attempting to be sarcastic but that's actually accurate:
> Capitalism is really centralized monopolistic oligarchical control in modern media parlance.
Of course, because the Capitalists try to control the industry they've invested in.
> Distributed empowering democratic grassroots level <word> allocation of resources that don't provide centralized control and administration is "socialism".
Yes, it is. When the people who actually do the work own it.
>Of course, because the Capitalists try to control the industry they've invested in.
But does the system eventually result in a small number of capitalists taking power or is it distributed over many capitalists? Not all monopolies are natural.
What is the "work" being done here? Manufacturing or installation? It's not like all of the solar companies are co-ops and contractors.
Solar is inherently distributed in non-centralized.
Because it's based on sunlight which is distributed and noncentralized and free.
With battery storage, the intermittency is solved largely. Maybe you have your own gasoline peaker.
With enough solar, and an electric vehicle, you have transportation independence.
And I'm no expert on the historical and political nature of agriculture and centralized control, but I could argue agriculture is also fundamentally decentralized, certainly within the modern standards of deep technological stack control.
So if you can get your food, energy, transportation, water by yourself or within a local network... Then while I wouldn't call that socialist, I would call that highly democratilized, is that a word?
Now traditionally you also needed centralized power for defense.
And I'm wondering if drones will provide a fundamental advantage to guerilla defense.
why are you happy? many African nations attempted socialism in the 20th century, and all of those states have since collapsed. trying the same failed strategy over and over doesn't bode well.
anyway, I hope they get electricity. the article said a lot about markets for something related to an ideology that rejects them.
> many African nations attempted socialism in the 20th century, and all of those states have since collapsed
This is false. Senegal attempted small-s socialism under its first postcolonial regime (under Léopold Sédar Senghor, 1960–1980) and has had democratic political succession to the present day.
We know how to cure addiction though, and its really low tech. People (and rats) with adequate social lives and decent living conditions are able to consistently overcome addiction. In fact, addiction has come to be understood as a coping mechanism for living in an unpleasant environment. Imo the issue with phones is really a symptom of our lack of leisure time, pleasant outside settings, and affordable third places.
I think a lot of people turn to phonecrack instead of their social lives because they think phonecrack is their social lives. They've been told it's good, it's community, it's social.
And maybe it was at one point. But it's not anymore. There are no social media sites left, only media sites.
It actually is, but creating these kinds of environments and promoting healthy social lives is extremely not profitable. We'd have to dramatically lower the cost of living for everyone and make huge investments in infrastructure and subsidize the creation of third places.
Idk what part of "make society affordable for everyone and ensure that everyone has access to adequate care and social support" sounds like an easy or reductive fix.
Maybe my use of the world "simple" is causing some hangups. This is obviously a prerequisite for curing addiction worldwide. Lacking support, care, and social ties is a strong indicator that an addict will relapse in any case. You can't even start treating the really pathological cases without a comprehensive healthy environment for everyone.
The summation of the problem is reductive and your fix won’t fix it, although there’s no doubt it would help. No one is claiming your solution is bad, on the contrary it’s the best solution, but to claim it would completely eliminate addiction is preposterous.
There is a new book by Owen Flanagan ”What is it like to be an addict”[0] where he goes through the phenomenon of addiction from many different angles and argues that rat park type findings are true but only give partial view to the problem. His view is that it is very multifaceted subject and can’t be understood or tackled with any one easy fix.
Idk what part of "make society affordable for everyone and ensure that everyone has access to adequate care and social support" sounds like an easy fix.
That’s a good goal and I think we should aim for that regardless if it fixes addiction. I would not call it easy though. And would it be world without addicts? There are plenty of well connected rich social happy folks who can’t handle simple molecules. Environment is part of the usage pattern but it’s not the only thing. That’s the books point I gather.
You have taken the point someone else made and run somewhere else with it, so I will reiterate it.
> People (and rats) with adequate social lives and decent living conditions are able to consistently overcome addiction
I don't think it's about riches, or power, or having friends. It is purely about how many stressors you have to deal with, how often and with how much reprieve you have available. More money can give more reprieve, it usually means more stressors too.
The more subtle point I guess is that it is not how much you have, it is the shape of your life and how each day feels.
Use the example of far northern countries. People who live in dark countries drink more, and they drink even more the darker it gets. The modern era says that the answer should be more mindfulness, more cognitive behavioural therapy, I think GP is saying we should be giving them sunlight which is clearly what they actually need. Substitute sunlight for whatever thing your locale is currently not managing well.
I recommend the book and the new research. It reflects on the rat park study and makes what I think are good arguments that addiction is not a simple thing we can fix only by fixing the enviroment even though it is part of it. OP was asking for evidence so I thought I’d chip in with a modern source. There are no socities that have solved addiction. Obviously it is a gnarly problem.
It’s a nuanced issue not a simple issue. Mental health is often involved but I guess your simple cure works for mental health too?
People read some articles about a few studies and not only form but propagate reductive takes with absolute certainty… It’s baffling to see people operate this way.
Its been plasma since 2009, a year after KDE 4 came out and they rebranded a bunch of their projects. Whether 16 years amounts to "ages" ig is up to interpretation.
KDE 4.4ish (early 2010) was when it finally started to become stable enough to be mostly usable, so that's close enough to just saying "KDE 4".
Unfortunately it's looking like KDE 6 is going to be another catastrophic upgrade, unlike KDE 5 which I barely noticed. Both of my Debian bookworm->trixie upgrades had showstopper bugs that required the terminal to fix KDE, there is multi-second lag unless you turn off some of the new features, and significant uninvestigated breakage remains even after that.
"Plasma [i]s Hell" is well-named, not that it's the only problem.
That is surprising. I didn't have much trouble getting LSP working either in og or neovim. My editor config is fairly barebones by preference, so its not like I spend a lot of time editing my configs either. I will say, Lua is a lot more ergonimic than vimscript for a lot of things, but I appreciate that I can still use the old ways at times. Like ALE isn't leaving my config unless I'm forced to remove it for some reason.
I use a plugin[0] for LSP in vim and it's pretty easy to setup there too. Installing and configuring the lsp software itself take more time as I'm constantly moving between OS.
Also, Emacs and Vim is very much about making the tool your own. I don't mind shaving the yak every now and then, because once an inconvenience is solved, it stay solved.
On the other hand, the main reason why Y2K happened was because a lot of major orgs would rather emulate software from the 60s forever than rewrite it. I'm talking like ancient IBM mainframe stuff, running on potentially multiple layers of emulation and virtualization.
We rewrite stuff for lots of reasons, but virtualization makes it easy enough to take our platforms with us even as hardware changes.
