I hate that some racist Karen is going to become a millionaire for being racist on camera. And this has happened many times before. Meanwhile I am sitting in a fast food place after spending $13 for some deep-fried slop served to me by people who are probably making $12/hr.

I've been unemployed for a while, using Wall Street to keep bills paid, but honestly I have no interest in working for anyone else at this point. This whole life is a huge scam! How is any of this fair?!? The evil people are celebrated, the worst companies get the highest valuations, the bad guys not only win, but they get ahead of us honest folks. I feel like I woke up in opposite land.

I do a lot of housework, work on my own projects, and am constantly working on self improvement. But those don't have a paycheck attached so I guess I'm a useless, lazy bum according to society.

I'm tired of all this.

I am at risk of being sent to a camp because my brain works a little differently than others. Being on the left isn't going to help.

Our friends and colleagues are being deported and jailed just for having anti-Zionist opinions and daring to express them.

Right wing violence is Surging. Our Trans comrades are in increasing danger. We are all having our rights stripped away...

...and the largest new thread is another fucking anarchist beefing with MLs.

What is it going to take for us to work together and fight a common enemy? Anarchists are not my enemies. I don't care which series of 200 year old books you have or have not read, and you shouldn't care either.

You know who ARE my enemies? Those old white people who go to Republican party meetings and plot to deport my neighbors and throw me into a "wellness" camp because they're too much of cowards to handle anyone different than them.

I'm sick of all this endless infighting! Can we all just, IDK, organize to shut down some local GOP meetings, or create some Socialism 101 agit prop, or do anything productive? Or is this what the left does, just endlessly bicker over books online?

Get outside, touch grass, and accept the person next to you no matter what kind of left they claim to be. We're not big enough for this and I really need you to organize because I like living outside of a DHS cage.

Hi Lauren, give me more of your money

[CWs: Fat-shaming, Reddit]

I'm not a fan of people scalping toys. I understand scalping is a consequence of living under Capitalism where we are all pitted against each other over artificial scarcity.

What I'm complaining about is this notion of "real" jobs.

Who decides what is a "real job?" And why do people care so much about whether others have a "real job" or not? Your money isn't magically worth more because you made it working a construction job vs. me pressing a few buttons on an app.

According to "the market" me pressing the Buy button on my trading app and the Sell button later is more valuable than people who clean toilets or cook food or do all sorts of important day-to-day work. But we're all in the same spot as workers.

(Yes my "career" is not noble or hard work and I'm not defending it. I do what I have to do to survive and find happiness elsewhere.)

The money isn't tied to effort at all. In fact, it gets easier to make money the more money you have! An example from trading: If you buy a share of stock then sell it back on the same day you buy it, your broker has to, by law, note it as a "day trade". If you do too many of these in a short period, your broker is supposed to lock your account so that you can't open any new trades for 90 days... UNLESS you have $25k in your account. You are literally pay walled out of trading your way up from, say, $500 unless you trade very slowly.

This kind of thing happens everywhere. Not sure where I'm going with this, just that people calling certain ways of making money "not real" are missing the point about Capitalism. The landlord doesn't care how "real" your job is. They're going to take the money no matter how you got it. Maybe it's a cope for blue collar workers who see that they are never getting ahead driving tractors all day but also haven't reached class consciousness.

sigh

Following up from this post where I talked about learning to daytrade and trying to break into finance.

The trading has been going well for the most part. My scalping/quick option flipping strategy works and I've had a good number of +250, +500, and even a couple $1000+ days. I have some things to work on, namely keeping myself from reverting to my older self (re: gambler) and managing my risk. I gotta let my losers go faster! Because of one trade that immediately went wrong, and I screwed up handling it, last Friday was one of the worst trading days of my life.

As part of my journey I've been reading some books, looking at online posts, and enrolling in a class with a company called Trade With The Pros

I found them from an ad that promised a "Free In-Person Trading Workshop" in my area. I figured that's a low risk to take, let's hear them out. So I went to the free 2-hour class, learned some things about risk management and other issues I had to get over. At the end I was invited to the next level course: a 3-day training "Premier" at one of the campuses for $200. I liked what I learned from the free class and decided "sure, I'll take some profits from today's trading to pay for this." and paid for the next course.

I can go into more detail about the 3-day training in a comment, but what made me want to write this is what happened on day 2.

Day 1 went well enough. Still learning a lot, but a lot of the comments from the instructor were talking about "we don't have enough time in 3 days to teach you everything" (true) and "we're not sharing our trading system unless you sign up for the full education." What's the "full education"? That's apparently much longer multi-week classes that includes live trading sessions, student/community portal, trade webinars, and potentially a spot on the company's "prop desk" (Basically you trade with their money and system and split the profits 90/10. You get more leverage in exchange for 10% of your earnings.)

Sounds cool except for one thing: The course starts at $8500 for the "Market Structure" module, and then an extra $8500 for each module after that. So if I signed up for this and wanted to deep dive into say Options and Forex... good bye $25k!

I had a one on one with one of the instructors. We'll call him Steve. On Saturday Steve and I talked about how the class was going so far, how I was doing with my trading overall, stuff like that. I showed him my Profit-and-Loss and talked about what I hoped to improve on. He pitched the full class to me. I told him very clearly I can't afford it but will consider it in the future when I'm in a better spot financially. I thought that was the end of it.

I came in to start day 2 of this 3-day class, and as I walked in the door to take my seat Steve pulled me aside for another 1:1. I joked "Am I in trouble?"

"No, not yet!"

I wasn't ready for a hard sell.

It started with "you're too advanced to finish this three-day event".

I bet they tell everyone who's traded before that! My PnL doesn't match this claim. Maybe Steve said this because I was the only person out of the ten-or-so of us that had done any trading.

"We didn't want you to talk to other students"

That was a weird thing to say. In the class I was asked if I traded before, gave my honest answer that this was year #4, made jokes about the Friday market action, but thought I was being humble and doing the self-deprecating humor thing. "Don't listen to me! I lost a lot of money yesterday" type stuff. So people came up to me during a break and asked about what I was doing. I showed a PnL and was talking about how I screwed up this trade, just being friendly.

"The instructor said he didn't think you would be coachable."

Another weird one. I thought I was super clear with everyone that I am trading, yes, but I'd like to learn how to trade assets beyond Options and I'm making costly mistakes. I thought I was in the right place to be around people to keep me accountable and help me get over my issues?

"You're obviously very passionate about this and more advanced than a lot of people here. You should do this and get to that consistent profits."

Sounds great... and I'd probably say yeah teach me your system IF it wasn't 17 THOUSAND dollars!

"Here's the deal. We only want people to complete the 3-day if they're going to sign up for the full class. We already called some students and that's why they're not here."

"If you complete this class and don't sign up the price goes up as soon as you walk out the door. It will be $25k instead of $17k to do Market Structure and Options with us" I hate this pressure tactic.

"Or you can choose to leave us now, we'll give you your $200 back, and then you can do another 3-day when you're ready to buy in."

Steve talked about how one of the students worked Uber part-time to pay for tuition. The instructor talked about students borrowing against their 401ks to pay for tuition. And all I was thinking was just keep my money and let me finish what I signed up for.

But then I understood what was going on. The free workshop weeds out people who won't pay anything. You get sold on the $200 class right there (It's $300 normally yada yada). Then the next "step" is to get the people who paid a little and weed out most of them. Catch the few who are going to spend more than I spent on my car for the actual product.

Maybe the full course is worth it? There's not a lot of reviews for this company so it's hard to say. I wasn't going to spend a ton of money to find out the hard way.

I took the refund and left. It felt like shit and I'm writing this partly to work through these feelings.

I'm feeling a lot of things right now. Part of me is really just struggling to get this part of life figured out so I can work on other things that are also going on. Part of me wants this to go so well I can start becoming the modern Engels and fund some mutual aid work, feed people near me, etc. Maybe even run some pro-China ads, fund true left-wing candidates, stuff like that. A comrade can dream...

I don't get it. I understand that we have borders as a way to have different sets of laws and separate different governments from each other. But why are people so obsessed with making the borders keep people out, or restrict what can come in, tax goods moving between them, etc.

Borders aren't real. At least not physically. If I cross state lines I don't see a literal giant black line dividing, say, North Dakota from South Dakota. In fact I wouldn't know there was a difference if not for the sign saying "Welcome to South Dakota"

For some reason humans can't conceive of a world where we all live on the same chunk of land and we somehow have to separate each other.

Shouldn't humans have a basic right to live where they have the best chance of survival? It seems like borders are just an excuse to exploit people along arbitrary lines by making up more rules to control humans who were born in the "wrong place".

I must be missing something. All of this effort around nations and patriotism over "I live here so I'm better than you" or "those humans suck because they live on THAT chunk of land instead of this one"... we're all the same species and yet we collectively seek out ways to divide ourselves and place people far away "beneath" us. All for some lines on a map.

Thanks for reading my Monday rant.

It's a weird nitpicky thing that makes no sense. If you can't even use the actual name for the CPC why should I believe a single word you say about China?

Are most libs just this ignorant or is there some sort of narrative/propaganda behind getting the name wrong?

I don't know what to do with my life. My local organizing is in limbo and I'm not sure I want to keep doing it for several reasons. I don't have a job, lost mine when my campaign work officially ended on 12/1. I used to write code for a living but really don't want to go back into it. It's not what I want to do for a living. Also....

Capitalism is dumb. Really really stupid. I hate how there are so many people busting their butts working in Amazon warehouses or meat packing plants, or those kids mining rare metals in Africa, making scraps and actually making all of these modern Capitalist treats possible. And then there's people who are clicking a few buttons on a stock broker app and pulling in thousands of dollars just like that!

Actually working for an honest wage feels like a scam at this point. I get to be pushed around, mentally distressed (hooray Autism) and eventually stressed out to the point of burning out for whatever wage I "agree" to take (aka whatever "the market" says I'm worth). OR I can turn the trading I'm doing into a "system" and hone it to a point where I can pull in $300-500 per day making trades on the market.

I'm not even talking about a fancy trading strategy with a bunch of indicators or other nonsense. I'm just scalping SPY, buying Call or Put options at a certain point and selling them when they go up in price by 20 cents. 25 contracts x .20 profit / share / contract = $500 - $25 in broker fees = $475. In theory I could run this every day and be in and out of my trade within minutes. The full strategy has risk management rules and then the "hard part" is picking the right entry point for each trade.

I'll be running a back test on this simple plan but I know from actually doing it on a smaller scale that it works. It's so dumb how I can make (and lose) a month's rent on a single trade.

It's disgusting. On one hand I am glad I have this "gift" of hyper-focus so that I can dig into topics like day trading and figure it out. OTOH there's a lot of jealousy over people who I see out and about as "normal" and knowing I'm not going to be them. Part of me wishes I could just deal with a 9-5 job like most people and maybe empty my mind of Politics. I'd be less informed but maybe happier?

The other thing that bothers me is that Capitalism is pushing me towards this route. I'd rather be spending my time learning how to make music, mixing with the gear I have, reading some of these theory and history books that are piling up, or doing something actually good for society. However I need money to survive and after going through plenty of really bad programming jobs I guess I'd rather try to make money on my own. So here I am, becoming the financial equivalent of a river leech, sucking some blood from my host each day, and those hosts being parasites themselves, those stock prices rising from stealing the labor value of everyone possible, charging as much as possible, screwing over everyone as much as they can get away with.

I'm writing this as a response to the linked thread and realized it should be it's own post.

I'll be brief: My DSA chapter is in the planning stages of what we will focus on next year. We are a smaller chapter so we are working to pick programs that we can realistically do with a handful of people.

I read a lot on here about how orgs such as this one are doing everything wrong... so is there a step-by-step guide to doing the "right" thing?

Potential programs we may pursue next year (these are being put up to a vote in a few weeks):

• A internal membership development program. Lots of political education including a reading group for the new translation of Capital Vol. 1

• An agitprop program. We will teach each other how to work Canva/GIMP, design flyers, posters and other media and start being more outgoing around the area with our advertising.

• A "mass line" project where we plan to hold community "listening sessions" in the more impoverished parts of town.

• A Crisis Pregnancy Center awareness campaign. We would point out these centers around town, agitate against them through awareness campaigns and maybe lobby to get them banned in our area?

What would you pick and why?

Recently I posted a pretty harmless meme in my DSA chapter's Discord (see image). It was in response to South Korea's recent spate of Fascism.

In response I had comrades jump down my throat, attacking me for critical support of AES states like DPRK and China. According to these comrades "there is no real Socialist nation."

As tempting as it is to quit DSA I think I should stay and try to educate.

Comrades also jumped on me for a comment I made months ago in response to some right wing BS where I said "maybe Democracy isn't always a great idea". The point I was trying to make was that Trans rights and other basic freedoms should never be put up to a popularity contest... I'm ok with a state that defends these rights and doesn't allow a reactionary majority to vote them away!

During this thread, people brought up multiple times that DPRK isn't Democratic because the Kim's have always been the figurehead, China isn't Democratic because "reasons" (racism), China lies about their suicide rates to WHO, etc.

Frustrating. I'll post more details in the comments.

My question: What constitutes a "real" Democracy? Is it leadership changing hands every few years? We don't have that in the U.S. Is it secret ballots? All the nationa above have that. Is it that the people's votes and voices actually change the government actions? We saw this in China unfortunately when people demanded ending the COVID lock downs early. It was the wrong thing to do but done for the right reason.

And is there any hope for these people in my chapter? One of them was basically racist against Chinese people and they seem very set in this "not real Socialism" mindset.

I finally have a decent DJ setup for the first time in years. I saw someone else posting some nice Jungle on here... any recommendations in these genres?

Atmospheric Jungle / DnB ([https://virtualwound.bandcamp.com/album/vw001](pic related)

Neurofunk / HARD DnB like this [https://youtu.be/zA7U8VbgZyM](Freeland - We Want Your Soul Raiden Remix)

Breakcore