this post was submitted on 14 Sep 2023
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[–] [email protected] 96 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The beatings will continue until the latte art improves.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 1 year ago

Comrade, we are already exceeding the artistic tolerance. Any higher and she'll foam!

[–] [email protected] 54 points 1 year ago (7 children)

Everyone talk about doing the fun jobs, yet no one talk about doing the hard and necessary jobs like a plumber, garbage men, or farmer. Poops and garbage aren't magically disappear and foods don't magically appears except in star trek utopia.

[–] MJBrune 34 points 1 year ago

Literally the comment above this one is talking about wanting to be a farmer because they grown good weed. A lot of people actually want to just clean up stuff. A lot of people like being a plumber. That said communism doesn't mean everyone just does what they want.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

What would I rather, collect garbage, or let garbage pile up in my house?

Probably I'll collect garbage.

And since I'm doing it, might as well do cooperate with a couple members of my community and clean up the whole thing.

Would I rather my house pile in shit or learn plumbing? Probably the latter. And then when my neighbor is having plumbing issues, I'll give 'em a hand.

And not everyone has to do this. My neighbor and I decide he'll take the garbage I'll take the plumbing. Or maybe we both learn both, and just switch.

You seem to forget that these things were born out of a need anyways. There's nothing stopping people from doing what they need to do to fulfill their community's needs.

[–] [email protected] 14 points 1 year ago (2 children)

You seem to forget that these things were born out of a need anyways. There’s nothing stopping people from doing what they need to do to fulfill their community’s needs.

I actually grew up in a pretty remote village and back then it was devoid of infrastructure, so we did pretty much what you mentioned above. Burnt the garbage in the backyard, dug trenches for drainages, built outhouses (basically just a hole in the ground, but with roof and door), dug wells for water source, etc. But the village is small and everyone know each other, and thus very willing to help each other. However, I'm having a hard time imagining similar stuff would work in a high density modern city. The sheer complexity of plumbing that service a high rise apartment can't be maintained by some random dude without appropriate training for example.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

Yeah I'm sorry but all these people who just assume you can just fix some plumbing and learn it easily are really misunderstanding the importance of specialization. I wouldn't want my neighbor to fix my water heater without prior knowledge.

I don't really want people doing half a dozen jobs each poorly but having enough people properly trained to do the right job while having enough spares to make sure people have free time and the needs of community is met. Each paid a fair and livable wage for their specialized contribution.

This hippy idea of a utopia in so many people's minds about communism is not one bound to a reality that works.

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[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago

Poop gets beamed from the colon back to the food replicator raw material tanks.

[–] MuhammadJesusGaySex 9 points 1 year ago

I suck at plumbing and electrical work. I’ve done Painting and Sheetrock work. I’ve also done pest control, and been a Walmart janitor. I have cleaned Walmart bathrooms, and honestly it was one of my favorite jobs. When people hire you to potentially clean puke, piss, blood, and feces they pretty much don’t fuck with you. I literally cleaned all the bathrooms in about 2 hours then I would hide out. Then spend 2 hours making sure they were clean before I left, and no one ever questioned it.

I don’t mind doing gross stuff. As long as it gets me what I need, and sometimes what I want.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I don't know man all of these could be fun tbh

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[–] GardenVarietyAnxiety 34 points 1 year ago (2 children)

My brain is a shortcut finding machine. I'd be doing the shitty jobs while trying to figure out ways to do them easier/more efficiently.

In my off time I'd be a tinkerer and a storyteller.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago

Automation and process improvenent are key skills. The less time spent staying alive, the more time living

[–] PP_BOY_ 6 points 1 year ago (1 children)

in my off time

Nonsense comrade! The quotas must be met! ~~Snowball~~ ~~Goldstein~~ the Capitalists have destroyed our grain storage and you must work to replenish it!

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

I'll do literally whatever if it can be a 4 day work week and support my life. Mines? Factory? Literally swimming in shit? I don't care

I work to live, I don't live to work. I don't need my job to be "fulfilling". It just needs to pay for my fucking needs

Then in the off hours I can do fun nonsense like draw furry dicks or whatever. Hopefully without having to turn that too into a job.

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[–] [email protected] 26 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (5 children)

I can fix/make electronics. Don't know how useful that is in a commune that probably doesn't have a lot of electronics. I guess I can keep the latte machine maintained and working.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Communist =! Luddites. Just because they're choosing to live in a different social structure does not remove them from modern technology. You'd still be useful, up-skill to basic power systems to keep the lights on and you'd be golden.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

You missed the joke. The joke was that the leftist commune only has to maintain their latte machine because there’s nothing else to do

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago

As a software engineer, skills I think I could contribute are systems design, debuging, writing software, and also trash pickup on the back af the truck. I'd be happy to help build software tools that help people actually enjoy life, and also I eon't mind pitching in to my community.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Why would a commune not have electronics? I think they would.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

I'm pretty good at repairing the means of production, so not to different here

[–] feedum_sneedson 4 points 1 year ago

No that's very useful.

[–] affiliate 21 points 1 year ago (2 children)

i’d be a math teacher. hopefully in the commune i’d be able to avoid the rigidity and tedium of the regular math curriculum, instead being able to focus on the fun stuff and foster people’s curiosity.

[–] Godric 12 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Interesting! Everyone loves professors who can make usually dry subjects fun, what are some fun math stuff?

[–] affiliate 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

at the higher levels you start to see all kinds of crazy stuff, here are some examples:

  • mathematicians abstracted the idea of measure and then found out not everything can be measured
  • we know there are different sizes of infinity, and we know what the "smallest" infinity is, but it's impossible to "know" (ie prove in ZFC) what the "second smallest size of" infinity is
  • we took the regular number line and made it longer just to see what would happen
  • The Hairy Ball Theorem, which says "you can't comb a hairy ball flat without creating a cowlick" (quote from source)

but as with any discipline, a big part of how much fun it is to learn has to do with how it's taught. i think it's possible to teach middle school/high school geometry in a way that makes it fun and engaging, but it's often not taught in this way. there's a great article/paper that talks about this. it's written to be very readable and accessible, although it is a bit long (but you can get the basic idea in the first 5-7 pages). he talks about how terribly math is taught in school and how it's no wonder so many people hate it as a result.

he also talks about how learning math could be much more fun if it was taught differently. he gives a really great example of this when he discusses something as simple as the formula for the area of a triangle (on the bottom of page 3 to the end of page 4). i tried to summarize it for this post, but i don't think a summary would do it justice, so i strongly encourage you to read it if you're interested.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

but as with any discipline, a big part of how much fun it is to learn has to do with how it's taught.

I teach (technically still in college, but true enough) basically the opposite of you, history, and this is very true. You can make history lessons fun and engaging and challenging, but it's also very easy to make them boring. Unfortunately, as you are also aware of, it's difficult to make these interesting lessons with the constraints of time (of which administrative bullshit takes up a lot), class sizes and government-mandated curriculums and tests.

Last year I had my internship at a pretty shitty school with abysmal guidance and support which meant I was teaching all on my own even though I shouldn't have been allowed to, and basically no curriculum. That sucked, but it also meant I had basically total freedom in what and how I taught, and the classes were 12 students maximum. I pretty much only did engaging and fun lessons for 4 months straight.

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

It always pains me how prevalent education systems hinder curiosity and our natural love to learn.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago

Ah, the lure of power.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Literally the same thing I do now, programming robots. Except we'd vote on what the robots are going to do, and everyone would appreciate the robots taking away their work.

[–] Darthjaffacake 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Honestly same I'd use my robot arm for good rather than evil.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Please tell us more about this robot arm you use for evil.

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[–] superduperenigma 16 points 1 year ago

I can write software well enough that my bullshitting skills will bridge the gap to convincing the powers that be that I'm useful.

[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I'm not sure i have much value to a commune.

[–] Godric 31 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Nonsense! You can work as a miner or factory worker! If you aren't as physically capable, you can always be bureaucrat who records who exactly believes reading tarot cards is labor!

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago

Wait a minute, I've seen this one!

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago

Do whatever fulfills your wants and needs and you're already doing good.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

Personally ? Guerilla warfare insurgent.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago (2 children)

It would be cool to spend some of my time gardening and landscaping to make the community look better. Having greenery around me and seeing public spaces that look cared for and lived in always puts me in a better mood. For that matter, we could bring back some of the skilled decorative trades and start embellishing buildings with stone and wood carving, tile work, tapestries, rugs, relief sculptures, and stuff like that. Maybe we could develop some new aesthetics instead of copying ostentatious old buildings. I just like when you can tell someone put attention and time into a building, and it's not all disposable prefab that will get torn down in twenty years.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Hot take but I also dig creative brutalist buildings like Boston City Hall and the Boston Government Services Building. I just like how permanent it looks, like cold war architects were reminding people to think of the future. But I'm probably in the minority.

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[–] [email protected] 13 points 1 year ago

I grow pretty good weed, and I expect that skill to transfer to food crops.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 1 year ago

I'll be the musician - it seemed to go OK for Shostakovich

[–] Whirling_Ashandarei 9 points 1 year ago

Oh plenty of things. I could teach, do some manual labor, be a peace keeper (a real one, not a pig), assist with legal matters. Hell would love to do a day of each one a week.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I don't know, construction maybe

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[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Do y'all need a shuttle bus? I feel like a commune would need a shuttle bus. (Feel free to add a leftist name)

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[–] MJBrune 5 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Game developer. I'm one now and I have 10 years of experience making great games. It's highly competitive but I could see myself getting it.

If I couldn't be one I'd them be a math teacher and apply game development to make algebra fun and interesting.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago

Writing the stories in my head that are waiting to be put out into the world, taking part in maker groups and just all around experimenting with tech

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