Monogamous relationships are centered on a single partner with whom you share intimacy and sexual desire. This type of relationship can already bring out some challenges, like jealousy, resentment, fights, or insecurities in general. Even with a shared agreement that you and your partner will exclusively dedicate their intimacy with yourselves, these feelings already pop up here and then.

Polyamory, polygamy, or non-monogamous relationships in general can have different "formats", but this type of relationship is solely focused on dialogue and internal agreements. Here is the main points and difference between them:

• Open relationships: usually there is a single partner with whom you develop intimacy and sex, but both agree that sex outside the relationship is allowed, but not intimacy.

• Polygamy: it's based on a shared relationship between more than 2 partners. Like 3 people under the same relationship, and having a relationship with each other. Intimacy and sex is usually shared among all partners, but it sometimes happen that 2 partners do not share a relationship. For instance a relationship where a woman has 2 boyfriends, and the boyfriends may have a friendship between each other, but not necessarily have sex together.

• Polyamory: it's an absolute non-exclusive relationship, similar to open relationships, but intimacy and sex is allowed. It tends to revolve around two partners, each allowed to have other non-exclusive relationships, be them casual or fixed.

It's an illusion to think these types of relationships are exempt from insecurities, jealousy, and that every person involved in the relationship are confident enlightened higher beings incapable of feeling insecure. This is a distorted characterization of these relationships. In polyamory, you'll still have to deal with jealousy, envy, resentment, and insecurities in general, both from yourself and your partners, but it can be a thousand times more intense than monogamous relationships.

There's always that male chauvinist who loves the idea of dating two women, but they can't fathom the idea of the woman he loves meeting, loving, kissing and having great sex with another man. For men, indoctrinated on the idea of sexual exclusivity (for women, not them lol), it can be quite tough to accept this situation and learning to deal with it. Polyamory is a journey in dealing with your deepest insecurities, and learning to deal with your partners' insecurities as well. It's definitely not an easy task, because it's already not easy to be responsible with a single partner's emotions, let alone two or more.

This is why I say polyamory is not for every one. Though it's solely based on dialogue and mutual freedom, it involves much more responsibilities than monogamous relationships, and it's way tougher to deal with insecurities and self-esteem crises. You need to be prepared to suffer a lot, and be ready to deal with your own issues, and also talking to your partners about it.

I've been in a non-monogamous relationship for 4 years now, and it's been a ride. For the most part I felt self-confident, but here and then I felt really bad, like anxiety, low self-esteem, jealousy and envy. Even though it happened only a few times, it was one of the worst sensations I've ever felt in my life. And even though I have a second partner, this shit's not easy, and it doesn't get easier lmao. For me, I adopt this relationship because of self-discovery. You learn more about yourself by exposing yourself to certain situations, and you find in yourself things to work out on.

Original (Italian)

Fischia il vento e infuria [urla] la bufera,
scarpe rotte e pur bisogna andar
a conquistare la rossa primavera
dove sorge il sol dell'avvenir.
A conquistare la rossa primavera
dove sorge il sol dell'avvenir.

Ogni contrada è patria del ribelle,
ogni donna a lui dona un sospir,
nella notte lo guidano le stelle
forte il cuore e il braccio nel colpir.

Se ci coglie la crudele morte,
dura vendetta verrà dal partigian;
ormai sicura è [già] la dura sorte
del fascista vile traditor.

Cessa il vento, calma è la bufera,
torna a casa il fiero partigian,
sventolando la rossa sua bandiera;
vittoriosi e alfin liberi siam.

English

The wind whistles, the storm rages,
our shoes are broken but we must march on,
to conquer the red spring,
where the sun of the future rises.
to conquer the red spring,
where the sun of the future rises.

Every street is home to the rebel,
every woman has a sigh for him,
the stars guide him through the night,
strong his heart and his arm when they strike.
the stars guide him through the night,
strong his heart and his arm when they strike.

If cruel death catches us
harsh revenge will come from the partisan
already certain is the harsh fate
of the vile treasonous fascist.
already certain is the harsh fate
of the vile treasonous fascist.

The wind stops and the storm calms,
the proud partisan returns home,
blowing in the wind his red flag,
victorious, at last we are free.
blowing in the wind his red flag,
victorious, at last we are free.

There are many Marxists who look at the US/NATO war against Russia without historical materialism. They condemn Russia and the war in Ukraine as an "inter-imperialist war" between Russia and the US, but this is wrong mainly because they ignore the historical aggression movement of the "traditional" imperialist countries.

One such movement was the expansion of NATO, where the EU and the US were funding NATO and EU membership campaigns, especially in former socialist republics. They took advantage of nascent states and low institutional complexity to spread propaganda in these countries, initially through television and today through the Internet. They manipulate the public opinion of an entire nation, just to serve their interests.

And worse, NATO demands from these countries "political reforms" in order to enter NATO, which eventually resulted in extreme right-wing governments in these countries.

NATO has been expanding eastward into Russia, settling in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, then Estonia, Latvia, Romania, and Bulgaria, with Estonia and Latvia bordering Russia. Furthermore, NATO has already stated if I'm not mistaken since 2008 that it intended to host Ukraine and Georgia, and not only that, it has frequently held military exercises with these countries. Both Ukraine and Georgia border Russia, Ukraine being the country that has the longest border with Russia.

In Ukraine, a government has been in place since 2014 that has openly advocated neo-Nazism and incorporated Nazi militias into its army. It promoted the persecution of ethnic Russians within the country and for 8 years the Ukrainian army assaulted the population of Donetsk and Luhansk provinces. School children were taught to hate Russians with children's stories portraying the Russian nation and its people as barbarians, monsters, as every government does with its enemies.

And now, with the Russian invasion, Finland, which also has a long border with Russia, has joined NATO. We already know what the historical trend of this will be. In addition, NATO has an indirect presence in Asia, mainly in South Korea and Japan, due to the presence of US troops in these countries (more than 80,000 soldiers in all).

It is very clear that NATO has been expanding toward Russia since the late 1990s, setting up governments hostile to Russians in its member countries for the sole purpose of generating a conflict with the country. In this way, it becomes possible to fragment the whole of Russia, to facilitate the plundering of that country's natural and human resources, and especially to prevent a competitive country from outgrowing the USA.

The idea that Russian aggression is part of an "inter-imperialist" conflict attempts to equate the US with Russia, as if both countries are waging war for similar reasons, or as if both are in the same position. The US/NATO has been hostile to Russia for decades, it's decades of constant aggression. To any Russian, who has seen it up close all these years, the war was a surprise, but everyone knew it was inevitable.

Marxists who defend the thesis of "inter-imperialist war" to condemn Russia and the US on the same "level" ignore all this historical development, and on top of that they use the argument that in Russia there is a right-wing conservative party in power. Or worse, they say that Russia is a bourgeois state and therefore does not deserve support.

It is true. In many aspects the Russian government is anti-communist, even. But all over the world we have bourgeois dictatorships or conservative governments. To take only this criteria of support would result in condemning the "inter-imperialist" war between the U.S. and Iraq, equating aggressors and aggressed. Because both are bourgeois dictatorships, therefore they do not deserve special consideration.

In the case of the war in Ukraine the "aggressor-aggrieved" relation is more subtle, because in the immediate appearance Russia invaded Ukraine. The aggressor-aggrieved relationship is between Russia-Ukraine, right? That seems to be the view of our Marxists, apparently. Losing sight of the background of NATO's actions, this war becomes a meaningless thing, as if Russia is wanting to take Ukraine for itself, to export its capital and control Ukraine's markets. It is a very similar discourse to the one NATO reproduces, of the invader Russia.

So who does the "imperialist Russia" discourse serve? Exactly the NATO side. Exactly the usual imperialists, which we are sick of knowing, the imperialists of the North Atlantic, the US and Europe. This discourse is aimed at undermining support for Russia in other nations, and gradually manufacturing a consensus that justifies a war against Russia.

The two sides of the war are not equal, and they do not wage war for equal reasons. Russia is a bourgeois dictatorship, as in much of the world, but it is part of a positive movement regarding the world market, an alternative movement to the US hegemony that for decades has plagued the countries of the world with its political and economic interference. Russia's partnership with China also adds strength to this alternative movement to the US-dominated institutions, the domination of the dollar, and the arbitrary interference in other countries.

Title is self-explanatory. The benefits of this would be tremendous, if correctly trained and perfected, it would be the greatest tool to democratize knowledge about Marxism.

There are already several open-source large language models on the internet out there, but I think the biggest bottlenecks is the knowledge on deploying such models and computing power to run such a thing.

Thread to discuss about this subject

Thanks to all donators, mostly from Patreon and Liberapay, we managed to upgrade the server so we have more space to store the content produced in the wiki.

We have stored every fund we have in a Brazilian bank, away from the dollar, and because it's easier to manage given the current staff of administrators. Upgrading the server cost us in total R$1243.40 (~US$247.39). This includes taxes in international transactions (R$13.91 Brazilian international exchange fee + R$57.09 exploited by PayPal) and a US$49.50 service we requested so the disk could be extended. The VPS server itself cost us US$183.5 for a whole year.

After paying for the host, we now have available R$3342.46 (~US$664.48) in funds. There is currently no plan for this money, and we are just storing it so we can pay for hosting for more years. We reserved a part of this money (R$2500.00) in savings which have earned us an extra R$33.17 passively, which is a minimal, but safe investment, and still better than just letting the money alone.

Any suggestion on what to do with this money is welcome. Thank you all for making ProleWiki sustain itself for one more year!

Thanks to @[email protected] for the tips, using bones was the best approach indeed

The first ProleWiki book club happened 12th February at 8PM UTC, and it was conceived and led by RedCustodian, with @CriticalResist helping set it up, and Clover helping with the reading.

It was a great success and signs that ProleWiki is starting to become an organic entity, because this is perhaps the first time that a major decision was made without my contribution to it, because I was not directly involved in the conceiving to the execution of the book club.

More than 2 years ago, when ProleWiki was merely 2 months old, I made some comments (some very idealist) on the direction of social ownership of ProleWiki:

We hope that in about a year or so, ProleWiki is able to exist without me individually and becomes a valuable resource to revolutionaries from all over the world, socially owned by all contributors.

It took way more than a year, but we finally have an expression of this goal, which is a somewhat big decision being taken without my contribution. I think this is pretty symbolic of the direction of our organization, which is slowly, but steadily growing.

Even though some big decisions are still directly in the hands of CriticalResist and myself, especially administrative ones, ProleWiki couldn't have maintained an unity among its editors without some level of democracy inside our server. Editorial decisions about the content of our wiki is no longer a decision solely made by the administration, and the administration promotes a culture of consultative democracy in most of the bigger decisions of our project.

As an important disclaimer, I should add that the administration does not hold up democratic values merely because we hold up an ideal and we are noble defenders of democratic centralism. Democratic centralism works, and it gives integrity to an organization. When decisions are discussed previously, sometimes exhaustively, the chances of disagreements are close to a minimal, and only in a free criticism environment can discussions happen until their exhaustion.

If you see around any individual interacting with others through strange antics, displaying weird or troll-like behavior, bot behavior, or similar, either on Lemmygrad or Lemmy, feel free to publish a people's court case about them if you think they are negatively affecting the Lemmygrad community as a whole.

The usual best way to fight trolls is indifference. So if you think someone is constantly annoying, please block them, and if possible, publicly express your dissatisfaction, so that everyone is aware.

Some trolls like Wisconcom can cause a major disruption in our community, and that's when we usually step in debating about the issue publicly. You are free to do so in People's Court as well, it's the place to collectively solve perceived problems within our community. You are also free to criticize the actions of the administrators,[^1] under public scrutiny.

[^1]: criticize our actions, not our political positions. This would be perhaps more appropriate in Leftist Infighting

Looks nothing like him lmao, but that's the best I got. I tried numerous times for a result like this.

Parameters used: Mao Tse-tung, cyberpunk, hyper realistic, neon --q 2 --v 4

I had to use "Mao Tse-tung" because "Zedong" was banned by Midjourney. Funny stuff

Using the parameters Fidel Castro, cyberpunk, hyper realistic, neon --q 2 --v 4