there’s a really good port of dodonpachi daioujou on the iphone app store, idk about android. sorcery is another good one, based on an old steve jackson gamebook

whose only flaw right now is supporting one wrong nation

you can’t seriously believe this is true right

hold him accountable how

Traveling across Cuba in 1959, immediately after the overthrow of the U.S.-supported right-wing Batista dictatorship, Mike Faulkner witnessed “a spectacle of almost unrelieved poverty.” The rural pop­ulation lived in makeshift shacks without minimal sanitation. Malnourished children went barefoot in the dirt and suffered “the familiar plague of parasites common to the Third World.” There were almost no doctors or schools. And through much of the year, families that depended solely on the seasonal sugar harvest lived close to starvation (Monthly Review, 3/96). How does that victimization­ in prerevolutionary Cuba measure against the much more widely publicized repression that came after the revolution, when Castro’s communists executed a few hundred of the previous regime’s police assassins and torturers, drove assorted upper-class moneybags into exile, and intimidated various other opponents of radical reforms into silence?

Today, Cuba is a different place. For all its mistakes and abuses, the Cuban Revolution brought sanitation, schools, health clinics, jobs, housing, and human services to a level not found throughout most of the Third World and in many parts of the First World. Infant mortality in Cuba has dropped from 60 per 1000 in 1960 to 9.7 per 1000 by 1991, while life expectancy rose from 55 to 75 in that same period. Smallpox, malaria, tuberculosis, typhoid, polio, and numer­ous other diseases have been wiped out by improved living standards and public health programs. Cuba has enjoyed a level of literacy higher than in the United States and a life expectancy that compares well with advanced industrial nations (NACLA Report on the Americas, September/October 1995). Other peoples besides the Cubans have benefited. As Fidel Castro tells it:

The [Cuban] revolution has sent teachers, doctors, and workers to dozens of Third World countries without charging a penny. It shed its own blood fighting colonialism, fighting apartheid, and fascism. . . . At one point we had 25,000 Third World students studying on schol­arships. We still have many scholarship students from Africa and other countries. In addition, our country has treated more children [13,000] who were victims of the Chernobyl tragedy than all other countries put together. They don’t talk about that, and that’s why they blockade us-the country with the most teachers per capita of all countries in the world, including developed countries. The country with the most doctors per capita of all countries [one for every 214 inhabitants]. The country with the most art instructors per capita of all countries in the world. The country with the most sports instructors in the world. That gives you an idea of the effort involved. A country where life expectancy is more than 75 years. Why are they blockading Cuba? Because no other country has done more for its people. It’s the hatred of the ideas that Cuba repre­sents. (Monthly Review, 6/95).

Cuba’s sin in the eyes of global capitalists is not its “lack of democ­racy.” Most Third World capitalist regimes are far more repressive. Cuba’s real sin is that it has tried to develop an alternative to the global capitalist system, an egalitarian socio-economic order that placed corporate property under public ownership, abolished capi­talist investors as a class entity, and put people before profits and national independence before IMF servitude.

Excerpt from Blackshirts and Reds, since Parenti and Castro himself put it better than I could.

What actually makes Endeavor easier than Arch? I switched to Arch from Mint a few months ago, and so far I don’t think it’s that difficult.

canadian health care workers to disabled people

What’s wrong with reading a book, writing poetry or a novel, exercising, playing with the smartphone… and going home to enjoy your hobbies fully rested?

I tried doing these sorts of things and was punished for it. If I can’t find work to do, then the only thing I’m allowed to do is stand (not sit) at my station until something happens.

I moved across the country to live with someone I was mutuals with on Mastodon, and then became her girlfriend a couple days later. It’s been almost 5 years now and we’re still very happy together! She’s my best friend and the only person that I feel understands me completely, and it still feels unreal that we even met at all.

I have no problem admitting I downvoted largely because of the waifu stuff. The other problem was that the question is ridiculously leading, but if that were the only problem I would be able to just ignore it and scroll by. Earlier I typed up a response but the more I sat on the question, the more it bothered me, until I just lost any desire to engage it at all.

The concept of an AI girlfriend is just so creepy to me and reeks of incel-y nonsense. Even just within this post, it’s clear the hypothetical AGI “waifu” in question is subservient to the reader. Maybe some don’t see that as an issue because after all, it’s just a program and has no real emotion, and I’m open to admitting I may have misunderstood the intent of the question, but to me it’s far too reminiscent of men I’ve had the displeasure of interacting with who clearly just see me as a commodity for them to aquire. I also can’t help but imagine the potential for people to use AI like the post linked by OP to make recreations of non-consenting women for men’s pleasure, similar to the issue we are seeing with deepfakes currently.

I’ve been emulating Super Mario RPG on my Switch for the first time and loving every second of it. It’s so much fun and very silly, and the music is absolutely incredible. The range of styles Shimomura Yoko is able to compose expertly is amazing to me! The fact that these goofy, high energy songs are from the same person who composed Parasite Eve is unbelievable.