EthicalHumanMeat [he/him]

This has been known for more than a decade (this study is just a review of existing research), and is not directly related to the efficacy of SSRIs (although the serotonin “theory” might have led to their adoption, idk).

For a while now, as I understand it, the view has been that SSRIs cause the downregulation (decreased new production of) serotonin receptors in reaction to the excess serotonin buildup they cause in the synapses (this is why they take a few weeks to kick in, despite increasing serotonin levels almost immediately, and is also why they will desensitive you to psychedelics like LSD, which act primarily on serotonin receptors). They decrease overall serotonin signalling, which in turn has downstream effects that alter certain activites of certain regions of the brain that are implicated in depression. (This is based mostly on discussions I had with my psychiatrist a few months ago, so if there are any actual experts here, correct me if I’m wrong.)

That being said, SSRIs suck ass, their side effects are awful, and I think it’s medical malpractice to make them a first-line treatment tbh. It’s really mind-boggling that they’re the go-to given how much shit they fuck up.

Damn, it’s almost like literal children don’t always pay attention.

Centrally planned bedtimes.

Owned.

I would like to add that less consumption isn’t necessarily a lower standard of living and could be the opposite if people’s basic needs are actually guaranteed and they’re subject to less abusive conditions than under capitalism.

Sure, why not.

But I though jeans were banned in the DPRK? :thonk:

In no particular order:

In the Pale Moonlight

Bar Association

It’s Only a Paper Moon

Far Beyond the Stars

The Wire

not drinking coffee means you are a socdem im sorry

How dare you. Tea is far superior.

As the most widely consumed drink in the world, it is clearly the beverage of the global proletariat.

Bring back downvotes.

This bothers me so much more than the presidential election.

It’s because the vast majority of the criticisms of China and Xi Jinping are unsubstantiated horseshit, because condemning China when the US is increasingly antagonizing them is reinforcing imperialist propaganda, and because Reddit and every other damn website is constantly frothing at the mouth over how much they hate China, which a lot of us are sick of.

And what do you mean by “brigading”? That implies that it’s being coordinated.

Inadequate use of crop rotation and particularly bad weather:

Ukraine was affected particularly badly by the expansion of the sown area. It already had a much lower level of uncropped arable than in all other regions of the USSR, with the exception of the highly commercial Leningrad region. According to the planning documents, the Ukrainian level of fallow was equal to 27.7 per cent of the sown area in 1927/28, and was projected to fall to 18.1 per cent in 1932/33.137 The USSR average was 59.1 per cent, projected to fall to 41.7 per cent. An external factor considerably complicated the situation in Ukraine. Bad weather led to exceptionally large winter killings of the autumn sowings for both the 1928 and 1929 harvests, and, to compensate for these, spring sowing was considerably increased. By 1929, rational crop rotation had been seriously undermined; and the increase in the sown area in 1930 and 1931 squeezed the fallow land still further.

Throughout the USSR, the reorganisation of the land, and the expansion of the sown area, disrupted the traditional arrangements for the cultivation of the soil, but for several years they were not replaced by an improved cropping system.

It was not until the autumn of 1932 that the restoration of proper crop rotation received the strong support of the authorities (see pp. 231–4). Meanwhile, much damage had been done. Such a dramatic expansion of sown area and reduction of fallow, without improved crop rotation and the careful introduction of alternative means for rejuvenating the soil with fertilisers or manure, was bound to lead to the reduction of yields and an increased likelihood of crop diseases. By 1932, in many regions, and particularly in Ukraine, soil exhaustion and crop diseases were widespread.

The Kulaks (who, yes, were monsters and did engage in sabotage in the past) didn’t actually have much to do with the famine in the 30s, as they had already been pretty much completely eliminated by that point. Conquest is citing the official statements of the USSR, who blamed the agricultural shortfall on the Kulaks, but the Soviet archives show that the cause was much more complex than that.

Davies and Wheatcroft, in The Years of Hunger: Soviet Agriculture, 1931-1933, explain them. It’s hard for me to summarize all of it and the relevant section is only like twenty pages, so please read “(E) CAUSES OF THE FAMINE”.

The gist is that planning had overestimated grain yields based on overly optimistic predictions of improvements on previous years’ yields. Grain was exported under the assumption that the leftover surplus would be sufficient, but it wasn’t. Drought during the growing season and heavy rainfall during the harvesting seasons resulted in low output and high spoilage, meaning much less grain was produced than expected.

The reduction in livestock from 1928 was a product of diverting grain from feed in the countryside to urban population centers. In order to survive capitalist onslaught and develop out of Medieval poverty, the USSR needed to industrialize rapidly, which meant more food for the industrial workers. However, they took too much grain from the countryside to maintain their draught animals, which, coupled with the bad weather, resulted in much lower yields than planned.

When it became clear that a famine was occurring, the USSR did everything in its power to minimize starvation, and Stalin personally pressed for more grain to be reallocated to the countryside. However, the rapidly industrializing urban centers were prioritized, for good reason.

The people who starved were the farmers, mostly in Ukraine, but this wasn’t an attempt at ethnic cleansing. Meanwhile, the party used the Kulaks as a scapegoat, even though they didn’t really exist at that point. And, honestly, I think that was the right call; they couldn’t have just said, “hey, the weather was bad and also we kind of fucked up and that’s why you’re starving to death”, and expected to still have the support of the people. The authors describe this overall response as “ruthless and brutal”, an example of a “genuflection to orthodoxy” as Parenti puts it; even though they’re in the process of dismantling the narrative of Stalin being a brutal, malicious dictator, they still aren’t willing to fully break from it.