I've probably complained about this on here before. But my local supermarket put these wide, low newsstands by the doors. It causes a bottleneck by the exit. I assume it's a loss prevention measure.

Maybe it works? It didn't prevent losing me as a customer. I can't be bothered navigating all the people who don't look up between the till and the obstacle, walk right up to it, and then struggle to fit through the gap.

The next place I went to stopped me twice at the self checkout store scanning thing saying that I was 'randomly' checked. (Mask on, sunglasses, hood up was almost certainly the issue. Either that or because I only go every three weeks, so my trolley is overflowing more than most people's.) I said if it happens again I won't come back.

Third time, it didn't happen but the alarm buzzed as I left and two security guys wanted to see my receipt. While they were looking at the longest receipt they'd ever seen and saying they didn't know how they were going to check everything, I explained that this was the third time I'd been inconvenienced on my way out and if it happened again, I wouldn't be back. It hasn't happened since. I suspect that someone was watching me enter with that mask, the glasses, and the hood, and pressing a big red 'dodgy' button as I got near the exit.

Same get up, different store, different day, I was accosted for using my own very wide open hard-to-hide-anything-in bag as a basket because the store's baskets are rubbish and it's hard to tell whether I'll over fill my bag if I use the basket; and if I over fill my bag, I ain't buying it, as I have a long walk home.

Someone comes over. Was I going to pay for that? This stuff that I haven't yet paid for? That's how it usually works. He clicks the walkie talkie. It crackles. He says, they say they're going to pay for it. He tells me to make sure I do. Vaguely threatening. I needed what I went in for so I bought it but I haven't been back. I probably should go back to give them someone to watch while people dressed incognito are stealing from another aisle and getting away with it.

I suspect this is one of the real reasons behind all the anti-mask stuff—it was getting too hard to surveil us; all that tech they had been sold as security-capable became practically useless overnight.

Maybe it's just me but when companies make it harder to spend my money, I simply oblige them. I am a begrudging shopper at the best of times. Most people seem eager, idk.

It's still racism to talk about illegal immigrants. It's Russophobic to blame Russia for being racist.

It's treating commodities as things, not as relations, and forgetting that humans make commodities.

For example, it's easy to look at a book and see a block of paper with writing on each sheet, all glued together. If it's a signed book, it might fetch a higher price than one that isn't signed. If it's brand new, it might fetch a higher price than a second hand copy. The commodity – here, the book – is treated as a thing. This isn't 'wrong'; but it's one-sided.

At the same time, the book is all the people who put it together: the writer, the printer, the binder. And all these can only be achieved if other workers have built a building, a printer, a laptop/typewriter, roads and vehicles to transport the equipment, materials, and the final product. Every one of the workers in these processes had to eat food every day (grown by farmers, prepared, packaged, cooked, etc), had to be raised and educated, etc. In reality, then, the book is a combination of all the relations between all the people who were needed to turn an idea into a book and get that book into shops and to each reader.

When commodities like books are fetishized, they're treated as things and all the human relations are ignored. This was hard to do before modern capitalism, because many fewer people were involved in creating goods. As you knew who was involved in making e.g. a book (a small guild of craftspersons), it was harder to forget that the only reason the book existed was because of labour.

Under capitalism, labour is divided into so many parts, that very few people in the production process know anyone else. One person chops trees with a chainsaw. Another turns trees into pulp with a machine. Another turns pulp into sheets with another machine. Another cuts sheets into pages with a guillotine. Another makes chainsaws. Another gears, oil, chains. Another machines. Another guillotines. Another turns chemicals into ink. Etc, etc.

None of these people know each other personally. They only know each other as the commodities they produce.

When we go to the shop to buy paper, a book, ink, or anything else, we 'meet' all the people who have produced those goods but we only see the commodity, not those people. We come to fetishize commodities, hold them up as things that appear in shop shelves as if by magic.

If we want to solve a problem, we look for commodities as the solution. Hungry? Buy a sandwich. Thirsty? Buy a drink. Fancy a story? Buy a book. Cold? Buy a coat or a house or a heater. We are working together to meet each others needs but we do it by buying commodities. So the commodities take on some magical properties.

As money is used to buy any commodity, we eventually come to fetishize (worship) money as having unique magical properties. With money, one can buy anything they want or need. It can fix every problem. Or so it seems when commodities are fetishized. But it's human labour, human relations – society – that produces the goods (and services) that satisfy our needs and wants, that solves our problems.

Commodity fetishism turns relations into things and separates humans from one another by making it appear that we don't need each other to survive. This has loads of distorting and disturbing effects by encouraging us to be anti-social.

It's human labour that produces what we need to survive. When we fetishize commodities, we come to think that it's the commodities that keep us alive, not the human labour that produced those commodities.

I'm struggling to believe it all tbh. It's not just random weirdos on the internet. It's whole parliaments and the press machinery just outright erasing Nazis and their crimes from history.

At the start of the SMO I wasn't too worried about an outbreak of WWIII but at this rate. Jfc. These cracker fucks have been hearing warnings of climate catastrophe and all the time been thinking, 'not if we kill the bastards first'.

Yet still there are enough crypto-fascists and clueless liberals that if you were to say any of this in 'polite company', they'll dismiss you for being a conspiracy theorist. If the Western left doesn't get it's act together within the next few years, we've got some scary times ahead.

Real sad to learn that only the original Nazi party lost WWII. The ideology and the infrastructure were not defeated.

Soviet and allied war heros, we failed you 😞

Is that a Wolfsangel patch on his sleeve?

Doctors:patients ratio!? Surely with the pesky Soviets out the way the top spot went straight to the USA? What? That's Cuba? And more than ten ex-Soviet states including the Russian Federation, plus the DPRK still score better than the USA? Damn those communists know how to make and leave a legacy. Looks like they take Stalin's insight seriously, unlike western politicians.

What were conditions like everywhere else in the world after the biggest war the world had ever seen?

I don't think you know how this cheese works. The rind is edible. It has the strongest flavour, so it's what's used in sauces, etc. If you ever had parmesan in a sauce e.g. at a restaurant, you ate the rind. Hence the need to put an edible microchip in it – because people are expected to eat it.

Because of its world-famous reputation for quality, Parmigiano-Reggiano can be sold at a higher price point than cheese simply labeled "parmesan,"

As if a 'business journalist' would just echo this lie. I'm not overly surprised. Parmesan made by any other reputable blessed cheesemaker is going to be sufficient quality even if they taste slightly different. And in the context of counterfeit cheese? If it's so good that you have to put microchips in the 'real' one because otherwise there's no way to tell which is which, it's surely an endorsement for the 'fake' cheese.

The parmesan in a plastic tub that's mostly saw dust is better anyway; I'm reluctant to make lofty claims but it might just be the people's parmesan. I wouldn't even be surprised if it's vegan too.

Marxist-Clinonists

I'm 98% sure this is a marketing ploy. Company faces bankruptcy because one of it's top products doesn't sell. So it complains that the reason is that it's product is too good? That's advertising. The element that will be studied in future by business students is how the company got anti-capitalists to spread the advert. The contradiction in this ploy is they customers will now be asking: what if I buy one and it does break but the company has gone bankrupt and closed?

Maybe it's stats show that it mainly has new customers rather than repeat customers. That's a poor endorsement, not confirmation that it's products aren't breaking. It suggests that is products aren't being used enough to stress test them. And it suggests it's a saturated market and these devices aren't all they're cracked up to be.

Edit: still, I agree we should use this as an argument to leave capitalism in the dustbin of history.