The hard part about writing untraceably on typewriters is that they’re relatively rare these days. When everyone used them, it didn’t matter too much if people could tell you used a Remington Quiet-Riter because tons of people had a common model like that. Nowadays, just being able to use a typewriter effectively either (a) means you’re old enough to have used one or (b) typewriters/vintage stuff is an interest of yours – or now, maybe just someone interested in anonymity enough to learn. If someone could tell what model of machine you typed it on, that would narrow it down further, and (depending on what the inquiry is about) that may be good enough info for their purposes, given the rarity of using typewriters today.

• IBM Selectrics are by far the most common type ball machines and the balls were not interchangeable among brands, so someone would be able to tell pretty easily. Some fonts are rarer than others.
• Daisywheel machines had a few more manufacturers in addition to IBM. I think there are still aftermarket daisywheels that can complicate identifying exactly what model/brand of machine typed a letter.
• Typebar machines were made by tons and tons of manufacturers in the 19th and 20th centuries. Each manufacturer had a book of typefaces it offered, though they changed from year to year, and the differences among similar typefaces between manufacturers were sometimes very minimal.

Since these machines are electromechanical, rather than digital, it would be quite difficult to encode identifying information into the type. Other considerations: tracing the purchase of the typewriter, ribbons, and possibly repair/cleaning services to get it working.

I’ve been using it and it’s been a good experience. It runs smooth, has less flashy stuff (at least by default), and an easy to use config file.

See also https://github.com/buckket/twtxt

That is deeply fucked. You deserve enough compensation to be comfortable, to have healthcare and all the other necessities & some luxuries, and to be able to plan for your future.

Those upholsterers are being predatory. No one deserves it.

Tea is an extremely social drink. For one thing, it’s a gentler caffeine ride than coffee, so it’s less likely to make you jittery and you can have more cups of it before you get too close to your comfort threshold. But it’s not just the caffeine: there is a social ritual in most tea cultures that focuses on pouring for guests. Finally, there are so many styles, regions, vintages, and flavors to explore – at least as many as, if not more than, coffee or wine – that it can be a fun thing to explore together. See if your local area has a tea house, a tea club, or something along those lines.

AI could be fine, except that in a capitalist society it’s going to be used by corps & govt as a weapon against labor, a surveillance technology, and a way to plagiarize the hard work of artists.

Unfortunately, we’re forced to survive while inside several unethical systems. Especially since you may have more trouble making enough money to survive than others, investing is necessary for you. Maybe, eventually, there is more of an ethical choice down there line if you were to have more wealth than you need to be comfortable, but that isn’t a concern now.

Invest, live, and if you end up with a surplus of wealth, share it with those who need it, fund liberatory projects (mutual aid, bail funds, etc), and don’t get caught in the consumption cycle.

As for the strategic questions: investing is complex. Most basic strategies assume continued growth in the long run, but it is possible to make all kinds of choices. Equities are not the only option. Take the time to research investment strategies and then providers. Roboadvisors can be a helpful starting point.

What, no formalwear option?

fair enough. It’s another reason why grass doesn’t make sense to me – it’s so incompatible with the landscape unless you put in the effort to make it habitable. Maybe there’s a type of ivy that would have an acceptable max height instead?

I have lived in suburbs, subdivisions, and city neighborhoods with green space. People (or their landscapers) use leaf blowers in all of them.

Looks like they’re making their own happiness!

Anarchists can have means of governing themselves – it’s not a big free-for all. The point is that there is no central hierarchy. For example, an anarchist collective could decide (via whatever method, that’s a separate convo) that each community member gets to use a piece of equipment one week per year, or that the community as a whole will operate that equipment to satisfy the needs of people in a mutually-decided order. They could also decide that the 20 electrical engineers among them should as a group have operational control on a day-to-day basis of the power generating infrastructure, but only as long as they operate it according to the expressed needs of the community, in the community’s interest, in a safe way.

None of that would be hierarchy or domination, as long as the underlying decision making process was democratic.

It’s tough to do anti-hierarchical practices in a hierarchical world! I’ve seen organizations have rotating roles that make sure people don’t get stuck.

Yup! Humans being imperfect is an argument against hierarchical power structures. How can we keep a few narcissists, bad actors, or even well-meaning but mistaken folks from causing bad outcomes for society? By getting rid of their ability to wield power. If you believe that power corrupts, then the answer to that is to distribute it so evenly and thinly that no one can accumulate institutional power. That’s why bottom-up decision making methods are better than top-down ones.

Unfortunately, lots of hierarchical systems are built into the fabric of our societies. Capitalism is a big one. Private property is an even more foundational one. Various kinds of bigotry rest on those systems. The authoritarian state will take whatever excuse it can (religious justifications, property-protection justifications, enemies-at-the-gates justifications, etc) to exercise power over society. So our struggle should ultimately be aimed at those things.

Finding ways to (1) give people the time, material security, and consciousness to organize together to change their lives for the better (tenant unions, labor unions, community-run non-police safety programs, etc); (2) decommodify essentials like food, shelter, clothing, etc; and (3) help populations learn to govern themselves at the local level and federate with others; would all go a very long way.

Look for lessons from existing and recent struggles. Anarchist Spain, the Zapatistas, and others have much to teach us.

They’re loud, they kick up dust, and they happen at intermittent times based on when the neighbors do it. they also use fossil fuels. Loud mowers are annoying, too! If you – heaven forbid – want to keep your windows open and feel a breeze, you’re going to get all of that noise and maybe even some of the dust.

I understand that we have to clear sidewalks and driveways so that accidents don’t happen. People usually don’t have so much sidewalk + driveway that a broom or something wouldn’t do that job quickly. But then we have to blow the leaves off the lawn, too? I know that your HOA will kill you if you don’t, but doesn’t it seem silly to remove the leaves from a lawn, then buy and put down commercial fertilizer, when the leaves would have biodegraded into new topsoil? To spend so much time watering a lawn to keep it alive when the leaves would have shielded it from the sun? Why are we spending so much time, money, water, and effort to maintain sterile grass lawns? We can have beautiful outdoors spaces without being slaves to an HOA enforcing what plants we grow.

I understand that it’s really the HOAs these days that are a big part of the problem. A good number of people in my HOA-less neighborhood have diverse plants in front of their homes. They look fantastic, they seem to take way less maintenance (I never see them mowing, watering, weeding, fertilizing, etc), and ofc they’re much better for the environment.

The sport does the bonding, which provides these shitheads with an in for their ideologies.

Yes, it can become part of one’s culture to appreciate another’s culture

It’s possible, sure, but you’d have to do a study. As I mentioned, there are plenty of ways to interpret it.

I thought by adding “or whatever it’s called” would make it clear that I’m aware that the theory is a racist and antijewish lie, but I guess that was not enough. How should I have worded that differently?

Ah, OK! I think “if white people were defensive of their culture” is what threw me.

What would it mean to take the time and effort to learn to play the Erhu, understand its history and context, but somehow not show real respect for it?

To begin with, there can always be some jerk out there who gives you a hard time no matter what, or who has had so many bad experiences with ppl thoughtlessly appropriating culture that their mind is just closed and they react badly. You’d just have to defend it and let reasonable ppl see that that person is wrong to call you out. That aside, I think showing respect means that if an instrument is sacred for some reason (I have no idea if the Erhu is), you don’t play it in a profane or silly way. Outside of that, using an instrument as like a way to make fun of the culture would be bad (e.g. playing it whenever a stereotyped character appears on screen). Just my two cents.

Assuming your service ended at that point and you were free to leave, it’d certainly be easier than deserting into enemy territory. France just after WW2 was pretty war-torn and full of refugees, so it wouldn’t have been the easiest place to live for the first several years at least.

If you see a number of people from Asian cultures playing classical music originating from Europe, does that mean it has become part of their culture? What if they are appreciating music from another culture? What if their families originate somewhere in Asia but they feel no connection to that place? Or what if there are more extracurricular opportunities for European-style orchestras than for other kinds of musical ensembles from other cultures?

The Great Replacement Theory is a racist and antijewish lie.

Edit: a white person who put in time and effort learning to play the Erhu, understood a reasonable amount of its history and context, and showed real respect for it would be fine.

Basically, your instincts are right and the question in the last line of your post is a good one. Here’s why:

“Whiteness” doesn’t come from biology or culture. It’s really just a way of describing a hierarchy that was set up by European empires and early corporations at the dawn of capitalism to justify the enslavement of people around the world, the colonization of their lands, and the exploitation of their natural resources for profit.

This hierarchy is used to steamroll over the huge number of ethnic and cultural backgrounds people have, in order to label some “white”, others “black”, others “asian”, and so on. There can be no “white” culture (even within one country), because the boundaries of who is accepted as “white” have shifted more than once in the past few hundred years and could easily shift again. For example, look up when and why Irish people and Italian people were accepted as fully white and look up the “contingent” whiteness that Jewish people have had in the US. See How the Irish Became White, for example.

Another reason there is no white culture is because, even for people accepted as white, whiteness has erased the cultures they brought to America when they immigrated by forcing them to conform to its rules. Think about how badly even light-skinned immigrants were treated by others whose families had been in America for generations. The immense pressure to look, sound, and act “American” and “white” to avoid being bullied at school, to be able to get good jobs, and to be seen as “respectable” in the neighborhood, meant for many people that they had to give up large parts of their culture to be accepted. This compounds over the generations, until we end up with people asking questions like the post you’ve made right here.

Racists proudly defend white (or “western” if they’re cowards) culture. They’re completely unable to see how whiteness has stolen big pieces of the cultures of everyone it touches. It has bleached them into a blander, more sterile version of what they once were.