/edu/ - Education

>>25128
you already conceded your point.
stop replying to me.
thanks.

>>25129
>you already conceded your point.
The original point was that gift givers can be held legally responsible. I stand by that point. Later posts are about the circumstances when this is applicable and give examples of defective gifts. These posts are not taking back the point, they are just more specific (note the "can" in the first point). You tried to show an exemption from liability for gifts without written contracts by quoting an article that mentions § 518 BBG (Form des Schenkungsversprechens), but this is for promises about future gifts only, and so gifting without written contract does not protect the gift giver from liability after the gift transfer. As explained to you multiple times, liability of the gift giver is explicitly stated in § 521 BGB (Haftung des Schenkers), and this is not limited to gifts with contracts.

🗣🗣🗣 "the transcendental deduction of the pure concepts of the understanding" 🔥🔥🔥

Who else enjoyed this thread's epic debate about whether you can gift people dangerous broken trash and be innocent as long as there is no contract?

Modern medicine rediscovers Soviet superscience

Press release:
https://www.monash.edu/medicine/news/latest/2025-articles/scientists-develop-a-virus-cocktail-to-combat-superbugs

The paper itself:
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41564-025-02130-4

>>25012
Cantillon:
<All these artisans and entrepreneurs serve each other, as well as the nobility. The fact that their upkeep ultimately falls on property owners and nobles is often overlooked. It is not perceived that all the little houses in a city, such as we have described, depend upon and subsist at the expense of the great houses. However, it will be shown later that all the classes and inhabitants of a state live at the expense of the property owners.
Yeah right.

Laughing our loud, literally
https://firstthings.com/voyages-to-the-end-of-the-world/

Finished Solving the Procrastination Puzzle by Timothy A. Pychyl. Basic sensible advice, with a few "comic strips" by Paul Mason thrown in. I'm putting up sarcastic quotes, because that stuff has the look of a comic strip, but it's spiritually a bit too close to things like traffic signs and health warnings.

It's OK and very short. Well duh. It wouldn't be OK if it were long.

Been working through "Set the Night on Fire" about the spectrum of liberal and radical movements in Los Angeles during the 60s, but it at the same time makes me realize that the period from the 1980s to right before 9/11 might as well be a black hole. Sure I know about the general stroke of neoliberalization and the Reagan years, but the movement side with the exception of the Battle of Seattle remains unknown to me.

Just went through the booklet As a Man Thinketh by James Allen (1903), a pioneer of self-help gospel.

<The outer world of circumstance shapes itself to the inner world of thought…
Suffer from racist prejudice around you? Just manifest a non-racist world in your own thoughts. Simple.
<Here is a man who is wretchedly poor. He is extremely anxious that his surroundings and home comforts should be improved, yet all the time he shirks his work, and considers he is justified in trying to deceive his employer on the ground of the insufficiency of his wages. Such a man does not understand the simplest rudiments of those principles which are the basis of true prosperity, and is not only totally unfitted to rise out of his wretchedness, but is actually attracting to himself a still deeper wretchedness by dwelling in, and acting out, indolent, deceptive, and unmanly thoughts.
And so on and so forth. Everything is your own fault/achievement.
<Suffering is always the effect of wrong thought in some direction.
I admit it was I who had the thought of reading this.
<Disease and health, like circumstances, are rooted in thought. Sickly thoughts will express themselves through a sickly body.
Remember this bit of wisdom next time you see a cripple!

James Allen didn't even make it to 50. Probably because he had ugly loser thoughts.

>>19860
Currently reading up on Zapata and the history of Mexican revolution. Very nice book. Absolute clusterfuck of a historical period. Feels like a perfect example of how the Russian revolution would have looked like if there was no organized vanguard.

The starting point of the revolution is essentially the same as in Russia: A westernizing tyrant keeps fucking over the peasants and suppressing the bourgeoisie until the country is in such a deadlock that the whole thing blows up. It results in a peasants revolt, but the revolt keep getting swept up by various liberal reformers promising them the land reforms they want, only to inevitably get fucked over one way or the other. They get more radical as time goes on, but theyre so exclusively concerned with agrarian issues that they cannot really sweep up the rest of the population into their revolution. Zapata was a very impressive leader of the movement, and did the best he could, but was clearly not ideologically and strategically up for the task. You can tell he was uncomfortable dealing with any political issue or diplomatic relation outside of the agrarian concerns of his native province in Morelos.

This month I finished Moby Dick, Fahrenheit 451, snow crash, and a Batman comic collection with the killing joke.


Basically I spent an entire 8 hour work day trying to beat the last boss of silksong and when I finished, instead of pride or accomplishment, I had a coming-to-Jesus moment that if I could do the same 1 minute boss 500 times, I could literally fucking do anything else. So I started reading again from my shelf of 400+ unread books.

>>19860
just started trying getting into philosophy and reading. Im halfway through platos republic right now and i find it really interesting. I just dont know what to read after it

>>25323
Always have a soft spot for Plato, have you read any of the other Platonic dialogues?

They're often separated in early, middle and late dialogues, with the early being ethical discussions close to the historical Socrates, the middle being more Platonic doctrinal works (republic is one of these) while the late tend to be very technical, dialectically subtle explorations of his earlier doctrines.

If you want to continue with Plato, the early dialogues are easiest to get into, the later ones closer to what would later evolve into Hegelian dialectical thinking. Im always blown away by "Parmenides", which i believe was quite important for Hegel as well.

I started writing poetry!
Specifically an biopolitical book about how both animals and humans need to be freed from capitalism.
Also I should say I’m not against hunting, I’m against mass Industrial killings

>>25323
Find a complete works of Plato at a used book store. After republic, if you want something long go with Laws, but mostly there’s about 5 core dialogues everyone talks about whenever someone talks about Plato in conversation. Personally I think reading Plato is for instilling critical thinking, and once you get past that part, move on. Once you’re burnt out on Plato you go to Aristotle, whose writings are his lecture notes, so it’ll be a shock to the system and a bit dry by comparison. While not in his core books about life and logic, my favorite is his book rhetoric.

>>25338
When I was a boy
I asked if I could see a calf
Great uncle obliged with rage in his eyes
Once ripped away from family
In my lap, It licked my cheek
And since I haven’t eaten beef

Finished Condorcet's Sketch for an Historical Picture of the Advances of the Human Mind (1795) in the translation by Jonathan Francis Bennett (2017). His website earlymoderntexts.com got free-as-in-beer texts of several philosophers (Kant, Hume, Hobbes, Bentham…) translated into modern English with more readable layout. I think I'll check out some more stuff on there soon.

Condorcet was a liberal feminist, anti-racist, anti-censorship, and unsurprisingly not a fan of religion. In his final text he tried to give a rundown of all of human history, judging it from a perspective of unchanging "natural law" of equal human rights. IMHO the only interesting part was the "10th era" at the end, his very optimistic speculation about the capitalist future:
-Advances in statistics and insurance mechanism will greatly increase security.
-Broader and faster learning for everyone with charts and a constructed logical science language (bolder than Neurath's Isotypes, it's more like Leibniz).
-With nobility and artificial monopolies abolished, people will have very similar wealth because good and bad luck cancels out long term. (Today we know that's not true empirically, and know it logically-mathematically from econophysics).
-Legal equality of the sexes.
-No more colonialism and no more wars.
-And finally some speculation about people inheriting health/knowledge improvements as in Lamarck.

Nothing new to me since I’ve already read the book, but I still found this to be a helpful guide for understand biology and evolution.

>>22345
Just finished this one. Can't believe it's recommended here. If you have a /g/ schizo background skip it because you already know it's all botnet. Zuboff is a lib appropriating Marxist terminology and concludes the book with a call to "just voot against it" completely ignoring the structure of bourgeois democracy. She spends a chapter glazing Robert Conquest's demonization of the soviet union, and to top it off she scaremongers about China, conflating (now defunct) credit bureaus with every lie about the social credit system.

>>22444
Good summary wish I hadn't wasted my time on the book. I was hoping for concrete analysis, but

my girlfriend is going through Das and i've been going through notes from my old sociology classes to help her understand what marx was waffling about. we were talking about the rate of profit earlier yesterday : )

>>25346
it's a good basis but for a critic of the selfish gene you should read biology as ideology by richard lewontin

Is there a Big Broad Overview of the communist movement in the 21st century?

not sure where the /occult/ thread went, but i was reading about alchemy and found arthur john hopkins' "alchemy" (1934) exquisitely illuminating as to what all of this stuff is about. i first encountered hopkins in a separate article discussing the "colour theory" of the magnum opus (which i independently confirmed in "splendor solis", 1530). the colour theory claims that the progress of the "great work" is the transformation of the base substance into different colours: black, white, yellow, red/violet. hopkins in chapter 6 shows that the "prima materia" in this case is represented by a lead-copper alloy, which is then mixed with silver, then gold and finally, mixed with vinegar. this reddens the "philosopher's stone". in splendor solis, the movement from the "black sun" to the "red-golden" sun shows this very process. hopkins' ultimate theory is that while alchemy has its ancient roots in egypt (e.g. thoth), its codefication is ultimately alexandrian (greco-egyptian) by the way of the philosophers, including plato, aristotle and (pseudo-)democritus, such as in his "four books" (the oldest alchemical manuscript extant). aristotle gets a lot of credit ultimately, such as in his attribution of "secretum secretorum" (which includes "the emerald tablet" attached to it), but this is an arabic forgery. as hopkins also shows, alchemy comes to western europe by way of arabia (e.g. geber)… we can also see the colour theory here (De Alchimia Opuscula Complura Veterum Philosophorum, 1550) where the person is composed of four sections (black, white, yellow, red) holding the 3 dragons (i.e. solis splendor, 1530).

more on alchemy:
apparently, it was jabir ibn hayyan (721-815 A.D.) that first defined the principles of sulphur and mercury as the "white" and "red" elixirs (t. "summa perfectionis") to which all phenomena corresponded (e.g. the four elements corresponded to the two principles), with suphur being a mixture of fire/earth and mercury being a mixture of water/air. only later do we have paracelsus in "opus paramirum" (1530) introduce the third principle of "salt", thus completing the understanding we have today between salt, mercury and sulphur. so then, we can say that while alchemy has its pre-history, it is only really completed in the 16th century by the establishment of the "tria prima".

Not reading anything right now but having a deep personal crisis about what I believe. I was a /pol/ regular for a long time but certain things in life have changed my perspective a bit.

>>25443
(comr8 anon is reading themself.)

>>25444
The biggest book I need to read is me.

Have a hard time reading due to my lazy eye but I downloaded a copy of Zizeks "Christian Atheism" today. Always struggled with the religion, it drives me to mental illness occasionally, but I have to dig deeper to find the answer I'm looking for

Finished The Invention of the Land of Israel by Shlomo Sand (2012). I knew there was a Sand book about the genesis of Judaism and this one and felt I had to read at least one of them, and thought this one to be the shorter read. Zionism only really got going in the late 19th century, so… But this book goes back as far as historical records permit. He historicizes (spellchecker says this isn't a word) everything. I thought I could read this to own Zionists online, and while that's true, it makes you wonder how much historians of other nations contribute to myth building by artful juxtaposition and omission. Compelling prose. Can hardly believe this wasn't in English originally.

>>25443
what specifically are you doubting?

Reading *Religion in Human Evolution* by Robert Bellah (among two other massive tomes) and discussing the content with some friends of mine as of late.
The book goes into what psychological processes contribute to how people make sense of the world through religious narrative, so its been exceptionally insightful. It's drawn from a lot of sources that my friends are more familiar with as well, so plenty to converse over.

>>25508
anarkiddie with an evopsych fetish, what an absolute classic

>>25508
here's what people have said about religion:

homer and hesiod: the gods are in conflict
plato: religion is a noble lie
epicurus: the gods are inherently finite
Jesus: God is love
eckhart: God is emptiness
luther: reason is the enemy of faith
calvin: man cannot justify himself
paine: christianity is atheism
feuerbach: christianity is humanism
marx: money is man's real god
engels: socialism is practical christianity
weber: capitalism is protestant
nietzsche: morality is an inversion of virtue
crowley and blavatsky: religion is science
freud: religious prohibition governs society
bataille: religion is sacrifice
becker: religion obscures death
paglia: sublimity is queer
graeber and hudson: sin is debt
zizek: God is immanent, not transcendent
mcgowan: sublimity is emptiness

>>25514
What have people said about the phenomena of religion? That's what's more relevant to what I'm reading, though I understand the philogeny you're describing is important as well.

>>25521
*history of philosophy, not philogeny.

>>25521
i have written about the rather recent invention of religion here:
>>25451
>>25472
>>25480
all the abrahamic faiths appear to emerge from military conflict; judaism comes in 167 B.C. with the hasmonean uprising. christianity emerges with the fall of the second temple in jerusalem in 70 A.D. and islam first appears historically with arabian conquests in the 7th century. religion here is a tool of unification, the same way plato pairs the two noble lies of religion and class society (e.g. "the myth of metals") as a way to have unity in society. religion understood sociologically is then a means for ruling classes to command authority.

as far as superstition and the like is concerned, freud in "totem and taboo" (with inspiration from anthropologist james frazer) attempts to show that religion begins at the dawn of civilisation by the repression of desire (e.g. the prohibition of incest). mythology, he contends, is based in this original struggle. he says for example that cronos was the "primal father" who monopolises women, and who is usurpsed by his sons, who invent monogamy (e.g. zeus castrating cronos). the invention of monogamy is what regulates sexuality, allowing sublimation. frazer sees religion begin after superstition (or "magic"), where the magician was a type of scientist. the "rain dance" as a form of "sympathetic magic" imitates nature so as to invoke these powers (another example is using a stone fish to imitate fish swimming to the shore); a sort of dream logic. religion begins later, where nature is no longer under our influence, but must be appealed to, particularly by sacrifice. thus, religion and sacrificial ritual are the same thing to frazer, as it is to bataille also.

graeber and hudson locate the origins of religion in debt, or obligation. this does not arise at any particular time, but begins in any complex form of society. hudson for example sees how temples operated as the first banks, recording everyone's debts to one another, where on certain ritual days, the debts would be cleared and a new cycle would begin (typically following the sun cycle). its clear to see sin as "debt" literally and figuratively. the "forgiveness of sins" is thus an economic plea to release slaves from bondage.

nietzsche sees religion begin by the priestcraft, who are weaker in body but stronger in mind. he says that the natural man has no concept of morality, but only of virtue (what nietzsche philologically traces back to "strength"). the priest thus invents morality (or rather, he invents "evil") as a way to give himself more power. this can be summed up by Jesus' saying, "the meek shall inherit the earth". all sin is what feels good to "the flesh", yet the priest says the flesh is evil. so then, morality is essentially against our instincts - its this denial of instinct, this denial of reality, which he sees as bringing religion into being.

marx and engels might see religion begin with the alienation of labour, causing man to be externalised from himself. this is feuerbach's hegelian interpretation, and marx develops it economically, where money becomes man's idol, and so he worships himself (i.e. his labour) indirectly. thus marx says that atheism is the prerequisite for communism, or self-directed humanism (e.g. humanity in-and-for-itself).

Finished Denial by Ajit Varki (2013), developing an idea proposed to him by Danny Brower (who died in 2007). Their claim is this:
Strong self-awareness / theory of mind is present in humans only because of a lucky co-evolution of another aspect of the human mind, denial of death. So, without death denial, strong self-awareness would lead to depression and inaction (thus not passing on your genes). They speculate that other species did not get strong self-awareness because of that barrier.

Maybe I missed something, but my impression is they failed to make an argument for their assertion (not even a good argument, just an argument). We probably all know of people who got really busy getting things in order when they got news of their impeding death instead of freezing up, and I'm pretty sure that this is indeed the more common behavior. Just like when we become aware of being near a less dramatic limit (deadline for a paper, last day of your vacation and so on).

Ancient artifacts from elaborate burial rituals are used as an example by Varki (as by many others) as signs of when self-awareness evolved. A great opportunity to point at this as a sign of reality denial, but somehow that does not occur to Varki.

The dumbest thing is his speculation about why there wasn't more interbreeding between homo sapiens and others. He posits MENTAL incompatibility specifically for the low fertility of interbreeding couples.
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/humans-and-neanderthals-may-have-had-trouble-making-male-babies-180958701/
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/a-neanderthal-gene-variant-related-to-red-blood-cells-may-have-contributed-to-their-extinction-180987586/
Yeah OK, the book is older than these findings, but what a stupid hypothesis. Mein Gott, has he ever observed some couples?? There are people who seek relief by fucking horses.

Finished Samuel Graydon's Einstein biography A Life in 99 Particles (2023). 99 tiny chapters, ideal format for anybody who thinks their short attention span prevent them from reading books. That said, I didn't like how much Graydon dwelled on Einstein's love life quoting private letters, and how Einstein's political side in the book is just pacifism and making an exception for WWII, and Zionism and souring on Zionism later in life. What about his socialist leanings? These Graydon misrepresents as mere hallucinations by hysterical McCarthyists.

I finished reading the Persistence Of The Old Regime by Arno Mayer this weekend. I was not familiar with Mayer either from here or elsewhere even though he seems to be an important Marxist historian of the 20th century. I learned about him by reading about David Irving's court case in which he cited Mayer's work on the Holocaust Why Did The Heavens Not Darken?, which I also intend to read next year. Anyway, the books central thesis can be summed up with the following quote
>Down to 1914 Europe was preeminently pre-industrial and prebourgeois. Its civil societies being deeply rooted in economies of labor-intensive agriculture, consumer manufacture and petty commerce.
Mayer goes on to show that economically, politically and culturally the now post-feudal ancien regime was still dominant. The grande bourgeoisie did not yet exist as a class for itself. Its new industrial economic base was grafted onto the old, but still dominant, agricultural one, the latter of which the nobility held in their hands through their vast land ownership. Through passive and active processes, the industrial magnates were assimilated into the nobility, or otherwise craved the acceptance of this old system. The capitalists aristocrasized as a result of this, making the would-be counter-elite easy to co-opt.

The nobility of course enjoyed great political power throughout Europe, with, of the major powers, only France a republic. Germany, Russia and Austria-Hungary meanwhile were all semi-absolutist. Upper chambers ensured an aristocratic check on democracy and a limited franchise and gerrymandering ensured the lower chambers barely registered the voices of progress to begin with.

Culturally too the bourgeoisie was steeped in its senior partner's tastes. The avant-gardes were sidelined, co-opted or rebelled in ways that were not threatening to the nobility.

In the final chapter, Mayer explains the Nietzschean and social-darwinist worldviews of the elites and shows how they over-perceived threats to their dominant, but waning position. War was seen as a cure-all to the nobility, it was no longer an extension of diplomacy, but rather one of domestic politics. The old elites intended on a preemptive counter revolution against the forces of progress, be they liberal, socialist or national liberation movements. They would rather plunge Europe into a second thirty years war, than see themselves slowly relegated to the dustbin of history even at a time when all of society was still bent to their will.

Mayer doesn't simply assert his thesis, but goes into great detail in each chapter how and why it is correct for each of the great powers in Europe: England, France, Russia, Italy, Germany and Austria-Hungary.
I was a little helpless in the chapter on culture. Throughout the book I occasionally felt I knew too little about European history to follow it, but a quick google search usually rectified this. When the chapter on culture started listing off all the great, but unknown to me, playwrights, painters, composers and architects of the era I must admit I tuned out a little bit and just took what he was saying for granted.

Overall a really interesting book. I'm reading The Furies, also by Mayer, now, which is a comparative analysis of the terrors during the Russian and French revolutions.

Is there more modern Marxist literature where LTV is dismissed?

Hey did you know that the NYT has always been a bunch of vile shitheads? Oh you did? Well anyway, I got this anti-gem for you.

<Both absurdity and grim humor, perhaps unintended, combined in an 1895 New York Times obituary of Frederick Douglass, the celebrated son of a slave and a slave master. The author of the obituary ruminated on the idiotic question that must have been percolating in many minds: Which race could justly claim this superlatively gifted individual?

>It might not be unreasonable, perhaps, to intimate that his white blood may have something to do with the remarkable energy he displayed and the superior intelligence he manifested. Indeed, it might not be altogether unreasonable to ask whether, with more white blood, he would not have been an even better and greater man than he was, and whether the fact that he had black blood may not have cost the world a genius, and be, in consequence, a cause for lamentation instead of a source of lyrical enthusiasm over African possibilities. It is always more or less foolish to credit or discredit a race with the doings, good or bad, of a particular member of that race, but if it must be done, plain justice should see to it that the right race gets the glory or the humiliation.
I got this from the amazing book Racecraft by Karen E. Fields & Barbara J. Fields (2012).

>>25617
very good citation.
the superstition of american racism is on full-display here, where whiteness appears as an "essence" which can be "added" to a person's soul, while blackness can only subtract from a person's potential whiteness (e.g. his integral humanity). further, the metaphysics are completely bonkers. how can douglass be more of "himself" when his internal constitution is fundamentally altered? it appears then that this spectre of a "lost" douglass is somehow even "more" of himself, than himself. God must be a white man, more than a formless spirit, to these people. well, indeed, we know that the nazarene was an aryan, dont we…? at least, thats what became popular to show. did you know that hitler actually manufactured bibles in the reich to censor Jesus' jewishness, in a promotion of "positive christianity"? christian antisemitism, is of course, a great mystery.

>>25554
sounds cool always looking for good marxist history books to read

>>25569
depends what you mean by "LTV".
watch this and see how you feel:

>>25622
Nice man if you end up reading it let me know your thoughts! I'm shelving the Furies for now. I keep running into the issue of not being familiar enough with the history of the French revolution and it makes it somewhat frustrating to read through.

I got Wages of Destruction for christmas so probably gonna continue with that instead. In case anyone is interested in reading about the holocaust I read picrel last year and it was really interesting. It's not explicitly Marxist, but I do feel like it takes a very materialist approach (emphasizing food, housing, plunder, forced labor and anti-partisan activity to name what comes to mind right now) to the topic. Gerlach also takes into account the broader European dimension showing how policies regarding Europe's Jews differed from country to country, but also how these policies contrasted in the heartlands vs the occupied frontiers. He also writes about the 3 million Soviet POWs that were starved to death at the start of operation Barbarossa, which is something that is not talked about often in the mainstream.

Finished Washington Bullets by Vijay Prashad (2020). It's about imperialism. Many sentences in it feel like they were crafted for a fire speech. But the structure is messy. Prashad is not just bouncing back and forth between years, but decades; and not just countries, but continents.
<Colombia’s war against the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), Sri Lanka’s war against the Tamil Tigers, Turkey’s war against the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK), or India’s war against the Maoists…

>>19860
Ghost Stories for the End of the World has turned me onto reading up on the mafia, specifically their parapolitical dimensions. I knew they had crossed paths with spooks during stuff like Gladio and the French Connection but my baby brain didn't appreciate just how much power and influence they wielded (and still do) especially in Italy. I think I still saw them as dumb mugs on TV in pinstripe suits with tommy guns running rackets and shit. Not as real power players in the real world.

Anyways, any good books or other resources on the history and politics of the mafia?

i just learned how many pop music stars are having their minds controlled by The Trumpist Propaganda Industry™ and being forced to promote the trad-values ideology against their will. Luckily, i never listened to a "trendy" pop song since 2021 and i am feeling more enlightened after watching a Gattsu video