ReadFanon

Throwback to when he was touting the "plan" to push Biden left.

It's a massive self-report that Vaushites will accuse you of doing no real-world organising because it's 100% projection; if you ask them whatever happened to pushing Biden left, where you can learn about Vaush's strategy to do this, and how his followers went about achieving this plan, they inevitably get infuriated by the questions.

These people, who will accuse you of ableism if you tell them to read theory, are very comfortable demanding that you account for how much real-world organising you've done without a single consideration for the fact that theory is much more accessible than irl organising is for most people with disability.

I know what you're saying here but the king is absolutely a part of the Australian government and this is cheap equivocation on behalf of the Australian prime minister who should know very well that Australia is a not a republic.

You can't be the head of state for a constitutional monarchy and claim that the monarch isn't a part of the government.

i stupidly took another this morning, i've heard that there can be really bad symptoms from stopping medication like this suddenly so i just took another but i'm already regretting that decision

You're not stupid, you're doing what you've been advised to do by medical professionals. I'm guessing they didn't tell you what to do if you have a serious negative reaction to the meds because they almost never do this. So you're just doing your best with info and circumstances that are far less than ideal.

If you're keeping it together then you will probably be able to taper down on the meds over the coming few days or a week, give or take. A pharmacist or doctor should be able to give you better advice on this.

The bupropion manufacturer claims that there are minimal side effects if you stop cold turkey and that you don't need to taper down. I don't believe that to be true but there doesn't appear to be any major concerns with tapering down fairly quickly.

If you're doing an emergency taper, my general advice is to drop the dose by half each day until you're at the point where you're down to a quarter of a pill or if you're noticing that you're getting bad withdrawals, at which point you can either go back up on the dose somewhat or you can plateau for a couple of doses before you continue tapering down.

If you're on a high dose or you've been on antidepressants for a long period then it's almost certainly going to need a more gentle taper, but you're probably on a fairly low dose and you haven't been on them for long so that's unlikely to be a concern.

With regards to escitalopram, that can be harder to withdraw from. I went cold turkey from a high dose due to necessity. Wouldn't recommend unless it's urgent. You might need a more gradual taper with this one but tbh it really hasn't been long enough to warrant this unless you're a very rare case.

My guess is that it's probably the bupropion that's causing you trouble. My hunch then is that tapering down on the escitalopram more gradually should be fine if the bupropion is the cause.

Glad to hear that this isn't going to really screw up your plans for the next week or two.

General advice moving forward with meds:

Go one at a time in future and if your prescribing doctor tries starting you on two meds at the same time, tell them that you aren't willing to do that again.

You could ask the prescribing doctor if you can try going back on one first to see your response, then trying the other later to see which one is the cause of the problems. Though if you're done with taking these meds and you're not interested in trying them again, that's understandable.

Not a government decision?

Help me understand where I'm getting confused here.

Yeah but if this happened under Trump they would have signed this motion pressing down harder on their pens and Trump would have said something mean and/or ridiculous on TV, so we can't get distracted by this because we need to vote for 99.999% Hitler instead of 100% Hitler, okay?

I don't think this can be measured in a vacuum.

Let's explore some different cases as a thought experiment:

A country achieves communism. I don't think this is possible tbh but let's go with it.

We can expect to see the "proles" consuming more than they would otherwise as they'd have all the products of their labour.

Let's presume that people are people and that they aren't going to suddenly develop much more class consciousness and a spirit of internationalism. Obviously I think that a communist society would go a long way towards this but let's ignore that for argument's sake.

Unequal exchange would mean that the communist society would be taking advantage of this arrangement, perhaps more than they would be able to otherwise.

But if this is the situation, we also have no bourgeoisie who do rampant exploitation of the third world. We have no more corporations. We have no more bourgeois democracy inflicting imperialism upon the world.

Perhaps consumption drops a whole lot purely by virtue of the fact that people would rather work 4 hours a day or 3 days a week. Perhaps in freeing up the products of labour and what would otherwise be capital and surplus value under the previous system, people are able to manufacture and acquire products designed for repairing with replaceable parts rather than for planned obsolescence. Perhaps people would be able to be more conscious consumers, opting for the things that have a lower environmental and social impact rather than working two jobs as part of a single-parent nuclear(ish) family and only being able to choose the simplest and most readily available options rather than carefully considering what they would genuinely prefer. Perhaps lots of people devote their time to things like gardening and producing food themselves because they only need to work 15 hours a week in their factory job to cover the rest of their needs.

It's hard to estimate what it would look like exactly, especially in an unbiased way, but even in a conservative estimate I'd say that it would be a net-benefit for the third world as the degree of exploitation and the worst excesses of consumption would be largely curbed, not to mention all of the excesses of capitalism and imperialism being eliminated (from that society anyway).

So let's look at a genuinely SocDem society next:

Imperialism is dead in the water. Capitalism is hemmed in. Billionaires are reduced to having no more than, say $10 million in net worth. If corporations still exist they are brought to heel and they are held accountable for their inevitable excesses.

Honestly in this society I would expect the net benefit to the third world to be worse than the example above but it would still be much better than what we have today.

Next is to consider things as they are today:

Increased wages are going to lead to increased consumption. But things like earlier retirement and better healthcare, education, environmental and workplace safety etc. are going to reduce the impacts on the third world - healthcare, especially stuff that is way downstream, has a big footprint. Workplace and public health and safety makes things better for everyone. Carving out chunks of profit to go towards better conditions generally means less money for wars and less money going towards imperialism, not always but more so than not. Workers having unions and solidarity means that there's more chance of things like general strikes, which can achieve good outcomes for the third world.

I think under this scenario we could expect to see a net benefit that is significantly reduced compared to a SocDem hypothetical scenario. It might even come out as a wash, if you really want to make a conservative estimate.

Idk this argument seems overly simplistic and very undialectical honestly. It's a bit like the reactionaries who complain about veganism or measures that benefit the environment and they charge vegans with being responsible for the deaths of animals due to industrialised agriculture or they concern-troll over the carbon footprint of a proposed expansion to rail transport.

I mean, yeah, there's definitely an environmental footprint that gets incurred when you manufacture a car seatbelt and that's fine. But if 100,000 seatbelts prevent one single person from becoming a permanent wheelchair user then the comparative environmental footprint is vastly in favour of making those 100,000 seatbelts because the environmental footprint incurred by the necessary medical and accessibility interventions from one preventable case of someone ending up as a permanent wheelchair user are far greater.

This is not an argument in favour of eugenics or to lay the blame for the social and environmental impacts of being disabled at the feet of the individual though. I'm just trying to highlight that we should not fall victim to an overly reductionist assessment of things in a very static way or otherwise we end up with well-intentioned measures that can have ramifications that are far worse than what we prevent.

Likewise we should not oppose fighting for better working conditions in the first world out of concern that any improvements here are simply going to make things worse in the third world because it's not nearly as simple an arrangement as one where improvements here necessarily make things worse over there in equal measure.

Sorry to hear that you're having a negative reaction to the meds.

Aside from contacting people, I would recommend creating a calm environment in your room and riding this out.

Put on some relaxing music, spend some time doing the minimum amount of stuff that you are able to. If you can sit and relax, cool. If you feel like you can't contain the energy and you need to keep busy that's okay too - don't force yourself to do nothing if that feels like torture but maybe play a video game or do some drawing or anything else. Peel some labels off off cans and bottles if it feels good and it's something that you can direct your energy towards.

If this is your first day taking the meds then I'd recommend not taking another dose tomorrow. If your doctor tells you to push through the side effects, you don't have to take their advice and you are within your rights to advocate for yourself and to say no.

Try not to worry about sleep too much right now - it will come in due time. If you're awake for 24 hours+ and you're still feeling wired then I would recommend seeking medical advice - your prescribing doctor, your pharmacist, a medical helpline etc.

If you are feeling really bad and you or the people around you are seriously concerned, seek medical advice sooner or go to the emergency department.

I would cancel any upcoming committments for the next couple of days so you can rest and recover without pushing yourself. There are very few things that cannot wait and right now the most important thing is getting you back to normal.

Ah fuck it, you hate to hear it. Definitely sounds like a Wellbutrin thing.

So the Democrat strategy of "I've already moved my stuff here so I might as well keep this spot" isn't viable?? Who could have seen that coming?

Biden's campaign is in tatters.

Quick questions for them:

What has Biden actually done to protect trans people through legislation?

Do they believe that international law needs to be upheld?

Do they think that it's okay to be complicit in genocide?

Interesting that it comes up on a Bernie tweet but not a Hillary tweet, eh? Almost as if AOC knows which side her bread is buttered on.