https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-neo-nazis-white-nationalists-go-on-pilgrimage-to-galicia-waffen-ss/
The move has been condemned by Jewish groups who renewed calls for the monument at an Oakville cemetery to be taken down
“What are the positives and negatives of using ChatGPT (and other AI) in post-secondary?”
This is a question I need to answer for an essay competition thing, and while I do have ideas myself and from my professor when I asked for his opinions, I was hoping if anyone here had some insights to add.
Is it ethical that I ask for your aid? I don’t want to overstep. I would not use anyone’s name/usernames at all in this essay, at most I will cite sources on the matter.
While I think my current ideas about the pros and cons are good (more cons than pros in my opinion) but I want to know if I missed anything.
If needed, I will add what ideas I’ve come up with so far but for now I’ll leave that out.
Edit: I was tempted to post this in the “Ask Lemmygrad” community but I think thats a more educational community about communism specifically so I’ll stick to asking here.
https://forward.com/fast-forward/561927/zelenskyy-joins-canadian-parliaments-ovation-to-98-year-old-veteran-who-fought-with-nazis/
Yaroslav Hunka was part of SS Galichina, a unit whose history has been whitewashed by veterans groups in the West
Maybe this isn’t significant to some but it means everything to me.
As someone with severe anxiety, and maybe some other mental illnesses, I have a hard time leaving my house. It’s already hard enough going to school and grocery shopping so being at such a confrontational public event. Last time I was at something even close to a protest was a pride parade many years ago and I wasn’t even in the parade self, just watching from the sidelines.
If you’re from Canada, living here, or just aware of current politics then you’ll know that a national protest called “1 Million March 4 Children” was being held today, September 20th, to protest “SOGI” and the “mutilation of children.” If it obvious this was a nationwide far-right protest to attack the 2SLGBTQ+ community, peddling the same conspiracy bullshit. Of course when these protest plans were made public many counter protests were set up. I, of course, battled with myself on whether I would go to the one in my area. The protest was going to be quite early and I was nervous about missing my first period class, but I forced myself to get a grip and just go.
I set up many alarms which didn’t even matter anyway since I barely got a wink of sleep last night, I was that anxious. Thankfully I didn’t feel tired in the morning but that could’ve been from lingering nerves. I made sure to make my lunch for the day and eat a decent breakfast before heading out to the meeting point. It was quite cold and damp but the shakes kept me warm-ish. I was worried about a lot but one was whether I’d be able to find the spot or would I be left wandering. Thankfully, it was easy to find, I just had to look out for pride flags, and guess what I saw there? Marxists! They were with us with signs and handing out pamphlets. I did not get one as I was to nervous to approach, which I know is silly but I was already freaked out enough going to a protest by myself let alone actually talking to people. Anyway we were all gathering and few infiltrators made themselves aware ad it was sort of cool how they were dealt with. One guy with a camera was pointed out, shamed, and we were all told to turn away so he wouldn’t get out faces. Another guy was handing out rainbow pamphlets, which I considered grabbing since I had nothing rainbow on me but another guy was tailing him shouting that he was from the other side, and what do you know the seemingly pride pamphlets he was naming out were actually inscribed with a bunch of religious and anti-queer crap. That guy also got into a screaming match and there was a small altercation that was dealt with but surprise surprise the cops did absolutely nothing. We had to handle it ourselves.
I was very shaken up from that ordeal but it went away pretty quickly when I saw how our side rallied together. Even though I was there on my own I didn’t feel alone. I knew that if I needed anything at all everyone there had my back. When the chants started it took me a while to find my voice but I got there eventually! It was invigorating to say the least. Even though it was cold and wet I felt warm and content. It felt amazing to be on the frontlines, essentially. I had to leave a little early because I didn’t want to miss my history class, but Im so glad I stayed for the amount of time I did.
I cry just going over these events, it was just a lot. A lot of big feelings, and a lot on the line. I’m sitting here writing this post while I wait for my next class to start and I’m just quietly sobbing, having to use sticky notes as tissues since I forgot to pack some from home.
In conclusion I am definitely going to be participating in more protests, schedule permitting.
Important edit: the transphobes brought so many of their young kids and had them hold such hateful signs. Most of the children were pushed to the frontlines to the point where they were spilling onto the road. In my area we were, unfortunately, outnumbered but I think it’s because we didn’t pull our kids out of school for this, also people had work and school. That planned this very deliberately. My heart aches that we still have to do this and fascism is on the rise. It’s terrifying to look hate directly in the face.
cross-posted from: https://lemmygrad.ml/post/1901054
I’m so late to posting this but I’m sure you all understand that life gets busy whether you’re in university or not. I was too tired to post on Friday and I spent the weekend rewriting my psychology notes. My note strategy is I have note book dedicated to rapid fire lecture notes while I have separate books to write down more structured notes with what was on the slides, the textbook, and lecture.
Anyway lets get on with day 5:
History class was nothing. It was good for me but nothing in the class was notable to write here. We learned about how to scrutinize sources when doing research, if anyone is actually interested in what thats like just leave a comment and ill write down what we learned in that regard. One comment that my professor did make was that apparently back in the day during the Great Depression Prime Minister R. B. Bennett would respond to letters from citizen lamenting about the pain the Depression was causing by mailing them dollars which was a lot for that time. He talked about this because politicians now just give the same automated response when people write to them. This could be due to many factors, population growth, the internet, etc. but I know if must’ve been nice to get a response back from a real human being. I thought this was a very cool fact to share.
Day 5 of Political Science we started off where we left off last class, that being learning about Bureaucracy and how it is central to the modern state. With Legitimacy my professor made reference to Benedict Anderson - imagined community, and Eric Hobsbawm - the state being the inventor of history. There are different developmental paths of modern states, like Prussia and the USA, for example, Prussia could no longer rule after WWII and the USA has corruption and scandals galore. With anarchists the believe the state does not provide ____ nor ____; unfortunately I could not keep up with what he was saying here but the gist of it was anarchists don’t believe in the state at all. Maybe during office hours I can ask him to restate that again.
Next we learned the 3 generations of modern social studies of the state:
First Generation is society-centred perspective, where the state is an avenue for multiple social groups and classes to struggle for power; the NRA was used as an example.
Second Generation is state-centred perspective, where the state is independent from society where the focus is on interstate competition. The state is central institutions that plan the economy and rules of law. Redistribution of wealth generated from the markets. This perspective is prevalent in East Asia.
Third Generation is a state-in-society perspective, the state and society compete for dominance. It’s typically seen in state-building in newly emerged independent states. In cases of civil war the state is not the dominant force, it is not independent from race, gender, and class.
The historical origins of the modern state began in Europe during the 15th and 18th century and was universalized via conquest, colonialism, and then decolonization in the 1960s. It went from feudalism to absolutism and then to the modern state. Absolutism helped give modern states their key elements: a standing army, diplomatic service, centralized bureaucracy, systemic taxation and policies for the economy.
“War made the state, and the state made war.”
To mobilize people you must have their consent and active participation.
We learned about the Liberal Social Contract theory which describes the limiting of powers of individual rulers. Voluntarily or not.
When we looked at premodern states outside of Europe we didn’t focus on any state particular but more so how Eurocentric the definition of state-formation is as there were layers of sovereignty outside of Europe before they exported their own version. Speaking of exporting Europe at the time lacked a shared sense of national identity, it also had weak legitimacy and internal sovereignty. So brutal colonization happened which was justified as it was portrayed as an act of “civilizing backward people.” When Europeans were colonizing the world, we specifically looked at a map of Africa in is early colonized days, it was shown how shoddy borders were established with little regard to the pre colonial boundaries that were already set, nor did they bother with pre colonial institutions and traditions. We all know great division was sown which lead to great disparities in wealth and education. It also prevented certain groups from truly gaining any sort of power.
That’s where day 5 ended. It getting late where I am so I’ll be writing about what happened day 6 (which was today) tomorrow. Maybe this wasn’t my most interesting post, but hey they can’t all be winners.
Also, I finally made a dedicated community for these posts! If I should still cross post them to other communities please let me know!
The dedicated community for these posts is called “Chronicles of SpaceDogs”
Today is going to be weird to post about as most of what was talked about in my history class was not interesting enough to write about here. I reread my notes just to be certain. Didn’t miss anything that I could potentially mention but for the most part nothing stood out. We honestly only talked about what a act is, how facts relate to the study of history, how they’re applied, the system used to study history, and a tiny bit about Napoleon. If you’re curious about the Napoleon discussion it was only brought up in reference to Lynn Hunt herself and how her main focus as a historian is how women were treated during the French Revolution and Napoleon’s rule.
Facts - Coherence - Completeness
That’s the method in which all historians around the world use to to do their research and make conclusions to whatever questions they’re trying to answer. I don’t think this is truly worth writing about here but if someone is curious I am willing to discuss it more in the comments.
I’m writing this segment during my break so maybe my Political Science class will be more interesting. Then again, my classes are interesting but, like today, not every day is going to have good content to write about on Lemmygrad. Unless the class content itself or the professor makes comments related to or about Marxism I’m not going to write about it. Which probably doesn’t track well with my posts as I tend to ramble a lot but I’m going to try and cut back on that as much as possible. I would hate for anyone to get bored or frustrated reading my posts.
So class started and wouldn’t you know, we talked about Marxism! You bet your asses I add little hearts around anything to do with it too. So in this class we went over what explain political behaviour, who rules, and where and why. Interests, beliefs, and structures are the three main things that explain political behaviour. I mention this because we dove into beliefs which led to what modernists are, and in relation to modernists my professor told as that Mexico was deemed as some sort of authoritarian system compared to Western European nations. He mentioned the book The Civic Culture 1963 by Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba in which they said just that. For what its worth my professor didn’t really take that claim seriously and only talked about it to lead into criticisms of modernism such as its tendency towards Anglo-American ethnocentrism. Next, of course, was postmodernism with a reference to Ronald Inglehart:
Cultures are sets of symbols subject to interpretation; focus on political discourse; challenge to modernist assumption on one clear, fixed, homogenous culture.
Political correctness and anti-PC; woke and anti-woke campaigns. The culture war fits here.
Critics of postmodernism: can interpretation explain something?
Symbols don’t have a monopoly. The colour red, for example, is the colour of the Labour Party but is also used by many conservatives in the USA.
Each ideology has its own idea for a good and just society. Im sure most of you know who Antonio Gramsci but he was discussed in class, so here’s what I managed to write down when my professor was talking:
He was a Marxist theorist that was arrested and unfortunately died in prison.
He never wrote a book himself but his works were saved and compiled by his friends.
He expanded on Hegemony.
Ideology is justification of rule.
The ruling class try to not only rule altogether but to convince the masses of their legitimacy.
After that we moved on to structures which opened up with Marxism. I wont write about my notes on Marxism but I want to talk about how my professor spoke about it. Of course we went over Base and Superstructure and how every society has both and in capitalism the bourgeoisie exercise power over every part of society. He admitted that the definition and discussion of Marxism in our class was the dogmatic version and that its a very orthodox ideology. His tone is almost kind, not dismissive or mocking, as if he recognizes Marxism as legitimate. If anyone remembers my last semester posts Marxism was brushed over in class, but even during the recorded lecture where my professor had more time he didn’t seem to take it seriously which saddened me but whatever.
Institutionalize was next but nothing too interesting was taught so I’ll skip it and go to “who rules.” So with this one there are two theories: pluralists and elites. With pluralists you got power dispersed equally among various political groups, no group has complete/permanent power. With the elite theory its self explanatory and Marxist traditions explain it well, yes my professor said this. My professor made sure to mention that in the Soviet Union, contrary to popular beliefs, it had factions and worked more like pluralists and he made this remark in regards to the criticism that pluralists cannot explain authoritarian regimes. He didn’t talk about the USSR with any contempt, and I feel like that’s important to mention. I wonder if any of the other political science professors here has the same view. With the elite theory section and citing Marxism as a school of thought that explain it well, a guy in my class asked if it was accurate to say that even in bourgeoisie societies its more pluralist as they too have factions. My professor answered this in the pluralist perspective there’s production bourgeoisie vs some other type of bourgeoisie that I couldn’t quite catch but that hardly matters.
After this the class ended and I went home. That’s really all I have for today, and for once I posted it on time.
Technically my second day was yesterday but I couldn’t post until today due to life getting in the way. I’m sure you all understand.
So in order of classes I will begin with my History course; as a quick reminder this is a level 100 introductory course so its not going to be super specific but we’ve already touched on interesting topics that I must share with all of you. Honestly I think its less about the content of the course and more so about comments made by my professors and how the course navigates leftism.
So far I’ve had to get three books for History while my Political Science class only required one textbook. I will list the three of them here and they can all be found on Lilgen very easily so thankfully I didn’t have to spend a dime:
First book: Lynn Hunt’s History Why it Matters
Second Book: Tatiana Seijas and Stuart B. Schwartz’s Victors and Vanquished Spanish and Nahua Views of the Fall of the Mexica Empire 2nd Edition
Third Book: Mairi Cowan and William Kelleher Storey’s Writing History A Guide for Canadian Students 5th Edition
This class we only covered the first book by Lynn Hunt and wont be diving into the others for a few weeks.
According to my professor historian research methods are very different compared to psychologist and sociologist methods. For starters historians use Chicago style formatting while the other two use APA. He finds the latter incredibly frustrating as with the type of research psychologists and sociologists do there is a high level of confidentiality and secrecy which leaves room for falsification. With Chicago style it brings you straight to the proper documentation, if that makes sense. This might not sound very interesting to you but I found their discussion entertaining and it gave me insight into my professor’s personality, but I can’t be certain just yet.
Being a historian is like being Agatha Christie, whatever that means. They’re problem solvers that need to watch out for confirmation bias as they may miss critical details and context as to why an event carried out the way it did. I was relieved to hear him say this as with the weirdos I’ve come across on the internet they frequently leave out the very real conditions that led to certain outcomes. If anyone recalls I made a post asking about debunking misinformation and the guy and article I linked reeked of bias.
The craft of history provides more data than any other practice out there and States have incentive to help archive history; he added a picture of the National Archives Building to illustrate this point. History is both a social science and humanities. It seeks out to understand the response to events that happen.
The first chapter of Lynn Hunt’s book details why politicians and people in general lie about history. With this slight intro my professor asked if any of us read 1984 and if we did what was one of the first things the government did in the book. Well they rewrote books. Then he used Stalin as another example of a leader rewriting history, Stalin rewrote about the USSR’s role in WWII and how the rest of the allies treated the Soviets. I couldn’t get every little detail of his statement as he speaks so fast and I can’t keep up, but his tone was mocking if that helps. In the book, Lynn Hunt talks Trump’s lies about Obama’s citizenship.
So why lie? Cynicism is a big one, and my professor self identificasse a cynic. People lie because they believe their goals are important enough to accelerate even if that means fabrications, in essence the ends justify the means.
Monuments are a hot topic, are they good or bad? This led to talking about Métis people. They’re unique because they’re the only ones in the world with such a unique identity. Compare the Métis to people in Mexico, according to my professor everyone in Mexico at this point are mestizo, but Métis are a legitimate “category” if that makes sense. Please do not shoot the messenger. Anyway, while looking at an image of the torn down and defaced statue of John A. MacDonald my professors explained that it was removed because of how horrible the man was to Indigenous people with residential schools but in contrast “respected” Lous Riel’s demands for his people, which led to the “creation” of Métis, then again that was more so due to Louis Riel demanding his people be respected rather than MacDonald’s graciousness. What about Laurier? He was arguably worse to the Indigenous peoples of Canada but he apparently also did really great things for Canada as a whole, so how do we decide who is celebrated? Well that’s for our generation to decide, according to my professor.
What are other lies? What happened in:
Spain (the civil war) Iraq (WMD) Japan (its role in WWII) Indonesia (mass killings of communists) Armenia (the genocide)
No one wants to talk about the bad when trying to build a nation, and that’s why Turkey denies genocide accusations because at the time it didn’t exist.
We proceeded to talk about the TRC in South Africa, how it failed, and its application here in Canada. I’ve already wrote a lot on my history class so if you want more details I can continue in a comment. But to conclude the class he ended with the statement “The world is moving very fast and changing just as quickly.”
I had to wait my two hours until Political Science and I forgot to pack food again so I reluctantly bought snacks from the vending machine. It was not worth it.
I am going to tell you right now that this class was very dry and even my professor admitted to it, but its important for us to learn but not enough for me to write about in detail. I apologize to anyone who was interested in what I would be learning but that may take a few more classes. This class was focused on learning about the scientific method, which I’m already familiar with as I’m a psychology student, but whatever. Lets go through this rapid fire:
Internal vs External validity
Qualitative vs Quantitative analysis
Single Case Study
Comparative Methods - MSSD vs MDSD
Quantitative Statistical Techniques do not allow for complexities, especially with regards to identity; example given was a Catholic worker, would they vote for the worker party that supports abortion or would they vote for the Christian Democratic Party that opposes abortion but is probably not great for workers.
Core activity in all Political Science explains political behaviour
Political Actor - person/group engaged in political behaviour, can be motivated by a variety of factors; women in Iran still participate/protest despite violence.
Rational Choice Theory - bring self-defined preferences into political arena. Group Behaviour is the collective action of rational individual actors in the group in a particular context. Problems is that it is unable to predict political behaviour in advance and is unable to explain different behaviours seen around the world. For example the white apartheid regime worked against their own interests, Engels (I drew a bunch of hearts around his name) went against his own self interest, the women against suffrage, and the great divide between Green Parties; “so called environmentalists” supporting nuclear energy. I am quoting my professor, not my own personal opinions, just to be very abundantly clear.
Psychological Theories
And of course, beliefs.
This was very messy, I know, but this class was more focused on the scientific method and I saved you from all of that. My notes are also structured in a way that reflects best what I had to deal with, I only shared the interesting tidbits that my professor gave and the needed context as to why he would say the things he did. Same goes for my history professor.
The textbook for this class is Stephen Orvis and Carol Ann Drogus’ Introducing Comparative Politics Concepts and Cases in Context 5th Edition
I hope this wasn’t as exhausting to read as it was for me to write. It doesn’t seem much but its late where I am and my back hurts. Please make as many comments as you’d like an to ask as many questions you have, I love engaging with everyone here. I’ll be back to write about my third day very soon!
Quick edit: I will be back in the morning to correct my typing mistakes, please give me a little bit of a break, sometimes my fingers move to quickly.
Second edit: I have come back to correct multiple mistakes (I have no idea if I got them all) and I’m so embarrassed there’s so many.
@SpaceDogs
@lemmygrad.ml