As a Russian communist with relatives in Ukraine, count me in!

(Historical context for others: 1917 has seen two revolutions, February one, which ended monarchy, and October one, which brought bolsheviks, the communists and socialists siding with Lenin, to power. Lenin has then taken Russia out of the World War I)

About 10th, really

Afaik, you can set it up not to have any image, or have any other one.

Servo and Ladybird are both worth keeping an eye on, but neither is even close to be ready yet, unfortunately

We’re unlikely to see the grand price fall in the coming year. Can get a bit cheaper, though.

Fast lane is for driving at the speed limit. If the front driver goes by the limit, you hold no right to complain.

Do not normalize speeding.

You should do both.

Conditions of early Earth are often complicated to recreate, and it takes a lot of simultaneous reactions going just right to make it work - but Earth had billions of years, and we don’t have such a luxury. Still, we are very close, and we already created a lot of biomolecules out of basic blocks like water, carbon dioxide, and ammonia.

Humans have plenty of faults in their design - why do we have reproductive organs, which need to be kept clean, right next or combined with exhaust (urethra/rectum)? Why do we have two legs and vertical organization of the body that adds huge gravitational stress? Why do we have pelvis shaped in a way that makes birthing more painful and complicated? Why people with uterus have bloody and painful periods? Why do we have so many vulnerable spots on the body where they should clearly be reinforced? etc. etc.

We also have plenty of rudimentary organs we don’t need anymore, that are either just sitting there for no intelligent reason at all, or are actively causing trouble for us (like appendix or wisdom teeth).

This all doesn’t fall into the line of intelligent design, unless divine creatures just enjoy crafting us at random and see how we survive anyway.

Sure, they could still do that, they may engineer us in a very odd and imperfect way, they could make our DNA similar to other animals to make us guess if we actually descent from them instead, etc. But this involves so much jumping through the hoops we may as well cut it off with Occam’s razor. Evolutionary theory offers clear sequence of how we got where we are, it shows clear relation of all living organisms and the ways they develop into what we know today. So, it wins.

I did, and saw it. I also saw optical illusions. So?

Is it the Sun as we know it, though? And how can we be sure the lamp is actually there, and not simulation/imagination/trick of our eyes or brain?

True

Could be an illusion, or a lamp somewhere in the sky, or a simulation

It doesn’t take philosophical weeds to consider the possibility of Sun being just a lamp in the sky, or people around you not being real

Unless you are the Sun (in which case, cute~), it doesn’t seem to help

Cosmology, mainly. To someone who’s barely familiar with Buddhism, it may seem like it’s all Buddha’s wisdom with some Samsara magic sprinkled on top of it. Really though, it’s every bit as bonkers and reflective of the ancient perceptions of the world as any other way of mystical thought.

As for teachings, I honestly didn’t go to deep into that, but I visited a local temple and the way a monk told about them made me feel I visited some sort of lnternet life coach with some mystical stuff on top.

Except the room is entire Earth, it’s filled to the brim with most elements of the Periodic table, and constantly receives hundreds of terawatts of energy. Oh, and it actually took several billion years, not one, to come from this to Taj Mahal.

Modern science has shown ways in which many of the organic molecules could be spontaneously formed out of basic elements under conditions observable on early Earth. We’re also about to bridge synthesis of organic molecules and synthetic biology.

Intelligent design, on its end, gets stuck with several big questions, like the fact our design is actually very bad, just workable, and the fact we share not only visual properties, but most of our DNA with other animals - particularly other primates.

Not here to alter your beliefs - you do you - but setting the record straight.

How can you definitively prove it, though?

Buddhism looked appealing to me until I actually looked into it (I come from a Western culture)

I spy an old, but respectable man

The “political” aspect of communism stems directly from the desire to radically alter the economic system. It is not tied, however, to the particular political order.

Coming from the same very Wikipedia article you cite on communism:

Communists often seek a voluntary state of self-governance but disagree on the means to this end. This reflects a distinction between a libertarian socialist approach of communization, revolutionary spontaneity, and workers’ self-management, and an authoritarian socialist, vanguardist, or party-driven approach to establish a socialist state, which is expected to wither away.

So, communism, just as capitalism and socialism, can be combined with all sorts of governance types. It can be authoritarian (and so can be capitalism - look at fascism to see an example), and it can be democratic (early Soviets) or even libertarian (anarcho-communism). You can build a totalitarian communist hellhole, and a totalitarian capitalist one; same in reverse.

Now, an argument can actually be made that capitalism is inherently undemocratic. As your ability to exercise rights is heavily tied to your wealth (think of regular worker suing a billionaire, or all the lobbying, or corruption scandals involving the wealthiest and the way they slip out of them like nothing ever happened), people can be and commonly are silenced. Moreover, if you have money, nothing stops you from financing the media to translate your message. This way, important political messages are drowned in favor of what the rich want to translate, and certain (rather corrupt) voices are heavily amplified over others.

By extension, liberalism, even in the most ideal of its forms, is deeply flawed when it comes to a true democracy.

Finally, most communists (including Marx, since you mention him) realize that the communist society is at least very far off from the current state of affairs. This is why socialism exists as a transitory state, an economic system that grants a lot of benefits of communism (worker’s rights, a social state, socially owned industry) while keeping the monetary incentives in the economy. The absolute majority of communists support this transition and welcome a socialist state.