Peter-Andre

@DoubleYou These look amazing! Are they difficult to make? I would like to give it a try myself.

When you use the word love in this context, what is the difference between that and the human emotion we usually refer to as love? What is the relationship between them?

What exercises/practices can one do to become more loving?

@Natasha Thanks so much! The video is on my Youtube channel, but I can leave a link directly to my channel if you want. Here you go: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC7lghbjHM8U5olMWR-Ta0Zw/ Also, piano improvisation is a pretty big art form. There have been plenty of great piano improvisers over the years, including many of the great classical composers, such as Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin. It's also a staple of jazz music regardless of instrument. Certain jazz pianists, like Keith Jarret would improvise entire concerts, many of which there are recordings of. It's a lot of fun just to make up music on the fly.

Lately I've been thinking about getting in better physical shape, so I've thought about joining the gym, but there are a couple of things holding me back. Firstly, it costs quite a bit of money. Not a whole lot, sure, but still a considerable amount for a poor university student like myself. The main reasons I'm considering the gym are the following: It will help me get in better physical shape. It will improve my mental health. It will make me more productive because I'll have more energy throughout the day. I'm totally open to joining the gym if the benefits are so great that they will significantly improve the quality of my life, but can't I instead just work out from home and combine that with running outside? What significant benefits are there to working out at the gym that I couldn't get by working out from home? Also, just for the record: I probably won't be joining the gym for a few months anyways because of Covid-19, I was considering to do it when things go back to normal.

I love this idea! Here is one of the first things that came to mind when I saw this thread.

@PretentiousHuman You could check out Leo's book list. It's got plenty of great books.

Are you looking for anything specific within self-help?

I'm a pianist and I love to improvise music. A couple of years ago I started recording some of my improvisations and upload them to Youtube. Here is my most recent one. It's a bit old now since I haven't uploaded in a while, but I'm planning to upload more videos this year:

Sure, the extremists of any movement will always be over-represented in the media and general discourse because they stand out from the rest. I also agree that people who focus too much on these extremists are usually not doing so consciously.

Leo has talked about this before. People have a much more nuanced view of themselves and their allies than they do their perceived foes. In the case of right-wingers, it serves their agenda to simplify feminism and reduce it down to just the extremists. That way it's easier to demonize and harder to take seriously, so they won't have their beliefs challenged by it. Part of the reason why this tactic is so common is because of how sneaky it is. Most people don't even realize that they are doing this.

@w4read I agree with pretty much everything you wrote, but I would like to add that it's not just the fault of a few extremists that the label has gotten a bad reputation. Anti-feminists will almost deliberately cherry-pick these particular "feminists" and use them to intentionally smear the entire movement. I see this a lot from people on the right, and unfortunately they've largely succeeded in worsening feminism's reputation.

I completely agree! We just have to keep pushing forward.

Actually, thank you! I remember reading some of your comments a few months ago in another thread about feminism. You made some really compelling arguments and pointed out how feminism is still relevant in the 21st century. Before that, I still agreed with the principles of feminism, such as gender equality, but I wasn't 100% convinced about the importance of feminism today, nor was I aware just how prevalent the issues of sexism and patriarchy still were. Over the past year or so I've spent quite a bit of time trying to educate myself about this stuff, and your comments on this forum have been of great help

I would consider myself a feminist. A lot of people, especially men, tend to just assume that we no longer need feminism because we've achieved gender equality and that feminism is now redundant. I think this is because men don't experience sexism to the same extent as women and tend to just assume that it doesn't exist, or barely exists. I obviously disagree with that. There are still a lot of issues in society relating to gender inequality that we need to overcome as a society.

@Robi Steel I'm curios; what would you consider to be far-right?

If Trump is not a fascist, then he is certainly not far from it and his behavior exhibits several, if not all of the characteristics associated with fascism. In any case, it is clear that Trump at the very least enables fascism. This video by Youtuber Beau of the Fifth Column is pretty relevant, so I thought I'd share it:

In most cases, people don't make the conscious choice to get into fights, so there is usually no deliberate calculated intent behind it. People are just letting their emotions get the best of them. There always seems to be some emotional attachment to ideas involved. When two people who are ideologically opposed get into a heated argument, it can quickly become a fight. It's not a deliberate choice. It just happens.

So, I've decided I'll give the gym a try for a few months starting with this coming semester and see what happens. Thanks for the replies, everyone! You've definitely helped me think things through

@Galyna I definitely don't have any room for gym equipment at home other than resistance bands and dumbbells, so right now it's either that or the gym. I don't care too much about the aesthetic stuff, that's just a bonus as far as I'm concerned. I care more about the health effects. I want to improve my cardio, build strength and get more energy.

@Onemanwolfpac Out of curiosity, what is it about Marxism that you don't like/agree with?

@modmyth Unfortunately my faculty is pretty far away from the university campus, so we don't have a school gym nearby, but thanks for the tip nonetheless. I'll have to see if my local gym offers student discounts though.

@StarStruck It's a little bit more expensive here. The local gym charges about 40 dollars a month, but I guess that's not really too bad either. Having read all the replies here it seems like I will gain more by going to the gym, so I've decided I'll give it a try when the next semester starts.

Not sure if I'm at the right level for it, but I'll look into it. Thanks for the tip!

Yeah, I love that movie! I've seen it like 4 or 5 times now.