cucumovirus

A barrel of oil.

No problem! I've been reading through pretty much all of Losurdo's translated books recently and enjoying them all quite a lot. Class Struggle deals directly with Marxist theory, and it's definitely one of my favorites.

Similar to how Hegel criticized the christian call to "help the poor" because it presupposes a constant existence of poverty in order to feel good about its (ineffective) charity. A quote from Losurdo's Class Struggle:

We are reminded of Hegel’s critical remarks on the Gospel commandment to aid the poor. Losing sight of the fact that it is a ‘conditional precept’, and absolutizing it, Christians also wound up absolutizing poverty, which alone could confer meaning on the norm enjoining aid for the poor. The survival of poverty was a precondition for Christians, or at least some of them, enjoying a sense of moral nobility attendant upon their aid for the poor. The seriousness of help for the poor should instead be measured by its contribution to overcoming poverty as such.

Deinocheirus - even though it's a herbivore, I'm still pretty fucked.

I thought most RNA virus had a system where they first make DNA copies of them to then make mRNAs to make their proteins

No, only retroviruses (like HIV, for example) do this which is why they have a reverse transcriptase enzyme that makes a DNA copy of their RNA genome. All other RNA viruses have an RNA-dependent RNA-polymerase (RdRp) which directly makes complementary RNAs from a single stranded RNA template. At some point in this process, a double stranded RNA intermediate is formed which is the specific form recognized by the RNAi machinery.

sometimes several different ones that work as pseudo “chromosomes”? and ¿sometimes a different DNA copy to make RNA genome copies?

You might be thinking, again, of retroviruses which integrate their genome, once in DNA form, into the genome of the host cell (e.g. HIV), or pararetroviruses who's genome, in DNA form, stays in the nucleus of the host cell, but not integrated into the genome (e.g. Hepatitis B virus). This is sometimes called a "minichromosome". From all of these, mRNA is made to translate into proteins, and new RNA genome copies are created which leave the cell as parts of the newly created viruses (or which are first copied back to DNA in the case of pararetroviruses).

The main thing I remember about virology is that is a clusterfuck of different systems.

It does integrate a lot of branches of biology and requires quite a bit of interdisciplinarity, and you have to deal with the host, virus and the environment at the same time - which is partly why I like it so much.

if RNAi is now a blanket term for all or several of those, or it’s a specific one.

RNAi is the name for the specific mechanism, it can perform multiple functions - like immunity and regulation, but there are of course other immune and regulatory mechanisms. Regulatory RNAi controls gene expression by recognizing hairpins and other double stranded structures in mRNA, to create the short targeting RNAs to either methylate the DNA genome (mostly just in plants), methylate histones, degrade mRNA or block translation on ribosomes - all of which lower the expression of the targeted gene.

Of course, there's a lot more complexity here, but I hope I'm explaining it at least somewhat decently.

Plant virus have strong promoters.

Yes, we do.

I think sometimes there aint no DNA cuz it can be an RNA virus which produces RNA copies from RNA as template but it’s a very tiny percent of cases OK?

The vast majority of plant viruses are RNA viruses, so it's pretty common when dealing with infections. But even then, some stretches of viral RNA can be similar to plant genome DNA sequences so the plant shuts down its own genes while trying to silence the virus. This can sometimes get out of hand and contribute to the symptoms of infection on a plant (most of which are already caused by plant immune responses). RNAi also plays a role in plant immunity against fungi and other plant parasites.

I would also add that RNAi also has non-immune system functions during normal plant development where it regulates gene expression, and RNAi is also found in many other organisms, in fact, in most eukaryotes, although it's most widely studied in plants.

I mean, at this point, you’re just saying he didn’t answer it the way you would have answered it and that you think there’s a correct answer and that he failed you personally.

I'm not saying anything of the sort. I'm analyzing his answer in the context of the interview and the geopolitical situation today.

it was not incorrect

It was arguably off topic and not really an answer to the specific question. The whole interview is about the particular situation today, not an abstract multipolarity. Socialism is present today, especially with China which is leading the bloc of countries struggling against US hegemony.

The logical inference we can draw from Becker’s response is that more must be done to secure the revolution

The question was whether loss of US hegemony today is good, and his answer does not lead to this conclusion. What you've said in the rest of your comment is correct, but it cannot be inferred just from Becker's answer as it stops short of giving an actual judgement on the loss of hegemony in question. He talks about multipolarity in abstract and not the particular multipolary we're getting where socialist China is one of the poles.

If his takes otherwise are good, then great. Same goes for the PSL. I'm just critiquing his answer here which seems contradictory to the rest of the interview.

I agree that the question is problematic, but he doesn't challenge it. He answers as if the assumption of an abstract multipolarity is valid. I think he should've answered concretely, in accordance with today's material reality.

Again, I don't care about Shea, I'm not defending him, and I don't care what he's saying. I'm commenting on the interview in question.

I don't take anything Shea says at face value. I've listened to the part of the interview in question and find Becker's answers to be weird and contradictory. As I've explained in another comment, he answers the question “is it good that unipolarity has been challenged?” and his answer is in essence no because it seems like he just argues against some multipolarity in general without considering the material reality of today’s world split into the west and the rest (with China on top). His answer implies that today’s multipolarity is like that of pre-WW1 which is in contradiction with his stance in general.

I don't take anything Shea says at face value. I've listened to the part of the interview in question and find Becker's answers to be weird and contradictory. As I've explained in another comment, he answers the question “is it good that unipolarity has been challenged?” and his answer is in essence no because it seems like he just argues against some multipolarity in general without considering the material reality of today’s world split into the west and the rest (with China on top). His answer implies that today’s multipolarity is like that of pre-WW1 which is in contradiction with his stance in general.

There’s a growing right wing opposition to NATO

But that's not actual opposition to NATO or US wars in general. They are just opposing what the democrats are currently doing until they get elected again. These people very much want and are working towards US hegemony and open war with China, not just this proxy war against Russia. They do not want multipolarity and their appeals to Putin don't really mean anything. They're just part of a larger effort to be as contrarian as possible to the current democrat positions in public, while actually pursuing largely the same foreign policy as the democrats. There's also the factor of Trump "being friends" or whatever with Putin which is nonsense, but the republicans seem to like spreading that, if nothing else, just to piss off the democrats.

this puts Democrats in a dangerous and weakened position.

I don't really care what kind of position the democrats are in and neither should you. Both parties have the same imperialist and hegemonic policy and serve military-industrial, and other large corporation's shareholders' interests. The dems are not better than the republicans, and the US elections don't really decide anything. No one in the US should be allying with democrats (or republicans or relying on elections) and expecting achieve any sort of meaningful anti-imperialist changes.

I’d be interested to see what instances you’re referring to in terms of the SU and China allying with other imperialist forces.

I'm not talking about the Molotov–Ribbentrop pact, that wasn't an act of allyship. I'm talking about the larger picture of WW2 in general. The USSR, along with the UK and US fought the Nazis in Europe, and the communists in China formed temporary alliances with capitalist/feudalist forces which were funded by US imperialists to fight against Japan.

expecting Putin to liberate us from NATO

Again, my point is that no one is actually expecting this. Maybe a few fringe voices, but its far from a real position taken by people.

He asks the question "How can we make radical change in America by saying ‘Vladimir Putin is our leader?’, which is a very salient point. He goes on to say that we should strive for socialist leadership in all of our countries. What is so off about that? Seriously?

Nothing is wrong with that in general, but who is he saying it to? Who are these people that only want multipolarity and simp for Putin? His call for socialism is good, but ignores the material reality of today's world in which new socialist construction is not possible without first the decline of US hegemony.

I don't like Shea and think he's quite problematic, but your comment about what Kim is saying is, I think, not a good portrayal.

but just thinking about it for like 20 seconds, this obviously wouldn’t mean supporting reactionary states against the US for the pure sake of it. Would Kim il Sung have supported Hitler? Obviously not.

The USSR and China did ally with other capitalist and imperialist forces against Japan and Germany in WW2. And today's world is largely split into two camps - the US and China. Critical support given to Russia (which while being reactionary still currently plays a progressive role globally in the struggle against US hegemony and is allied to the world's socialist countries, though only out of necessity) is not the same as "supporting Hitler". Putin and Russia today are not equivalent to Hitler and Nazi Germany.

As Losurdo puts it:

we can speak of a struggle against a new colonial counter-revolution. We can speak of a struggle between the imperialist and colonialist powers — principally the United States — on the one side, and on the other we have China and the third world. Russia is an integral part of this greater third world, because it was in danger of becoming a colony of the West.