Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14hr ago
Yeah, should probably specify that I was talking about strictly the use of the word "revolution" in politics, it is used in social trends like "industrial revolution", "sexual revolution" and so on. But yeah, "kill" in this sense is probably a better example, and there's a lot of other violent-style rhetoric like that - "crush X", "kick X's ass" and so on.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1d ago
Without taking a stance on what the Iranians actually mean when they say Death to America, I was just thinking a few days back how there exists an American relative equivalent in phrases that demonstrate ambiguity of rhetoric and the need to take cultural context into account in translation: the constant calls for "revolution" and uses of the word "revolution" as a description in politics (Ron Paul Revolution! The Reagan Revolution! Bernie's "Our Revolution!") with "revolution" basically just meaning electing a candidate within the existing system instead of its general historical meaning of a complete societal upheaval from the bottom to the top, often/usually through the force of arms (or at least an implication of the same).
You don't see the word "revolution" used the same way in Finland, for example, a country with negative experience of actual attempts at revolution (the left used the word when it was communist but basically doesn't any more, the right has approximately never used it in any sort of a positive sense).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1d ago
This is the same as my experience. The guy who was the most insistent about going "fuck them" was basically just a teenage edgelord, a channer before the chans. He became conspicuously right-wing a few years after the events (conspicuous enough to stand out in the generally apolitical atmosphere). The next day there was a minute of silence for the victims of 9/11 and the one guy known for left-wing activism in the class made a point of saying that he was only doing it to honor the civilian victims.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
12d ago
It's clearly taking up air from the real scandal of Olympic hockey in 2026, meaning two Canadian refs being allowed to be refs for the Canada-Finland semifinal.
Therians (the modern iteration) have been a thing in Finland for some years now.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
19d ago
I thought that D means Decadence [causing the fall of empires] here, not Devereaux.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
20d ago
But when the Arabs built their empire they did it by steamrolling the (Eastern) Romans and the Persians who had a plenty of martial prowess and whose troops were well battle-hardened, precisely because they had spent hundreds of years butting heads against each other.
The Arabs were highly united and driven when doing their conquests, but that's because they had just been united by a fresh new mission-oriented religion, not any inherent "desertness". Before Mohammed, and during the early parts of his career, the Arabs were notably disunited and prone to clannish infighting.
Also, the Fremen are Chechens.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
21d ago
I'm also wondering about the claim that this case has received "little attention". I think it has received a large amount of media attention for an event in France not related to international policy, at least in Finland, and has been discussed in considerable detail by feminists in social media, insofar as I've seen.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
23d ago
EU has regulation confirming the availability of cash as a legal tender in the legislative pipeline, though.
The new push for digital euro is about hopefully eventually replacing Visa/Mastercard as digital payment structure (for obvious sovereignty reasons, especially considering the recent events in US/EU relations).
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
27d ago
And yet, even without all that, Sweden had nearly replacement rate fertility (both as a whole and among native Swedes, anticipating a potential objection) as recently as 2010 without any of that.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
29d ago
For what it's worth I don't think Ludwig von Mises would have supported this. Mises Institute's Mises is really Murray Rothbard wearing a Mises mask.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
It's kind of sad that the best DTTW t-shirts are always unavailable. Have wanted the one with the Arabic Lord's Prayer for some time.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
The sense of community probably dominated once you were in the community, but the exploration of niche interests, chiefly music, was what got people in the first place and the communities formed.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
In the olden days, subcultures had real functions, a chief one of which was that they allowed one to explore genres of music efficiently. If you were dissatisfied with mainstream pop and happened to hear, say, gothic rock and liked it, it's not like you had hundreds of curated Spotify playlists (or, earlier, music blogs) to find more stuff quickly; you'd get handmade zines, sections in obscure record shops, small clubs (or club nights) and, especially in non-Anglo countries, the necessity for mail-ordering stuff. To find all that you'd need to get into the local goth scene, and of course there would be other benefits like other media, interesting conversations, drugs, strange ideas and belief systems you wouldn't get elsewhere and so on that would keep you there.
Since all that is not particularly necessary now - due to the said Spotify playlists and music blogs and such - all the subcultures have since started to bleed together to create some sort of a general lowest-common-denominator simulcra of a subcultural look which, for some odd reason, is now being called "goth" despite not particularly resembling the goths of old, expect perhaps for the derided "Hot Topic goths". Earlier the same look was often called "emo" with only marginally more of a connection to the claimed musical genre.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
You'd think that the whole Tea App debacle - Tea App not having been usable in its purpose in Europe due to being obviously wildly GDPR incompliant - would have shown that there are in fact reasons for GDPR other than just hobbling the US tech sector.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Europe has totally failed to make its own social media (with exceptions for some countries like I think Finland ( @Stefferi ?)
Finland used to have a popular social media called IRC-Galleria, so named since it was originally for IRC users to post their own photos and so on. It still exists and has something of a continuing userbase from what I've understood, but basically they failed to develop their interface and usability and got quickly replaced by Facebook as the social media of choice when it became a thing.
This Instagram page posts old IRC-Galleria photos from the 00s, in case one wants a nostalgic trip to early-millennial Finland.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
But it's not "seemingly out of nowhere"! If you're an European who's been using the Internet for decades then that entire time has meant encountering American conservatives and libertarians shitting on Europe and pouring scorn on it! And it is assuredly just as annoying to see European rightwingers (and, of course, liberals and left-wingers too) adopting and trying to ram through simplified American slop ideologies that they haven't bothered to even try to localize.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Well, yes, but he's also in a different position from just some ordinary Joe Sixpack shooting his mouth. He is supposed to be a statesman of some sort. There are (unstated but still existing) rules and codes for statesmanly behavior, especially in international contexts.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
I'm not really even talking about choosing masters, just that the current chaos in DC makes China look at least a bit more appealing than previously.
One of the huge risks involved in China is, of course, that if it decided to fundamentally and decisively to alter its tack (restore doctrinaire Marxism-Leninism and go for global revolution, say), it would be that much more fateful for everyone else. Nevertheless, insofar it is in America's interests to prevent this for happening, it's currently dropping the ball.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
When OUR guys do it, it's just Twitter ragebaiting and flaming. When THEIR guys do it, it's some unsolicited jab about "Murka," or obesity , or guns, or something the current president did.
I also wonder how much of this is just Europeans trying to do to the Americans the same sort of international bants that Europeans tend to do to each other when meeting in international settings, and those bants failing to land.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Is it really that weird why there's now a certain amount of speculation about whether it would be wise for EU (or Canada) to move at least a bit towards China?
What is prized in global politics is consistency and predictability. China is extremely predictable. The outlines of its foreign policy have been the same at least since the end of Cold War. When Xi took over, nobody seriously entertained the possibility that he'd do something different in this sphere than his predecessors, which he indeed hasn't done. When he relinquishes his position, his successor will do the same. His rhetoric matches what his country does. What China does may be annoying (going bonkers if someone caters to Dalai Lama or Taiwan) or hostile (espionage, support to Russia), but these can be priced in and accounted for.
Trump is inconsistent and unpredictable, both regarding his own previous actions and the policy lines of the previous presidents. While America's foreign policy largely the same, there are now new elements (who could have guessed that the idea of military intervention to seize another NATO member's territory would have even been on the table?) to account for. These wild scenarios probably won't take place, but they might - Trump's rhetoric doesn't match what his country does, expect when it does. What's more, there's a general feeling that Trumpists seriously believe in Trump Year Zero, that Trump is so special and so different that his election means America can just junk all of its previous commitments (made by worse cucked presidents who are not Trump and thus are not as legitimate as he is), which just increases the unpredictability. What will Trump do with, say, Russia? In the end, who knows? He probably doesn't even know himself right now what he will do in the end.
I think that one of the reasons for the TACO narrative is less that it's a burn on Trump (though it plays a part) and more that it's a narrative that attempts to assert at least some normalcy and consistency to this maelstorm. However, a problem is that now that the narrative itself is at play, there's a risk that it bugs Trump enough that he stops chickening out.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
There's a nonzero chance of being invaded by Russia with participation of Chinese troops.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
1mo ago
Without further statistics or anything my gut feeling is that actual Nevertrumpers are a very small section of people who supported GOP in 2005, that yoru standard hard Republican base type went just as bigly for Bush in 2005 as they are doing for Trump in 2025, and "neocon" is largely a meaningless label at this point, considering that the supposedly totally non-neocon Trump is doing or threatening to do the sort of interventions neocons only dreamed about in 2005.
Woah, I also just finished 2666 a bit over a month ago, with the same thoughts as you did (well, apart from the guns part, I didn't catch that.) The Archimboldi section ended up being the best part.
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