Botond173
2d ago
I sort of remember when the Berlin incident was discussed here. It seems that it was not going to be culture war fodder at all without the climate protestors added to the mix. I can imagine the local rightist opposition, to the meagre extent it even exists, would have still tried to turn it into a scandal, but which leftist is going to question the victim status of an almost murdered trucker who wanted to assist a female cyclist (so presumably a leftist voter/sympathizer) after accidentally running her over, warm feelings toward both the homeless and refugees notwithstanding?
To the extent that the flames of the culture war were being fanned in this case, I reckon 95% of it was due to the climate protestors doubling down in characteristic fashion, and explaining, with their usual mix of complete cynicism and complete idealism, that of course public protests entail negative consequences stemming from the disruption of traffic, dumbass!
Botond173
18d ago
Plenty of married couples rent?
I'm sure they do, generally as long as they're still childless. Once they're not, I'm not sure most people see that as a viable option.
Botond173
24d ago
I remember the time when Finnish (or Estonian or Latvian...I can't remember) authorities specifically stated at the time of the Russian partial mobilization that they will not give Russian refugee men asylum. Their foreign minister (as far as I can remember) declared that "coming to Europe is a privilege, not a right". Of course, being relatively old, I remembered the rhetoric of this exact same cabal at the time of the 2015 refugee crisis. I understood that only a pathologically evil cabal can be this shameless and brazen. It's mind-boggling, really.
Botond173
24d ago
In practice, the suspension means military age men now living abroad will be unable to renew expiring passports or obtain new ones or receive official documents such as marriage certificates.
So I guess these measures are designed to drive these men in particular to apply for asylum in their respective host country, with the expectation on the part of Ukrainian authorities that such applications will be rejected. After all, I can hardly imagine that such measures in themselves will be sufficient to make them return home and sign up for the draft. Am I correct?
Botond173
26d ago
The IT sector as a whole in the United States has, as long as such records have been kept, attracted more men than women.
I'm not disputing that.
This is mere pravda.
As far as I know, it's actually Sociology 101. Men are more likely than women to apply to jobs for the purpose of supporting a family or to position themselves as eligible for marriage. This means they're less likely then women to accept positions with bad pay/prospects, no matter what advantages may be on the table. So if people get the impression that the IT sector offers better prospects than they thought, which is basically what happened after the 1980s, it will attract more men than before.
An increase in data-entry "operator" positions (typing, basically, for which women had been predominantly hired for decades) compared to the "console operator" type positions (which we know in 1974 leaned slightly male)
Yes, that makes sense. The devil is in the details.
Botond173
26d ago
The social conditions where 'nerd' is no longer normalized as a slur are indeed very, very recent in historic terms, whereas the Sexual Revolution was more than 50 years ago.
Botond173
3d ago
Well, yes, this is a classic misunderstanding. Cads aren't johns per definition, they're men who prioritise casual sex and other forms of hedonism and avoid the social role of the father, the husband, the provider and worker. It's not a matter of visiting brothels or not.
Botond173
4d ago
With regard to the so-called ethnic campaigns I think it's necessary to point out that the ethnic minorities who were targeted (in a loose sense) in the purges all had ethnic homelands of their own which bordered the USSR and were either hostile states, former wartime adversaries like Poland or Finland, or colonized by a hostile state, such as Korea under Japanese rule. While this was never expressed officially, the purges and terror waves targeted individuals with any ties abroad, no matter how insignificant, because the regime accused foreign governments of secretly plotting to overthrow the Soviet system with the assistance of recruited internal wreckers, spies, traitors, terrorists etc. It is for this reason that Korean, Latvian, Polish etc. minorities were hugely overrepresented among the victims of state terror, not because the regime wanted to stick it to non-Russians as such.
Botond173
4d ago
First, the Bolshevik revolutionaries didn't say they were merciless and malevolent; quite the opposite! Who could be against their stated agenda of fighting tyranny no matter what class of the people it affects? or self-determination for oppressed peoples?
They also promised to terminate Russian involvement in the ongoing world war and sue for a separate peace. Which, I guess, was more important of a factor than this.
Botond173
5d ago
an important military hub for the existing frontline:
Is it really one though?
Botond173
9d ago
There’s a Trump personality cult with very little genuine infrastructure behind it, sitting on top of the carcass of the post-Tea Party GOP, which itself is a hollowed-out shell of what it once was even ten years ago.
The timeline is a bit of a mess here. 10 years ago it was 2014. The Tea Party protests were in 2010 and, as far as I know, were quickly co-opted by the mainstream GOP after contributing to its success in the midterms. It was a flash in the pan, basically. 10 years, ago, the GOP was already a post-Tea Party GOP. Also, weren't there periods/terms between 2010-18 when it had a majority in the Senate and the House? There was ample opportunity to do immigration reform.
Botond173
12d ago
My point is this: isn't hiking normally considered as a social/bonding activity by its enthusiasts, or at least the majority of them? I'm looking at this in the context of social conventions, not legality. The issue isn't how hiking is to be regulated. I know a bunch of people who have hiking as their hobby, and almost everytime they go in groups. When I first heard about this whole social media brouhaha, this was my first thought: why is a - presumably young and single - woman going hiking alone in the first place? Especially in a forest inhabited by wild bears? Isn't it women who do not like solo activities as much as men?
Botond173
16d ago
It's still not advisable though. Getting lost or suffering an injury can have grave consequences in such a situation, especially if there's no cell phone signal.
Botond173
17d ago
Early 20s reader of The Ethical Slut finally finds the rich foreign gentleman she's been trying to snag. Comes back raving about how the first date was amazing, he must have spent $500 between dinner and the hotel, she's finally found the man of her dreams. A week later he has to go on an international business trip, and stops answering his phone. Oddly, his phone is ringing like it's still in Korea ...
To be fair, this behavior is genuinely puzzling.
Botond173
18d ago
I'd say the decisive factor was the armistice in 1953, and the Americans not leaving. The war was never terminated in a clear manner, and was instead transformed into the mess that persists to this day, with the DMZ and so on. Had the North Koreans been capable enough to successfully and swiftly reunify the country through force, as it happened in Vietnam, Korea today would be a more or less normally functioning, average Asian nation, as Vietnam is. This'd be preferable to the current situation. One consequence of American military presence was the widening exposure of the populace to American cultural concepts, such as radical feminism. Also, there wouldn't be any Sarah Jeongs in the US.
Another factor was the assassination of President Park Chung Hee in 1979, which the Americans probably had some role in by either abetting it or supporting it. If there was one South Korean leader after 1953 who had both the willingness and ability to turn the country into a more or less normally functioning Asian nation without the current social dystopia of implemented cyberpunk, it was definitely him. If given 5 or 10 more years, it might have worked. But it was not to be, and he was replaced by a stooge of Washington.
Botond173
25d ago
Even in the 80s, being caught going into a porn store to rent a VHS was the height of embarrassment, made fun of on sitcoms etc. It’s not just that horniness is embarrassing. The level of cringe was much greater that, say, merely catching your friend picking someone up at the bar for a one-night stand. The idea that you watch porn instead of actually getting laid makes you - in the eyes of much of society - a loser.
I guess so, but again, there has been massive social change since then in that regard, including dating and so on. For example, the notion that the Sexual Revolution might have deleterious long-term social consequences was almost completely fringe back then, as opposed to today.
Botond173
25d ago
The fact that American fails at empire is a good thing, both for us and for the world.
America didn't always fail at military occupation though.
Botond173
2d ago
he strongly supported Ukraine in the current war and he participated in anti-government protests that were organized basically since Fico took power
There is supposedly even video evidence of this, courtesy of a local TV channel. I can't comment on this because I don't speak Slovak.
Botond173
2d ago
Let's not get carried away.
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It was by no means extraordinary anywhere. It may seem extraordinary to many youngsters, I suppose, because they compare a world of fancy touchscreens of all sorts, social media, the laptop class lifestyle etc. to a world of stagnant socialism without any of those, and conclude that there must have been a huge improvement in the average quality of life, when in fact there was no such thing, and it's all just self-delusion driven mostly by Russophobia. I can very much assure you, for example, that there is no, and has never at any point been, consensus on this supposed extraordinary increase in Hungary.
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To the extent that there was tangible increase in prosperity in Poland, most of it is obviously explained by the severity of austerity measures introduced in the final years of socialism. It's a matter of relative difference, and people's emotional revulsion at a regime which permitted the evil Russkies to station their orcs on sacred Polish soil and whatnot.
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I find it somewhat odd that you added Belarus to this list. As far as I know, it was, in fact, the one post-Soviet country that largely survived the '90s without economic collapse, social disintegration and widespread anomie, at least compared to the other unfortunate post-USSR republics.
But anyway, let's not pretend that this is not even surprising. Slovakia has been an independent polity for a combined period of roughly 35 years (1939-45, 1993-). Was there even one political assassination such as the current one during those years? As far as I can tell, no.
Botond173
16d ago
That's the point. Fried ice does not and can not exist. It's an old Arab proverb, supposedly.
Botond173
16d ago
It's worth pointing out though that I can imagine many mainstream Republicans (not those heavily involved in the Christian Right) would also be more or less sympathetic to Sanger's ideas if they actually checked out what those were.
I imagine there's actually no society anywhere that'd even want to do this. And for good reasons.
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