Pigeon
coo coo
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User ID: 237
Pigeon
coo coo
5mo ago
I don’t know about the others, but unlimited world class healthcare is not unlimited healthcare to the maximal extent possible.
Pigeon
coo coo
5mo ago
I did once, back in college, have a conversation with someone whose position on death camps and genocide was "no bad tactics, only bad targets," and that whether such things are immoral — or not — depends entirely on who is using them against whom and whether or not the latter group "deserves it."
Out of morbid curiosity, who, in this someone’s mind, “deserves it”?
Pigeon
coo coo
5mo ago
If I see a guy using !!! in any context, I'm going to rip off his pants to see if he has any balls underneath them.
I have to admit I have written notes with !!! to indicate important developments or other critical issues…
Pigeon
coo coo
5mo ago
https://www.lbc.co.uk/radio/presenters/maajid-nawaz/maajid-the-left-is-no-longer-liberal/
It’s been around since at least 2016. I swear I’ve heard it earlier than that but not sure from where…
Pigeon
coo coo
6mo ago
Or you could just have no say when you get whipped in the House of Commons in the UK.
Pigeon
coo coo
6mo ago
Oh, I work as a doctor. History, especially the Great Divergence, is just a hobby thing I keep up with.
Pigeon
coo coo
6mo ago
Glad to be of service! If there are any questions I can try to answer to the best of my ability.
Pigeon
coo coo
7mo ago
If we are to reach for institutions that are lost to history (at least continuity-wise), surely we can reach farther back for the Sumerian city-states? We even have written history from this.
They had this weird, subordinate relationship with China, changing their allegiance as new dynasties and invaders took control.
Probably worthwhile to note that this is true mostly of the Joseon period, and less true as you go back from that point, fromTang intervention on behalf of Silla in the Korean Three Kingdoms period + the Silla-Tang war; all the way to Han conquests of parts of the Korean peninsula.
At home, Korea was run by actual civilian governors, to the point where they could actually have military coups in the 11th or 12th century when everyone else was feudal.
China certainly wasn't more feudal than Korea at this point in time (especially 11-12th century), I don't think. There's a good argument that feudalism proper ended in China with the Qin dynasty (221 BC).
And of course China flooded the peninsula with so many troops that the Japanese army was ground down.
IIRC ~150k soldiers were sent during each invasion wave from Japan. Ming China sent something like 50k soldiers each time. The Ming-Joseon side were quite outnumbered when it came down to soldiers (numbers may even out more if you count Korean militia).
There were actual Ming advantages, such as much superior cannon and field artillery. I don't think "flooding the peninsula with so many troops the Japanese were ground down" really is accurate.
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
I'm not aware of any major religion that's more cool with atheism, barring perhaps Buddhism, but that's just a distant cousin.
Does Taoism or Confucianism work, if either count as religions?
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
I haven't played piano in 15 years or more, and the piece I would go for would be Rach prelude op. 3 no. 2. Sometimes familiarity beats everything else?
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
I think the left qualifies it in a sort of paradox-of-tolerance way
Not this again!
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
Granted that Mao was not a good person, he didn't set out to kill 100 million people. He made some bad decisions that inexorably led to a famine which killed 100 million people.
Absolutely nitpicking, but I don‘t think Mao killed a hundred million people in the Great Leap Forward. The commonly quoted numbers are anywhere from 18 million (CCP official estimates) to 60 million (some of the more loony estimates), with most reputable estimates going from 30 to 45 million. (The commonly quoted one I grew up with was 36 million.)
100 million sounds like something right out of the Black Book of Communism, which has very artistic ways of arriving at casuality figures.
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
Where’s that graphic from? I’m pretty sure Newport is the name of many suburbs around the world, and Propecia and Sinutab are actual brand names for real medications (for finasteride and pseudoephedrine + paracetamol respectively). This seems too stupid to be true.
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
Both.
But I would defer to any expertise on this, I don’t know much of Midway.
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
Sure, it wasn‘t literally pure fortune, but is there not another definition of luck were decisions made have unforeseen effects?
If thievery is only caught 5% of the time, then a first-time thief getting caught would be quite unlucky. Much in the same way, the French were astonishingly incompetent in the Battle of Agincourt, but they were also unlucky with the weather.
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
Bored DMV-esque Employee: Name?
Puyi: Yaozhi
Employee: Former occupation?
Puyi: Uhhh Emperor of the Celestial Kingdom of China
Employee: Haha no seriously though
I mean, this is close enough to real life. In his first day as a street sweeper he got lost:
But I agree Puyi's story is funny, has its own charm. It shows how total a regime change is when you can have someone like that around, safe in the knowledge that they are now, truly, a nobody.
Made even more poignant by that he was the figurehead of a failed Qing restoration, and in adulthood still had aspirations to restore the Qing (a good part of how he got convinced to act as a Japanese puppet).
I’ve always found his story (and Wanrong’s) to be quite sad, if not too sympathy-inducing.
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
One is an expensive and unpleasant medical procedure with lots of forms to be signed and cold metal tables.
Not all abortions are dilatation & curettage. Pretty sure more than half of abortions are medical.
Pigeon
coo coo
8mo ago
The skill of individuals on the Japanese side was high, but they absolutely failed to fight as well as they could have. Many of the decisions made during that battle make no sense even by the standards of what the Japanese should have known at the time.
I only have a passing knowledge of this part of history (the Pacific war), but did Japan not get quite unlucky as well with scouting and with loading times of bombs/torpedoes?
What it is is unfortunately ambiguous punctuation…
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