Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
User ID: 137
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14d ago
Two things that strike me about Mamdani:
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his main proposals really go beyond Bernie-style "Do what they do in Nordic countries!" style stuff. While there are still elements of rent control in Nordic countries, I haven't heard anyone put a total rent freeze, even in public housing, on the table. Free public transport is not really on the table either, apart from some small Danish towns (and Tallinn if you think Estonia can get into Nordic). I don't remember anyone even suggesting publicly owned grocery stores. Even a failed attempt to do these in the "capital of the world" would probably put all these on the table all around the West.
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Mamdani's platform, as presented, seems like a specific attempt to do what many class-first leftists have proposed doing and run on lunchbucket issues instead of idpol. There's a LGBTQ+ page, sure, but if one drills down to proposals then there are some specific Black and Hispanic appeals but way less and way less prominently than I'd expect most Democratic candidates in a similar position to include. My understanding is that there's more idpol stuff if one drills down to Mamdani's old tweets and like, but if we're talking about a specific campaign strategy, it seems to have worked.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
21d ago
Spitballing on the lower reach of influencers in Western Europe, but one thing I've noted about local political YouTubers etc. is that they often just seem to be doing a "Finnish version" of something (Finnish Rogan, Finnish BreadTube etc.), and they can't quite seem to get it right, being left in an uncanny valley zone where it's not properly like the original version but not properly something culturally Finnish either. Ironically one of the rare organic forms of video creation we've managed to get going is the "rappiotube" ("decadencetube"), where alcoholics (occasionally mixing alcohol with drugs) just get completely wasted and go out of control on live shows, though of course it would be hard to create a political/news project based on that concept.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
29d ago
If you think about Kulak, through, the character has gone through shifts. There was the ancap personality on this forum and - I think - the early days of the Twitter account, then the more fashy type of persona, now the same but with a strong pagan/anti-Christian component. Audiences shift and so do the characters.
According to this Boelter was renting part-time, presumably so that he could stay near his workplace when necessary. (edit: did you mean 50 miles? I read that automatically as 50 meters.)
Also: "The roommate tells FOX 9 he has known Boelter for more than 40 years, since the fourth grade and didn't express a lot of strong political views. He did, however, have strong views on abortion. Authorities also found receipts for items used in Saturday morning's shootings in one of his vehicles at the Minneapolis home."
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
17d ago
I've long been interested in how people, when talking about Ukraine, use generic terms with little meaning like "increasing escalation" to make comparisons of things that obviously aren't comparable - in this case, the direct use of the American bomber fleet, which obviously hasn't been happening in Ukraine and does not seem like something that is happening.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
20d ago
The OG Nazis, it should be remembered, strived to at least in theory to reduce the stigma of unwanted motherhood.
During this period an attempt was made to change views on illegitimate children. Adolf Hitler was quoted as saying that as long as there was an imbalance in the population of childbearing age, people "shall be forbidden to despise the child born out of wedlock". (33) According to Lisa Pine, the author of Nazi Family Policy (1997), the Nazi state no longer saw the single mother as "degenerate" and placed the single mother who had given a child life, higher than the woman who had "avoided having children in her marriage on egotistical grounds". (34)
It has been argued by the historian, Cate Haste, that in the 1930s "most European countries stigmatized unmarried mothers as a threat to the institution of marriage". In Nazi Germany, however, motherhood and procreation by women of "good blood" were so highly valued that steps were taken to "re-cast the image of the unmarried mother and illegitimate child". It was claimed the "bourgeois concept of marriage and morality was outmoded as far as Nazi population policy was concerned. (35) The Nazi campaign was "designed to confer parity of status as well as of public esteem on unmarried mothers and their offspring". (36)
Heinrich Himmler explained to his masseur, Felix Kersten: "Only a few years ago illegitimate children were considered a shameful matter. In defiance of the existing laws I have systematically influenced the SS to consider children, irrespective of illegality or otherwise, the most beautiful, and best thing there is. The results - today my men tell me with shining eyes that an illegitimate son has been born to them. Their girls consider it an honour, not a source of shame, in spite of existing legal circumstances." (37)
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
26d ago
The endless "Though experiment: what if a scenario where pedo stuff is not actually harmful, or is at least the least harmful option?" assuredly plays a large part.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
26d ago
I mean yeah, I think perhaps the cruel part here is that she was showered with money, attention, fame, and general encouragement because her shctick lined up with progressives stated values.
She was/is not showered with money, attention, fame and general encouragement exactly due to that but moreso for offering the direct possibility or at least a fantasy of sex with an attractive yet intelligent woman for the stereotypically sexless and nerdy rationalist community. It's not progressives in general who are obsessed with Aella (most would of course not even know of her and a large amount of her statements are offensive to progressives as well), it's this one particular group and its subgroups.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
5d ago
It is amusing that it starts with "(I think this is a pretty important article so I’d appreciate you sharing and restacking it—thanks!)", since I would imagine that most randos exposed to arguments like "utilitarian veganism means that eating honey is one of the worst things that you can do" to conclude that utilitarian veganism is stupid and must be resisted, rather than stop eating honey. In general I cannot recall any thought experiment style arguments on ethical veganism that haven't just ended up pushing me towards a wholesale rejection of animal rights as an ethos.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
11d ago
Our Orthodox parish has a lot of relatively recent young female converts who come out of the New Age scene and apparently converted to Orthodoxy during the Covid era. Some other women in their circles went Pentecostal. This, combined with the more recent wave of young men into Orthodoxy (like in other Western countries), has recently led to some marriages, and more appear to be on the way.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
26d ago
Apparently the rainbow was co-opted mostly from the hippies:
"A close friend of Baker's, independent filmmaker Arthur J. Bressan Jr., pressed him to create a new symbol at "the dawn of a new gay consciousness and freedom".[11] According to a profile published in the Bay Area Reporter in 1985, Baker "chose the rainbow motif because of its associations with the hippie movement of the Sixties but he notes that the use of the design dates all the way back to ancient Egypt".[12] People have speculated that Baker was inspired by the Judy Garland song "Over the Rainbow" (Garland being among the first gay icons),[13][14] but when asked, Baker said that it was "more about the Rolling Stones and their song 'She's a Rainbow'".[15] Baker was likely influenced by the "Brotherhood Flag" (with five horizontal stripes to represent different races: red, white, brown, yellow, and black) popular among the world peace movement and hippie movement of the 1960s.[16][17][18][19]"
This seems credible, considering this was somewhat after the Rainbow Family of Living Light had started organizing the still-happening Rainbow Gatherings. I didn't manage to find an explanation of where the hippies took the rainbow from, but the rainbow Peace Flag and the general colorfulness induced by LSD probably play a large influence.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
13d ago
There's not that much need for an exhaustive deep dive, as it is a question you asked and answered in the same post.
To put it in other words, the nerd is titillated, but is also still unconsciously ashamed of his titillation, so appreciates the fact that there is a smokescreen justifying his titillation.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
15d ago
Ethnic cleansing, as a distinct concept from genocide, has traditionally involved there being a territory where the population being cleansed is cleansed to. Thus far, Israel has not succeeded in finding such a territory.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
21d ago
The Black and Tans are known, among other things, for failing to do exactly the thing they were intended to do.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
22d ago
I continue to await for the rationalist crew to (re)discover Freemasonry, which offers a combination of a possibility for a Deist belief in an Universal Creator, cool mystical rites with actual historical heft, plenty of chances for networking, and a focus on personal development.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
13d ago
I think that Mamdani's middle-class/upper-middle-class appeal may in large part be simply due to the Mr. Smith Goes To Washington idea of a honest, non-corrupt outsider against a corrupt machine creature.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
21d ago
My understanding is that Mamdani's rise has basically been achieved mostly by hammering the housing issue. His policies would be unlikely to fix the issue, but that's still there.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
17d ago
It would probably be prudent to offer the full context here:
Not at issue is whether there will be kosher food in the Dunster dining hall, since I have said from the beginning that I welcome anything that meets the food wishes of students.
Nor at issue is whether there will be a toaster oven for kosher use only, since House Master Liem offered to pay for one out of his private funds.
The only issue is whether Harvard money will be spent for something whose use is restricted on sectarian grounds. I oppose such an expenditure because it violates secular principles, which in my opinion are part of the foundation of a democratic society.
Cooking utensils, according to kosher law, must be used only for kosher food. Harvard funds all sorts of religious facilities, but none of the others is restricted in use on sectarian grounds. Thus Memorial Church hosts a variety of religious and non-religious activities, which do not render it unfit for Christian (or other) worship, and no one is compelled to engage in any form of religious observance in order to use it.
...
Finally, at least one Crimson headline writer and one cartoonist have suggested that I am anti-Semitic. I regard anti-Semitism, like all forms of religious, ethnic and racial bigotry, as a crime against humanity and whoever calls me an anti-Semite will face a libel suit. Noel Ignatiev Non-resident Tutor, Dunster House
So, he's objecting to what he sees as specific Jewish privilege and is specifically answers the claim that this action would make him an anti-Semite. Seems like context that one would want to include and not just drop this one individual sentence here, whatever one things about Ignatiev's other statements.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
20d ago
I don't think that it was only in that specific context (and a fair amount of things that we take for granted about the Nazi ideology was also at least partly about answering a specific context, such as their particular attempts to appeal to the working class in the specific context of a threat of Marxist working-class rebellion). The Nazis had a mission to combat traditional religious morality and advance a more... nature-focused sort of an understanding of various things, such as sexual relations.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
13d ago
No, I just meant why define capitalism in a way that only includes the good things it enables and not the bad.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
13d ago
I specifically contrasted his current platform with his old tweets.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
11d ago
...aren't Kurosawa and Leone basically currently at the same "they made seminal classic movies but let's face it, appreciating them doesn't really make you a cinephile as such by itself" status?
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
13d ago
Wait, Wikipedia says that KF and Konsum were specifically the predecessors of Coop?
The Finnish grocery market is similarly dominated by the co-operative S Group, which has also attracted the attention of American progressives, but co-operatives have also always been specifically an alternative to not only standard private enterprise but also public ownership, and have been pushed by non-socialists, too, as such an alternative.
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