johnfabian
3d ago
I think Churchill just wanted summary executions of 50,000 top Nazis without a trial. [...] I wonder if the Churchill [approach] would have actually been healthier than the [Nuremberg trials].
Killing the top N followers of an enemy ideology is certainly what the Nazis would have done. Thiel must hate the ICC really badly when he would prefer a general precedent of "the victor gets to murder however many enemies they like". Also, {{Citation needed}}.
Quite the opposite, really. Churchill of course wanted those involved in the Holocaust and Nazi war crimes tried and executed, but he was very hostile to any sort of indiscriminate mass revenge against senior German officers and officials.
In fact there was an episode during the Tehran Conference in November 1943 where Stalin made a "joke" about how they could just kill 50-100,000 of the most senior German leaders to prevent another war, and FDR responded (in a more humourous tone) that maybe 49,000 would be enough. Churchill, knowing of the Katyn massacre and much more cynical towards Stalin than the somewhat naïve FDR, stormed out and had to be convinced to come back and resume the conference.
johnfabian
9d ago
This type of "hypocrisy gotcha" you see as a go-to defence mechanism is very frustrating to me. "OH, so YOU EXPECT ME to be BETTER than [my political outgroup]? Why don't you hold them to the same standard?!?!?!"
Well firstly, often people are. Not everyone is locked into a rigidly partisan mindset. Secondly if you proclaim you are better, loudly and repeatedly at all times, you have to walk the walk.
johnfabian
9d ago
I'm gonna be honest, I'm fairly distressed over this.
Be honest and admit that these kind of "just joking" comments come from all sides. I don't like it, I think it's probably more insidious than people think, and at its core is corrosive to an open society. But if you think this is solely a "left-wing" or "Democrat" phenomenon and one couldn't trivially produce examples of Republicans doing the exact same thing, you're lying to yourself. Hell, it's not uncommon to see this kind of sentiment on this forum, albeit typically worded more fancily.
johnfabian
9d ago
Suppose Hornblower is the obvious next suggestion, but the question is whether you want something in the same niche or something in the same spirit. The former is easy to find, the latter is hard.
johnfabian
21d ago
Edit: FWIW I think Sanderson's world building in the Stormlight Archives is actually pretty good, it just gets dragged down by the plodding story.
I think people try to create some objective sense of what is "good" worldbuilding and what is "bad." Sanderson's worldbuilding is sort-of slapdash and relies heavily on rule-of-cool, which I don't think is a bad thing - it just doesn't work when paired with torturously meandering and overstuffed writing. It needs sharp prose and quick action.
johnfabian
1mo ago
The left seems to believe the situation is sufficiently dire as to justify violence. Is there sufficient cause for resisting them on their own terms?
Your social media algorithms are almost certainly not feeding you opinions representative of "the left", just like "the left's" social media feeds are currently displaying the dumbest and most overwrought reactions from conservatives.
johnfabian
1mo ago
I think there is certainly a case to be made that following these kind of style changes are more ideological than abstaining from their use because they are fundamentally prescriptive rather than descriptive. It was not the common use of English speech in America or anywhere else to refer to males as she/her should they wish to identify as such, and neither was it common use to capitalize Black. Calling a human male he or a person of predominantly African ethnicity black is not some conscious political choice. Choosing to do otherwise, and beyond that making it an institutional requirement to do so, is what is ideological (for better or worse).
Yes you can argue that choosing not to rebel against convention is just as political a choice as doing what everyone else does yada yada yada but I think this misses the point, besides being needless sophistry. When describe things as being "political", they mean that the action in question done was with deliberate intent to make some kind of rhetorical or political point. Failing to try to make a point, or not even conceiving of your speech as political at all, is obviously inherently less "political" in nature.
I like to say that even if you must insist that a chocolate chip cookie recipe is just as political as, say, Das Kapital, you must at least be able to recognize that they are political to vastly differing extents.
johnfabian
1mo ago
"migrant" in the UK context almost exclusively refers to illegal immigrants, and often specifically the small boat kind
johnfabian
1mo ago
You might have been thinking of Ukraine, whose GDP per capita is a third of Bulgaria's.
johnfabian
1mo ago
KSR is very much a utopian socialist, and thinks that humans could - if we all sat down together in open conversation - Figure It All Out. I don't mind it, it's nice to have not everything you read be endlessly cynical. But this streak of his obviously runs through all his work.
johnfabian
1mo ago
I about wrote some of my reflections on the trilogy here last year.
johnfabian
1mo ago
A much more frustrating element of SecureSignals' writing is that he will often make some passing mention of some supposed ironclad consensus that exists on this one niche topic, that requires no sourcing or validation (after all, it is the consensus!).
He will then of proceed to conspicuously deny universally agreed-upon facts.
johnfabian
2mo ago
I finished four books over my holiday, including Pieter Judson's The Habsburg Empire which I wrote a short review of on reddit
johnfabian
2mo ago
My initial thought after reading this post is that the future will have two types of capital C Conservatives: those who are excited by this kind of stuff, and those who think anyone enjoys this should be involuntarily sterilized.
johnfabian
2mo ago
Top 10%, but it feels like I got off easy, getting all relatively recognizeable phenotypes
johnfabian
2mo ago
All the attempts to claim other bands as progenitors/contemporaries in metal are laughable. Like people will bring up Deep Purple or Hendrix (or more rare bands like Lord Baltimore) but it's so obviously not metal when compared to Paranoid
there really wasn't another metal band until Judas Priest
johnfabian
2mo ago
It's possible - perhaps probable - that you were banned by an AI. Reddit is using LLMs to detect and automatically punish users for "violent" language. So you have to be careful quoting song lyrics, or politicians, or people you don't like, etc. In my experience they've just been warnings but if it was bad enough it might be a short ban.
johnfabian
2mo ago
This is a funny kind of idiocy, in the sense that not only is it objectively and very obviously false, but that it also obscures a more interesting controversial element. It would be like if someone's main criticism of Trump (being otherwise a generic liberal) was that he was not an American, but actually Burmese. (edit: on further reflection, what is actually quite similar is the claim I see pop up on reddit that the attempted assassination where Trump was grazed by a bullet was entirely faked, and he was not shot, or shot at, at all)
I only tangentially know who Owens is but I strongly suspect, like in many many other cases, this is another instance of social media-induced psychosis
johnfabian
2mo ago
Cheese is also a big one. There are lots of grocery items that are value-dense (is this a term?) Essentially give disproportionate payoff for the ease of taking and moving them. Bonus points if you only need limited effort to keep it in good condition.
And unlike other things where you basically already need to be a career criminal to get the ins to someone who will fence stolen property for you, stealing food products has another upside: there are a million struggling restaurants who will gladly buy your stolen product from you, no questions asked.
johnfabian
3mo ago
Canada of course famously has a strategic reserve of maple syrup (which a while ago was equally famously stolen).
johnfabian
5mo ago
Certainly there were lots of people who at the time of the Holocaust saw it as a uniquely terrible crime, even as it was ongoing. For example in July 1944, Churchill wrote to Anthony Eden (concerning the deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz):
There is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world, and it has been done by scientific machinery by nominally civilised men in the name of a great State and one of the leading races of Europe. It is quite clear that all concerned in this crime who may fall into our hands, including the people who only obeyed orders by carrying out the butcheries, should be put to death after their association with the murders has been proved. I cannot therefore feel that this is the kind of ordinary case which is put through the Protecting Power, as, for instance, the lack of feeding or sanitary conditions in some particular prisoners’ camp. There should therefore, in my opinion, be no negotiations of any kind on this subject. Declarations should be made in public, so that everyone connected with it will be hunted down and put to death.
johnfabian
5mo ago
Also the "right" is far from a unified front, as it is sort of awkwardly mashing together the progressive conservatives and Reform types.
The Jivani interview (that's JD Vance's bff) last night coming right out and blaming Ford for the defeat flabbergasted the CBC panel. Quite funny to see
johnfabian
5mo ago
Personally I mentally separate the West and BC. When people talk about "the West" they are not talking about Coquitlam.
johnfabian
5mo ago
Any tips for dealing with DOMs in the legs?
I find nothing works better for me than just walking it off. Yes it hurts but it gets the blood flowing. Eat extra protein and you'll be fine.
It sort of comes from a period of time (1860s and 1870s) where the immediate success of the theory of evolution in providing an overarching material explanation for diversity of life on Earth engendered great enthusiasm in discovering similar sorts of grand theories that explained fully other disciplines. And while we eventually got some for certain of the "harder" scientific fields, obviously the softer sciences have resisted such attempts. Marx attempted to provide a grand theory of politics; it has clearly been about as successful as grand theories for history, criminality, economics, poverty, etc.
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