veqq
1yr ago
quokka
complains of "akrasia" -- an inability to accomplish things, or he struggles with his own failure to live up to his standards of logic. But his problems are grounded, not in his mind, but in his body
Becoming physically strong is the cure for basically every mental illness in men, such as depression or philosophy.
Hit the gym!
veqq
1yr ago
A lot of cult classics like Fight Club and Taxi Driver had already impended signs of a male crisis.
They were talking about a male crisis in the 1800s. Masculinity's always under threat
veqq
1yr ago
I see this scenario where weird homeschooled kids get surpassed repeatedly to the point where I think that your mindset is pretty common
Can you give examples?
veqq
1yr ago
Ukrainian identity is being based on 19th/early 20th century style blood and soil rhetoric
No. Though some splinters remain (some very obvious nazi groups), the model the diaspora coalesced on by the 50s, which became state policy 8 years ago, is a multi-ethnic national state. Rudnytsky, Hrushevsky, Lypynsky etc. are taught in school... Dontsov and his ilk have no cachet today. But yeah, sure, obsess about a few hundred (surviving) neonazis in Azov.
N.b. Kiev already had quite a lot of Afghan and Iraqi refugees. Already by 2017, most drivers couldn't speak Russian, Ukrainian or English.
veqq
5mo ago
Off topic:
A reminder to everyone, we have a Telegram group with nearly 100 members. Join us: https://t.me/quokkas_den
veqq
1yr ago
Well I don't buy the whole 'Russia inflicting genocide' line
Russia's stated goal is to reunify the Ukrainian people with the Russian people, destroying an independent Ukrainian identity. That matches the definition of genocide.
By "genocide" we mean the destruction of a nation or of an ethnic group. ... The objectives of such a plan would be disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups
Forced assimilation qua taking Ukrainian children is one of the 5 prohibited acts, amounting to genocide in context.
veqq
1yr ago
Could you explain the distinction between Tutsi and Hutu?
Previously I vaguely remembered colonial authorities basically made them up. So I looked into it a bit. Wiki e.g.:
They defined "Tutsi" as anyone owning more than ten cows (a sign of wealth) or with the physical features of a longer thin nose, high cheekbones, and being over six feet tall, all of which are common descriptions associated with the Tutsi.
which would add any successful people into this, as if making "kulak" an ethnicity.
Both the Tutsi and Hutu had been the traditional governing elite, but both colonial powers allowed only the Tutsi to be educated and to participate in the colonial government.
🤷♀️
Is it the case where a few disparate groups were sublimated into either Tutsi or Hutu? Or that the Tutsi were a coherent group? Are "official" takes as distorted as e.g. HBD? I'm more familiar with Central Asia, where Kazakhs, Uzbeks and such were basically invented in the 1920s, almost whole cloth.
veqq
1yr ago
Tether's story went from "backed 1:1 to dollars" to "holding various tokens" to "we mostly have Chinese corporate paper" all along fighting or failing audits by state regulators and redefining what it's backed by, while printing billions a month without relative inflows.
Where is the evidence for Tether being fraudulent?
Surely you're joking? Google "Tether scam" and there's a deluge of proof, including successful investigations against Tether, which led to Tether providing new reserve definitions.
veqq
1yr ago
No one knows what it was programmed to do exactly but here's a good example scenario:
The missile should fly 400km Westward, but a sensor malfunctioned and miscounted its distance. Once that sensor thought it had been 400km, it turned on the visual targeting system. Normally, this would look for a building of a certain shape - but in the middle of a field, it found no buildings. It went to secondary targets, tanks and so on. It found a tractor and went for it.
veqq
1yr ago
Yes it is. We've all just clicked the link and seen it. Are you lying here?
veqq
1yr ago
Tangential and beyond this, many Muslims (especially in their countries) are really receptive to manosphere and incel type texts. I've recently been befriending Pakistanis, Saudis and such on facebook and they all share the most cringe inducing things by western influencers. It's really disappointing, honestly.
There's this incredible segment by Tucker Carlson that basically lays out a theory Nixon was not as big a crook as we think, and that he was set up because he tried to keep the government subordinate to its notional head.
This is honestly fascinating. It demands further research.
I see that a certain Geoff Shepard's written a few relevant books.
The best short thing I found: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2022/06/20/watergate_at_50_revelations_from_newly_declassified_evidence_147766.html
Here's the tape recording of Nixon saying he knows who shot Kennedy: https://rogerstone.substack.com/p/nixon-threatened-to-reveal-the-cias
But so much of it seems like pure paranoia e.g. here Nixon claims everyone was out to get just him: https://nypost.com/2022/06/16/watergate-gave-rise-to-the-culture-war/ besides how aggressively partisan they are, not digging into the actual topic, but primarily using it as a quick thing to besmirch various actors, to influence current perception. Stuff like:
Sound familiar? Those same dark forces will continue to wage ruthless war on anyone else who challenges their unaccountable power and corrupt status quo.
really weakens a piece and narrative.
Primarily Russians, Poles, Jews, Tatars, Greeks, Romanians, Hungarians etc.
Historically, the key event which formed Ukraine was the Polish Lithuanian commonwealth forming in 1569 (from a centuries long personal union). Poland and Lithuania continued to have different legal codes etc. but this shifted the border of Poland East, making the modern day Lithuanian-Ukrainian border to the North and the Russian-Ukrainian border to the North East. (Eventually, Ukrainians and Belarusians would have different national geneses due to different cultural contexts after this point, namely the Lithuanians not being exposed to the following.) Note, Lithuania was primarily an Eastern Slav state, using a legal code written in Church Slavonic etc. but the upperclasses started Polonizing in the 1500s.
Now become Poland, the South East of the commonwealth was flooded by rich Poles (only Lithuanians could own land in Lithuania) and Jews. They brought Polish methods of farming over, namely serfdom (a different form existed further East) to sell grain westwards. Many Eastern Slavs followed suit, adopting Renaissance learning, Catholicism and the Polish language. Many others were able to stay free, but didn't enjoy rights. Poland was rather democratic at the time, with the nobility (making up 10-20% of the population) participating in representative democracy. Outside of the nobility, even the "registered cossacks" couldn't make full use of the courts etc. To the South were the Ottomans (the Crimean Khanate (a mongol successor state) shifted in and out of their sphere) who often launched slave raids on the coasts and southern steppe. In a war in 1648, discontent at getting enserfed, at not being able to use the courts etc. boiled over and the cossacks rebelled. Somewhat losing, they then signed a treaty with Russia, which didn't go well. A lot of interesting stuff happened (Polish nobility converted to Protestantism, then back to Catholicism, part of the Orthodox church went into communion with the Catholic church, Ukrainian churchmen brought scholarship to Moscow, Lazar Baranovych came up with the 3rd Rome story etc.) Then Russians came under Catharine, who settled the steppes and coasts, which were primarily empty (fear from slave raids) or inhabited by Turks (Tatars) so Russians came. Greeks had been living on the coasts the whole time under the Turks at this point (Athens got its wheat from Southern Ukraine).
In the 19th century, looking at all of this, inspired by the German national awakening which threw off Napoleon, the Hungarians, the Croats/Serbs etc. etc. further West in Europe, many theoreticians of Ukrainianhism appear. They worked to fight Polish landlords (for reasons). Whereas other nationalists came up with historic narratives, made notes of the nobility's roots etc. to justify their people, the Ukrainians didn't have these things. Others had ruled them for many centuries etc. But there were a lot of them, speaking the same language(ish). Wasn't that enough?
Well, to answer your question, finally: Hrushevsky tried the traditional method, writing massive tomes of past history describing the existence of the Ukrainians or their lands from time immemorial (until the 1660s). He tried to provide a legitimizing context, showing the people's engagement in politics, what they were doing etc. If Hungary had a king ruling by divine right, the crown's actions described the nation. But if Ukraine doesn't, you have to describe the people's actions, customs, social history etc.
Now that's all fun and good, but how is a state supposed to form? How are the peasants supposed to conduct trade, pay taxes etc. when the cities are primarily filled with others? Should Ukraine be the countryside while the cities are not Ukraine? Lypynsky answers: Hell, even our fairy tales have Tatars, we've had these others here for ages! They belong here. Indeed, he wanted the Polish and Russian nobility to stay and guard the Ukrainian people, he was a monarchist... If Polish nobility existed in Russia under the Tsar and Austrian Kaiser, why couldn't they under a Ukrainian Hetman? Hrushevsky adopts this. Of course, his past work included many "non-Ukrainians" and besides, what is a Ukrainian? An Orthodox Eastern Slav? How's that different from the historical Lithuanians or the Russians or? It's different because we have this land touched by so many foreigners. The Russians in the East lived centuries under the mongols, they had serfdom for much longer, they didn't have nobles with rights or property, but we got Western serfdom, we had scholars of Greek, thousand year old cathedrals, elections etc.! And from those in the North, they didn't suffer under the Polish landlords.
(A lot happens. Austria-Hungary fell (where Ukrainians throve and fought Poles), independent Poland gained control over millions, removing their rights (universal male suffrage in Austria-Hungary's lost), famines, wars, mass murder, communism, fascism (everyone but the Czechs were Authoritarian to fascist in the 1930s...) The same bad things happened in most of Eastern Europe, with huge ethnic cleansings, expulsions etc. resulting in today's rather unmixed states. Anyway...)
Rudnytsky continues this further. He studies in Poland, a multiethnic state desiring a Central European union of sorts (as a bulwark against Germany and Russian imperialism, some of the minorities called this Polish imperialism), then Nazi Germany (weird, eh? Still trying to understand these points visawise), but leaves to Prague (still during the war) fearing being caught as a Jew. He eventually finds himself in the US. There, he writes many articles for a dissident Polish publication in Paris: Kultura. These Poles get read a lot by Polish dissidents - and have specific policy pieces. One of which is accepting Vilnius and Lviv as Lithuania and Ukraine (and not Poland, saying no to territorial disputes). When socialism falls, their policy suggestions are implemented immediately in Poland. As are Rudnytsky's in Ukraine. Writing to the Ukrainians diaspora, he said Ukraine shall be a virile push into the future, not dwelling in the past. Instead of Lypynsky's loyalty to the Tsar, loyalty to the Ukrainian people! And everyone who's loyal to them is Ukrainian! (Who's American? The Americans! That guy waving the flag with a slight foreign accent who came last month, what about that guy [insert politics you don't like]? Still American, technically. Embracing it makes you one, being there also does etc.
(For whatever reason, many Ukrainians ended up in the Canadian plains. They were sort of an incubation chamber for Ukrainianism, in communion with ideas from Austria-Hungary and then the 20s USSR, but not being exposed to famine, war and genocide. Many were also in the North Eastern US. They would sort of move into Ukraine in the 90s, but their influence was spotty in a way I don't fully understand. In constant contact with other diasporas, they largely maintain a bit of Polish, Russian and Ukrainian, so you don't get too many ethnopurists.)
Now, Rudnytsky's family language was Polish, their mother's family language was Yiddish, Dontsov's brother was a Russian bolshevik. Lypynsky was a Pole. (Hrushevsky seems fully Ukrainian.) They all just embraced and made Ukrainianism. This was common in Hungarian, German, Czech, Finnish and Russian nationalisms too, where e.g. a Swedish speaking Ethnic Swede would compile the great epic of Finnish literature or German factory owners (like emigrated from Germany) would research the origins of Hungarian and make their kids Hungarian politicians. (Hungary's great project was to turn everyone they could into a Hungarian through forced schooling, much like Argentina in the late 19th century did with the Italian etc. immigrants.)
Contrary to this, in the interwar Poland great resentment appeared, where in some provinces in the 20s regular assassinations of government officials took place. (This stopped in the 30s after people saw what was going on in the USSR, so less rights in Poland than in the past under the Austrians was still better than... Yeah.) In this milieu you get guys like Dontsov. He quit socialism before it won out in Russia, and thought Hitler was the bomb. Obviously independent Ukraine failed after WWI because of the minorities. When the Nazis appeared, many of this ilk in Poland joined in the killing of Jews, and Poles. Similar happened in Lithuania. Much was less than ideological and just police continuing to police under the new leadership, just with different commands. (These guys also disliked the Czechs and wanted to incorporate Rusyns, who are sort of Eastern Slavs further West than Ukraine.)
So, did they just cleanly disappear, these guys who genocided 200,000 Poles for the Nazis? Oh no, their plans succeeded. They won. The USSR pushed Ukraine West, expelling a few million Poles, beyond their greatest dreams. (Ukrainians still in Poland were either sent to Ukraine, or sent to resettle the lands taken from Germany in 1945. Socialist Poland was fixated on the Polish ethnicity, declaring the country purely Polish in the 70s. Thus the Kultura Poles, opposing socialism, also opposing such mononationalisms. Socialist Romania and Bulgaria were also extremely nationalist, deporting a few million Germans, Bulgarians etc.) Some survived the war, floated around the diasporas etc. but all the far right parties in Ukraine get less than 1% of the vote now.
This is the Ukrainian narrative, generated from talking to Ukrainian friends, living there, reading 6 books, seeing some lectures. My personal thoughts are a bit different, mostly boiling down to: All Slavs (at least Eastern Slavs) should speak one language, all Romance speakers should also etc. (more cultural connections for better literature, maybe), but many states. 1000 Slavic states! (Many courts to patronize poets...) Nationalism distracts from poetry.
veqq
1yr ago
Here's a list of ~450 (by line count) exchanges which failed: https://www.cryptowisser.com/exchange-graveyard/
75 exchanges closed down in 2020: https://cointelegraph.com/news/75-crypto-exchanges-have-closed-down-so-far-in-2020
https://coinjournal.net/news/42-percent-of-failed-crypto-exchanges-vanished-leaving-users-in-the-lurch/ lists 94 in 2020 and 81 in 2020... Higher than the others. From my work, there are more than a few which certainly weren't listed in the above. (Some 0 years when quite a few scams occurred.) Note, 42% disappeared without any justification at all.
veqq
2mo ago
It's just elite theory. Pareto described revolutions etc. as non governing elites replacing the governing elites: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elite_theory
veqq
1yr ago
I grew up in LA, spending nearly 20 years there. I only learned there was a metro/subway/non-freight train 7 years after leaving.
veqq
1yr ago
That is provided you can choose where you work and it's in a place near grocery store which carries all the things you need.
No, that's an Ameirca/Canadian/Australian thing. Explore, "walk" with google street view, clicking forward around in Istanbul, Chelyabinsk, Kyoto, random places in Africa whose names I don't know... There are grocery stores with better, cheaper and more variety of food than US supermarkets everywhere. It's mindboggling.
Ljubljana: https://www.google.com/maps/search/supermarket/@46.0395398,14.4861671,15z search "spar", "mercator", "hoffer". You're rarely 2000 ft from multiple markets at any point. And those are just the chains. There are then plenty of independent butchers, some farmers markets etc.
This is how most of the world is.
Here's Szeged, a city in Hungary: https://www.google.com/maps/search/supermarket/@46.2584053,20.1461581,14z searching grocery will give you different locations - near the same.
Now Guadalajara, Mexico https://www.google.com/maps/search/grocery/@20.6755284,-103.3554495,15z
try mercado and tanguis, but a lot of stuff isn't actually there. Almost every corner will have a shop selling meat, dairy and fruit - often on a corner.
veqq
1yr ago
Thanks, that led me down a 2 hour rabbit hole. https://old.reddit.com/user/zaruka
veqq
1yr ago
I know 3 guys who studied theater and acted professionally before becoming right wing political consultants.
veqq
1yr ago
We all know the statistics associated with dating apps.
Going outside and talking to people has great statistics.
"Yeah, I spent some time in the Ukraine."
"You can't say the! It implies imperialism! But Ukraine is a real country not just "the borderland!""
"But that's how we say it!"
"Doesn't matter! Shame on you! Follow the current thing!"
In English "the" often indicates a region: The Rockies, the Balkans, the Mississippi, but we say the Congo for the country and don't say the Livonia for the region. Our ancestors said "the Yemen", the "Sudan", "the Lebanon".
In Russian and Ukrainian there are no articles. Instead it works like this:
na = on
v = in
Note that In English, we have in, on and at. Some words use both e.g. sitting na lake but swimming v lake.
There are many specifics and exceptions:
na: post office, factory, beach, dacha, city square, stadium, kitchen, East, North, activities (work, lessons)..
v: used with countries (because they contain you)
But we're talking about places, Ukraine:
na used for geographic things you are on (islands, mountains) and regions (Caucasus, Carpathians, Kuban)
v with some regions like Siberia, Polesia or the Carpathian region (uses both)
v with places ending in -landia (Iceland, Ireland, Curland, Ingermanland, Scottland, Livonia (Lifland) although they're islands
Sicily and Sardinia use v 1/3 as often as na (from google search hits), Corsica gets 5% (most islands never use v). Other trivia like na Malta country/island, but v Malta a village in Irkutsk...
Ukrainian culture warriors say v Ukraine while Russian warriors says na Ukraine. Others fill the middle ground, squeezed between both, while older literature and old ladies do the darnedest things.
But it goes deeper. Other Slavic languages have the same issue. In Poland, they shifted to w Ukraine in the 90s. But if I ask google translate: na Ukrainie. Asking friends:
Indeed, the Polish national epic starts: "O Lithuania" here referring to the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth. It's title features: na Litwie. With na! (In the verses, w is also used.) Now, Lithuania has many Poles. Anna Pieszko shows how Poles and Lithuanians fight this war:
The Lithuanian Algimantas Zolubas believes if "a Pole considers himself a Polish in Lithuania, not a Lithuanian Pole, he's a guest" [not a citizen. An anti-Polish cultural organization Vilnija of course believes usage of na "threatens the integrity of the Republic" in "non-compliance with the constitution."
But Poles also say na Slovakia, na Latvia, na Belarus, na Hungary (Poland's honored brother). Does this imply that Polish na doesn't carry a regional distinction? Either way, the Polish position is continuity with tradition. The New Dictionary of Correct Polish says:
Impressive cultural steadfastness. In English we no longer use the article and many Russians have moved to v Ukraine. While we say Germany instead of Deutschland and Türkiye probably won't gain much circulation, Myanmar is gaining on Burma and we have stopped saying Bombay, Ceylon, Siam, Persia (for the modern country), Kiev. (N.b. Peking and Bejing transcribe the same word, just with different systems) And often people don't care: What Italian complains about our Florence, Venice etc.?
In Serbo-Croatian (also outside of Serbia): na Kosovu, but all other culturally relevant regions I could find are u (like the Banat, Vojdovina, Srem, Raška...) except na Balkanu. Friends could not think of more.
The historian Timothy Snyder says names are part of an overreaching colonial process. But how much can it matter? What's in a name? Do Slavs think worse of the Germans who they call mute (Nemcy, Lenard Nemoy's last name means mute)? Do we think worse of the Slavs whose name gives us slave?
Above I wrote "continuity of tradition." What does that really mean across the vagaries of the years of centuries? The Hebrews called Southern Ukraine "Ashkenaz" but as Jews came into Europe (from the Mediterranean Northwards) Northern France and Western Germany came to be the Ashkenaz, Iberia Sepharad and the Slavic lands Canaan. Eventually those Ashkenazi Jews were pushed Eastwards, merging with those in Canaan - the new new Ashkenaz. It stayed this way as borders ebbed and flowed, nations rose, fell and rose again (Poland and Lithuania).
In 1919, the Karaite Adolph Joffe, a Soviet Bolshevist, running negotiations after the Polish-Soviet war with the Baltic countries, found himself negotiating with Max Soloveitchik in Yiddish. Max, the Lithuanian diplomat, asked for what they Jews called "Lita", that is: the whole of the old Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth.
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