A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
No bio...
User ID: 645
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
Trivial to find: https://odysee.com/@LightElf:0/Kanye-West-Heil-Hitler:9
Not worth listening to, rather terrible, but such is our fallen society that some like rap.
It would be nearly impossible for mass incarceration NOT to lower the crime rate.
Very easy to imagine a society where half are incarcerated for things which have since been legalized etc.
There are many hypotheticals like arbitrary imprisonment of random people etc.
In reality, our model arbitrarily imprisons certain demographics in certain areas, randomly enforces some laws in certain areas, randomly ignores certain criminals in certain areas, randomly believes crime shouldn't be punished in certain areas... So it's very difficult to actually map.
We have countless true stories of people in Alabama or whatever being in prison for 20 years for stealing 5 dollars, or for people falsifying evidence for decades etc. We also have countless true stories of rabid monsters committing 500 crimes while people wax poetic to free them immediately.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
3mo ago
as well as overreliance on external customers
Exports are less than 20% of Chinese GDP (and domestic GDP is lower because of accounting differences like imputed rent. In China, they use construction cost depreciated over the building's life, so rent is 2% to Chinese GDP, whereas almost 10% of US GDP is imputed rent; much of US GDP growth is just bureaucratically increasing what home owners pay themselves...Oh, and remember, as Trump says, China's artificially weakening its currency, which... decreases domestic GDP!) Japan and India rely more on exports than China. The US, EU and China are roughly equal in total volumes, although China's GDP is 2/3 of the US (or 4/3 if PPP).
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
4mo ago
Do you actually speak Russian or Ukrainian? Can you actually show us ...Ukrainians suicide bombing offices?
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
17d ago
genuinely sticking to the claim that the average Israeli citizen hates Western civilization more than the average Iranian citizen does?
Yes. I chose my words carefully. N.b. I don't "hate Jews" as someone above assumed. I just see that Israelis and Israeli media doesn't cargocult and follow the West, seeing it as the best thing in the world, as Iranians do. I can easily find statistics (which correspond with my (admittedly probably, but not intentionally motivated) beliefs and first-hand anecdata that Iranians are less religious than Israelis, with demographic trends only accelerating this, considering Hasidic demographics etc. who are not inline with what you call "Western cultural norms". But I oppose these "Western cultural norms" and see them as anti-Western^TM. I believe their pushers hate my people.)
gay sex
Well... Maryam Molkara convinced Khomeini to issue a fatwa in 1987, so that in Iran the government will (forcibly) pay for your sex change, so it's not gay, anymore. Only Thailand "leads". Overall, there's a cottage industry of cosmetic surgeons, with 2.5 million nose jobs per year.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1mo ago
I don't think you understand what an institution is.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
1yr ago
Snyder is really obscene.
Or are you saying they just took Tether's word for it?
Yes.
Learn some accounting. They go through significantly more scrutiny when you buy a house. Tether has been shown to double or quadruple count assets in the past. Tether has been shown to literally make things up. Plenty of other friendly actors move 10x the assets into an account then remove it the day after.
From the end of page 1, halfway down through page 2 it lists all the things they did. They checked over the blockchain records, they got confirmation letters from banks, looked for the collateral in the loans... Not what I'd call 'confirming that Tether claimed things'.
That was a hit piece against Tether you know. They investigated it and found large amounts of bs and contradictory flows, not BDO.
Tether published a self-proclaimed ‘verification’ of its cash reserves, in 2017, that it characterized as “a good faith effort on our behalf to provide an interim analysis of our cash position.” In reality, however, the cash ostensibly backing tethers had only been placed in Tether’s account as of the very morning of the company’s ‘verification.’
It disappeared the same day.
In march, Tether claimed 4.96 billion in "other investments (including digital currencies)" when the crypto market was over 2 trillion. After it dropped under 900 million a few months later, Tether claimed 5 billion. The numbers they claim are verifiable bullshit.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
3mo ago
Brilliant! This is just beyond the pale of stupidity.
I even think the described actions are probable and philosophically valid (but having many people assist with execution of the same office is a quite complicated and rather dehumanizes the office until the actual holder seems irrelevant.) There are plenty of historical analogues with idiot kings etc. Anyway, sliding all the way down the slope, unless Trump is flying the plane, deportations until the executive branch are illegal, yah enforcing murder's illegality is impossible because only the very, uh, lightning bolt which broke the stone on the 10 commandants, or the person who wrote e.g. §§ 1111 (calling murder unlawful) is eligible to detain or punish; but this person used a tool, a pen and we don't know whether someone else used this pen and was not... And can we just disregard all laws written by lobbyists?
Can someone steel man this?
"Leftist" (larping) contacts are waxing verbosely about how to flee the US. To quote one:
frustrating that in this moment of panic, of fight or flight, the left, or what passes for it, is so quick to pick fleeing-- something mainly available to the petite-bourgeois and above, not poor proles. The thought of waging a struggle, of organizing something to get rid of the system that harms them and the majority, is so off-putting to them because they have the delusional idea that this political and economic system is actually all about serving them. I don't mean to sound idealistic, but the total lack of fighting spirit is pathetic. Liberals are like, "well, if we can't vote, then we have to lay down and die! Nothing can be changed!" They don't see when it's most apparent that voting is nothing but consent to their own powerlessness, and that they choose this powerlessness time and time again. They also seem totally unaware that they have become thoroughly conservative because their whole worldview consists in a defense of the previous status quo (law and order, patriotism, the constitution, being granted permission to grumble in the most inconsequential way).
For the most part, they don't understand how immigration works, imagining they can just go to relatives in e.g. Norway (surely, only the US has immigration laws!) They all believe they're next, that the Reichstag fire will occur, that their occasional meming or anti-Israel comments will get them sent to a Salvadoran concentration camp.
No one has the least idea of e.g. debanking, let alone how to cope with it. Their networking all happens through FB or at best ... gmail. I was kicked from the conversation for mentioning such matters (why crypto, https://odysee.com/ etc. exist etc.) and the performativeness of their whole program. They don't realize that... They have been on the (deep) state's side the whole time, while nominally opposing it? Baffling!
Anyway, https://landchad.net/ is lovely. Everyone should cyberhomestead.
What do we do now (that we "won")? What interesting projects do we have to move forward?
Edit: Our community's migration here went into full swing when Reddit admins removed a common of mine about quotation marks. It turns out, I don't understand quotation marks either - my load bearing quotation marks get misunderstood. This is of course my fault; I must write better. But I have not the slightest clue how that could be construed as "consensus building". As I can't magically write better, I will write more words to clarify the final question(s):
The previous system is collapsing, how do users of this forum plan to insulate themselves from the shocks and take advantages of the opportunities going forward? I shared tidings from frenemies of the old regime, who never fully captured (or wielded) it to their liking. I am curious how to e.g. influence things as a fellow traveler and not be hit by blowback, how to protect and continue to amass wealth amid dedollarization and inflation etc. New world, now what?
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2mo ago
...we Motte users.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2yr ago
We all know the statistics associated with dating apps.
Going outside and talking to people has great statistics.
Democrats international money laundering operations that have been further exposed via the vetting of USAID
That's still a conspiracy. At least, I've yet to see any proof or even mildly plausible concrete descriptions. Domestic webs of domestic (insert pejorative adjectives) NGOs (and in Central America) doing things we don't like, sure. But they're doing concrete work, which we oppose. If they were just laundering the money into their pockets, the culture war might look different. But in Ukraine? Ukrainian journalists and logistics organizations certainly aren't redirecting money to help people break the law in the US, they're making up for destroyed logistics systems and talking about the war... Anyway, please do point me to proof if I'm wrong!
tl;dr: Yes, it would not degrade readiness against China, at all nor require out of theater assets. NATO air forces would quickly defeat Russia, NATO land power would help but not change things without air support.
Ok, let’s pretend that we actually have the balls to go fight Russia and curb-stomp them out of Ukraine (including, of course, Crimea). Does the US and her allies really have the ability to fight a two-theater war? I would question this.
Ukraine is conventionally equal to Russia. (Ignoring making Russia sad and nukes), a small increase in power would result in local overmatch cascading to relatively cheap victory. Even just the EU's F-35s (though they're probably lacking in munitions) are more than enough to shape the front (like 2022 with HIMARS in Kharkov) or even win the war (there's debate how effective Russia's air defense would be, but failures in Syria (of Russian operated systems) against Israel suggest not very.)
NATO minus the US and Turkey doesn't have especially more ground power than Ukraine (e.g. in brigade numbers, due to lack of mobilization and equipment). ( /r/credibledefense there are some comments giving detail) but even some 10 brigades would be enough to break the current stalemate (if not for drones and the recon fires complex. That is, the stalemate is of a different kind.) But if F-35s' EW capabilities are able to saturate the spectrum, degrading Russian C2-5 or degrade air defense enough for other assets, existing Ukrainian forces could very well suffice (but more would help.)
That's the wrong framing. "Realist" defense concerns play little role in Russia, otherwise it wouldn't have emptied its borders with NATO to feed the grinder in Ukraine. There've been a gish-gallop of contradictory reasons how x or y impact and threaten Russia's security posture, but they are trivially rejected when looking at Russia's actions and the arguments in totality. Rather, for both Russia, this is a question of self identity:
The standard Russian self-image includes Ukraine, where the reformers (1654) and leaders of the church for most recent history, where the first educators, language reformers, where your ancestors (1000 years ago and 80 years ago) came from, where the very fairy tales happened! At the same time, most of Ukraine was not Slavic until the Russians came and took the South, letting the central planes populate, now safe from Turkic slavers. Over time, Russia developed into a great, welcoming multiethnic empire, a true melting pot for its peoples with the sternest nationalist smiling on his Muslim Tatar friends and the president kissing the Quran, brought man into space and brought the arts and mathematics to great heights (otherwise abandoned in most of the West, today). Yes, this great project has had many struggles, but... How can you believe your brothers spit on this, abandon your shared history, authors, everything and move out? (Think of your wife showing you divorce papers...) Love turns to hate, spite, evil, post facto justifying the split.
Translated to American sensibilities, imagine Philadelphia succeeding, the great colonial cities, home of the liberty bell, the continental congress etc. and insisting you have nothing in common, you New Yorkers and Georgians just oppressed them and they don't even want to speak English anymore, but create some new literary tradition etc. etc.
The same process happened in Yugoslavia (which one common Russian narrative holds, broke hope of Russia-West integration.) China is not identical (Taiwan being far smaller and weaker, today and lacking historic relevance), with explicit reunification rather being an important political point. But most importantly, China has already won, as it races past the West in wealth, cultural power and future shaping vibrancy, the growing support for reunification will see Taiwan (even if only by creative interpretation) in the PRC's sphere.
The worst part about Russia in this is that, had they just gone in in 2014 or integrated the Donbas, instead of turning it into a mafia run hell hole, Ukraine wouldn't really have resisted now - indeed, had Putin not invaded, but worked with Zelensky who won on a pro-Russia platform, none of this would have happened. This is a self-own the US is now copying. (For lack of time, I will not go into polyphonic government, where seeing your neighbors thrive might inspire you that there's a better way. Squashing this threat by incorporating or forcing Ukrainians out helped regime stability.)
I'd like to dunk on Mearsheimer as a broken clock which looks right twice a day, but actually that's a stain and it's missing hands entirely. For one thing, he repeatedly stated that Russia would not invade Ukraine (as I too believed) and after it started began “There is no evidence that Putin wanted to take over the whole of Ukraine” yet somehow people claim he predicted everything? Baffling! He constantly praises Russia on the field, claims victory's just on the horizon, that Odessa and Dnipropetrovsk and and and will soon fall, while the lines haven't shifted a day's walk since the end of 2022.
anti-Trump
Most seem to be regular contributors whose red line Trump already passed (they don't trust Trump to fix demographics enough to overlook the rest.)
leftist
"More than two sides", political compass blabla. What does leftist mean to you? It's easy to object to them from the right (or wherever) e.g. Vance for not raising his children Christian/Catholic (his wife hasn't converted) (cf. him saying "my wife's children" and saying he feels terrible for dragging her to church.)
Personally, I criticize Trump from the industrial and commodity lobby, where he was bad for mining and energy in his first term (Biden was good for O&G, bad for nuclear and mining), wants to increase production (although crude's already around break even for many producers and the last booms and busts ravaged the industry) and ban exports. Lately, I oppose insane rhetoric about Ukraine and may appear to be a fierce defender of Ukraine; but I have 10 year old pro-Crimea comments, prefer Russian culture to American and Ukrainian etc. but I respect the truth and don't lie for position advantages in some great metapolitical crusade.
Why should we even continue to listen to discredited warhawks?
You are simply listening to (Russian) warhawks, while calling incompetent bureaucrats, scared of escalation, warhawks for trickling material. If not for Bucha, I might not object to your argument...
From your other comments, I don't think you understand much about this war in any sense, what combat is like, why there's a stalemate, what goals the parties have etc. The real threat is ensuring deescalation happens in both Russia and Ukraine at the same time, otherwise peace only means disarming Ukraine so Russia can continue later, tripwire or not. (I'm not convinced recent US and EU governments would have reacted to the red line of their tripwire forces being overrun, were they hypothetically there in 2022 already.)
who fantasize about killing millions of Russians
Full NATO mobilization would have a mean estimated death toll in the millions
The forces involved are a magnitude lower. Russia is not a peer and even some cartoon scenario without air power, NATO would not need to mobilize or increase its industrial base (just actually sign multiyear munitions contracts with its existing factories).
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
2mo ago
"Weird fact, things actually stop being true once many dumb people believe them"
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
3mo ago
I don’t think conservatives have been in the cultural drivers seat since at least the 1970s
And what of the other 5 thousand years of human history?
China has a severely over-dimensioned property+construction sector and now also a severely over-dimensioned manufacturing base.
In 2015 the Chinese government already stopped emphasizing real estate and announced that it would cut incentives for constructing and investing in it. To stop the "disorderly expansion of capital", they purposefully deflated the bubble, e.g. legislating huge down payment requirements for housing loans, high transaction taxes etc. The expansion stopped a while ago and workers have been reallocated. (Didn't you read all those articles about China's real estate collapse?) (There was a popular narrative around ghost cities too, but they quickly filled up. China urbanized many hundreds of millions of people and still has 150 million to go.) (Freezing real estate, which holds the majority of household savings in China, lets them inject liquidity to specific industries without inflation.)
The industrial base is what you would call an asset. In the absence of trade unions, irksome regulations etc. a greater concentration of capital should reduce production prices (instead of raising them, as e.g. happened in the US) particularly as labor is often quite a modest part of the balance sheet in today's firms.
To paraphrase Rick Rule: "In the super market, when you see tuna half price, you happily stock up. But in the stock market, when your holdings are on sale, you freak out instead of buying more." China did load up on infrastructure. And now commodities are significantly higher than in the past decade, but they just pay their cheap loans off instead of building for 5x the cost.
The Information's claim that DeepSeek, a private Chinese AGI company owned by Liang Wenfeng, is implementing some very heavy-handed measures: «employees told not to travel, handing in passports; investors must be screened by provincial government; gov telling headhunters not to approach employees».
Is this actually happening and not just coping accusations from a dying empire? We've known for a long time they're ahead. But truly, where Liang last year spoke of Chinese industry seeing its place as only productizing, they see true innovation's around the corner.
American theory of victory
I don't believe it exists. The only articulations thither I've heard involve the Benedict option or deportations, but lack positivist goals. Hajnals of yore built cathedrals, today's don't even hope to build, let alone transcend. It's shameful what they've taken from themselves. This is the West's century of humiliation, but worse as the sell themselves to the youthful Chinese like African leaders to slavers. Many Western traditionalists, Christian nationalists etc. have told me they believe China'd be a better hegemon though, and welcome this. How insular. What of striving, Promethean urges? Does myopic Icarus now only build rocket emojis for his stocks?
How can we disagree? Seeing the new paradigm, my little mind just wonders how to amass and secure resources and continue my line, such middling human concerns. I even work finance instead of pushing the envelope. No wonder we've stagnated.
It would help to identify our enemies first. Iranians are friendlier to Western Civilization than Israelis.
A_Wee_Hearts_Toll
23d ago
The whole movement is bankrupt. While I theoretically understand "imperfect instrument" or "who cares about corruption if they still solve problems", it's literally not clear that MAGA is better for libertarians, conservative christians or anyone with a desire for intergenerational stability.
American cities were bulldozed for cars in the 50s. American cities looked like European cities: https://i.redd.it/mn45jsmhowna1.jpg https://www.vox.com/2015/5/14/8605917/highways-interstate-cities-history
Never forget what they took from you.
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