functor
11d ago
A big difference between Americans and Europeans is how we view Brits. If your image of Brits is upper class posh people you are American.
If you associate Brits with obese football hooligans causing a scene at a McDonalds at 3 am you are European.
functor
12d ago
Both can be true. The US becomes a financial empire with the rest of the world buying lots of money from the US. The rest of the world is forced to prop up American real estate markets and financial markets while the expensive dollar makes it cheap for Americans to import. The US empire is great for finance, insurance, real estate and the military industrial complex. It is not good for manufacturing. The world is has to send products to the US in order to get dollars, the US gets products for free but all the money printing makes the US too expensive for a large portion of the population.
functor
13d ago
In other words there is no rules based international order, there is just powergrabs. If that is the case then it is expected that other countries will be weary of the US and their power. Why be vulnerable to a country that is nothing more than extractive empire? The US has a problem and it is that the rest of the world is no longer far behind the US and therefore they can't bully countries to submission.
functor
13d ago
Russia chose to go to war with America.
Glad we are admiting that Ukraine is just a proxy state for America. So the US can bomb, invade and occupy countries left and right and have proxy states right on Russia's border and there are no sanctions. However, other countries have no real legal protection and are left to the wims of American for whether their dollars are worth something or not.
There is a reason why this system isn't going to be stable.
functor
13d ago
Peter zeihan should put his money where his mouth is and demonstrate how stable Detroit and Atlanta are by riding through them on a bicycle at 1 am.
functor
14d ago
Americans have a lower life expanctancy than Costa Ricans, Thai people and Chileans. The US and China have roughly the same life expectancy. There are two scenarios: Americans live incredibly unhealthy lives and require 17% of GDP to be spent on health care to keep a decent middle income life expectancy or Americans live some worse than other countries and have somewhat better medical care yet get minimal bang for the buck.
functor
16d ago
I was mostly looking for upper-middle, educated, career-having women and I'd say about a quarter were palpably inexperienced to the point that I don't think they had any meaningful romantic experience by their mid-late twenties.
Where was the best place to meet this type of women?
functor
17d ago
The initial religions were people worshiping local natural phenomena, such as a pile of rocks. As city states arose, we got local pantheon gods who sit in the local palace/temple and exert power over the local community. As Rome became an empire, it became too hard to have gods that were too Roman to be gods for the known world. Therefore, Catholicism arose as a more universal religion. The same thing happened in the Middle East with Islam. Islam allows for a billion people to follow it, previous religions couldn't.
As the church lost its power, we started to get more localized forms of religion in Protestantism where the power was shipped to the bourgeoisie, who could now read the bible in a way that fit them. The power structure became north-western European merchants.
After WWII the US became a global empire and needed a global religion. Evangelicalism is too particular to WASPs for an empire that covers most of the globe. They needed a far more universalist ideology. Human rights which morphed into wokeness is the perfect imperialist american ideology. It is extremely generic, easy to follow and preaches that we are just random individuals who happened to be born a certain way. We can be whatever gender we want and there are no groups. We are all just consumers in a world which we are allowed to consume whatever product or identity we want. The US military exists to ensure we can all be liberated from any cultural context or organic social structures.
Black people in Japan are a part of this. There is no Japanese culture, history or people. Japanese people are not a collective. They are just a bunch of players who happened to be spawned in that corner of the empire and can easily more around and be exchanged for another group. Ubisoft's ideology reflects the imperial ideology. As for profitability, they are far more profitable than building giant mosques and cathedrals was.
functor
20d ago
My honest guess is an overrepresentation of jews and they are overrepresented in the posts on the conflict. Add on to this a large overrepresentation of Americans who have grown up in a society that is almost religiously pro Israel. I think a lot of the justifications for Israel starts with support for Israel and then the arguments are constructed to justify the belief. It is more akin to the support of a football team than a political position.
I have met people who are pro Israel because they want to own the libs. How being on the same side as the ADL and JIDF owns the libs is beyond me.
Israel support is also a safety valve for ventilating anger towards non whites. Back in the Iraq and Afghanistan wars era I met several people who signed up just because they wanted to ventilate their anger caused by immigration. That the wars ended up causing mass immigration to Europe didn't seem to bother them. We get this sentiment a lot in Europe. People who would never say the word repatriation and talk about how migrants have to come here legally will happily cheer on bombing Gaza because they just want to see the cousins of their migrants get killed. Advocating for doing 2% of what Israel does in the suburbs of France isn't politically acceptable so we can bomb their relatives in the middle east causing another refugee crisis.
functor
1mo ago
DEI is the natural state of humanity, the 90s was an extreme outlier. Throughout history humans have always been tribal and worked for their group interests. A group of people working as a group will easily outcompete individuals. Tribes, clans, nations etc exist for a reason. The US is well over 400 years old, not ignoring the first half and ethnic interests were a central part of conflicts throughout nearly all of that. The 90s were an outlier, not the norm even in the US. Go to other parts of the world and democracy simply doesn't work since people vote for their ethnic candidate.
The 90s required the US to be so white enough for white culture to be the norm. The whiteness was implicit and black people were seen as white people with brown skin. This level of implicit whiteness no longer exists.
The 90s came after decades of rising living standards and a high point of the American empire. There was less competitiveness.
The cat is out of the bag and lots of groups have realized that their lobbying gives results. Good luck convincing black people to adopt meritocracy and opposing government transfers of wealth from haves to have nots. If fighting for your group delivers big results, people will do it. Historically people have been more than willing to die for it so expect people to continue to do so.
functor
1mo ago
Why would conservatives ally with people who have a culture fundamentally opposed to European/western values whose lobbying groups have been solidly against the interests of western conservatism? The natural relation between western conservatives and jews is one of antagonism and it has been the case for 2000 years. Israel is a massive waste of tax money and AIPAC is a major foreign influence on politics.
The ADL got conservatives banned off twitter and now they are supposed to suck up to them?
functor
1mo ago
Counterpoint: Say something about someone's mom who is from a traditionalist culture and if you survive the reaction you should reevaluate women not being valued. Mothers and matriarchal figures are highly respected.
Inferior is a relative term, it simply depends on what we are measuring. With that said, the standard deviation for achievement is limited for women. Becoming a king is a greater achievement than motherhood. Alexander the Great clearly beat all mother's throughout history in achievement. However, few men live up to that level. The mother's aren't valued aspect is dependent on a culture where people think they can be whatever they want and they are comparing house wife to astronaut. Not average job of a man to mother of 2-3
functor
1mo ago
Open society foundation, every mainstream jewish organization in Europe, Barbra spectre, Jewish internet defence force, ADL.
functor
1mo ago
The jewish problem is that they want their country to be an ethnostate that steals land and ethnically cleanses neighbors while promoting multiculturalism everywhere else. White countries can't be white since then jews would be uncomfortable. This has been a cornerstone of the reasons why jews have not been liked. They often work against group interests of other peoples while pushing their own group interest to an extreme extent.
The left will have trouble reconciling the radical individualism they have been inculcated with and extreme jewish ethnocentrism. The right will be sceptical of jews because ADL wants them banned of twitter and Ben Gvir wants millions of Palestinians to become refugees 300 km from EU.
The left will be shocked at how they are treated in a diametrically different way than when they protested against white men sitting with their legs too far apart. However, jews are a small minority and won't be able to control all the goyim in the long run.
functor
1mo ago
While consuming far more diesel than ever, far more artificial fertilizers, degrading soil faster than ever and using enormous amounts of antibiotics. Modern agriculture isn't sustainable, it is built on using slowly replinishing resources at a high rate.
functor
1mo ago
The issue is that we can't have 10 billion peole living a western lifestyle on a finite planet. The amount of water, artificial fertilizers, pesticides and antibiotics required for 10 billion people eating meat twice a day is simply not feasible. I don't think anyone is really enthusiastic over bug meat, it is simply an adaption to over population. Personally I would go for fewer people living on less industrially produced meat.
functor
1mo ago
So I take it that in your view, the Holocaust was because all these evil Polish Jews were meddling in German politics.
Yes, the major factor in the thrid reich's policy on jews was jewish support of communism, the rampant issues with jews engaged in degeneracy. Jews such as Magnus Hirschfeld were not exactly making their people look good. This was during the same era that the Soviet union was wrecking eastern Europe and killing millions, the Bolshevik party was stuffed with jews.
Jews don't have to act as a coherent group. Jews can still be highly overrepresented in certain movements such as communism. There have continuously been problems with dual loyalty amongst jews throughout history and the jews in Germany were clearly not loyal to the German people. Jews have high in group preference and are nepotistic. Their overrepresentation is largely due to them working as a group to promote their own. When a group's members primarily are loyal to their own group and engage with rampant nepotism that hurts the host society.
gentile industrialists were funding Hitler
The movement largely consisted of working class veterans who saw jewish communists take over Munich and have a predecessor to a BLM rally and decided to shut it down.
Charitably, you want to suggest that the Jews are guests to the host population.
Yes, they are a diaspora population that moves around.
Of course, less charitably, you know exactly what phrasing you are using and the word opposite to the host is "parasite", which is also an old antisemitic trope.
Funny how the same tropes have been used by ancient Egyptians, Romans, Greeks, arabs, and throughout Europe for two millenia.
functor
1mo ago
Have these anti muslim zionists ever done anything for white people? The whole Bush era was full of white people siding with AIPAC to fight Islam. It achieved absolutely nothing and Europe got swamped with migrants. While the mainstream right got blown up fighting peasants in the middle east their home countries were taking in millions of Muslims. There is no reason to side with people who have been consistently hostile to White people for decades because they now want you to fight for Israel again.
Will these jewish lobbyists actually do something for White people or will they just try to convince us that we are owning the libs when we waste tax money bombing peasants fighting the same billionaires that donate to ADL?
Antisemitism has less to do with people not liking jews and more to do with people being annoyed with things jews do. Pogroms weren't caused by abstract hate of jews, it was caused by people being fed up with how the jews were behaving. The best thing jews could do would be to stop provoking people around them and stirring up conflicts. Unfortunately, it seems like jews use conflicts with the host population in order to increase cohesion within the jewish community. An outside enemy is a great way to unite a people and jews therefore need to be in a continuous state of conflict.
functor
1mo ago
England has an awful housing situation and has expensive real estate yet has the opposite political divide.
functor
1mo ago
https://europeanconservative.com/articles/news/germany-afd-most-popular-party-among-under-30s/
Germany: AfD Most Popular Party Among Under 30s Increasingly dissatisfied with the conditions under which they live—the growing prospect of war in Europe, a precipitously declining standard of living, mass migration, and a bleak future in general—a large number of Germany’s youth now view the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) as the party which best articulates their concerns.
Findings from the 2024 Jugend in Deutschland study, published days ago, have revealed that 22% of Germans aged between 14 and 29 years old would vote for the AfD if federal elections were held today, making the rightist, anti-globalist party the most favored among young people.
AfD’s favorability among young Germans has spiked sharply compared to past years, rising from 9% and 12% in 2022 and 2023, respectively, and has come at the expense of the parties in the ruling left-liberal traffic light coalition.
Support for the Greens, which in 2022 stood at 27%, has tumbled to 18%. The liberal pro-business FDP, having largely kneeled to all of the dictates from the Greens and the SPD since forming the coalition, has seen its standing among youths nose-dive even more drastically, plummeting from 19% in 2022 to a mere 8%.
Commenting on the results of the study he helped author, Klaus Hurrelmann, a Professor of Public Health and Education at the Hertie School in Berlin, said:
The assumption that young people are left-wing is wrong. We can speak of a clear shift to the right among the young population. … The AfD has clearly succeeded in presenting itself as a protest party for the traffic lights and as a problem-solver for current concerns.
Among the chief concerns for young people is not climate change, LGBTQ rights, or gender ideology, as the mainstream globalist press might have it, but rising costs and a lower standard of living due to inflation (65%), the wars in Ukraine and the Middle East (60%), and overpriced and scarce housing (54%).
Deteriorating social cohesion, the managerial state’s disproportionate concern for migrants and asylum seekers, the growing risk of an economic crisis, and the prospect of poverty in old age are also worrying vast numbers of young Germans.
Youth sentiments reflect issues raised almost exclusively by the AfD.
This trend isn't unique to Germany. In Sweden SD was more popular among the youngest voters than average. Since more young people are immigrants and less likely to vote SD that means young ethnic Swedes are fairly overrepresented voting SD.
In Poland support for Konfederacja was by far the strongest among young people
Le Pen has done well among young people.
Meanwhile, in the US Young people lean massively democrat and in the UK the tories have essentially lost support among young people. Only 15% of young Brits support the Tories while 60% support labour, with greens and libs being the third and fourth choice.
Why has right wing politics become so heavily correlated with age in the Anglosphere, while it is not in other countries? What can the Anglosphere right do to attract younger people?
functor
1mo ago
I think they’re referring to the 240 US military personnel who were killed by Hezbollah (or rather its immediate precursor) in Beirut in 1983, which is the single highest one-day death toll for the US marines since Iwo Jima and for the entire US military since Vietnam.
That was before Hezbollah. Secondly, they had no business being in Lebanon. The endless warmongering in the middle east has not had a benefit and has had a huge cost. If there were hundreds of foreign soldiers in Lebanon the Lebanese have a full right to hit back. Giving weapons to Ukraine but not acknowledging that the Lebanese have the right to defend their country is hypocritical.
Israel has a neighboring territory flooded with jihadists who are downright and openly genocidal towards Israelis of Jewish ethnic and religious background,
Palestinians have a hostile nation occupying their territory, and they have every right to armed resistance.
functor
1mo ago
now waving the flag of Hezbollah who actually killed a lot of those troops.
If you mean in Syria, not many US soldiers have died in the occupation of Syria. Why on Earth would we respect them? Hillary Clinton's campaign to destabilize Syria via hefty sanctions while the US flooded the country with weapons has been an absolute disaster. Hundreds of thousands of people have died, 13 million refugees of which a great many are in Europe, and the destruction of ancient and Christian culture in the region is nothing to respect.
Hezbollah has had a neighbouring country flooded with jihadists who are down right genocidal toward Hezbollah and Syrians of the same religious and ethnic background as Hezbollah. Why wouldn't they fight? It is absurd to call Ukraine an American interest and then condemn Hezbollah for fighting ISIS next door.
Conservatives make a grave mistake simping for troops. They did absolutely nothing for you. The military industrial complex has wasted trillions, murdered millions and is if anything spying and influencing far more than China and Russia combined.
functor
1mo ago
The big issue for Ukraine isn't bodies to fill the military it is demographics and qualified people.
Soldiers take almost a year to train and cost a fortune to train. It is far more demanding to train a soldier than most college degrees. Militaries require officers, NCOs and people with specialized skills that require far more training. During peak Ukraine hype we were sold the idea that Ukrainians could be trained to do mechanized assaults in half the time it takes a western soldier to do basic training. The idea that Ukrainians can be trained extremely quickly died with the Ukrainian counter offensive.
Ukraine's doctrine has been to pool its veterans and experienced soldiers into elite brigades used for offensive operations and for stopping Russian attacks, while territorial defence forces man most of the trenches. These elite forces are heavily attrited, have gotten far less rest than they need and are worn out. Replacing them is going to require vast resources. The Ukrainian military is still largely using soviet equipment for which they can't get new parts. Replacing their gear with western equipment requires much more training. The median age in the Ukrainian army is 43 and these men have had hard lives. Even if the war ended half their soldiers would be over 50 within 7 years. Ukraine needs to train hundreds of thousands of men. This is not easy in the slightest and will be an enormous drain on European militaries that are not scaled for mass training of soldiers. Most western European countries only train a few thousand soldiers a year. Even Japan only trains 10 000 per year. Ukraine has over 3200 confirmed dead commissioned officers. The number of seriously wounded is probably 2-3 times that. Replacing those officers is expensive and time consuming.
The other issue is that most men aren't suitable for the military and those who are are often the most economically productive men. Removing them from the workforce hurts and the draft encourages them to leave and never come back.
Russia's war aim is to ensure that Ukraine can never join NATO. They can ensure that by having a war against Ukraine if Ukraine tries to join. Militarily wrecking Ukraine and creating a major incentive for Ukrainians to leave are ways Russia can keep Ukraine militarily weak.
functor
1mo ago
There are several million Ukrainians in Russia and around three million Ukrainians have moved to Russia during this war. That isn't people who live on captured territory but people who voluntarily moved to Russia since February 2022. Russia risked losing 10 million Russians by having them live as a minority in a hostile Ukraine and have them slowly integrate in Ukrainian culture. A few million of them have moved to Russia, a few million live in the same place but their home is now controlled by Russia.
Ukraine is losing 4 million or so people in the Donbass, Crimea etc, 3 million moving to Russia and 5 million moving to the EU. This is a country with a birth rate on par with South Korea.
Twitter wasn't meant to be a profitable business. He bought it because it needed reform. He kicked a four digit number of problem employees and greatly improved free speach on the global public square. That is a major achievement.
SpaceX has been the most successful rocket program since the 60s. F9/FH, the dragon capsule have been true game changers. Starship is a complete paradigm shift. It is going to be atleast a decade between Falcon 9 doing a successful landing and anyone else repeating the feat. They made sci fi tech happen. As for starlink they are a global scale ISP with capacity that is several orders of magnitude above everyone else. Starlink is almost profitable as is and has 50% growth per year. There is a lot of potential left with millions of more potential clients. While starship will take several years to get operational it unlocks a giant market as it allows regular cell phone users to send text messages globally and use basic services everywhere in the world.
The launch market has a shortage and the demand is greater than supply. Spacex has costs that are substantially lower than the competition, and demand is growing.
As for Tesla it is probably overvalued but it is in a better position than a lot of legacy car manufacturers. The legacy manufacturers don't have anywhere near the experience with electric cars and face major issues as they have to sunset large portions of their company. Tesla was one of the biggest things to happen to the car industry in decades. Musk became obscenely rich from it. I believe his interest in Tesla will fade away and he will use his Tesla money for other projects.
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