domain:youtube.com
hydroacetylene
2hr ago
Again, those things are bad, but what makes Jews special?
TowardsPanna
2hr ago
The Jew-targeting wasn’t what made the Holocaust evil. The mass murder was.
Are you forgetting the 10+ years of worse and worse bullying, terrorizing, marginalization, robbery, deportations, starvation, pogroms, slave labor, etc - gradually worsening systematic destruction of every jew and group of jews at the level of body, mind and soul? It wasn't just killing. The sadistic, dehumanizing killing process started a very long time before their eyes closed on this world.
In somewhat similar vein I care not a zilch about some acquaintances’ complaints about AI coming to music and overriding everything with slop. From my point of view that already happened 25 years ago, only with human slop (aka modern trends) not just overwhelming quality stuff in volume but outright putting it in front of execution squad and pulling all the triggers at once to ensure none of it remains except as old recordings.
successfully pivoted
There was no pivot; Easterners were always going to vote for themselves and were hungry for an excuse.
a hate symbol during the trucker protests
Who/whom. The flag being used to represent people it's not intended to represent, in a way it wasn't made to represent them, is powerful symbolism. Same thing with the SuperStraight flag- the Canadian flag is for Easterners, by Easterners; that tree doesn't naturally grow outside Upper/Lower Canada.
He invoked concepts of [the East has the moral right to fuck up everything]
Indeed.
Cons only win if the left is split
The West (the free, productive part of Canada) only wins when the East is split. The NDP/Western Left- what used to be our mechanism of co-operation between West and East- has collapsed in favor of Eastern imperialism (the Western Left tried to out-East the East and failed). We were on the road to reconciliation, but Easterners blew it up, and they did so deliberately because they wanted to play culture warrior.
We have very little national identity to begin with
Fortunately for the rest of us, the Easterners are hell-bent on sabotaging it every chance they get. We'd be better off on our own.
yunyun333
2hr ago
The U.K. is apparently going to buy U.S. Beef
Britain and the EU won't buy beef from hormone-fed cattle. The way they talk about it, this probably won't change.
Ukraine Mineral Deal
As discussed previously this is a nothingburger, but if it makes Trump happy, good job Zelensky.
cjet79
2hr ago
skimming through the volumes I didn't find many references to concentration camps. (I did find one in volume 6 that was complaining the germans would starve if too much german land was given to poland, the comparison was with how terrible the conditions would be in a german concentration camp).
But I'm also realizing how much of a nothingburger this is. This was basically a dry administrative account of the war effort. The bombing of Dresden gets a single line. Hiroshima only gets mentioned 4 times. Only one of which is to dryly mention that it was nuked.
Even finding references to London being bombed was difficult.
One of the few times the nuremberg trials came up was in reference to a massacre of polish officers that was probably carried out by the Russians. The reason it was brought up is that it was causing frictions between Russia and Poland, and Churchill just wanted to smooth over those frictions.
This is the exact quality of evidence I'm talking about with the conspiracy theory thing. "Why did this news station say a thing on 9/11 and then never talk about it again? Must be because they were silenced!" Nevermind that they were confused and scared on the day it happened.
"Why doesn't churchill mention it in his super high level summary of the war effort?! Must be cuz it didn't really happen." Nevermind that he directly mentions it elsewhere in different works.
The_Nybbler
In the game of roller derby, women aren't just the opposing team; they're the ball.
2hr ago
There is no way to counterbalance a population where there's a massive class of consumers (the old and decrepit) and not nearly enough producers (young-middle aged workers) to keep everyone at a reasonable standard of living.
Yes, there is. "Keep everyone at a reasonable standard of living" is not a requirement for what remains a Communist dictatorship.
Grant_us_eyes
3hr ago
Given all the horror stories I've casually heard regarding chinese sellers and re-sellers on Amazon, I doubt they care at all.
FiveHourMarathon
Wawa Nationalist
3hr ago
So, I ask- what makes the Holocaust worse than the holodomor to you?
Killing all the members of a group is worse than killing a lot of people.
Genocide, in its literal sense of cide ie completely killing a genos ie an ethnicity or race, is viewed as uniquely bad because of reification of race and ethnicity as concepts. Stalin killed many millions of Slavs, but there was no possibility that he would kill all of them, that left to his own devices there would be no more Slavs remaining. Hitler killed many millions of Jews, and his intention was very much that there would be zero Jews remaining in the areas under his control at the conclusion of his process. Hitler's intention was to exterminate the Jews, Stalin's was never to exterminate the Ukrainians.
So I think the core of privileging killing millions of Jews over killing an equivalent number of Slavs is simply that there are more Slavs, while Jews were reasonably close to being, as it were, an endangered species. The number of Jews has been permanently reduced, the number of Slavs remains large. The rule would be: It's worse to kill all of some group than it is to kill 10% of a 10x larger group.
With regards to animal species, where we can say definitively that two species aren't equivalent and one can't produce the other, I agree with this concept. I'd find it much more abhorrent to kill a California Condor than to kill a Turkey Buzzard, and I'd find it almost infinitely more abhorrent to kill 500 California Condors than to kill 500 or 5,000 or even 50,000 Turkey Buzzards; regardless of the method or motive or degree of cruelty involved. Because the death of a Turkey Buzzard (1/5,600,000 in the USA) is just the death of a bird; the death of a California Condor removes a piece of genetic diversity from the world, some fraction of some utils from everyone.
With regards to humans, I'm a little more skeptical but still see the logic. This attitude reflects a reification of the idea of nationality and race as ideas more important than mere lives. If one recognizes a superhuman value attached to the idea of a nationality as a cultural project, ending that cultural project is much worse than mere murder. If one deeply believes in HBD and one values diversity, either genetic or cultural or whatever, then wiping out a branch of the tree of life is much worse than merely killing a lot of folks.
If one identifies instead by class, than one ends up at Mao's infamous remarks on the subject of nuclear war: Mao expounded at an international conference that China had (at the time) 700 million people, and that even if half of them were wiped out in Nuclear War the remaining 350 million would be able to build world socialism. An Italian communist asked how many Italians would survive. Mao replied "None, but what makes you think Italians are so important to World History?" For a Communist, whose identification is with the international proletariat rather than with race or class, killing every Italian is a small price to pay for permanent liberation from Capital.
Of course this adds obstacles to the cultural diversity arguments. Ok, you still have Ukrainians, but you killed all the Kulaks, so you lost their culture, you lost their unique class of genetics, you might still have Ukrainians but they're not the same Ukrainians. But this lapses quickly into absurdity: any cultural change reduces diversity by killing off what came before, and any lack of cultural change kills off what might have been. Humans are malleable.
faceh
3hr ago
Unless China is absolutely fudging their population numbers to UNDERCOUNT their population drastically (which would be a galaxy-brained move) then they are absolutely fucked in the medium term. There is no way to counterbalance a population where there's a massive class of consumers (the old and decrepit) and not nearly enough producers (young-middle aged workers) to keep everyone at a reasonable standard of living.
Its baked in. The collapse will come, Wile-E-Coyote already ran off the cliff, but they may be able to keep him from looking down for a while with propaganda and manipulation, or manage the fall down better than expected.
TowardsPanna
3hr ago
Rat Award 🏅
Primaprimaprima
...something all admit only "TRUMP", and the Trump Administration, can do.
3hr ago
Recently from Slavoj Zizek: THE POPE IS DEAD, ANTI-CHRIST IS ALIVE AND KICKING
I'm curious what the actual (theistic) Christians here think of Zizek's "Christian atheism" and his conception of Christian love.
More precisely, in the Scriptures there are four terms for love: eros (sexual love), storge (parental/familial love), philia (asexual affection/friendship), and agape (the unconditional love that unites individuals who dedicate their lives to a Cause). At the level of agape, feelings (sexual or not) no longer matter; what remains is just the Holy Spirit, an egalitarian community of comrades dedicated to a Cause. Terry Eagleton, a Catholic Marxist, was right: agape should be translated as political love. As a comrade, I can involve myself sexually with another comrade, I can become his or her friend, but this doesn’t really matter: if the situation of a struggle demands it, I should be ready to betray him or her, because only the Cause matters. And if my comrade is a true comrade, he or she will fully understand me and even despise me if I allow any weakness for him or her to overcome my fidelity to the shared cause and am not ready to betray him or her. My position here is that of Louis Althusser, who in 1980 gave an interview to Italian TV in Rome, where he said:
“I became a Communist because I was Catholic. I did not change religion, but I remained profoundly Catholic. I don’t go to church, but this doesn’t matter; you don’t ask people to go to church today. I remained a Catholic, that is to say, an internationalist universalist. I thought that inside the Communist Party there were more adequate means to realize universal fraternity.”
I don't expect Christians today to be lining up to join the local Communist Party. It is my view that, more often than not, actually-existing communist movements have been little more than a thin veneer of respectability over the ambitions of power-hungry sociopaths. But isn't there still a kernel of truth here? Isn't there something, as was articulated in last week's discussion, "quasi-communist" about Christianity? Is not the doctrinal communist ideal -- the universal fraternity of man, sacrifice for those who are in need, "the last shall be first" -- ultimately just an expression of universal Christian love? Should Christians not view communists as fellow travelers who are correct about certain fundamental principles, but misguided on method?
[...] That’s why love should be paradoxically commanded. “My command is this: Love each other as I have loved you” (John 15:12). The key resides in the last words: “as I have loved you”—here the vanishing mediator is located. Padre Nogaro is right to emphasize that true love is not mediated, that it links us directly to a neighbor. I would only add that this is why Christ is a vanishing mediator: only through Christ as a vanishing mediator can we love our neighbor directly, without mediation. At its highest, love is not a spontaneous feeling (which, of course, cannot be commanded); it is a practice of how I deal with others. True love is cold, not sentimental. To attain true love, we have to reach beyond humanism: even loving all of humanity directly is not enough—Christ has to be here. Why? Because we are fallen.
There is a certain basic paradox that presents itself when one begins to interrogate the concept of love: do you love me for who I am, substantially, in essentia, or do you love me for my qualities and properties? You say that you love me because I'm smart, because I'm funny, because I'm beautiful; but suppose that I were not smart, nor funny, nor beautiful. Would you still love me then?
Either horn of the dilemma presents an issue. If your love for your beloved is contingent on them possessing some particular quality, then you are liable to the charge that you don't really love the person: what you really love is that quality. You are a lover of intelligence, or humor, or beauty, but not of that particular person. But if you say that you would continue to love the person regardless of any qualities they possess whatsoever, even if they were stripped of all qualities and left only as a "bare particular", then it would seem that your choice is entirely arbitrary and without justification; for what could be motivating your choice if it is made in the absence of all qualities? And a baseless arbitrary choice cannot constitute love either. The conclusion we draw is that, if there is such a thing as "love" at all, it belongs to the domain of the unsayable.
Thus Zizek suggests that true love should be "cold" rather than "sentimental". Powerful sentiments suggest that one is fixated too strongly on the secondary qualities of the object, rather than the obligation of love proper. Love is seen to have an almost Kantian character: the bloom of pleasure is a stain on the perfect austerity of duty. Christ is then interpreted as the formal condition of possibility that both binds us to this duty and makes its realization conceivable; Christ must not be "made into a direct object of love who can compete with other objects", for otherwise "things can go terribly wrong". (In particular, it opens the door to transactional thinking; if He Himself told you that all of humanity was saved, but you alone were damned; would you still love him? Would you still love him even if he wasn't living up to "his end of the bargain"? An authentic conception of Christian love has to confront this possibility.)
100ProofTollBooth
Dumber than a man, but faster than a dog.
3hr ago
Oh, I think you were right and have a very valid point.
In regards to "high art" literature, I think we're going to see a revenge of the typewriter. Writers will make a point to not only not use AI, but to disconnect entirely and write only from inside their own brain. I earnestly believe some will even resort to using typewriters again as a verifiable medium - there's no way I AI'ed this. Hell, maybe some will even return to longhand.
And this will create both excellent literature, and a snobbery class of weirdo "purebread writers" who still turn out slop, but they do it with artisanal pencils and free-range raised tree paper.
naraburns
nihil supernum
3hr ago
One could argue that both the Enlightenment and the later Progressive moment falsely took credit for quality of living improvements that were actually just the result of the Industrial Revolution
I mean, this is pretty much Marx's whole schtick, isn't it?
My own view is that ideas and material reality are mutually intertwined, but I doubt "it's both, really" is a position that will raise anyone's eyebrows. The hard part is explaining exactly how each influences the other, and I've never encountered a fully satisfactory approach to that question. Clearly, sometimes people think new thoughts and do new things. Clearly, sometimes their success in doing so depends on the conditions of material reality. And equally clearly, sometimes the conditions of material reality are the result of people thinking new thoughts and doing new things.
But mostly, Nothing Ever Happens, which makes the fact that anything has ever Happened at all, all the more puzzling. This is at heart the same argument Parmenides ("change is an illusion") had with Heraclitus ("sameness is an illusion"), which Plato "resolved" by saying--of course--"it's both, really."
How does this line up with your personal predictions for how this was going to proceed?
Giving myself credit for calling this one, although we can quibble over exact timing. I tried to keep my head down a bit until the outcome could truly be called.
Quoth me:
So my full expectation is that there will be a couple weeks of rapidfire and rough negotiations with some touch-and-go moments, but ultimately other nations will do the needful and come the end of April Trump will make a YUUUGE fanfare about signing Tariff reductions and trade agreements with those countries that capitulated, and markets will 'correct course.'
(I solemnly swear I didn't edit anything material in this post to make my prediction look better)
and
I will precommit now, that if other countries actively take steps to reduce tariffs and otherwise appease Trump's demands and Trump is too temperamental to accept these offers in good faith and we still have most of these Tarriffs in place at the same levels come May 2nd 2025 (unless real deals are pending come that date), it is a bad thing and we will be in for some rough times. I will criticize/condemn Trump and Co. in no uncertain terms.
I think my May 2nd deadline was also met, since China was technically the ONLY holdout that still had massive Tariffs on it at that point.
And then there's this bit from the OP article:
U.S. stocks rallied hard on the announcement. Futures contracts for the U.S. benchmark S&P 500 index gained by 2.5 percent, putting the index higher than where it was before the “Liberation Day” package, after it had fallen by more than 12 percent.
Remember what I said up there: "and markets will 'correct course.'
I'm sure there will be other disruptions, but someone can probably run some numbers and tell me if this recovery basically makes all the turmoil of early April a wash in terms of broad economic impact (on the markets, that is). WHICH IS TO SAY, if all the doomsaying and gnashing of teeth at the time was... premature and melodramatic.
I continue to think my Model of Trump is far better at predicting his actions than virtually any pundit out there, and he's far more of a rational actor than even people here credit him. Yes, I'll accept the argument that Trump backed down faster because he was afraid of really breaking something, but the whole argument is over whether the U.S. will find itself in a stronger position after all this is done. I see this as evidence that yes, the U.S. will be able to reduce global 'paper' barriers to trade, and other countries may be handing over some tribute to the U.S. to keep in its good graces for the next few years.
The one thing I admit surprise over is that there's been relatively few deals regarding the purchase of U.S. goods OR offers to sell foreign resources. The U.K. is apparently going to buy U.S. Beef, and the Ukraine Mineral Deal is signed, and I guess there's some additional deals with Vietnam. Honestly I can say I thought there'd be more capitulation by now, but now there's a new deadline in place.
So maybe Trump hasn't brought home the bacon just yet.
To add on to my prediction, I'll say I expect that the 'final' deals being worked on during the pause will start getting executed BEFORE the one month countdown mark hits, that is we should start seeing them in the next 60 days.
I do expect more hard agreements for purchases of resources and goods, and I ALSO expect some legislation might follow that is designed to bolster U.S. manufacturing for military purposes (i.e. aimed at onshoring factories that can produce tanks, ammunition, planes, and ESPECIALLY boats).
As we get a bit closer to the deadline, I might take a stab at guessing which countries might try calling his bluff and letting the timer run out. I'm not so blind as to expect everything to go completely smoothly. I wouldn't have called the India-Pakistan kerfuffle starting up for example.
hooser
3hr ago
If anyone has an example of "this is how I use it for work/at home and it really saves me time and mental energy", I'd be glad to hear.
I wanted to make slow-rising pizza dough from scratch. The online slow-rising whole-wheat bread recipe I liked gave all proportion in weights. I don't have a cooking scale. So I uploaded it to Claude and asked it to convert the recipe to cup measurements. I noticed the water-to-flour ratio has changed, so I had it explain why, and learned quite a bit about the role protein plays in dough. Then I had it re-do the recipe, substituting semolina for a quarter of the flour. Finally, I had it scale the recipe for two particularly sized pizzas I planned to make. Time: about 10 minutes, because I side-tracked into the protein thing and had to check it out elsewhere.
Two days later, I get two delicious pizzas.
Pynewacket
3hr ago
Just saw this bit of news:
https://religionnews.com/2025/05/12/episcopal-church-ends-refugee-resettlement-citing-moral-opposition-to-resettling-white-afrikaners/]https://religionnews.com/2025/05/12/episcopal-church-ends-refugee-resettlement-citing-moral-opposition-to-resettling-white-afrikaners/
with the title of "Episcopal Church refuses to resettle white Afrikaners, ends partnership with US government". Thinking that it was a case of sensationalizing the tittle to attract clicks to a more moderate news article I opened the page. Oh boy was I disappointed.
While the majority of the article was more as a moralizing plea for the resumption of resettlement programs, the beginning at least was what it said in the title. The episcopal church will end its partnership with the US government due to being asked to benefit white south africans.
...we have determined that, by the end of the federal fiscal year, we will conclude our refugee resettlement grant agreements with the U.S. federal government.
Why are they doing that?, in their words, because they are pro racial justice:
In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step
It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years.
Maybe the next step in the Trump Administrations should be to show that welfare programs benefit a majority of white people or something like that?
Link to the letter from the Church - https://www.episcopalchurch.org/publicaffairs/letter-from-presiding-bishop-sean-rowe-on-episcopal-migration-ministries/
Reading the letter, I'm struck by the notion that the way they talk about their operations is not so different than what an international corporation does. Bits like
We have served nearly 110,000 refugees during this time, many of whom are now American citizens and beloved members of our communities, workplaces, and neighborhoods.
Just substitute refugees by clients and then it makes sense why they are so gung ho about adding more bodies through this kind of partnerships. They win twice, once by getting money from the federal gevernment and once more with some of those resetled contributing to the church itself, be it through economic donations or voluntary work.
We are working with the affected staff members to provide extensive outplacement services and severance packages.
in reference to their winding down of their resettlement services makes me think Corpo. And it's logical if one thinks about it for a moment, but for some reason it never occurred to me that churches aren't that diferent from other NGO's.
While our public-private partnership as a refugee resettlement agency is no longer viable.
Finally, this last bit is maybe the real reason why they are finishing their services and not just out right anti-white racism, but it is curious that it is buried in the body of the letter and the woke justification is front and center in the opening paragraphs. But one salient point against this theory of mine is that it looks like they are ending services due to the white Afrikaneers, not because the pause in the resetlement programs. This is further reinforced when the original news article mentions that
Four of the faith groups have since filed two separate lawsuits, one of which recently resulted in a ruling that should have restarted the program.
so it sounds to me, like these NGO's were hopping to lawfare their way into opening the money faucet at the through again, but at least for the Episcopal church dealing with whites with "preferential treatment" is too much.
Bartender_Venator
3hr ago
Happy to give any recs based on what you're looking for, I happen know a thing or two about Junger. Have one book and a half left before I've finished his entire (translated) bibliography (and "Bartender Venator" is chosen after the protagonist of his novel Eumeswil).
RaiderOfALostTusken
3hr ago
Essentially this took place about the time Donald Trump was elected. It coincided with an inevitable election that we knew was going to be called. Trudeau (polling at catastrophically low numbers) dipped out, and Mark Carney took over the (floundering) Liberal Party. He successfully pivoted and ran on a very nationalist campaign (in opposition to USA/Trump), successfully outflanking the previously ascendant Conservative Party. Rallies were full of Canada imagery, flags (a hate symbol during the trucker protests), colors. He invoked concepts of monarchy, John A McDonald (previously, a genocider). And the NDP (our leftist party) collapsed enough to hand him the victory. (Cons only win if the left is split).
Canada exists as a nation only in opposition to what happens in the states. We have very little national identity to begin with - funny that the old rich white guy who won the election by tapping into boomer nationalist fervor was a liberal, but these are strange times.
charles
3hr ago
Years ago I worked in an urban liquor store and the owner would actually receive promotional mailers about which products were about to be featured in songs/videos by which rappers so stores could stock up. Its not just cognac (really just Hennesy and Remi Martin, black consumers don't buy brands they haven't heard of), Snoop Dog personally caused a spike in Seagram's gin in the early 90's that lasted a decade. Rappers have been moving Grey Goose for years. Any popular rapper mentioning by name any liquor or luxury brand of anything really (cars, clothes, shoes etc) can potentially give the product a significant bump.
ABigGuy4U
3hr ago
The Motte doesn’t like unions because most of the Motte works in Sillicon Valley where until recently individual employees had a large amount of leverage. In five years when they’ve all been fired they will probably feel differently about the idea.
ABigGuy4U
3hr ago
But today if you've "caught the vision" of progressivism, you needn't pursue it very long to discover that the low-hanging fruit is well and truly plucked.
One could argue that both the Enlightenment and the later Progressive moment falsely took credit for quality of living improvements that were actually just the result of the Industrial Revolution and the uncorking of more and more energetically concentrated fossil fuels. When the quality of the gas stopped getting better and better all the supposedly related social improvements suspiciously stopped.
faceh
3hr ago
This is actually a very defensible position
It was a very defensible position every time, then some new advance blew past it.
I'll listen to the defense, but I'm not placing my bets on that side.
UnopenedEnvilope
3hr ago
In terms of slop, I’m surprised Amazon hasn’t cracked down on AI-generated knockoff scams. I recently purchased Graydon Carter’s new memoir, and in searching for “Graydon Carter memoir”, the first result returned was the actual hardcover, When the Going Was Good: An Editor’s Adventures During the Last Golden Age of Magazines.
Then, the AI-generated paperbacks and e-books immediately followed: Graydon Carter Memoir 2025: From the Golden Age of Mazines to the Digital…, Graydon Carter Memoir 2025: When the Going Was Grand, Graydon Carter Memoir: When the Going Was Perfect, Graydon Carter: The Biography…
Perhaps Amazon is just dealing with a game of whack-a-mole, or maybe they don’t really care?
Communism and Christianity are fundamentally incompatible because Christianity’s is individualistic. Every soul matters. Every soul is redeemable. There are no chosen people. Every person is worthy of god’s love.
These ideas are destructive to communism, which is a collectivist ideology. Christians are saying that you should love each other, and that people are all, each, valuable individuals—communism says you should love each other insofar as it serves the emergent gestalt that sits on top of it.
How to integrate this into a functioning society: hardcore individualistic ruthless capitalism is in tension with the morals of the religion. Christian ethics act as a governor which serves to prevent stuff like becoming a wage slave to Amazon, and aborting your children so you can keep working.
You need both of these things, although the “hardcore ruthless capitalism” I’m talking about is not so much a “thing” as it is the base state of human existence. You have the base individualism, free association, etc. and then are Christian morals on top of it to make it all work.
More options
Context Copy link