domain:worksinprogress.co
Soviet communism was very murderous, don't get me wrong, but that it killed 40 million Russian people is extremely unlikely. I don't even think that Soviet communism killed 40 million Soviet people or 40 million "people who were living in what used to be the Russian Empire". A figure of maybe about 10 million people who were living in what used to be the Russian Empire killed is more realistic, maybe 15 million at most.
epohon
16hr ago
In a century the scientists will wonder why it suddenly jumped to 170 to 1 during the previous few decades, and will conclude that it was because of patriarchy and toxic masculinity.
epohon
16hr ago
I want to die in my sleep I wanta to die in my sleep I want to deie in my sleep
epohon
16hr ago
And if I'm too much of a coward to end myself before that point, at least I hope I'll have the presence of mind to see that there is no reason other than they're strong and I'm pathetically weak, and so not bother with this pitiful question.
VinoVeritas
4hr ago
The last time I made a post it was a nice thoughtful thing about how Trump should change his mind and leave abortion 'to the states' rather than try to come up with a cut-off date
Speaking plainly, the response was abysmal, and, it turned out Trump did what I thought he should anyway. The time spent writing the post had negative value.
But just for good faith efforts sake on point #1 here is our sectary of state playing guitar in Ukraine while the war rages:
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/05/14/us/politics/blinken-ukraine-guitar.html
I would think this was incredibly humiliating to our people to have our representative act like this, but for the fact we don't really have 'a people' anymore and this is much less humiliating than Biden shaking hands with a ghost or Mitch McConnell having what quite sincerely appeared to be yet another stroke when asked about running for re-election
#2 genocide in Middle East, here is a video of Israeli's destroying aid meant for the millions of people they've made homeless, and are now pushing out of their squalid refugee camps. https://youtube.com/watch?v=3wfQtRgcZ_I
It is unthinkable to me that any adult with full cognitive faculties could think these people were the good guys chosen by God. But, it is not a surprise to me at this point that millions of seemingly adult people are actually functionally children who only do as they're told. The irony that the bible could not be more explicit that Christ-denying Jews were not grafted into the Tree of the Covenant is just the cherry on top
#3 There are 10's of thousands of people crossing the border illegally every day in every western country and nobody seems to care beyond how we're going to raise more taxes to pay for them. Our already destroyed cities are having their dicks ground into the dirt. The tallest highrise in St Louis just sold for like $3 million bucks. Denver is literally broke from it https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/denver-only-has-enough-money-to-fund-migrants-for-two-more-months/ar-BB1hRFYT?ocid=entnewsntp&pc=LCTS&cvid=54d5d35986d04a1ca96ee78f18d7de36&ei=17 (that story was from 3 months ago)
epohon
13hr ago
Judging by four years ago, the hysteria will ramp up steeply right about now. He is an obvious rallying point.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
13hr ago
I don’t know about that.
The American right has plenty of history with speech restrictions, especially around sexual content. DeSantis is not breaking new ground. He’s approaching from a more secular angle, but it’s the same old song and dance of a Moral Majority. Same for Texas jurisprudence.
Nor is the situation uniquely dire for the right! Keep in mind previous acts of defying the Feds have ended with the 101st Airborne deployed to high school. Or at least a good old FBI shootout. Compared to that the cultural and legal battles are tame.
I think what you’re observing is better explained by the libertarian wing receding from its high-water mark during Obama’s presidency. Trump’s branding has polarized the Republican base and it dominates any media coverage.
Stefferi
Chief Suomiposter
14hr ago
Yes, the biggest Soviet killings would have been the Holodomor, Kazakh famine, ethnic campaigns and the Great Purge, the three first of which mainly implicitly or explicitly targeted other ethnicities than Russians (unless one is Great-Russian enough in mentality to just consider Ukrainians to be funny-speaking Russians) and the last targetting communists of all ethnicities.
netstack
Texas is freedom land
16hr ago
Cute narrative, but demonstrably false.
[Taylor’s lawyer] Varghese continued: “Remember, these are all political appointees, and I don’t see a judge granting him bail pending appeal. So we may try, we may try and pray, but it’s highly unlikely.”
I think you’ll have a very hard time finding right-wingers happy to bend over and take it. What’s more universal than blaming the people in charge?
netstack
Texas is freedom land
12hr ago
Sliders was pretty clear about 2021 as an inflection point. In my opinion, that’s way too late.
The current backlash is a development of populism which has been brewing (at least) since Obama was in office. Crediting DeSantis and Abbott with reinventing conservative opposition? That’s the same kind of mistake as people insisting Trump is going to abolish democracy. He’s not special. They’re not special. For that matter, Obama wasn’t special, either. The situation circa 2010 was uniquely suited to a libertarian opposition. Since then, that support has been redirected to Trump’s platform.
Describing that as “the right realizing they were in a war” is, uh, cope.
Outlaw83
4hr ago
No, it's because almost every woman who of even moderate attractiveness has dealt with weirdness from a decent amount of men, from a pretty young age, and it turns out, they don't like it very much.
This isn't a political, ideological, or social thing, as seen by the almost regular stories of pastors and priests doing things people claim people preforming at DQSH do, and by the same token, the stories of creepy men in various liberal-coded spheres.
Outlaw83
4hr ago
"Both single men and single women lived under the surveillance and control of their social circle to a degree."
Yet, somehow, prostitutes continued to be healthily employed in every major and probably minor European city even during the most buttoned up times. Which proves the feminists point - there was never actually true equality, even in repression.
Outlaw83
4hr ago
As a leftie, there was no way to get Medicare for All from Pelosi, because not only does M4A not have the 218 votes you need in the House, it'd die on the Senate. All that would result of such a vote is a bunch of terrible primary challenges that would fail, because the median Democrat, while preferring Medicare for All, it's not a support it or else issue. Stuff like abortion, gay rights, thinking Trump is bad, those are actually support or else issues to the Democratic base of African-American women, suburban Mom's and so on.
Plus, in the long run, Biden did far more of what lefties expected economically. Unfortunately, some of the dumber ones are now upset about that full employment and higher wages means higher prices for Chipotle or Doordash.
2rafa
4hr ago
Most of those things are discussed pretty regularly here. Others are just uninteresting. Another dissident right personage turns out to be Jewish? At this stage it would be surprising if someone prominent on the DR wasn’t Jewish (Sailer DNA test reveal when). Big price rises in the US, particularly in service (stuff like fast food etc) are just due to labor shortage related pay increases for the poorest workers since 2020, they’re not hugely interesting. Day traders being retarded again? As I recall the statistics showing, something like 95-99% of them lose money in the long term. Eurovision being gay and weird, really? (Also this was literally a discussion last week).
If you have a good idea, make a top-level comment.
jacksonjules
12hr ago
It was quite the statement to throw out there, but it's true. If black people's natural inclination was towards monogamy, you would see monogamy be the dominant mode of relationship in African countries. Or if you want to argue colonialism is responsible for Africa's current state, there would be large reservoirs of archeological evidence showing monogamy in pre-modern African societies. But we don't see that.
I would argue where my statement was misleading is that monogamy isn't natural for any race. But still, there are degrees: it's easier for whites and Asians than it is for black people.
pusher_robot
PLEASE GO STAND BY THE STAIRS
15hr ago
Wouldn't you rather die in a war?
RegularlyExpressed
17hr ago
Are you going to claim that Israel hasn't been exerting any kind of pressure or influence in Gaza since 2005?
The influence they've exerted since 2005 has been driven primarily by Hamas who keep starting conflicts with them. Unless the Irish think that Israel should just sit there and not respond to rocket fire and massacres like 10/7?
Even if you grant that absurd falsehood, the idea that their actions prior to 2005 couldn't have any kind of lingering impact is equally farcical.
I'm also not sure what this is supposed to suggest. Would it be acceptable for the IRA to conduct acts of terrorism against the British due to the lingering impact of British colonialism in Ireland? Or for the Taliban to keep hijacking airplanes because of the lingering impact of the USA in Afghanistan? Why even grant any diplomatic concession to an adversary if your prior acts are apparantly justification for continued violence on their part?
If a people lacking a living memory of their land is enough to deny their claim to it, why should Israel exist at all given that none of the zionists and British people involved in creating it had any living memory of it either?
Israel should exist for the same reason any country should exist - the vast majority of people living there are born there and have no where else to live, and as such it's their home. The founding myth or original claim or whatever you want to call it is irrelevant. It wasn't justifiable for the original European settlers in the US to displace the native population, but no one sane is suggesting that descendents of the natives should be allowed to carry out mass rape and murder of Americans with European ancestry. Same argument applies to Australia, Canada, the Saxons displacing the Brits, the Vikings displacing lots of Saxons etc. etc.
hydroacetylene
18hr ago
What dataset are you going off? The famed ranking of dog breeds by intelligence is a ranking of trainability, a complex measure which includes intelligence. Many breeds(eg huskies) are famously intelligent but non cooperative; most wolf-dog hybrid breeds fall in this category and many were actually developed to be better for more complex working-dog tasks at the cost of being more likely to savage people, and wolves have physically bigger brains- which is correlated to intelligence with people.
I’m not doubting that there might be a dog breed which is on average smarter than wolves. I don’t think it particularly likely, but I’d like to see the data which isn’t just trainability data if you think there is one.
TowardsPanna
19hr ago
Don't have the time, so I'll delete the comment.
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
20hr ago
Being a "True Opponent" of either Putin (and establishment in Russia) or Obama (and establishment in US) does not have the same result. So by "True Opponent", what do you mean exactly?
AhhhTheFrench
We will sell no wine before its time
21hr ago
Good writeup of basic economic policy and how it could impact currency valuations. Yes this is what happens when a place like Mexico or Venezuela starts reneging on their promises or nationalizing industries, capital flight, to places like the USA! Even it times of total crisis for the whole world, like in 2010, capital still came here and the value of the Dollar actually went up.
Yes if we nationalized every company and didn't pay out investors, stopped paying our debts etc....overnight. The value of the dollar would crater, It would be bad for the future of America, but now I that I'm thinking about it, what is the total value of all assets in the USA? 135 Trillion according to a quick search. That is enough to give every man woman and child ownership over $400,000 dollars (in assets) So a family of four would get $1.6 Million. So it could be an attractive short term play for a certain "Pay me now" segment of the population.
I'm not advocating for anything like that. What I've been saying here all along that within this new landscape of worldwide fiat currencies MMT is the only way to play. You don't go back to a gold or crypto deflationary hoarding mentality where the economy is constrained by tokens of wealth.(This caused a few major problems in the past if you recall)
You treat money like what it is, an idea to be experimented and played with for the betterment of your country, to get the most real resources for the least value in return. To do otherwise is to place your country at a major handicap for no reason other than stubbornness. As I have pointed out several times the USA is uniquely positioned to take this theory as far as it can be pushed due among other things to the complete financial, technical and military dominance that has allowed it to become the world's #1 reserve currency.
yellowgreenred
22hr ago
Yes, it does change the conclusion. The sample size is too small to extrapolate from, hence why the far-right talking point you reference is nonsense.
Why do you care about ink smudges on dead wood? The only thing that matters is who can kill or indefinitely imprison whom without any consequences. There is no tooth fairy, and there is no constitution.
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