domain:imgur.com
Stellula
1m ago
A lot of the posters here are just very bad communicators who are good at writing gigantic, very low entropy walls of text.[1]
Those walls of text have become semi-required by the moderators[2].
Thus: normal posters don’t post about any of these (interesting almost always fruitful for discussion) topics because they don’t want to get banned. I suspect that most of the interesting people have already left the party, but unfortunately I don’t know where went.
[1]: If you are into cryptocurrency, watch the episode of Alexi Friedman with the founder of Cardano on it. He talks for like 6 hours and says NOTHING. This is a good example of what a 2024 motte poster does in most top level posts.
[2]: Yes cjet as you say every single time anybody complains about this topic there is no length requirement. And yet: yes there is.
FiveHourMarathon
You can get anything here except red ink
2m ago
Describing the approach the communist leaders adopted towards their enemies as "identity politics". As I and many others use the term, "identity politics" refers to politics based on immutable identity characteristics (race, sex, caste, ethnicity etc.). It appears that (with the possible exception of the aristocracy, depending on how hereditary privileges worked at the time), none of the groups targeted by the communist regime meet this description: kulaks can sell their land and immediately become non-kulaks, industrialists can sell their factories.
This doesn't really hold within the Soviet system.
First, birth-class was not so easily washed away for many. It was probably true that a lower-class Kulak could slip into the category of Laborer easily enough by divesting himself of his goods, but he would not have the option of selling them for cash, he would need to donate them or otherwise expropriate himself while carefully avoiding accumulating anything.
Second, the Soviet system did not entirely allow people to renounce their prior statements. If you were once a Capitalist, and made any public statements to that effect, it was difficult if not impossible to "convert." You might succeed, but you might fail, you would never be truly safe.
Consider the Duc D'Egalite:
In 1792, during the Revolution, Louis Philippe changed his name to Philippe Égalité. He was a cousin of King Louis XVI and one of the wealthiest men in France. He actively supported the Revolution of 1789, and was a strong advocate for the elimination of the present absolute monarchy in favor of a constitutional monarchy. Égalité voted for the death of Louis XVI; however, he was himself guillotined in 1793 during the Reign of Terror. His son, also named Louis Philippe, became King of the French after the July Revolution of 1830. After Louis Philippe II, the term Orléanist came to be attached to the movement in France that favored a constitutional monarchy.
Tollund_Man4
3m ago
Lady flashing her tits at the Times Square portal
On the Dublin side there was a guy showing photos of 9/11, another guy snorting coke, a guy showing his ass and a homeless woman raving before being taken away by police, it’ll be funny if some tit flashing is what gets remembered as the true scandal.
I take your point, but on the other hand, think of it this way: the American Revolution, the French Revolution(s) and the Russian Revolution were all radical overhauls of society that required tens of thousands of people to die for the movement to succeed. That seems like valuable information that shouldn't necessarily be discarded in a general analysis unless you are performing a specific comparison of one armed revolutionary movement* against another.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reign_of_Terror https://www.history.com/news/revolutionary-war-deaths
*The question of how far you can hold an ideology responsible for the movements that it produces is vexed, obviously, but if there's a strongish link between a given ideology and violent rebellion I think you have to take that into account to some degree.
Botond173
7m ago
At this point, what would it even need to be contained from? It seems to me that the entire rationalist / new atheist sphere is moribund.
Botond173
9m ago
I, for one, would love to hear from Atlanticists and Putinists as well what they think the endgame is here. No, really. Like, what?
Botond173
11m ago
So a bit of a time ago there was a discussion here about the gender war, demographic implosion and political male-female divide in South Korea. @rokmonster stated that "Seoul is the only city worth living in [there]" as self-evident fact, apparently.
As someone who knows little about Korea, I find this puzzling. Aren't there other large cities there? I'm sure there are. Are they really that bad? And if yes, what is "that"?
quiet_NaN
21m ago
I think replying "That seems like a pretty controversial claim, do you have any evidence to back it up, my evidence for it not being true is so-and-so".
The (I guess) inflammatory statement was part of the top level post, which to me seems like a clear example of an effort-post. If the post was just this one statement, I think our mods would likely have asked the submitter to put more effort in by proactively providing evidence. But if one cancels every lengthy post which contains some claim which might be controversial and is not backed by evidence then there will be very few posts left.
No_one
21m ago
People don't want to talk about the war because
-
by and large, the west is losing it because of bad procurement, industrial output and planning
-
despite their skepticism about particulars -wokism, governance, I'm betting most people here are in favor of US hegemony and see the countries involved as somehow 'theirs' - something like the nationalist delusion. No, they aren't. The countries belong to people who have power and influence in them - and that ain't you unless you're a billionaire with an entire department of lobbyists and a prominent position in CFR etc.
-
it's a rather gnarly affair, entirely possible there's been up to half a milion dead by now, 3/4 of that Ukrainian. I'm basing that claim on the estimates of amputees being 25-50k according to press quoting charities, and the amputee/KIA ratio being certainly somewhere between 6 (GWOT) to cca 30 (WW1).
So, it's perfectly clear why we aren't talking about it.
Botond173
28m ago
Yes, it was fine. And it's not like the current social regime is not as unjust in other aspects, so it doesn't matter.
Anyway, why are you also bringing up inequality? This entire subject has nothing to do with inequality.
AvocadoPanic
43m ago
Not to answer for @VinoVeritas I suspect he's referring to Romans 11.
What are branches? Some are broken off, others grafted on.
Christ denying jews being outside the covenant is news to you?
zeke5123a
47m ago
The influencer looked hot. Didn’t mind it. I’m sure the Irish didn’t mind it either….
sliders1234
48m ago
My issue with his post was all those issues seem beaten like a dead horse already.
For the DR it’s funny but Milei claims he’s a little Jewish. And seems to have all but officially converted.
I have accepted my Jewish overlords. May they be kind to me.
sun_the_second
1hr ago
Visiting brothels sounds like failing at the social role of a husband to me.
And if it's fine because husbands weren't expected to be as faithful as wives, then this is again evidence of inequality.
johnfabian
1hr ago
There's an obvious political motive to this. From a casual scanning of the academic literature historians generally do not consider the Holodomor a genocide (but this doesn't really change the moral aspect of it much).
johnfabian
1hr ago
Rummel was writing before the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of its archives to western historians. There was a good 15ish year window after 1991 where western historians got a good insight into the history of the Soviet Union and that deflated a lot of the more extravagant numerical claims with respect to the death toll of the Soviet regime.
johnfabian
1hr ago
Describing the approach the communist leaders adopted towards their enemies as "identity politics". As I and many others use the term, "identity politics" refers to politics based on immutable identity characteristics (race, sex, caste, ethnicity etc.). It appears that (with the possible exception of the aristocracy, depending on how hereditary privileges worked at the time), none of the groups targeted by the communist regime meet this description: kulaks can sell their land and immediately become non-kulaks, industrialists can sell their factories.
I would too hesitate in calling it "identity politics" (feels intuitively wrong), but I would not say the rest. In the Soviet system the circumstances of your birth were not so easily washed away. One might become a "reformed" ex-noble or ex-bourgeois who is a true believer in the promise of Communism, yet somehow these people always tended to be the first ones swept up in any new or recurring wave of paranoia. There were also in practice discriminatory measures applied against people who had "class traitor" backgrounds, even multiple generations past.
Also the Soviet state effected very real ethnic discrimination, either purposefully or via other less deliberate means. Ethnic minorities were perpetual sources of paranoia and distrust; in the lead-up to WWII and during for example there were a number of purges, forced displacements, mass imprisonments, killings, etc. that might not qualify as genocide but come very very close (and morally deserve little distinction). The Holodomor is the most famous but there are probably some you've never even heard of like the Polish Operation or the deportation of Tatars. These are just some of the more notable ones, there was a whole history of "population transfers" which sounds like a sort of benign planning thing but in reality was often a very brutal form of ethnic violence.
And this is without getting into the more passive bigotry within the Soviet system of preferences towards certain groups over others with respect to everything from university spots to food allocation. Systemic racism is kind of a big deal when the system is a totalitarian one that controls almost every aspect of your life.
stuckinbathroom
1hr ago
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
This is news to me; in fact I’ve never heard the term “Tree of the Covenant” before. Can you please cite chapter and verse?
FormerPothead
1hr ago
That sounds interesting. Those anthrax attacks were very odd and in retrospect does seem like an intelligence op. Let’s see what you have.
johnfabian
1hr ago
This is also where the term "terrorism" originated, even though it has shifted from its original meaning of state-driven activities to that of non-state actors.
coffee_enjoyer
☕️
1hr ago
I can work on a post about new compelling evidence implicating Israel in the anthrax attacks of 2001 if that interests anyone
Primaprimaprima
Bigfoot is an interdimensional being
1hr ago
In some sense the weekly thread format is vestigial at this point, but, I still like it and I wouldn’t want to change it. It draws everyone into one conversation, it encourages people to read posts that they might normally not, and it creates a FOMO effect which spurs engagement: if you want your reply to have maximum visibility, you have to strike while the iron is hot, because you only have about a day before a post gets buried under new top level posts and not as many people will see the old posts.
magic9mushroom
If you're going to downvote me, and nobody's already voiced your objection, please reply and tell me
1hr ago
I get the "gunpoint" part, but why "spermjacking"? Is there a "Bambie" among the various women who've impregnated themselves with stolen semen, or something?
Have the campus protests had any sort of effect on Israel? It seems like no.
More options
Context Copy link