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Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3hr ago
· Edited 2hr ago
Best of luck with the project!
Let us know what it's about, once you've got a sliver of dry land beneath you and a moment to spare.
ive only been to kuala lumpur and I feel like I'm missing out on the rest of malaysia. my impression of the city near bukit bintang was that it was somewhat empty shopping malls and skyscrapers spaced out by dense blocks of slums and pedestrian hostile infrastructure. the outskirts were unremarkable by south east asian standards. I never felt particularly unsafe.
The racial economic caste system was obvious to me, as an outsider. Businesswise, english speaking Chinese seemed to be the most trustworthy, followed by "bumiputera". Did not interact with laborers from the subcontinent but was warned to keep distance by my singaporean guide.
I saw a monkey in someones back yard. I saw a temple filled with trash. I saw some fantastic islamic and colonial architecture. I saw a guy on a motorbike get smeared on the asphalt by a truck.
One of the best cities for food I've ever been to
There were a lot of russian men when I was there for some reason
Did not really feel like a islamic country in the same way as indonesia.
What are the lies you accuse the establishment of?
"Iraq has weapons of mass destruction."
"We are building a democratic society in Afghanistan."
"Our test grades are low because we don't spend enough on education."
"Race-based caps on school discipline will lead to better outcomes."
"COVID was not a lab leak."
"Police routinely kill unarmed, compliant black people."
"Joe Biden is mentally competent."
"The laptop is Russian disinformation."
"Insurrectionists murdered a police officer on Jan 6th."
"Rittenhouse is a white supremacist murderer."
"The BLM protests are mostly peaceful."
"Antifa is just an idea."
"Brett Kavanaugh is a rapist."
...Off the top of my head. There are plenty more where those came from.
Because if you look a little deeper I believe you will see that they aren't lies but a shaping of the truth and that's a massive difference.
Could you elaborate on what you mean by "shaping of the truth"?
nopie
3hr ago
Obviously the support for Zelensky is high. The fact that we cannot know the percentage with high precision doesn't mean that we don't know the percentage with error margin that is less than ±10%.
Is his course good for Ukrainian people? Who knows. I personally think that Ukrainians are too obstinate to consider they could ever get Crimea and other territories back. It prevents them thinking more about how to protect the rest of Ukraine. But that's their choice. Ignoring this will not be productive. Suppose the US forces Ukraine to do elections and Zelensky is again elected. Then what? Or someone else is elected with the same aspirations as Zelensky.
And forcing to elect a certain leader that yields to the US will lead to a new Maidan. Ukrainians want free elections not some US or Russian stooge.
Lykurg
We're all living in Amerika
3hr ago
And as a source, I'd point to the massive free-market demand for urbanization implied by unfulfilled immigration kept under control by legislative fiat.
Im not sure why you interpret demand for immigration as demand for urbanisation. Mexicans wanting to urbanise can move to mexican cities - and prefering US cities of mexicans ones is not demand for urbanisation. And besides, the limiting factor for american city growth are city-level laws, not the US population.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3hr ago
military formations
Give such warfare three days, and "formations" will cease to be identifiable as squaky clean targets no matter how many cameras are nearby. If the limiting factor on what you can do to the enemy is how many civilians they strap to their tanks or force to live in their camps...
The Cuban Missile Crisis comparison falls apart because Ukraine wasn't pursuing offensive capabilities against Russia. NATO membership is defensive.
What was NATO defending when they attacked Serbia? I believe the answer that is usually given is "the Albanians of Kosovo", so it seems to be defensive only in a sense that includes non-state entities that are not part of NATO itself. This is a basically meaningless condition, which is moreover also met by Russia's "defensive" campaign in Ukraine.
Conversely, in what way was Cuba pursuing "offensive capabilities" against the US? I'll quote directly from the Wikipedia article:
In December 1959, under the Eisenhower administration and less than twelve months after the Cuban Revolution, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) developed a plan for paramilitary action against Cuba. The CIA recruited operatives on the island to carry out terrorism and sabotage, kill civilians, and cause economic damage.
(...)
In February 1962, the US launched an embargo against Cuba,[26] and Lansdale presented a 26-page, top-secret timetable for implementation of the overthrow of the Cuban government, mandating guerrilla operations to begin in August and September. "Open revolt and overthrow of the Communist regime" was hoped by the planners to occur in the first two weeks of October.[15]
The terrorism campaign and the threat of invasion were crucial factors in the Soviet decision to place nuclear missiles on Cuba, and in the Cuban government's decision to accept.[31] The US government was aware at the time, as reported to the president in a National Intelligence Estimate, that the invasion threat was a key reason for Cuban acceptance of the missiles.
It's also worth taking into account that Clinton actually made suggestive noises to draw parallels between Kosovo (which NATO "defended") and Chechnya, and that NATO is deploying nuclear bombs and missile defense systems in countries that are as close to Russia as Cuba is to the US, but unlike Cuba during the crisis are not regularly being attacked by the respective adversary.
SteveAgain
3hr ago
Fences aren't meant to stop people, they're meant to mark "the gate people who belong there walk through" and "the barrier people get shot for climbing over with blankets".
All of my security is behind an initial screening layer that wouldn't stop anyone, but anyone who does come through it sets off alarms rather than "someone coming down driveway" notifications.
Southkraut
A tale Told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, Signifying nothing.
3hr ago
Vietnam
Take my opinion with a fistful of salt, since I'm just going off of half-remembered documentaries (anyone else watched "The Ten Thousand Day War"?), but that seems a bit dependent on the details. I don't think the tactical use of nukes would have done America a ton of good here, unless they were willing and indeed physically capable of completely deforesting North Vietnam with them. Of course, if the use of nuclear weapons here also implies a generally greater and less compromising commitment up to a total war mindset, that might do the trick...militarily. But woe betide the US' foreign relations and civil peace then.
But I'm probably wrong. Someone tell me how using nuclear weapons would have allowed the US to win militarily in Vietnam, all else being equal to history.
Perfect Run is too much of a comedy and is too "wacky" for me. Where as both MoL and YoA are overall pretty serious.
Fruck
Lacks all conviction
4hr ago
The best anti-establishment takes usually come from people like Hanania. They don't come from "anti-establishment" conspiracy theorists who don't believe any data, election results, polls, scientific studies, and just bloviate and make assertions completely untethered to any evidence.
Yesterday you said you weren't here to passive aggressively side talk about all these low quality populists. I didn't have time to respond and I figured the charitable thing to do would be to take you at your word, or at least not rub your errors in your face. And yet here you are not just side talking but coupling it with hilarious jokes like "The best anti-establishment takes usually come from people like Hanania" and it's complete tonal whiplash.
Jokes aside it's obvious why you like Hanania's stropfest, but you make no effort to explain why anyone else should, just another wide brush of smears against anyone who questions the neoliberal consensus. I'm not going to defend conspiracists, because that's just your nail, it covers everyone from doesn't trust polls to flat earthers and beyond.
Instead I'm going to do you a favour and explain some things populists don't like, so you can better reach those doge guys and future republican senators. Populists don't like being lumped in with the craziest people you can currently think of. They don't like people who smirk at the powerlessness of others. They don't like arguments from authority, especially when they don't respect the authority. And most importantly they don't like listening to people who are too blinded by their own petty bullshit to notice that the entire world changed in November, or who try to gaslight them into thinking Trump changes nothing even as he goes around changing everything, or whatever the fuck you were doing there.
FlyingLionWithABook
Has a C. S. Lewis quote for that.
4hr ago
Yeah, Matthew Stover’s version is the best version of RotS for sure.
OliveTapenade
4hr ago
In the political sphere specifically?
I admit I'm blanking.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
4hr ago
I don't think it's necessary to get into a deep analysis of the word brainrot , we know and you know what we are trying to express.
I don't think this is true, and the fact that you didn't address any of my examples shows it, as does the motte-and-bailey dance from Musk to other public figures, and back to Musk depending on which one is convenient at the moment.
Ademonera
4hr ago
Russia's historical claims on Ukraine don't justify invasion. Territorial sovereignty isn't negated by shared cultural history. This principle has been foundational to post-WW2 order.
The Cuban Missile Crisis comparison falls apart because Ukraine wasn't pursuing offensive capabilities against Russia. NATO membership is defensive.
While Western interventions have questionable legality, Russia's annexation of territory represents a different category of violation. Iraq wasn't annexed, whatever other flaws that campaign had.
mrvanillasky
4hr ago
My experience was the total opposite, I only ever used them in South East Asia and everyone was helpful, cordial and happy to help. Being a girl makes a difference but we did have female expats there who reported the same things.
After 3-4 days of the same clothes it must have been a special type of smell haha.
I still bathed 1-2 times a day, so it was not that bad. Otherwise, I would have done worse with the girls there. Though there is something about worn clothes, some girls liked the smell of my t-shirt if they were into me, as it reminded them of me. I was too intoxicated to notice anything, honestly. Though I looked like a sitcom character with the raincoat and crocs and trying to shuffle whilst wearing that. I still cant believe I was able to dance for 7 days wearing fucking crocs.
Otherwise, I risk catching the attention of creeps.
Most dudes are creepy by default. If you live in the west, then some might even be homeless drug addict kinds who would scare any sane female.
ulyssessword
5hr ago
It does not seem to me that positive change can be built on just flipping off all the bad people.
What do you think the justice system and police do? Sure, they sometimes reallocate some resources to victims, but the vast majority of their job is punishing bad people.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
5hr ago
Agreed.
Now that I think about it there's this weird gamer specific sunk cost fallacy about the initial purchase and time investment that can make you think that you should finish it. Also not wanting a long difficult game to be able to 'beat' you through attrition.
ulyssessword
5hr ago
That comment is filtered.
CertainlyWorse
No one is coming. It's just you.
5hr ago
Anyone else here ever get easily 'bumped out of' these very good but long games where you feel like you kinda have to invest a lot of time per session and immerse yourself?
Yes. I would really really love these games (KCD1&2 are good examples) until the enjoyment fell off a cliff. My advice is ignore most side quests and focus the main story to maximise your enjoyment before burn out. And yeah, its kind of a 'where were we again?' feeling of requiring effort to get back into it that turned me off picking them back up.
If I were the victim of a terrible crime, I would accept the criminal as 'effectively dead' if they were imprisoned for life without parole but if I was given the option to put them to death, I would do so since it's probably better for society.
Life without parole is extremely rare though, and death row prisoners constantly drag victims back into court over and over again with legal bullshit.
ArjinFerman
Tinfoil Gigachad
5hr ago
Who are the serious right wing intellectuals at the moment, in your view? Hanania talks a lot about the right lacking human capital
I'm going to turn that question on you and ask who are the serious intellectuals of any kind at the moment, in your view. Who is the elite human capital I should be jealous of, and thinking "I wish this guy was on my side"?
You're mistaking Hanania's marketing schtick for an interesting claim about reality. He's not offering a diagnosis, he's trying to gatekeep wrongthink.
A mistake in government? It can literally kill, it can have dangerous long term ramifications on both the lives of the citizens and the future of the country as a whole.
This is true, but also we have had government for some time. As a calibration measure, can you give some examples of what are, in your opinion, the top five or ten worst mistakes in US government since, say, the year 2000?
In this context, "justifications" work to some extent just by being restricted. It is in fact possible to have ambitions which are neither in line with international norms nor unlimited conquest, and thats what hes arguing.
Russian goals from here may be achieved by instating a puppet government in Ukraine that they support against enemies internal and external. I think this wouldnt make an important difference, and hasnt been raised as an option largely because everyone agrees with me. In fact, Russia only annexed the northern parts of their defacto 2014 conquest sometime into 2022 - which seems to me like they calculated better odds of keeping it from doing so at that point.
There is a difference between that and Iraq, which can be seen from how quickly the US let their client collapse again among other things, but Afghanistan seems like its getting there. Whats the difference between indefinite occupation and annexation, especially for a non-democratic state?
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