Obviously it wasn’t like those child emperors wielded any power whatsoever. They were just a sieve by which whatever the rich and powerful wanted would happen.

I was thinking about how Trump himself isn’t “dangerous”. He’s a moron who doesn’t actually care about anything policy-related. But it’s specifically because of that, he simply enacts whatever the capitalists pulling the strings in the GOP want - and no doubt, the GOP’s agenda is awful.

Of course, that doesn’t make Biden any different. The man clearing has pudding for brains now. It’s obvious Nuland was and Blinken now are running the show in foreign policy. And even if there’s a different group of capitalist who support the Democrats, ultimately what they want is largely the same as the GOP capitalists.

Good times up ahead…

I’m in the fortunate and privileged position of having some very long term friends in my life. Unfortunately, we’re now spread across the country. We’d like to try and keep our social connection by playing a TTRPG over zoom or something.

I have never played a TTRPG before. I really got into Disco Elysium and that’s got me interested in TTRPGs. Other friends have been interested for years but no one’s bothered to try and organize something. So all of us have zero experience with running an actual game. And no one to guide us through it who has experience.

I’m looking for recommendations for a TTRPG for us get started on. Needs to work over Zoom. I’d say the most important aspect is that it’s fun and social. “Fun” sounds like an obvious one but the reality is I have one shot to make playing TTRPGs “stick” with this group. If my friends don’t have a great time with it we’ll probably not play after this.

Happy to answer any questions about myself or my group that would help you come up with a recommendation.

“bUt TrUmP WiLL tUrN AmERicA fascist”

Don’t care, we’re already there anyway and the Democrats were the junior partners in making this place a fascist hellhole anyway.

I literally do not care what happens to this country anymore. We deserve sooo much worse than 9/11. If there’s a god then this country deserves divine judgement. Death - and I cannot emphasize this enough - to America.

I will vote for anyone who promises to stop American imperialism. But since that describes precisely no one in either of the two major parties, I guess I’m not voting for any of them then.

Claiming you want to see the downfall of the CPC is akin to wishing for the deaths of all 1.4 billion people:

Reverse uno card on all those “criticizing Israel is antisemitic” freaks.

I kinda don’t like this meme because Garak is cool and the IOF-satzgruppen is incredibly evil.

Thought this was an interesting analysis, though I think it needs to be taken with a bit of a grain of salt (I think it’s power is what is qualitatively describes rather than precise numbers, and I think the author might even agree with me).

I’m always on the lookout to see it quantified how much the average American benefits from imperialism. My guy says if the US was unable to exert hegemony, the US would experience at least what Russia experienced in the 90s. These numbers align with that; and this is only talking about dollar hegemony and not, for example, the US using military pressure, sanctions, or other methods for extracting cheaper resources and goods from the global south.

That said, I’m not sure you can just run a regression and get your answer. I don’t see how you can isolate the US losing dollar hegemony without it then creating an uncountable number of secondary effects. All this stuff is deeply interconnected. But that said, I think this does a good job of highlighted at least in a qualitative sense just how much Americans benefit from dollar hegemony, and how losing that would be huge problem for the US economy.

My single issue is “anti-genocide”. I wonder which party is more anti-genocide 🤔

The girl’s mother and her sister were also murdered in the same attack on Khan Younis.

Reminds me of this photo from 20 years ago.

As always, Death to America !amerikkka

This wasn’t in a rural area or impoverish inner ring suburb. This was in an older but perfectly nice suburb of a large midwestern US city. I had two friends at the time who were just out of college and teaching in public schools. And they both bought houses. One had a spouse who was working (normal job, not high pay or anything) but the other was single. I know for a fact they didn’t have any help from parents. I do know they both had most of their school paid through scholarships so little to no college debt, fwiw. Went on google street view to check out the houses - not large but definitely comfy. Around 1,600-1,700 sq ft single family homes with a yard and everything. Something a small family would be comfortable in.

And I mean, I was looking at buying a home around that time, too (and for years afterward). My salary was above the national median but not that much above it. There were lots of options - the only reason I didn’t buy was because my life situation was not stable. I don’t live in that city anymore but looking at my salary now and what’s available on the market, buying a home is pretty much out of reach for me. Certainly what I could get now, in terms of square footage, is drastically reduced. I’m not even taking into account current interest rates, I was just plugging in numbers at the old 4%.

That’s how fast material conditions have eroded for a lot of Americans. This is what journalists who write this articles about “aww why are young people so down these days, they should just cheer up all that bad stuff is all in their head” completely miss. Probably because in all likelihood, they bought a house a couple decades ago and are secure themselves. It’s why the dems’ bullshit about how the economy is so great is so offensive to us. It’s a denial of reality.

Generational politics is bunk, but I also think inequality should be thought of along multiple axes. One is whether or not you bought a house 15-20 years ago or not. If you did, then you’re sitting on a mortgage that is relatively low which makes your material conditions comfortable. You’re not feeling the effects of the bad economy as much. If you’re under 30, then it’s not possible to be in that situation.

Because:

1.) Fuck the troops. US soliders in Vietnam were every bit as genocidal as IOF troops today.

2.) The whole idea that Vietnam was holding any POWs after the Paris peace accords was a total lie made from whole cloth. There has never been any evidence presented that there were any POWs being held after the war and anyone who spends 10 minutes on the internet reading about it will come to that conclusion.

Seeing this flag burn, in emoji form, would be nice.

I haven't really come up with anything smart to say about this. Probably because pointing out hypocrisy is pointless most of the time. Like, it doesn't matter, no one cares.

But the 1932-33 Soviet famine (commonly called "The Holodomor") gets all the attention for being a man-made famine. Despite the fact that no legit historians believe this, even those who hate the USSR like Robert Conquest. At the worst, the Soviet leadership and Stalin were slow to act and believe reports on the ground (don't @ me, Stalin and the Soviet leadership admitted this themselves) but once they did understand the problem, the immediately put what resources they could into mitigating the famine. It was an incredible human tragedy, but it wasn't the result of intentional genocide.

Meanwhile right now, in Gaza, there is an UNDENIABLE intentional, artificial famine being conducted on the part of Israel with the full intention of genociding the population. What is happening in Gaza is what libs think happened in Ukraine in the 1930s. And yet, so many Americans are either supportive of the actions being taken, or are at the very least passively supportive of the US' and Joe Biden's role in this intentional famine.

I'm not even sure what to say, it's such a disconnect.

So many libs keep telling me if I don’t vote for Biden that Trump will pass all these anti-trans laws that Biden and the Democrats would of course have stopped. I tell them my trans comrades on Hexbear all say I shouldn’t vote for Biden but these libs just keep asking for the proper documentation.

Hate that it’s Ted Cruz, though.

To clarify something, I’m not some boug. I worked at a job for years where they put money into a 401k as part of the benefits, and I was there long enough that it vested. So I have a few grand that’s locked up in an IRA that I can’t get into until I retire.

Here’s my simple strategy: I’m putting everything into Chinese index funds / stonk ETFs.

My rationale: it’s all about the emotional risk management.

What I mean by that statement is, in the past when one of my sports teams I root for has made it into the final round of the playoffs, I would place a small bet against them. Because if they win, I won’t care that I lost some money. But if they lose, I’ll at least have a bit more $$$ in my pocket, it’s a small consolation but it helps.

So how does this relate to China and investing? The way I see it, there’s likely one of two scenarios for where the Chinese economy will be a few decades from now when I can take that money out. Either A.) the CPC more or less just continues on with what it’s been doing since Deng. Continue to develop the productive forces, continue to rack up W after W while the west implodes on itself, and the Chinese corporations I’m invested in will do great - stonks go up and I have a nice little savings built up.

Or B.) CPC pushes the communism button in 2050 or so, they nationalize all the corporations, and I lose the whole investment. But you know what, WHO CARES?! THEY PUSHED THE BUTTON! That would literally be the best thing that I could ever see happen in my lifetime, and the last thing I would care about would be my IRA.

Seems like no matter what, I end up a winner 😎

For this hypothetical, let’s say it’s not aliens actually visiting earth. But let’s say JWST finds a planet maybe a few hundred light years away, and we can see lights and cities and maybe spaceships or stuff like that around it. So no contact, but 100% proof there’s intelligent life out there. How would humans (and different groups of humans, like conservative Christians) react to this?