Darzin

Yes if we excluded every institution that used to oppress the LGBT community organizations at pride would basically be limited to gay bars and a few hippies. Cops at pride is a good thing, it shows that those with alternative sexualities have been excepted into the fold of civil society. If if you expect the cops to investigate hate crimes and protect the LGBT community you should welcome them at pride. The desire to exclude them comes from the fact that the cops were the "baddies" at stonewall but this feeds into a kind of leftist myopia were the cops must always be the agents of heteronormativity and the gays must always be outsiders against the state. It's telling that no one ever argues that politicians shouldn't be at pride despite all they have done historically to harm LGBT people。

I think the whale mothers are likely something Bakker thought up when he first created the series and didn't revise but who really knows.

You 'member when the libs fantasized about Melania being a secret resistance person? I 'member.

You stop him at the ballot box. I for one think it's a very good thing that criminal charges can't stop someone from being elected.

Social media was pretty open before the war and none of that happened. The audience for state media is boomers who want to believe what it says. Millions of Russians already don't believe state run media as credible they just don't believe anything else is credible either. The politically engaged westernized Russians you want to reach already have VPNs anyways. There is a lot less of a bubble then you think, they just don't care.

What is it you think is being hidden from the Russian public? Sure their media has a big propaganda spin but the basic facts are there. Russia is fighting Ukraine battles are happening at X and Y location. Sure their media doesn't report Russian loses very much and talks about every Ukrainian tank that's been blown up, but it's not like you can't assume Russian losses are happening too. They just don't care.

How approved is this? Is it 100% confirmed or still in the pitch phase?

This possible BSC adaption sounds great. Even better that it's a movie, we need more good movies and less long long series. The same way Joe Abercrombie doesn't write doorstopper fantasy series a simple movie seems a breath of fresh air.

I'm not sure I agree with this, most of the scandals of American policing have come about because of actions officers took in the moment based on their judgement not on orders. Regardless, if the only people left being cops are MAGA chuds how exactly would police reform ever happen? All the committees of sociology majors in the world won't matter if everyone who actually needs to follow their recommendations is violently opposed to them.

I feel like the 1996 timeline had a great season finale and the present day one just flamed out. Walter is a great character but the tone for the show is all off with him and he just magically uses his computer skills to make a murder investigation go away. It feels cheap and unearned and while not really bad writing just doesn't fit the seriousness and realism of season 1 and large parts of season 2. But the 1996 timeline knocked it out of the park. Sophie Thatcher's acting was phenomenal, as was the whole fucked up situation. Ben telling her she's "not like other girlstm" and her saying she's the worst of them all, which I don't agree with at all seeing as she was under threat of death when it happened, but I see why she thinks so. and finally the cabin getting burned down. Just a great fucked up finale. All this is pretty much confirming what I felt when I first heard of this show, which is that five seasons is way too long and it should just have been a movie or a mini series set only in the 1996 timeline.

I suspect that's why his troops are being ground down in Bakhmut, he was getting absurdly powerful and building his own mythos. He still has a lot of power and if Putin were to die tomorrow I suspect he'd take his troops and march on Moscow.

I'm actually not sure how much those loans were a nefarious scheme and how much they were miscalculations. For Sri Lanka my understanding is the Chinese may have been very content to get that port but for a lot of the others it seems more like overestimating the host countries ability to pay, and the host countries getting used to welching on debts and taking out unsustainable loans. I know in Central Asia China has been burned a few times on big belt and road initiatives by overestimating recipient countries competence and underestimating their corruption. A lot of this debt was loaned for the purpose of keeping China's infrastructure sector from shrinking as there is less and less new need for such projects in China proper, but using these loans that way means they are expected to be repaid.

Seems a lot of police organizations are having trouble recruiting these days and lowering standards. I doubt that an easier to enter and increasingly right wing force is going to perform better. I wonder if there is anyway to get police reform activists to join the police force? Or at least more liberal people. Because to have actual police reforms there needs to be people on the force who actually believe in them or else it's just going to be city councils trying to implement these reforms on a hostile workforce.

I wouldn't exclude universities from Capital, when most students are being taught by adjuncts making slave wages and paying exorbitant fees and going into tens of thousands dollars worth of debt on average. Given that there is a huge glut of liberal arts Phds willing to work for very low wages to have a chance to teach their subject, something is severely broken in higher education. It's not so much that a liberal arts degree isn't worth it, it's whether it's worth the current cost and the answer to that is probably not. You can say viewing college as a job training program is cynical and conservative and yet students and parents don't pay for degrees based on intangibles, they are paying for an accredited degree. Otherwise they could listen to Harvard lectures and read books for free. Take away the accreditation and degree and all those parents who want their students to "study for the sake of knowledge and an open mind" are gonna go elsewhere the degree is the point as much as the education and for liberal arts it doesn't matter what the degree is in as long as you have it, which meets your class and white collar expectations. Anecdotally there were several programs at my university that were essentially run by the industry they produced workers for, Paper engineering being the big one, you got an automatic scholarship from the industry association and they were heavily involved in the actual academic program. And they didn't teach you to vote Republican or lobby for lower taxes for corporations. It was a highly technical program that produced engineers for paper plants, whether you work as an engineer or at McDonald's your still laboring for capital so I don't get the fearmongering over "industry training."

I'm not sure that university actually broadens the mind or teaches critical thinking, at least not in undergrad. When I was in university you were expected to do those things and if you didn't you failed especially in community college where i started out something like 80% of the class failed or dropped out of English 101 because writing papers was never actually taught nor was critical thinking or research skills or anything else like that. I certianly had some interesting and mind expanding classes but that was maybe 6 for my entire degree so with four years and around four classes a quater plus some summers that's around 6 out of 40 classes not a great ratio for intangibles and not worth 25k a year. But it was required for most of the jobs I've had but its' still a horribly expensive and inefficient system.

The second wave is hitting China now lots of people sick lots of students asking for leave from class ect. I likely had it but didn't bother to get tested.

On the Lukashenko thing no way he's harmed by Russia, he's one of the only factors keeping Belarus in Russia's camp if he dies there is a decent chance Belarus democratizes and joins the EU.

I don't buy this at all. I agree that there is a lot of essentializing of Russia now. It's not hard to dig up posts on reddit or Twitter (and even more respectable outlets) posted by Good Liberalstm talking about the essential despotic characteristics of the Russian people and state even tracing it back to Muscovite Despotism. This kind of talk would never be allowed about Muslims or Africans and such people would never be caught dead posting that anyway but yeah there's a lot of essentially orientalist rhetoric about "the Russian people" not to mention the LGBT narrative that is a lot more complex then it first seems as Russia serves as something of a haven for LBGT individuals among the post-soviet states and also conveniently ignoring the US alliance with Saudi Arabia. But but... all of that happened post 2014. Before that and before the Georgia war in the 90s and 00s Russia was regarded as on the path to the liberal order stumbling per haps but on it. Bush looked into Putin's eyes and said he had a good soul as late as 2012 Mitt Romney was laughed at for saying Russia was a threat and the Germans maintained their Ostpolitik until well after bombs had started falling on Ukraine. The idea that the west drove Russia to this through hostile action is simply false. The seizing of Crimea was shocking that another country would unilaterally annex territory moved Russia into the real enemy camp but Russia largely got away with it. And then now started this war, if they couldn't see how both Crimea and the current war mirror the actions of a mustachioed man and would through all Europe into a panic well they should have. On NATO expansion, first you should really consider that the narrative of NATO expansion is somewhat of a narrative for external consumption. The narrative inside Russia is far more about protecting native Russians from Nazis. That being said Russia got what they wanted in 2014, with the Crimea and Donbass conflicts Ukraine was not eligible to join NATO. As long as Russia held the Crimea Ukraine was never going to join NATO so it makes little sense to start a war to prevent something that was already prevented. Additionally the last time NATO expanded towards Russia's borders was in 2004 almost 20 years ago. The idea that Russia was under threat by a constantly expanding NATO is just false. No country on Russia's borders was going to conceivably join NATO when the war was started.

I think the five year gap was really an issue in retrospect. George cited Cersei as one of the reasons to scrap it, but that's easy to get around just have someone like Mace take over as hand and keep the realm in stable uneasy stagnation. and have Stannis stew in the north with the wall and Moat Cailin protecting him. Doing that would save him two books and he'd have had the plots where they are now 20 years ago.

You'd think that but if you compare their military to Israel they are significantly underinvesting in it despite being under much greater threat. The ROC military is only 20% larger than the Israeli one despite having around three times the population eligible for conscription, and being under significantly greater threat. Even Singapore operates more and better submarines that the ROC despite fact that Singapore has a quarter of the population and that these type of subs would be extremely useful in the event of a cross straight war.

In some of my darker moments I wonder if it might be better to strike a Hong Kong style deal over Taiwan. Something like Taiwan keeps it's system for 50 years but electing a governor instead of a president and with open immigration for Taiwan passport holders to the US. The US Navy still has the power to project across the pacific and press China on it's borders in the South China sea and Taiwan straight but that won't last forever. I suspect Chinese strategy is force this kind of union rather than a shooting war. Though the fact that both US and Chinese planners seem to think a naval shooting war can be kept conventional rather scary. I do worry about a Chinese miscalculation on this. No one in China views Taiwan as a real country it's viewed as something akin to the Donetsk People's republic. But no one here seems to get that just because foreign governments have been pressured into the one China policy doesn't mean people really believe it. Hopefully the leadership is better informed but I see a real potential for error based on what here is viewed super seriously and in the rest of the world is a legal fig leaf.

Also Rippounet, who I believe identifies as a communist? Is holding rather standard positions for European leftism. Everywhere you look their are communists against supporting Ukraine. Read or watch some communist/socialist media and the very best your going to get is "complicated" conversations about Ukraine but more likely you'll see screeds against NATOand calls for "hands off Ukraine!" referencing the US and NATO, not Russia of course. The far left parties in Ireland and Portugal snubbed Zelensky. There are communist grassroots activists in Greece and other places organizing with teamsters and longshoremen to interrupt and halt war supplies going to Ukraine "in the name of peace". Opposition to any help for Ukraine is mainstream in communist circles, largely stemming from hatred of the US and NATO, as NATO is seen as the protector of the liberal capitalist order.

A lot of the stuff about NATO expansion seems to be for external consumption and not really emphasized within Russia. I recently watched this video which while very biased towards Russia has some really good sections showing the Russian perspective especially at around the 15 minute mark when he goes to the WW2 museum which as an Azov section now and the 30 minute mark when he goes to the Donbass. There is a lot of Russian propaganda shown and repeated on the video but it's really telling how much is of the internal propaganda is focused on protecting Russians and Russians in the near abroad from Nazis. There is scarce mention of NATO and it's not "Nazis" It's these are straight up swastika carrying Nazis coming from the west to kill Russians the same as in 41 this message is repeated again and again, in the national museum, on billboards, in war ballads, and none of these say much about NATO.

I was quarantined with no booze allowed for most of the runtime. Which is also why I watched season 1 with nothing better to do I figured why not? Without that motivator I'm probably not gonna watch season 2 though I will at least watch episode 1.

Yeah the changed date was a huge bummer for me as well. I was gonna be able to go 100% but now not so sure as I'll have to get a train to Chengdu after classes have started.