SoyViking

SoyViking, 6 days ago

This is if course bad and all that but there is the silver lining that you can now get rid of those stubborn dandelions just by having a wank in the garden.

SoyViking, 9 days ago

I would be surprised to find out they were not doing it but I don’t believe the tankie panic is all regime propaganda. “Left” anti-communism has an organic component to it as well, founded in the material interests of those participating.

If you are a comfortable western labour aristocrat enjoying a relatively high standard of living based on the exploitation of workers abroad and sometimes also at home then you have something to lose by a revolutionary chance in the social and economic order. You might feel genuinely appalled by racism, queerphobia or the deliberate destruction of the climate for profit and you might sincerely organise and agitate against these evils but you instinctively understand that revolutionary socialism is bad for you personally and know you have to limit your politics to the soft play area of liberalism as not to threaten your own position.

SoyViking, 8 days ago

Unfalsifiable orthodoxy: If China threathens military force they are aggressive and belligerent, and when they in fact seeks to further their standing through diplomacy and political engagement they are nefarious and sneaky.

parenti-hands

SoyViking, 19 days ago

How long until the EU regimes begin deporting refugees right back to the trenches?

SoyViking, 18 days ago

Isn’t there some kind of political ideology where you’re constantly obsessing over plots made by external enemies?

I can’t remember which ideology but I’m sure it’s one of the nice ones that don’t do anything bad.

SoyViking, 20 days ago

I can only begin to imagine the suffering the Mexican chef goes through every day, having to make that slop.

SoyViking, 23 days ago

It also gives information that these words belong together in a single word

SoyViking, 23 days ago

Petition to change German orthography into that weird American phonetic spelling so the yanks will not be too confused about other languages than American existing:

hog-SHOOL sta-TEES-teek gee-SETS

SoyViking, 23 days ago

This could work as an aesthetic choice but you’d have to finish it really well in order for it to last and for you to be able to keep it clean. Buying normal cupboards would probably be easier and cheaper.

SoyViking, 27 days ago

Temu is not nearly as interesting for US oligarchs as TikTok. If they manage to steal TikTok, the tech oligarchs just have to run another app but if they steal Temu they suddenly have to deal with the logistics of shipping dirt cheap physical products to people.

SoyViking, 27 days ago

I’m shivering imagining how cursed the content on the EU branded social media apps was. I’m having nightmarish visions of Eldritch horror levels of neoliberal cringe.

SoyViking, 27 days ago

ByteDance is a private profit-maximising company. What would make most financial sense to them now?

• Leave the profitable US market and continue with less revenue
• Sell everything at fire sale prices to oligarchs connected to the US regime
• Somehow split into a TikTok for the free world and one for Burgerland and just sell the latter to the US oligarchs, thereby exposing their algorithms to the yanks.

And is it likely that the Chinese government would be intervening to get one outcome over another?

SoyViking, 24 days ago

Part of the reason Democratic Germany removed it’s anti-LGBT laws was that the Stasi realised that it was a security threat. They knew that statistically a significant number of their people were queer, they also knew they had no way of knowing who that was but that it would be trivial for western spies to find at least some of them and use their sexual identity as blackmail. The logical answer of supporting queer rights theb became obvious to them.

I guess that’s the kind of decisions a state that promotes materialist thinking over idealist makes. The democratic German supreme court decision striking down some of the worst anti-gay laws were also based in materialist scientific reasoning as well y the way.

SoyViking, 1 month ago

I’ve received checks three or four times in my life. I’ve never written one. As a kid I had a physical paper booklet for the savings account I put my birthday money into. The only way I can get to own a house is by winning the lottery. I remember when small shops had manual credit card machines that would transfer your account details to a slip of paper. I also remember when local stores would give credit to people from the community. I get low-key annoyed when I have to use cash instead of digital payments. My retirement plan is not to retire.

SoyViking, 1 month ago

So students in Florida will learn that there is something called communism and that the deeply uncool assholes who are in charge of everything thinks it is very very bad.

I wonder what will happen once the students gets fed up with how the assholes are ruining the world they’re growing up in.

SoyViking, 1 month ago

China should make a Radio Free Garden or something to broadcast real news into the west.

SoyViking, 1 month ago

Isn’t most of this Chinese embassies reaching out to fugitives and taking them into going back home to have things sorted out?

Do we know anything about what kind of crimes they’re on the run because of or what consequences they gave when they go home? I wouldn’t be surprised if most of it is really banale stuff.

SoyViking, 1 month ago

I once read somewhere that the racist myth about the “savage cannibals” arose around the same time in the 18th century when white elite Europeans were consuming ground up mummies and human bones for what they believed were medical reasons. An entire industry existed of looting skeletal remains from old battlefields for human consumption. A skull with moss growing on it was believed to be especially potent.

And that’s not to speak of how Christians have made an entire religion centered around cannibalism with Catholics who still to this day believe they’re consuming literal human flesh and blood whent they go to communion.

Every accusation is a confession.

SoyViking, 1 month ago

I absolutely adore the way scare quotes are used in the article. It doesn’t make any sense. Why is a house where nobody lives “empty” and not just empty? Wh are tenants’s description and rating of their experiences with housing scalpers “reviews” and not just reviews? These are normal words.

Also, bonus points to whoever wrote this for calling the legal process in which occupants can gain ownership over abandoned property stealing (without scare quotes this time).

SoyViking, 1 month ago

Yes. While cannabis is unproblematic to most users, some cannabis users experience substance abuse disorders that are hurting their health and social relations. They should receive qualified and empathetic care, not condemnation and criminalisation.

SoyViking, 1 month ago

Elon Musk was testing his new driverless ship technology

SoyViking, 1 month ago

This is where the idea of “personal responsibility” is useful for liberals. Flatly admitting that they want a desperate underclass is too mask off for them to feel like good people so they invent a way of blaming individual victims rather than the economic system.

The poor has a theoretical opportunity to pull themselves up by the bootstraps so when they don’t do that it’s really their own fault. Of course that theoretical opportunity doesn’t translate into actual opportunity for most people but that’s fine, as there’s enough window dressing of meritocracy to make the opportunity look real if you are careful not to go into too much detail.

This is also the reason why liberals hate discussing real-world examples. Their logic only works in abstract thought experiments where they get to control the variables. Saying that everyone has the opportunity to succeed is a lot easier than saying that Bob, who has a set of very concrete and undeniable material conditions, has the opportunity succeed.

SoyViking, 2 months ago

How is the indigenous resistance surrendering going to end generations of apartheid and occupation?

SoyViking, 2 months ago

Wow! I’m so impressed with her immense moral courage! It is so brave to do the right thing only when doing so becomes less damaging to your career than not doing it would be.