People are extremely susceptible to propaganda in general, but they seem particularly likely to fall for Russian and Chinese variants of same. Are those two countries just better at it, or what it is? To be painfully honest, even some of my friends have repeated Putin talking points like he’s got his hand shoved so far up their butt he’s able to control the words coming out of their mouths. Now, I like you, friends, but it’s true.
Don’t be a Putin shill. It’s just déclassé. And hurts your butt.
That is 100% correct. Makes the solar opponents look clownish (as usual).
Did not expect the left to so quickly switch to full copyright maximalism. They turned on a damn dime. Still wrong, no matter which side believes stupid shit.
Oh yeah. This isn’t even directly political; the media just needs the election to be a neck-and-neck horserace. It gets them many more clicks, and makes vastly more $$. That’s all is it is.
Dang people are clueless. So many are like, “That’s a war crime!” to things that definitely are not war crimes. And then are like, “Sinking civilian ships and killing civilians is not a war crime!” When that definitely is.
And it’s not just the Russian shills, either. Nearly everyone talking about it is absurdly clueless.
Noah is correct. The “China cycle” was widely denied because believing it was real was associated with racism, partly due a very successful Chinese propaganda operation focused on PMC liberals that equated believing in the cycle with such. That influence operation worked and was fairly brilliantly done by the CCP in that it got a lot of bang for the buck renminbi.
Those days are mostly over now, so you no longer roundly get accused of racism when the Chinese do something harmful or at least not very nice and get called out on it.
Though they don’t usually complain about this specifically, the one bit of NIMBY griping I agree with is construction noise. It is terrible, long-lasting, and hugely disruptive. Especially since I sleep at odd hours, it is particularly disturbing to me and my oddball non-schedule.
There is not likely to be any nearby construction in the neighborhood where we bought anytime soon but I’d sure dread it if that ever came to pass. No, I would not oppose it, but if it were something that was going to last years as much construction does I’d strongly consider just moving.
I don’t even remember where I saw it anymore. I think somewhere on one of those balky fediverse sites that I’ve been mostly avoiding, but someone referenced me and this blog, asserting that I didn’t listen to indie rap for “demographic reasons.”
LOL.
Not only do I listen to indie rap, I listen to obscure Chilean and Argentinian indie rap that I’m certain they’ve not heard of in their lives. If you’re gonna step to me with that kinda shit, you gotta try harder. I listen to a broader range of music than anyone I’ve ever fucking met, except maybe this one DJ in Seattle who listened to, like, Norwegian hunting chants mixed with whale song sold on cassettes you could only buy in some pop-up stall in Oslo one day a week in mid-winter.
Come on, people. Your limitations are not my limitations.
This is excellent. (Right after I wrote the previous sentence, Safari mega-crashed; too many tabs.)
We watched My Summer of Love earlier. Like most movies about girls/women, it’s underrated on IMDB. It’s a beautifully-shot study of the summer love affair of two girls-verging-on-women 
in the Midlands of the UK. The first one we meet is a lower-class, rough-around-the-edges dreamer who yearns for a better time in her life, often without quite being able to express it.
The other girl is from a posh family and seems to be sincerely looking for companionship and the solidity of a real connection after a recent tragedy has left her grieving.
But this is a deeper and more compelling work than the surface would indicate, and quite a bit darker. I’ll not say more to avoid spoilers as it’s best watching unaware. With great performances by both Emily Blunt and Natalie Press, the film never goes for the easy cliché, either in its shots or its narrative, and never is less than true to its characters and their motivations; the film moves how they would move.
Recommended.
The dominance of podcasts and video is fucking terrible. Both are so horribly, incredibly slow. I especially refuse to listen to any podcast ever. Fuck all of them.
And the only video I’ll watch is (generally) a music video. Otherwise, huge waste of my goddamn time.
I am so 100% against the belief that if someone is attacked and then fights back, the resulting conflict is the fault of the person who resists. This is how my teachers way back in elementary and middle school used to excuse their punishing me (and not my bullies) even though I was the one being beaten up.
I just cannot understand the people who buy into this way of thinking.
Most people are so little concerned with the things that they should be, that they definitely deserve the bad things that happen to them as the result of their chosen cluelessness.
But the problem with that is that though the above is all true, the just outcome makes my life worse too. Dammit. Thus, I selfishly have to support allowing dumbasses who should suffer to continue to prosper in spite of their metaphorically juggling running chainsaws while blindfolded and riding a unicycle.
I am forced to charity and grace by pure self interest.
Unrealized gains taxes are a pointless hassle. Mostly agreed.
The Texas Billionaire Who Has Greenpeace USA on the Verge of Bankruptcy.
Amazon Wants Your Palm and TSA Wants Your Face. What Saying Yes Will Mean. Amazon can’t have my palm, but they can have my finger. The middle one.
China Is Becoming Much Harder for Western Scholars to Study.
Decaying jobs market overtakes inflation as U.S. economy’s biggest threat.
Most people’s politics are based on fear. Even mine, to a large extent. That is because fear is the base human emotion.
It means, though, that most people can easily discern the exact fears that inform and shape others’ politics but can almost never see how their own beliefs and tendencies are molded by the same force.