WideningGyro [any]

It’s just a nice way of saying that under capitalism “children will be left alone, to fend for themselves”.

Most pathetic press corp ever, for sure. If anyone had any doubt at that point, their coverage of Nordstream cemented that fact.

vote for Lars Løkke and talk about goddamn Mink Farms

When I heard my old boss say that the Mink-saga was the most important political event of our lives, I realized that the man was living in a fundamentally different reality than me. Then again he was a fairly rich business owner, so he had plenty of reasons not to learn fucking anything ever.

Agreed. I’m often met with the reply of “well, it’s much better here (Scandinavia) than most other places!” whenever I criticize our country, and it just makes me sad. Like, if I say “our country is part of an extremely destructive and often downright evil western imperialist bloc, selfishly sucking resources out of the global south while actively destabilizing it.”, then “but look how much material wealth we have!” isn’t a rebuttal - it’s just highlighting the problem.

Sure, it feels privileged to complain about living in one of the safest and richest countries in the world, if you ignore the context of those privileges. Any moral person’s food should turn to ashes in their mouth if they know their neighbor is starving, and likewise I don’t feel happy to live in one of the small, pampered kingdoms in the imperial core - it makes me miserable because its very existence reflects everything wrong with the system. Same applies when people here self-congratulate about our low crime (crime has been outsourced), low corruption (because corruption is mostly a legal part of our political system), social safety net (which is actively dismantled by the same people who praise it) etc. To the extent that we really have these privileges, how did we come to have them? Who suffers so that we can? It makes me go insane how little my countrymen think about this, and how many will frown at you for refusing to join in the self-congratulatory circle-jerk.

It’s good to bring him up when talking to liberals about the necessity of violence to achieve liberation (something they’ll vehemently deny). Usually, they respond by going “well Nelson Mandela was peaceful, unlike [insert unacceptable resistance movement]!”. After which you can point to all the bombings and acts of “terrorism” that uMkhonto weSizwe engaged in. That can then lead to a productive convo about how those aren’t actually blemishes on an otherwise peaceful and democratic struggle for freedom, but is itself part of the struggle for freedom (and, of course, based af).

It was talking about Trosky’s criticism of Stalin and Kruschev’s de-Stalinization and I wasn’t really into it

I’m not sure I understand why you’d be interested in a book about Stalin but not those things. They are essential for understanding why the picture of Stalin among the western left is so skewed today.

That book made a lot of things click about modern liberalism, for sure. Losurdo doesn’t miss.

The ones in my family (Scandinavia) are, yes. It’s all surface-level “at least she’s not an old white man” vibes. My experience is that our society is so Trump-brained, that most people would welcome literally anyone else.

EDIT: When I say “excited”, I do mean relative to their lack of enthusiasm for Biden (although they were still certain he was way better than Trump, of course). It’s worth remembering that a lot of people to the immediate left of centre here celebrated Obama as if it was some massive victory for them in 2008 (myself included, but I was just a dumbass kid).

Unfortunately, for the average left-leaning lib/succdem, symbolic victories and vibes are all politics consists of. I recently made the mistake of airing some doomerism about the state of EU politics to my overwhelmingly succdem family, essentially just saying that I believe fascism will continue to gather support in Europe as long as the “left” continues its strategy of moving right to counter the right, after which (surprise) the right says “thanks” and moves further right.

This was met with a) astonishment at where I got these “conspiracy theories” from, b) concern trolling (“are you doing all right? I get worried about you when you say these things”) and c) vibes (“I have to believe things are getting better!”).

All participants in this conversation are people I would call above-average in terms of political literacy among libs/succdems. And even they are just completely checked-out. They are also all quite excited for Kamala Harris

Where I’m from in Europe I think most people sort of think of it as just basic common courtesy, especially for older/disabled/people carrying stuff. At least, that’s what’s taught, but I wouldn’t speculate on how often it actually happens here vs. the US. I did also once have a colleague from the US who was extremely (almost performatively, I would say) friendly about those kinds of small, polite gestures. So what do I know.

Wait, you can like “hold” a door open? What, with your hand? I’m European and I’ve literally never heard about that. I thought slamming doors straight in other people’s faces was a universal thing. Learn a new thing every day.

I kid, of course. But for real, what makes you think of door-holding as a uniquely American thing?

Team Seen Been or team Shawn Bawn? That is the real “if a giraffe could wear a tie…” question

they do X and Y

Goes to any forum for landlords: “How can I avoid doing X and Y for my tenants?” “Is there any way I can force my tenants to do X and Y or pay for them?”

Ah, I see. Thanks!

I’m a bit OOTL on the Winnie the Pooh thing. I always just assumed it was just a bunch of redditors making a racist effigy out of a fake news story, but googling it does give a bunch of (western) news outles, wikipedia pages etc. saying the character was censored/banned. Can someone pill me on this/direct me to a less brainwormed place than wikipedia for learning more?

Ew, reddit is leaking

Even my lib dad could see this bullshit for what it was. It’s a super transparent attempt to manufacture crisis support.

Maybe this is a stupid question, but does Obama have a lot of sway still? Is there good reason to think that his support is a strong indicator that Biden won’t get canned?

Whatever site that is really knows their audience. Not only is Yasuke, famously a real human being who actually lived and was black, “originally depicted as a black man”, the mod also apparently turns him into an “authentic Japanese character”. Which is apparently a more fitting description for whatever generic Japanese dude the modders think up than an actual historical figure. Christ.

My story is implausible because elderly people can’t hear? That’s certainly a take, given how the “angry old lady downstairs knocking on the roof with a broom” is a super common trope. This woman was in her 60s, they can generally hear just fine lol. If you literally believe people would never complain unless there was genuinely something to complain about, then you have been extremely privileged in your selection of neighbors. There are tons of unreasonable and shitty people out there. There are also people who have aforementioned hypersensitivity or other mental issues. These things cause people to disagree on what characterizes a normal level of noise. Negotiating this shit is part of what it means to live in close proximity to each other, and it’s way harder in an atomized society where most people in the city don’t know their neighbors.

I saw the letters she would dump in their mailbox, and they didn’t look like the work of a healthy individual. I also happen to know that my sister and her husband was (and still are) very chill people who don’t party, listen to loud music or have screaming matches which also wasn’t what she complained about - it was literally things like “talking loudly” and “moving furniture” (half the time the complaints and “logs” were dated to times when they were both in bed). They noped the fuck out of there because there was no reasoning with this person, and they wanted to start a family. I can only imagine what would have happened if there was an infant in the mix too. Which is, incidentally, another source of noise that you sometimes have to put up with when you live in an apartment (my own downstairs neighbor had a baby with colic. It sucked, but that’s life).

Like, I get that nothing is ever true on the internet etc. but for real, what the hell is implausible about this story?