built_on_hope [she/her]

I tried one time, got 50 pages in and gave up. Would it have killed him to use like. Slightly less convoluted sentence structure

This is so moronic. The way they call it “blue skies” as if it was done for aesthetic / PR reasons. Five seconds ago they were moaning about the smog and how china’s killing the planet

I’ve seen so many libs in the MN subreddit telling people to call the police on ICE

Yes you’re right I definitely overstated it. I should have said that intuition is something to listen to as an indicator of what might be worth suspecting / being careful of. I do think that if you have spent a long time tracking sentiment in an area, you gain a feel for the patterns of the flow of information and influence and if something feels inorganic it can trigger the spidey senses. But it shouldn’t be treated as definitive

I’d believe it. Sometimes our intuition about stuff is just right. Like if a surge of attention or engagement feels inorganic it’s because we’re subconsciously picking up on weird patterns that we can’t fully describe

I hate what the chuds have done to Tolkien fandom

I think the problem here is that you’re using socialist content / quoting socialist theory but your mindset is stuck in a liberal way of analysis. Everything you say can be boiled down to “technically…”, which is a viewpoint derived from taking other people’s definitions as sources and framing what you perceive in a way which fits that definition.

Many critiques can be made of China’s economic policies, but we try to apply a material lens: what are the material causes and consequences? Definitions come at the end of the process if they come at all.

Others can post refutations of the specific points you make, but there isn’t much hope of “changing your mind” when the issue is approach. In fact, the challenge of “change my mind” is itself a sign that you perceive the world through an idealist lens. It also signals that you’re more interested in the debate than in finding the truth, which some are going to find annoying. (Personally I find the point scoring/debate bro stuff pretty boring.) If you’re really trying to seek materialist viewpoints, it’s much more rewarding to engage in a collegiate, good faith way here.

You’re not being unreasonable. It won’t happen all at once, but we’ll see things progressively get worse in different areas of the world for several decades. It’s already begun, to be honest. But this means we have to urgently focus on dismantling capitalism to try and mitigate the worst effects.

USG has already lost that trust with everyone else, hence what we saw with the bond market; as many here have discussed, the illegal seizing of Russian assets, cutting Russia off from SWIFT, volatile geopolitical actions, attacking the federal reserve, setting/cancelling/resetting tariffs in the first place. The problem is that everyone is stuck with the dollar. Russia is the only country that’s been banging the dedollarisation drum. Export economies like China hold billions of dollars of surplus, and regardless of how much trust is lost, it’s really bad for them if the dollar actually goes into freefall.

As for US capital owners, it might be a “didn’t think the leopards would eat my face” moment, but they have even less choice. Where are they going to take their capital when more than half the world is sanctioned? It’s not so easy to get out of all your investment positions, especially in USD. They’ll bitch and moan but if Trump is ignoring the Supreme Court already then who could even enforce their claims?

For a while I’ve been wondering if there are any separatist factions in the military but that seems pretty far fetched. Idk how much loyalty any general or group of generals can command in the US system

I wonder what would happen if they actually rule against him. Like there’s no way he’s complying. If the Supreme Court falls might be the wake up call for a lot of libs

What everyone else said. I like vegan sausages too, the Beyond ones are dece and often seem to be on sale near me

Came in here to talk about Discworld. I generally agree with OP but for Discworld I usually recommend one of the standalones first because it’s a good way to get a feel for his writing and to see if you like it, whereas Colour of Magic and Light Fantastic are quite different from the other ones since he hadn’t really gotten into stride yet. Also depending on the person I usually recommend one I think they’ll like because it’s about something I know they enjoy. But I would never try to prescribe a whole reading order, that’s insane

Best news I’ve read in ages. May it be the first pebbles that launch the avalanche. Love and solidarity to our American comrades.

Someone posted this thread a while ago, pretty quick summary

https://web.archive.org/web/20210103190959/https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1309760094624600066.html

Thank you for listening

Of course beauty standards can be incredibly damaging, but you or a subset of men or society saying “I prefer a different/less makeup based standard” isn’t helping to dissolve the damage, it just reinforces the existence of standards. It can also shame people, including unintentionally, for wearing makeup in the first place. It’s a lose/lose situation for us. We get told to look a certain way and then told “I prefer it actually when you look a different way”.

The better way to dissolve the power of the standards set by our capitalist society and cosmetic industry is to reorient the conversation about beauty away from standards of any kind and towards personal expression.

U.S. Citizen mothers

Should tell you all you need to know about who these ghouls consider human

Have you considered that people wear makeup because they want to / enjoy it, and not just to align with what others might see as attractive? When I wear makeup I like to experiment with different looks and take my time because it’s an act of self care and expression.

Kind of disappointed in the number of comrades ITT who have the patriarchal “natural beauty is better” brainworms tbh

Good read