“The future ain’t what it used to be.”

-Yogi Berra

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: July 29th, 2023

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  • So this guy has been getting a lot of traction lately because they basically predicted not only that the US would attack Iran, but also the specific mechanism which would cause it to happen.

    I linked to the next video in the series and I think it’s worth watching, especially in the context of the above figure. I think the professor is pretty cherry picked in their examples and what they choose to bring forwards as data and evidence, however, their opinion on why Putin is doing what they are doing is especially worth considering. Effectively, the professor argued, Putin is trying to use a constant state of war to reshape the Russian self image into that if a warrior nation. You can agree or disagree with the professor, which is neither here nor there.

    However, and this is why is sat their examples are cherry picked, let’s look at the parallels to the US with regards to using war to transform a people. I think the above point highlights the issue excellently, and those who can remember a time before 9-11 can attest. The US people changed after the war on terror; or perhaps, had change thrust upon them by a government interested in cultivating a police state style authoritarianism.

    Before 9-11, maybe a few police forces has something akin to a special SWAT unit. It was headline news if they were ever utilized. Now every small town practically has a bearcat, and through the use of copaganda, the oppression of citizens with no due process and no probable cause is practically the point of one lice forces. Forces within the US used militarism, they used the war on terror to subvert the US constitution in a multi decade process to convert local police into military forces, which can easily be swept under federal control.

    So when we criticize Putin for using war to remake the identity of a nation throughout the war, we should at least be consistent and consider how the US identity was remade through war. These p organs are the kinds of slippery slopes that those interested in bipartisanship committed us to over the previous two and a half decades.










  • It’s not a racial slur. It’s just what they use for someone that isn’t family.

    I mean it definitely can be. I mean, fuck, my best friend Kai (who is 100% Hawaiian, from a well known Hawaiian family) just about beat the shit out of another mutual friend (who is also Hawaiian) when he was was joking about his kid gonna catch diseases from the haole he was standing next to (me). Friend maybe meant it as a joke, but Kai sure af took it seriously enough to scrap.

    But I’ve also had another neighbor tell me “Oh you don’ worry nephew, you da’ good kinna haole”, and mean it.

    So it depends. It depends how you say it and what context.






  • why we aren’t more open to separating the work from the artist

    Because we shouldn’t?

    We shouldn’t support pieces of shit. Not with our eyes. Not with our ears. Not with our dollars or our attention. Its not like there aren’t hundreds of thousands of other hilarious people who aren’t pieces of shit. Its not like we don’t have literally PLENTY of other options.


  • Brazil is in the conversations. Mainly for professional reasons and because they do still invest in the kinds of science that my partner and I do, and I have many colleagues there and some family near Rio.

    The other is Tahiti, because I’ve got a pretty substantial Vanilla production operation going at this point, which was kind-of the entire point of why I moved to where I did. I also have access to EU citizenship through my mother, and I as far as a visa to live and work in the country, I think that part should be straight forwards since its basically France. My partner and I also have some connections to the university, University of French Polynesia. My partner has also previously worked for CNRS in Toulouse, although briefly. Buying land might be out of reach because its ridiculously expensive, but I can imagine various ways of making it happen.

    We’re seriously considering some option at this point, but its very tough because we moved to where we live because this is where we wanted to live. We’ve also got a wide range of “things” going on that are difficult, but not impossible, to disentangle ourselves from.