It just so happens that under Russian rule, Russian rulers will be making profit instead of Ukrainian rulers.

I think we’re missing a couple of nuances here, no? Although it’s a stretch to call them nuance. The way Ukrainian rulers have been making money has been through privatization. And because there’s so much privatization we need to look at who owns Ukraine’s economy. It’s only escalated since Russia invaded, with national assets being sold off to foreign private sectors so cheaply that one has to wonder why they did it when the gains are a drop in the bucket compared to the direct aid they’ve been getting from Western public sectors.

If Ukraine emerges from this conflict with its own sovereignty, it’ll be sovereignty over a flag, a presidential palace and a state framework that protects foreign companies’ investments from hungry Ukrainians.

Especially when the user experience is constantly guiding users who don’t know better to do exactly that

Or it’s a glimpse at Rom’s Dengist arc

The kicker is that Rom eventually becomes Grand Nagus and starts transforming Ferengi society.

The new HBO The Last Of Us series for example has this scene,

I love that scene. It’s so authentic: hearing a white American describe his successful living arrangement as literal communism but saying it’s not communism, and a black American correcting him. 100 years of Red Scare and minority struggle captured in a few lines of dialogue.

Conscious and Conscience are different things (but understandably easy to conflate)

I remember that!

Is it still playable anywhere?

The only downside is the game being set in Florida but we won’t get to be Florida Man

It’s true but it’s also exhausting. Like swimming upstream

The current shitshow is not allowing France to maintain its delusion of ‘first among equals’ consensual imperialism.

I think we’ll be seeing more Western countries break from the usual map as the blood one has to wade through to ‘stand with Israel’ increases to such an extent that they can’t ignore it even from atop their high horses. And also because the US is eating their high horses.

Iiving in one of the most densely populated cities on Earth, it sounds quite spacious to me. Perspective is wild.

I always used athletics tracks as a frame of reference. On a 400m track, the saucer section sitting in the center would be longer than the straights, but wouldn’t reach the ouside edges of the curves.

Liberal takeaway: “They took her banana! Surely that’s pillaging!” /s

I saw Scott Ritter had some interesting insights that MSM, as usual, is missing: Palestinians have much more will to fight. Israelis are a settler nation and most of them have second citizenships they can flee to. Palestinians don’t. For a Palestinian soldier the consequence of surrender is just a slower death than what they’d get if they keep fighting. An Israeli on the battlefield has a lot more to lose from taking any risks compared to fleeing. A Palestinian soldier has nowhere to flee to.

He also noted that if Hezbollah commit as well, all of Israel’s neighbours are gonna see it as a now-or-never chance to finally rid themselves of having a nuclear-armed US puppet on their doorstep; and if they don’t take it and let Israel make a bloodbath of Gaza and the West Bank, they’ll become more stable and consolidated than ever.

I have an Israeli friend living in Israel. I stayed with him and his family a while. They’re good people. The bomb shelter/home cinema in the basement and automated armoured shutters on their windows were dissonant to the rest of the peaceful community vibe.

But it’s the same with any Western community. The ‘normal’ creature comforts and luxury compared to the rest of the world is dressed benignly but it’s all predicated on robbing the rest of the world. Israel was only different in that it’s on a part of the global border between colonizers and colonized where the border is actively being pushed.

What’s happening in Israel now is coming for the rest of the imperialist core as that core is stripped down like layers of an onion. It may come in the form of militants driving down your street taking their homes back, or it may come in the form of your energy bill shooting up because in some far-off land someone decided not to let your government steal their uranium anymore.

People are going to think they’re being unjustly victimized because they’re ignorant to the fact that they’ve been complicit in the victimization of others. And that’s why westerners are so suddenly willfully ignoring what Israel has been doing to Palestine in plain sight: because as westerners their governments are doing the same, albeit more subtly. They’re more than ready to acknowledge the crimes, but they’re not ready to pay reparations beyond empty gestures.

From the river to the sea ❤️

Were they morally right to eat shit? No, but then there is no ethical consumption under capitalism.

Have a gander at the people behind Brave Software. They’re all cut from the same silicon wafer as everyone else in the Silicon Valley executive biome. And the (lack of) readiness of the information about who is behind Brave is another tell in itself.

The border and migration controls are something socialist states do to protect workers and their economies. The “your family will starve if you fuck up” or “our laws are inhumane and we don’t care; if you care you’re fired” are absolutely propaganda.

I just started. It’s beautiful. Can’t comment on the narrative yet.