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Skiluros

@ Skiluros @sh.itjust.works

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2 yr. ago

  • The highlighted division and factions of Lemmy.

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  • Strongly disagree on this one. Tankies and MLs are almost universally supportive of genocidal imperialism and authoritarianism.

    Had some unhinged ML quote tweet my post about how she was in no position to complain about removal of Soviet monuments (she doesn't live in Kyiv, doesn't walk in Kyiv's parks and doesn't pay local taxes).

    "Libs" do not all hold identical views on Palestine. If anything, negative perceptions of Israel (not just the current leadership) is on the rise. Libs are no where near tankies or MLs in terms of toxicity and comical stupid polemics (I refuse to believe tankies genuinely believe NK is a vanguard against imperialism and a great place to live).

  • The highlighted division and factions of Lemmy.

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  • I have Lemmygrad and Hexbear blocked. ML still has a few communities that need to move off ML.

    FWIW, I actively mod/curate several communities that have become vibrant alternatives to the original (half dead) ML variants.

    I actually joined Threadiverse via ML (did think the domain and their application was strange but didn't think too much about it) and then I realized Dessalines also admins Lemmygrad and he is a scumbag; of course I left ML ASAP.

    I am generally doing my part to move over to Piefed, which also has a lot of cool features and better devs.

  • The highlighted division and factions of Lemmy.

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  • Might be worth looking at the behaviour of so called leftists on Lemmy.

    Many of them openly support and cheer for russia's invasion of Ukraine and support summary killing of Ukrainians ("summary executions in Bucha [and beyond] is a BIA conspiracy!!!" is not a serious statement), openly state that Ukraine does not have the right to self-determination and generally support the extermination of Ukrainian culture, language and identity.

    I am from Ukraine, from Donbas (Lugansk) no less. What sort of reaction do you expect when you see alleged leftists cheers for the total occupation of Lugansk by the Russians with BS like "Lugansk is free of da Nasizzz !1!1!".

    Or what about Jeromy Corbyn fanboys denying Corbyn's open support for russian genocidal imperialism (keep in mind these type of things get reported in Ukrainian media)? The fucker literally worked for Russia Today (which is managed by russian intel) and cheered the annexation of Crimea in 2014.

    As far as I am concerned, I hope all tankies meet the same fate as "Donbas Cowboy", Russell Bentley.

    Bentley’s wife, Lyudmila, then claimed that Russian soldiers from a tank battalion abducted him.

    According to the Investigative Committee, Vansyatsky, Agaltsev, and Iordanov tortured Bentley on April 8, and he died shortly afterward.

    Vansyatsky and Agaltsev are suspected of blowing up a car with Bentley’s body in it and ordering Bazhin to get rid of what was left of his remains.

    Is this an unreasonable reaction to disgusting tankies? What reaction do you expect?

  • The Movie Trope that Explains Trump’s Political Dominance

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  • Fascinating article. One that seemingly raises some salient points, but eventually collapses under the weight of its own contradictions.

    If this "slobs vs. snobs" allegory is true, what would stop US oligarchs from buying paying some demagogues to do something to stupid before running the pro-oligarch propaganda copytext?

    Say Joe Rogan could stick a hot dog up his ass and eat it and then run a pitch for position A [oligarch copytext] and bitch about position B [the alternative] being woke and that the snobs want to limit American freedom and you won't be able to stick a hot dog up your ass.

    And that's just the tip of iceberg, the article is littered with unconvincing American cultural axioms about "Americans fighting the system" and "the slobs always win".

    If you want to buy into Brooks' movie derived allegory (and I don't agree with this), the place to look for is Idiocracy where Luke Wilson's character explains why you need to use water for plants and not soda:

    After several hours, Joe finally gave up on logic and reason, and simply told the cabinet that he could talk to plants and that they wanted water.

    Isn't this conclusion consistent with Brooks' "slobs vs. snobs" allegory?

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  • Gates being connected to Epstein was widely reported a few years back, no?

  • ‘CEO whisperer’ says US tycoons are privately anxious of Trump’s ‘Maoist’ leadership

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  • Source article:

    https://fortune.com/2025/09/21/behind-closed-doors-ceos-say-trump-is-bad-for-business-and-its-time-to-make-america-into-america-again/

    It's honestly a fascinating read. It's fundamentally a PR piece, but the details (especially if you read between the lines) provide some interesting insights about how American oligarchs want to be viewed.

    Difficult to make any educated speculation without direct access to the event (this is a PR piece first and foremost), but I get the impression there is an attempt to hedge their bets and avoid a scenario (even if it is low probability at this point) where they will have to go down with the ship.

    Nearly three-quarters of CEOs surveyed said they were confident that U.S. free-market capitalism can compete with China’s socialist market economy in the global AI contest, and they expressed a near-unanimous discontent as the Trump administration has veered away from the capitalist system.

    This is a particularly funny quote. America is not a free market model and China does not have a socialist market economy. Both are state capitalist countries with China being more centralised via the CCP and America allowing a measure decentralisation for oligarchs.

  • Pete Buttigieg Responds To Kamala Harris Confession He Wasn't VP Pick Since He's Gay

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  • highly corrupt PR firm

    McKinsey is a consulting firm, not a PR firm.

  • Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime - NYT Archives

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  • That's fair, it's not a one to one comparison.

    But at the same time there also were unqiue challenges in the Baltics, Ukraine and other countries occupied by the russians. Protesting against the soviet union was a very high risk activity and protesters were killed during the subsequent acceleration of demands for freedom and self determination. The USSR was likely capable of putting down the demonstrations, but thankfully luck was on our side and it helped that the USSR was seen by most as having reached a dead end.

    All protests against authoritarian thuggish regime carry challenges. I personally think if the scale of protests in the US reaches a sufficient size and intensity (which is unfortunately a big if), you can overcome the challenges with size.

  • Democrats in House and Senate support 'National Day of Remembrance for Charlie Kirk'

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  • "Charlie was a good man -- a devout husband, father, and friend. His life was shaped by his faith and the idea that in America, debate and discussion are crucial to the betterment of our country," Scott said on Thursday.

    Kirk was almost certainly a demagogue who believed in nothing and was willing to shill any copytext from oligarchs and the American far right for his own material benefit. Only a fool would deny the irony of Kirk getting a taste of his own medicine (one last time).

    But the funny thing is that they are showing extreme disrespect to Kirk (after he was gunned down no less) by essentially stating that he was a gullible idiot who lacked the mental capacity to evaluate American political culture. And how was his life shaped by faith? If his life was shaped by faith he wouldn't have focused on politics.

  • Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime - NYT Archives

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  • If we ignore Polish solidarity, the fall of the Berlin Wall and the Romanian Revolution of 1989, protests against the Soviet Union started in the Baltics and quickly to other occupied countries.

    The Baltic Way (Lithuanian: Baltijos kelias; Latvian: Baltijas ceļš; Estonian: Balti kett) or Baltic Chain (also "Chain of Freedom"[1]) was a peaceful political demonstration that occurred on 23 August 1989. Approximately two million people joined their hands to form a human chain spanning 675 kilometres (419 mi) across the three Baltic states of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania, with a combined population of around eight million citizens, who had been subjected to the Soviet Union's occupation and communist repression for more than 45 years

    The next year brought increasing protests. On 21 January 1990, the anniversary of the 1919 Unification Act between the Ukrainian People's Republic and West Ukrainian People's Republic, a human chain of three million people linked the western Ukrainian city of Lviv to Kyiv, Ukraine's capital. The human chain, which also drew hundreds of thousands of protesters to Sophia Square in Kyiv, demonstrated the popularity of Ukrainian independence outside of Western Ukraine. It was the largest demonstration in late-Soviet era Ukraine.

    The protests eventually even reached Moscow, with estimates of protest size ranging from 200 K to 500 K.

    I will note that US population density isn't that much lower than in Ukraine (38 per KM2 versus ~70 per KM2 in Ukraine). Assuming there are 4,500 KM between LA and NY (and 2M persons per 675 km) around 13.3 million people to replicate the Baltic Way, a mere ~4% of the population, compared to 25% participation rate in the Baltics as a whole (that would be about 80 million for the US population).

    There are of course many differences between Warsaw Pact/USSR and modern US (with the issue that the Soviet economic system was collapsing and was irreversibly discredited), but that's always the case with any situation.

    The bigger point is that it's never easy and successful anti-regime protests find a way through the challenges. Sure there is some measure of luck involved, and you have to take risks, but that's true of literally anything in life.

    And yes, the decline of democracy is a global issue. The old system/model is clearly reaching a breaking point. “The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: Now is the time of monsters.” We'll get through it. My only hope is that this breakthrough won't take 50 years when I'll be in my 80s.

  • Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime - NYT Archives

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  • You have people like that everywhere.

    They'll stop acting out when they understand there is a not insignificant risk that they will be on the losing side and there will be consequences in a independent court that won't look kindly on their actions. That's if they don't get caught before that and get to experience a symmetrical response.

  • Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime - NYT Archives

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  • Successful protests reach a scale and determination where this doesn't matter.

    Don't mean to be a doomer, if anything I am trying to show a realistic option beyond doomerism.

  • Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime - NYT Archives

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  • No offence taken. Nah it's not an LLM. It's just my writing style (and occasionally speaking style when discussing more formal topics). I do that in other languages too. That being said, the other languages that I speak have a formal sounding tone with written text by default. I started learning English when I was very young and I've been speaking/reading/writing from an early age. LLM output may have a similar tone (the formalism), but they don't output the same context/arguments without extensive prompting (which would require more work than just writing out the reply by hand). And you are correct that you would need elaborate prompting to simulate minor grammar errors and typos. :)

    For me, centre-right = Democrat, far right = Republican. It's not a translation issue, I am well aware that my language style doesn't align with commonly used terminology. That's the basic distribution of the US political spectrum in a global sense. The word "liberal" is used incorrectly by Americans. Even the term "conservative" in the American context is more borderline. From my experience conservatives globally tend to have a subtle, but different outlook than what is marketed as conservatism in the US.

    Honestly, my reply was badly thought out in retrospective. The reply was indeed boilerplate what I would say to any American (I make the same arguments to my American friends albeit I modify how explicit I am depending on who I am talking to) and the emphasis was by design. I was trying to emphasize that there is benefit to "novel approaches" 😆 and that standard methods and even analysis (in the US context) can work, until the day comes when it doesn't work.

    I will happily concede the discussion about US exceptionalism if there is reason for it. An example would be changing the situation on the ground via mass scale, bottom up protest (the Democratic party is too corrupt, too cowardly and have no new ideas) with the government losing control over parts of the country (e.g. institutions like local courts and admin, key transport infrastructure like airports) and showing the rest of the country that the scale of the protests (e.g. 60 million strong daily protests, with weekend peaks approaching 100 million), their determination (no compromises, immediate resignation of the current administration and all senior enablers) and most importantly gumption (letting both senior business leaders and security forced understand that they risk going down with ship and the captain and his team will be the first to bail if things get hot).

    Me ignoring the “my country is dying I hate this” was a lack of compassion on my part. My bad. The doomer last paragraph in my OP was also uncalled for. I am trying (and failing in this case) to point out that now is not the time to think of exceptionalism, the time is to make it happen.

  • Billionaire Trump Supporter Larry Ellison is Closing In on CNN, HBO, and TikTok (Gift Link)

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  • I was living in a small, relatively well off town, it was a bubble both economically and culturally.

    My foreign friends and I travelled extensively when they were visiting and we stayed in Detroit multiple times, visited Gary and Flint, stay in random despondent rural trailer parks (my local friend was from there).

    We visited many local cultural locations. There was a funny situation in a small rural museum where the bored receptionist was like "Oh wow, you are from Ukraine/[another country]. You know what, there are no other visitors, I will give you a private tour on a complementary basis." She was really excited. I was polite and was asking questions and telling her about Eastern Europe and topics related to the museum content. She loved that we were visiting.

    Also did some DIY tourism. Climbed over the fence to explore abandoned buildings with interesting graffiti. Took photos of random stuff in the ghetto. We had locals come up to us and ask if we were students doing research. I answered that I am a student at a regional university, but we are here not on university projects. It was crazy to see the number of young children hanging out seemingly alone during school time no less.

    The trailer park home I was staying at was via a guy who burned down part of their school (he was good friends with one of my local university friends who invited to me to this town). One of his friends was buying drugs through a contact from the school burning guy's father's girlfriend. The father demanded a cut of the drugs (not financial comp). Stayed at another house in a completely rural area. The family would be considered poor by local standards, but their house was huge. At one point they converted it into a strange (by my standards) conservative church.

    I was shocked how empty downtown Detroit felt outside of sport games and events. Even the major museums felt empty. I remember going to this nightclub that was on the top storey of a beautiful art deco skyscraper.

    Also there was no rail access to Detroit, only busses which are not as comfortable or convenient. One of the students in my dorm wrote low quality article about how building a railway line would be bad thing. He was likely right due to the lack of feeder infrastructure, but his argument was more polemical. Cars equal = freedom. Cars are of course nice and convenient. But from my perspective you have much more freedom and independence when you have an expansive, convenient and "on time" railway system while having the option to use a car. In a way, it requires more personal responsibility to build such a society (not to mention the CCP's massive success in building out national railway infrastructure).

    Gary honestly felt a lot less interesting than Detroit or some other places. Even the downtown did not have anything distinctive. Just liquor stories, paydown loan places and mini marts. Jackson family home was tiny. I was expecting a gigantic museum considering how well know Michael Jackson is around the world. I would strongly recommend staying in Detroit over Gary.

    I have positive memories about all these trips. This felt more real and satisfying than the small town I was living in. It felt fake with a lot cognitive dissonance. There was a funny situation were I wasn't allowed in a fraternity party (even though I was invited by a junior member) likey because I didn't look like a member of athlete fraternity community that hanged out exclusively with the blond sorority community. I lived in a major metropolis and we went to both underground rave events at high-end night clubs, so this was a funny situation.

  • Democrats fume about Charlie Kirk vote: "We're being totally set up"

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  • The funny thing is that they could just speak the truth and state that the Kirk fellow was a demagogue who believed in nothing and would shill for any oligarch copytext that would benefit him. They could even make a glib remark that he would shill the idea that "a mayonnaise enema supports freedumz and shit and will allow you to fly" as an example.

    I don't think Kirk was a fascist in the ideological sense and likely knew that what he was pitching was both immoral and factually wrong, but didn't care as long it materially benefited him.

    This is honestly a horrible situation not just for the US, but the democratic world at large. US moving from proto-fascism to full fascism in not a good thing for the global democracy and human rights.

  • Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime - NYT Archives

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  • Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime - NYT Archives

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  • Look man, I genuinely don't want steer things in an even more negative direction.

    Perhaps I misread things. Honestly, I regret writing my OP in such a negative tone and I should have been more constructive.

    I was just sharing things that came to mind.

  • Billionaire Trump Supporter Larry Ellison is Closing In on CNN, HBO, and TikTok (Gift Link)

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  • I would disagree.

    From my time living in the US, I got the impression American society is generally meek, conformist and often a bit shallow in their claimed political beliefs and attitudes (this is not true for everyone of course). See the postscriptum for some additional clarification

    I thought the "rebel" attitude was primarily theatrical and aimed more at maintaining and conforming with the local cultural milieu. When everyone claims to be an "independent-minded free thinker", then no one is really a rebel.

    Take the tendency for localism, "rural posturing", alleged libertarianism and faux-survivalism. The impression I got is that this is a sort of a "theme park" for adults movement. The localism is a bit superficial, it's not like the rural areas have their own language or a truly distinct culture relative to the rest of the country.

    In US rural areas everyone drives around in expensive off-road style vehicles (from both a cost and opex perspective). Infrastructure is well developed you can access all ecosystems for every manner of product and service with ease and relative cost efficiency by local standards (I will specifically note eCom delivery being universal ).

    Compare that to the situation in that town when the Maoist bomb railways, most people cannot afford getting an off-road vehicle and would have to switch to busses which are heavily overloaded and prone to accidents and breakdowns. This is especially true during the monsoon season.

    Or consider the gun culture in the US. My family are from very run-down towns in Asia and Europe, lots of poverty, challenges, no growth and so. One of my first experience of the US was Detroit, Gary (the where town Michael Jackson is from) and Flint. Never could I imagine that the towns where my family is from could have a much higher standard of living than large areas of the US (at least you don't risk getting shot or robbed if you are out at night).

    US lacks any functional to limit the negative externalities of gun ownership and much of the gun culture is built around opposing all common sense measure to reduce externalities purely out of malice and conformist culture. There is an abstract beauty to this level of stupidity and backwardness.

    "Gun ownership" is a massive cultural signifier. Thinking that having a gun makes you "independent-minded, powerful, free thinker" is the most stereotypical American cultural motif there is. It's not very "rebel" to think that merely owning a gun makes you independent and free. The whole "gun ownership to help fight back against the risk of oppression" is Hollywood style fanfic. This might have been true 250+ years ago, a lot has changed this days. I live in Ukraine, gun ownership would do nothing to help fight back against the russians. You need APCs, tanks, ballistic missiles, anti-air, bunker infrastructure in cities, mine clearing ships.

    Apologies for sounding like a broken record, but the very notion that "America has a lot of rebels" is a conformist attitude. It really does not (definitely not more than average).

    P.S. This is not an anti-American rant. It's a great place, lots to see, with friendly people, good food from all over the world even in smaller towns, it's a good to place to earn money, many world class companies, very strong R&D and higher education culture (at least historically). I've travelled a lot and a good policy is to focus on the positive things in a country/region and be flexible and try to be understanding about the negatives. In this case though, we are discussing the negatives, these are actual things I encountered while living in the US (as someone who didn't necessarily wanted to move there permanently, immigrants are often a bit biased in their evaluations).

  • Goebbels Ends Careers of Five 'Aryan' Actors Who Made Witticisms About the Nazi Regime - NYT Archives

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  • America has heart in a way that a lot of countries don’t seem to have.

    ...

    ....and that’s very much a part of the American character,

    ...

    Maybe it will heal stronger after the break. It’s a unique type of country, it doesn’t have to follow that same decline and fall.

    So I've lived in ~5 countries (across three continents) for multiple years, I speak multiple languages and I've visited maybe another ~25 countries.

    Every country has its own beautiful and unique things. Every country also has its own bad things.

    That being said, I am very proud of my own country, Ukraine.

    While you should be proud of your own country, I would argue it is unproductive to focus on exceptionalist rhetoric in this context.

    Arguably, it is this sort of superficial, exceptionalist rhetoric is at the root cause of the situation:

    • Assuming that Americans are unique and that oligarchs and corruption isn't going to lead to universal outcomes.
    • Disregard for the need for reform, assuming that a system made ~250 years ago is magical and impervious to reality.
    • Ignorance of the more "luck-driven" elements of the success of the American system (and an unwillingness to consider the implications of said luck).
    • Cultural mores emphasizing repetition of alleged commitment to some vague freedoms. If you keep parroting, "freedom this, freedom that", your not going to be able to make a true evaluation of the price and nature of freedoms when push comes to shove.

    Please note, while it does come off as if I am being a doomer and anti-American (honestly, I starting to think I shouldn't have added the last paragraph, even though I think it is true), this is not true at all. Beyond general humanism, I would stand to benefit from a democratic America. However, I am not really seeing any desire among Americans to take any meaningful action and consider novel approaches (I am referring to both the leadership of the centre-right and common voter who supports them).

  • New York Democratic Chairman Won’t Endorse Mamdani for Mayor

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  • US Democrats are so fucking corrupt.