Open Thread 147: A Time for Transition

I know this will come as a shock to many of my regular readers, but I will nonetheless ask you to respect my new identity as a Black Trans Russian (#BTR, pronouns: she/her) and support me in my transition.

You can do that verbally, or even better, financially. Those surgeries don’t come cheap.

Black Trans Russian Lives Matter! #BTRLM


In other news:

~ Steady trickle of new escalations in the Donbass, with news of Russian military equipment being brought to the border. This is a Russian response to the Ukrainian buildup in Donbass, ongoing for two months. I think the Americans are frontrunning the narrative of Russian aggression for when Ukraine attacks the LDNR and Russia defends it, to create grounds for sanctions. My followers are about evenly split in assessing the chance of serious fighting in Donbass within the next half year between <20%, 20-50%, and 50%+, respectively.

~ mal comments on Russian developments in space radiator chillers.

~ Vladislav Inozemtsev – The Physics of Sanctions (h/t Thulean Friend).

~ Sber-chan

~ In addition to my stunning and brave decision to transition, Peter Schiff has unexpectedly endorsed Bitcoin and there are reports that Trump is seeking to buy Putin’s Palace in Gelendzhik and convert it into a 5 star hotel.

~ Global Times has also repealed a Report on Human Rights Violations in the United States in 2020. Foreword: “I can’t breathe!” — George Floyd.

Anatoly Karlin is a transhumanist interested in psychometrics, life extension, UBI, crypto/network states, X risks, and ushering in the Biosingularity.

 

Inventor of Idiot’s Limbo, the Katechon Hypothesis, and Elite Human Capital.

 

Apart from writing booksreviewstravel writing, and sundry blogging, I Tweet at @powerfultakes and run a Substack newsletter.

Comments

  1. This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes – within reason.

    If you are new to my work, start here.

    Commenting rules. Please note that anonymous comments are not allowed.

  2. Abelard Lindsey says

    I know this will come as a shock to many of my regular readers, but I will nonetheless ask you to respect my new identity as a Black Trans Russian (#BTR, pronouns: she/her) and support me in my transition.

    Good one, that!

  3. Daniel Chieh says

    You can do that verbally, or even better, financially.

    You can support our kind hostess here:

    https://www.patreon.com/akarlin

    Every cent that you can part with, is a cent for a more equitable and diverse society. Remember these truths:

    Abortion is health care
    Trans rights are human rights
    No human is illegal
    Love is love

  4. anyone with a brain says

    Apparently my hypothesis that Khazar genetics are shared with East Asian genetics is btfo’d. I found this neat website by a geneticist who faces pushback from 23andme and other genetics gatekeepers.

    His studies affirm Khazar affinity with the caucuses, northern Iran, eastern Turkey. https://khazardnaproject.wordpress.com/2017/08/29/shaming-23andme-works/

  5. A shock? You’re a transhumanist who used to live in the Bay Area. Not transitioning would be the shock. Also WB.

  6. AnonFromTN says

    April Fools Day in full swing.

  7. …brave decision to transition

    Brave indeed. A few weeks back I also decided to transition. Given my culture I went for the female goat: ga – absolutely no conjugation allowed!

    I go to this Viennese clinic – the one where they botched botoxing Yushenko, but with new staff now. First it looked promising. Then some non-descript gender deviant (possibly of Habsburg descend) asks me:
    have you been vaccinated?“.
    I go, “why do you think I am doing this, I am trying to avoid that mrna sh..t”.

    That was it. I was out of there like a Czech when a war starts. They even stamped my ID with some 114-letter incomprehensible German term. The damn is too long for Google, so I have been in hiding ever since. (Interestingly, male goats don’t seem to care much for paperwork, so life is pretty good.)

    Good luck with it Anatoly! The black part is pure brilliance. I wish I had thought of it, the f…ing inbred Krauts could had been more polite.

  8. Morton's toes says

    I am transitioning to Rafael Nadal. It may take some time.

    G. Gordon Liddy is gone. Will is a pretty good self serving autobiography. Also his interview with Buckley is pretty good. TL/wont’ watch: snitches are the lowest of all life forms.

    For some reason it seems to be no longer in print.

    https://www.amazon.com/Will-Autobiography-G-Gordon-Liddy/dp/0312924127

  9. songbird says

    If you want to utilize high human capital women, you have to give them high education, up to post-graduate, otherwise having them as at home taking care of the family is maybe just wasting their IQ, but then if you do that their fertility rate drops like a rock.

    Posted on the last thread, but I’ll make my reply here:

    Since the vast majority of geniuses are men, utilizing high-IQ women in the economy, by separating them from their role as mothers is probably somewhat over-valued. (as it diminishes the number of genius men born.)

    But, if is necessary, then the most optimum way to do it would be by anti-credentialism and by finding work that they could do from home, part time, and on and on-and-off basis.

  10. Athletic and Whitesplosive says

    An apt topic to raise in celebration of Anatoliya’s newly installed Khazar milkers

  11. Time for a post on Myanmar? Interesting that China is basically arming both sides of the conflict, and has actually been sheltering and sponsoring the Kachin, the United Wa, the Arakan Army, and the Karen for the longest time, interesting considering its own problems with separatism.

  12. songbird says

    Lately, I’ve been thinking that HBD must be one of the prime factors of humor. That is, I believe that its appeal to hindbrain instinct makes it inherently funny. Meanwhile, the natural diversity of the world opens up almost endless source material. But these simple truths cannot be articulated on a mainstream level, and so we are limited to appreciating the rare ethnic or sexist joke, spoken in secret among friends.

  13. Let me guess–Anatoly is going to be keeping his junk, not going on any HRT or getting any FFS, and going to be identifying as a non-op trans lesbian, correct? And also be identifying as an inside-out Oreo–white on the outside, black on the inside?

    Anatoly, you could have a chance of getting some of that forbidden lesbian pussy now! You go, tiger! 😉 Don’t disappoint us! 😉

  14. Those milkers are only for lesbians, not for you!

  15. Coconuts says

    Congratulations on becoming Black Anatoly!

    (I am a TERF as far as the Trans thing goes).

  16. Dacian Julien Soros says

    There’s hardly a brick left from the Khazars, although some progress is being made on the Northern shore of the Caspian. In order to say anything about their DNA, you need to find that DNA first.

    If you just make it up in the computer, the way Elizabeth Warren did, then it’s your choice. You could pretend they were the ancestors of the Japanese, and infer a very non-Ashkenaz genome for they. Or you could pretend they were the ancestors of the Ashkenaz, and obtain the opposite result. I suspect that most of the disagreement stems from whatever geneticsts are using as Khazar surrogates. Any random person from Crimea to Xinjiang may have been used as a stand-in for Khazars, and there is more diversity there than in the old Africa or the New Africa.

  17. Bashibuzuk says
  18. Bashibuzuk says
  19. ~ mal comments on Russian developments in space radiator chillers.

    Woohoo!

  20. songbird says

    He is doing a Jimmy Carter and trying to carry his own bag, as an obvious prop, but Carter was only in his 50s when he was prez. It would not have worked for Chernenko, who was younger. Biden, at his age, should at least try to follow sailors’ rules: “one hand for oneself and one for the ship.”

  21. Morton's toes says
  22. Morton's toes says

    Do they let him walk down stairs without a secret service guy two steps below? Stumbling going up the stairs is no biggie. You can die falling down stairs.

  23. April 1 – New CDC. Guidance

    Invisible squids in your commode cause those flabby thighs — and Covid. The invisible squids transmit covid because the virus jumped from a bat to an invisible squid when the bat was dating the squid. The guidance is to wear thigh masks.

  24. Bashibuzuk says

    https://www.ucl.ac.uk/human-evolution/news/2018/apr/multivariate-examination-dali-skull-early-homo-sapiens

    These results add perspective to our previous view of as Dali a “transitional” form between Chinese H. erectus and H. sapiens. Athough no taxonomic allocation is appropriate at this time for Dali, it appears to represent a population that played a more central role in the origin of Chinese H. sapiens. Dali’s affinities can be understood in the context of Wu’s Continuity with Hybridization scenario and a braided-stream network model of gene flow.

  25. songbird says

    I imagine they have someone in front because it would look suspicious if he fell down the full flight of stairs, like they greased it.

    You can die falling down stairs.

    Definitely, and that would be the ultimate moment of gerontocracy. Worthy for the new Edward Gibbon, especially considering who is next in line.

    BTW, I wonder if Kamala ever faced a primary, even once. I mean, I know she didn’t during the presidential run, but I wonder about before then.

  26. Supply and Demand says

    Powerful Gannibal post.

  27. AnonfromTN says

    April 1 Russian Navalny joke.
    Navalny looked at the door of his prison cell and saw the guard. The guard opened the door.
    – Prisoner Navalny?
    – Yes.
    – Collect your things and get out.
    – So, the tsar got scared and decided to let me go?
    – April Fools Day, you moron!

  28. Thulean Friend says

    There was a discussion about urban renewal in the previous OT with Dmitry writing an insightful comment (as usual). I’ll quote it at length here.

    The problem is not traffic jams. The problem is that city planners in Moscow added multilane roads in central parts of city, to try to improve the traffic flow.

    Traffic jams help to disincentivize people from driving in the city, and reduce the demand for driving. If you try to solve the traffic jams, by increasing road capacity, the result is that the disincentive is reduced, and the equilibrium is moving to one in which there are traffic jams again, at the high road capacity.

    It would be better strategy to try to stop driving cars in the city, and converted multilane roads, into two lane roads for service vehicles – i.e. reducing traffic flow, rather than increasing it.

    There would be a transition shock, with popular discontent. But the long term situation in the city will become a much more healthy one.

    Most of the cities are being raped by the increasing numbers of cars, and central Saint-Peterburg has the same noisy multilane roads in the centre of city, although at least they didn’t cancel the trolleybus.

    For various reasons, I find it difficult to be enthusiastic about “renovated building facades” and “tidier underground power cable”; but mainly if the number of cars of the city is increasing, and so the unpleasant air and noise pollution that negatively effects mood when you are walking in a city.

    When you walk in the city, who cares if the building facades are dirty, compared to if the air is dirty? You don’t have to breathe the city’s facades, but the city’s air goes straight in your lungs, and could potentially damage your long term health.

    Moreover, roads are physical obstacles, that are rather more annoying than faded paint and overhead cables that only have practical negative impacts on postcards or Instagram photos.

    This was in relation to the popular concensus that Moscow was supposedly a world-class city, to which I retorted that it had the worst traffic jams in the world. Dmitry makes a good point. Traffic jams are not bad per se, but should only be used in the context of a transition away from car-centric NIMBY:ism. Moscow’s city planners have unambigiously failed in this, so its title as a ‘world-class city’ is suspect at best. (Stockholm’s record here is mixed too, with it lagging behind Amsterdam, Copenhagen, Oslo etc – although still better than many North American and EE cities).

    Moreover, as Dmitry points out, we shouldn’t think of car-centric NIMBY:ism only in terms of noise or air pollution, as important as those are. Most people have become so accustomed and conditioned to its deleterious effects that they no longer realise the huge space they have effectively surrended to cars.

    https://i.imgur.com/vDHZ338.jpg

    Cities that are actively moving away from this toxic model are truly world-class. Those who have failed are not.

  29. Thulean Friend says

    Russia warns of ‘anti-white aggression’ in the US

    Russia’s foreign minitry is obviously being hugely cynical here, but the West has shot itself in the foot to allow these kinds of silly idpol issues to proliferate in the first place. This is a smart play, even if it is done entirely in bad faith. No different than China’s invocation of BLM in response to the fake “Xinjiang genocide” that the West keeps harping about.

    I can see a division of labour here. China will target the left-wing audience, given China’s elevated status among socialists with Russia going for the right. It’s a smart tactic. If the West keeps up the idpol nonsense it will start doing real damage and the West will have nobody to blame but itself.

  30. sher singh says

    You’re a white nationalist.

  31. Daniel Chieh says

    At least he’s not boring, unlike you.

  32. …it is done entirely in bad faith.

    How do you know? How would you define bad faith in international relations? By almost any objective standard one can say that almost all Western critical opinions about others are also entirely in bad faith.

    This lazy habit of always labelling others is so ingrained in the West, that there is almost no way back to sanity. What if Russians are genuinely concerned about the sorry state of white males in today’s West? But they also see it as an opportunity to score points. That is true about Western criticism of Russia: a genuine concern paired with bad faith.

    I often ask myself what would happen to a relative who would be this openly hypocritical, as West is today. Would anyone take a relative like that seriously? Like, Kosovo was great, but Crimea is the worst crime. They are hopeless…

  33. Shortsword says

    Lavrov didn’t say this as a public statement. It was just part of an interview directed at the domestic Russian audience. He’s basically saying

    “Look, they are crazy over in America, see Russia isn’t so bad!”

    But Western media picks it up because it serves the purpose of demonizing Russia by association with white nationalism.

  34. Max Payne says

    That was gayer than the time I had sex with a man.

  35. Mr. Hack says
  36. Morton's toes says

    When just the facial skeleton is considered, Dali aligns with Middle Paleolithic H. sapiens and is clearly more derived than African or Eurasian Middle Pleistocene Homo.

    clearly

    Now see multivariate cluster analysis is almost never done clearly. It’s usually not even done correctly. The current state of the art with the resources of a couple aircraft carriers sunk into it already is done by google adsense.

    Google adsense serves me advertisements for women’s clothing. Some of my autistic friends believe that adsense knows me better than I know my own self and I am truly either transvestite or transsexual and I just have not figured this out yet. They may even believe this is clearly the case!

    Clearly is one of my favorite words to use in meta-analysis.

  37. ravin' lunatic says

    when i was a young boy, i thought of myself as a lizard. the smoothly streamlined body plan, durable scales and sexy tail were so attractive could scarcely consider a regular human male body tolerable.

    but i grew up. i became an adult. and i realized that i was actually a BIRD

  38. Morton's toes says

    Amazon corporation has borked the delivery of their image to my comment above rendering it mangled. : (

    So I am going to repeat myself a bit. G. Gordon Liddy is dead. For those of you unfamiliar with this character he is worth investigation. His autobiography, Will, is well worth reading one time.

    The goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1255962.Will

    G. Gordon Liddy was sort of a real-life Tyler Durden. He claimed to have never backed down from anybody and I certainly would not ever have challenged him on this point.

    His interview with William F. Buckley was good though not to everyone’s taste. The high light of the interview was when Buckley tried to get Liddy to agree with the hypothetical that snitching on [Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Pol Pot–I forget which but I believe it was Pol Pot] should be admissible within the G. Gordon Liddy Honor Code and Liddy insisted no; it is not ever permissible to snitch even on Pol Pot. Snitching is always instrinsically a dishonorable act, irregardless of the object. This was a lengthy argument.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v8NUu0jT4r8

  39. Erik Sieven says

    A good infrastructure project for 21. century is banning cars in cities. But you need to ramp up security in public transport at the same time.

  40. Yellowface Anon says

    Malkin’s newest piece here nails it for the role of test-and-trace systems as systems of social control. It’s doubtless and lots of observers here know by now COVID vaccination means way more than the virus, disease or biotech, but used for other , Great Reset or Bashibuzuk’s “Westroika”

    The biggest choice for resistance is to go around the system, by severing the connections of life and survival and doing whatever the most radical dissidents are pushing for (agrarianism?). But this means the abandonment of the old neoliberal consumerist order, and it will potentially bring about the downfall of industrial civilization in the style of post-Roman ruralization (so no malthusian industrialism, but deindustrialized and demodernized malthusian economies), since temporary adaptation would become indefinite transformation (Orlov’s dream coming true).

    Everyone from Schwab to the ants know it’s the time for a great transition (no allusion to Anatolia’s April Fools coming out intended). Let’s debate if Malkin and I are right or wrong on the matter.

  41. Bashibuzuk says

    I wonder whether any DNA could get extracted from the Dali skull. Regarding the Denisovan belt, Kostenki and Sunghir were Y haplogroup C .

    https://media.springernature.com/lw685/springer-static/image/art%3A10.1038%2Fjhg.2010.40/MediaObjects/10038_2010_Article_BFjhg201040_Fig2_HTML.jpg?as=webp

    Haplogroups C and paragroup K have been prevalent among Australian Aborigines before they admixed with the European settlers. Haplogroup C and paragroup K is also significant among the natives of Papua New Guinea highlands, which have been nearly non-affected by the Austronesian expansion.

    This might explain why the Denisovan genetic imprint is stronger in these populations: they lived in Eurasia prior to the last Glaciation maximum. They met Denisovan populations and sometimes interbred with them. Then they migrated South-East and were replaced by other Y haplogroup lineages everywhere except for PNG and Australia where they managed to survive and proliferate.

    That would entail that Denisovans lived in the area where their ancient remains were found in Eurasia and not in South East Asia. They were perhaps replaced/driven into extinction by the Y haplogroup C and K Cro-Magnon people, just like the Neanderthal were replaced elsewhere by Y haplogroup C and I populations.

    When the Sunghir hunter’s skeleton was found, Soviet paleontologists speculated that his physical features might be due to an admixture with Neanderthal people. The two boys buried there also present some physical abnormalities, although not previously linked with a possible Neanderthal admixture. The remains at Sunghir were discovered some 50 years before the Denisovan genetic heritage has been described in modern human populations.

    https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/paleolithic-burial-sunghir/

  42. Bashibuzuk says

    Commenter Levtraro has written about a potential future segregated society.

    In the smart cities the “state people ” living in a high technology environment, in the countryside “anarcho” communities left to fend for themselves without any state support and with minimal state intervention. The “state people ” live under constant surveillance and tracing, the “anarcho” communities are kept on a low technological level ensuring that their impact on the biosphere is rather low.

    Levtraro wrote about “segregated governance ” as a concept that TPTB might want to implement in the post Great Reset future. If Levtraro is still around he might possibly be willing to tell us more about it.

    I believe that this type of system would be an appropriate way of hedging against what our kind host(ess) has termed the X risks. In the smart cities the technology is evolving, but under a strict control, while rural human populations are kept under conditions that would ensure the selection of the fittest. The rural gene pool might be used to improve the smart city populations if required by disgenic trends among the “state people “.

    (Also, notice the similarities of this potential future social organization with Pelevin’s SNUFF and iPhuck novels.)

  43. Daniel Chieh says

    The elites I know are applying their extensive intelligence to figure out how to have sex with her brother in a socially acceptable way and will be using her extensive monetary resources to do everything possible to make society accept her. That’s among the less ridiculous things that she does.

    https://www.vice.com/en/article/wjeq44/why-cant-i-consent-to-sex-with-my-brother-on-genetic-sexual-attraction

    There’s no one at the helm of this ship, for all practical purposes.

  44. AnonFromTN says

    But you need to ramp up security in public transport at the same time.

    Then Russia is ahead of the curve: it does not have any problems with security in public transport (in sharp contrast to the US and many other countries).

  45. Daniel Chieh says
  46. Bashibuzuk says

    I can easily imagine that a significant proportion of the financial elite and old aristocracy offspring are utter degenerates. But we might also think of people like Karl Von Habsburg (of Belingcat fame), who is certainly a very functional person, just like his father was.

    https://www.facebook.com/worldeconomicforum/photos/klaus-schwab-world-economic-forum-annual-meeting-1971-european-management-sympos/10150229212286479/

    As I have already mentioned in one of my previous comments, Otto Von Habsburg has worked with Richard Coudenhove Kalergi. This is not a conspiracy theory, but a well-known fact. Also, Otto Von Habsburg fled to USA during the WW2 where he worked for the US Intelligence Services. During that time, his wife lived in Québec City where she might have met and got acquainted with the local Franco-British elites, such as the Elliot-Trudeau family.

    After the war Bilderberg, Club de Rome, Trilateral Commission, the WEF and the IIASA (International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis) were formed by these people to foster global governance and in the case of WEF and IIASA promote the convergence of the Socialist and the Capitalist systems. A network of think tanks and international research centers has been active for at least three generations, made of very bright people, working along some very clear ideological guidelines: global governance, reform of capitalism and environmentalism.

    To deny the existence of these well funded and well connected initiatives is futile. We can deride them all we want, doesn’t change the fact that people try to influence the future of mankind the best they can.

    Whether they will succeed is another matter altogether. The task they outlined is unprecedented and extremely complex. The odds that they will fail are high. But frankly, I am now far from being certain that their failure will make any good to humanity in the end.

  47. Bashibuzuk says

    We will have both: transhumanist smart cities and Amish / Mennonite type of agrarian communities. Both are needed to hedge against the X risks.

    Having only the high tech approach is short sighted: cities have always been population sinks, it will be even worse in the future. We also need to keep some genetic diversity and some natural selection.

    It will be a Jedem das seine type of approach.

    Levtraro, are you still around?

    Please chime in.

  48. Daniel Chieh says

    I was familiar with some well-funded initiatives, likely one from Soros on a pretty personal level. A long time ago in a different life, I was aware of how seemingly organic protests by anti-fa(and anti-fa like groups then) were ultimately working in concert with “law collectives” and “legal organizations” that provided them with an excellent facade and protected them from the repercussions of their actions.

    This still continues: here’s a simple example.

    https://twitter.com/tgijp/status/1377341657339715591

    And of course, someone pays for the bussing, the medical bills, the legal expenses, etc often of the pond scum that inhabit antifa, people who are often degenerates and trash who do terrible things to each other and whatnot(and certainly don’t need money to do that). One of my many reasons for having such fondness for humanity.

    Well, where did the money come from? Ultimately, from Soros. But the thing is, the Open Society Foundation does not really micro-manage, know or largely care about the actions of their pets. What does Soros believe in? Well, we don’t have much history there, he’s written about the Open Society Foundation and I believe he is genuine in his commitment. None of this allows him to closely coordinate things, however, and this results in fun times like antifa trashing Democratic cities, and police being deployed to squash anti-fa. His approach is that of a shotgun: if you fund enough liberal writers, causes and believers(and budget reasonably well), you’ll be able to have meaningful political change to a more liberal society. Such an approach allows you to destroy a lot of structures, but isn’t exactly controlled in building what you want. Ultimately, the main challenge for even ideologically motivated elites like him is coordination.

    https://www.chicagotribune.com/nation-world/ct-syria-militias-us-cia-islamic-state-20160326-story.html

    AMMAN, JORDAN — Syrian militias armed by different parts of the U.S. war machine have begun to fight each other on the plains between the besieged city of Aleppo and the Turkish border, highlighting how little control U.S. intelligence officers and military planners have over the groups they have financed and trained in the bitter 5-year-old civil war.

    I do not doubt that there are others like him. But ultimately, great and small, there’s a surprising similar I think that they are indeed driven by personal demons and causes, and their actual effective control is quite minimal compared to unforseen consequences. Like children kicking in a pool, they can create waves and they want to create waves, but they cannot tell how it’ll all turn out.

  49. Will the Amish conquer the galaxy?

    Got to figure they religiously believe the commandment “be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth”, but eventually, they will hit some kind of wall. And then they will be facing a contradiction. What to do? Not grow, or adopt technology and grow? Who is to say that they won’t pick the second?

    But what is the distribution of Amish intelligence? If they scale-up, will they have geniuses to invent technology? Or will they all be of middling intelligence and lack the necessary anti-social impulses to innovate?

  50. IMO, the promotion of incest is not because elites want to live like ancient Egyptians. It is because they want to demolish sexual taboos, in service to the one sexual taboo still standing that they desire to destroy the most: the minimum age of consent.

  51. Daniel Chieh says

    Like children kicking in a pool, they can create waves and they want to create waves, but they cannot tell how it’ll all turn out.

    In fact, another thing to consider is that however well-motivated the leaders are, they are ultimately reliant upon their staff and assorted minions to element. And much like the generals of yore, they’re only really as capable as their enforcers and by and large, each of those have their own mind, motivations, and demons.

    I don’t doubt there are people who want to move humanity in some direction or another. But insofar as an overall “planned” approach that isn’t anything more than kicking around waves in a pool? That’s a lot of faith, even hope, the idea that someone is actually in control.

  52. Abelard Lindsey says

    I think what is going on is that their sexuality is an addition, and all addiction is progressive.

    Gay sex, lesbian sex, three-somes, foursomes, its just not enough to get these people off any more. The last frontier is sex with teens and finally children. I think this is what is going on. These so-called “elites” want to fuck up everyones’ childhood and family life for no other reason that the inability to control their sexual urges. To top it off, they have the arrogance to think that they are better than anyone else.

  53. I think TF is best described as a Hindu nationalist. Let’s review the facts:

    Endorses Modi (cuck, though he is). Tacitly demands Modi send in the tanks against Sikh protesters. While on the last thread, he spoke in favor of following the Gulf model – an oblique reference to foisting India’s Muslim problem on other people, who will use them as helots, and not allow them to reproduce. This time, while the Arabs pay India “remittances” for the privilege.

    And he isn’t completely against caste. Much to his credit, he’s been consistently advocating that liberal urbanites be turned into a caste of bug-eaters who are forbidden to use cars.

  54. Daniel Chieh says

    The girl I knew just wanted to fuck her brother. Age of consent laws for them on a personal level are pretty immaterial anyway when they have unlimited travel capacity. Everyone wants something they don’t have, and that’s something “they have.”

    Societal applause for how amazing you are for fucking your brother, of course, is also don’t they don’t have.

    If one wishes to be sympathetic, they grow up in highly unusual circumstances(immense wealth, privilege, praise, etc) and so they often feel a bit out of sync. The obsessions and drives they have may be a little weird(or sometimes familiarly petty), but its because they don’t really have a normal life anymore.

  55. Bashibuzuk says

    As a wrote a couple of times already, I do not believe they will succeed because the task at hand is overwhelmingly complex. But they are certainly trying to bring the World to some “Shining Tomorrows “. And it will certainly impact human development to some extent.

    OTOH, history presents examples of dramatic change impacted upon societies by some highly motivated and well organized people. Especially if their ideology is (quasi-)religious in nature. Christianity started as small Hellenistic Jewish sect, Islam was the newly minted and half-cooked Bedouin creed. When there’s will, there’s way.

    And who is going to stop the Great Reset/New Green Deal ? Les gilets jaunes, COVID-19 anti-vaxxer dissidents and MAGA deplorables?

    The Western middle class is sedated and dumbed down. As Max Payne has correctly written, many people will accept a lot of social control if they receive their welfare checks, have their pot and shrooms and junk food and are allowed to watch some VR porn.

  56. Bashibuzuk says

    they don’t really have a normal life anymore.

    Some of them didn’t have it for generations already. They are not normal people, perhaps they have never been, probably they never will be.

  57. Daniel Chieh says

    OTOH, history presents examples of dramatic change impacted upon societies by some highly motivated and well organized people.

    Good, the Machine God shall see all is well in the world.

    Especially if their ideology is (quasi-)religious in nature. Christianity started as small Hellenistic Jewish sect, Islam was the newly minted and half-cooked Bedouin creed. When there’s will, there’s way.

    Religion is very powerful when it provides both spiritual and material benefits and both Christianity and Islam fulfilled that vein for its adherents; they helped solve coordination problems. There is indeed a modern equivalent to religion – the woke religion. It even has scriptures that require schelling points:

    Abortion is health care
    Trans rights are human rights
    No human is illegal
    Love is love

    For the alienated youth, it provides a significant sense of identity, answers and cooperation, thus its spiritual benefits(often accentuated by chemical drug use). It provides material benefits from mutual self-help as well as from organizational overtake, their high moral capital allows it to also be converted into social and monetary capital, especially useful in the maggot society of stealing from the dying corpse of society. The existence of genitally mutilated transsexuals, etc, is a powerful form of dedication, a modern equivalent of monkhood that prevents distractions like family, etc, from disturbing them from their central religious identity. It has its apocalypses(climate change) and its raptures(luxury gay space communism).

    Without a doubt, it is powerful.

    It is sweeping the world, and perhaps cannot be stopped. But it has no great meaningful goal or meaning, no more than that of rats or bacteria. It is an effective meme and it hooks well into the modern psyche, like old religions once hooked into.

  58. Age of consent laws for them on a personal level are pretty immaterial anyway when they have unlimited travel capacity.

    I guess that is true. It was why Roger Casement was originally in Africa, and we have all heard about Foucault. But, even so, that mostly applies to countries full of ugly people, and I bet they wished it applied to other ones.

    BTW, elites seem to be outbreeding.

    Chelsea married a Jew. Aren’t all of Biden’s grandchildren half-Jews? And many of Trump’s. Harris is married to a Jew, but is thankfully barren. I wonder about Putin’s daughters…

  59. Bashibuzuk says

    It is an effective meme and it hooks well into the modern psyche, like old religions once hooked into.

    Yes, and Religious traditions are structured through a memetic evolution process and the guiding intervention of the elites. It will probably be the same with the Church of Woke.

  60. Daniel Chieh says

    BTW, elites seem to be outbreeding.

    Outbreeding(away from the population you rule) and incest(with other elites) are both lindy and trad for elites.

    https://cdn.zmescience.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/12/charles-spain.jpg

    https://www.zmescience.com/science/scientists-confirm-habsburg-jaw-is-the-result-of-royal-inbreeding/

    The Habsburg King Carlos II of Spain was sadly degenerated with an enormous misshapen head. His Habsburg jaw stood so much out that his two rows of teeth could not meet; he was unable to chew. His tongue was so large that he was barely able to speak. His intellect was similarly disabled. His brief life consisted chiefly of a passage from prolonged infancy to premature senility. Carlos’ family was anxious only to prolong his days and thought little about his education, so that he could barely read or write. He had been fed by wet nurses until the age of 5 or 6 and was not allowed to walk until almost fully grown. Even then, he was unable to walk properly, because his legs would not support him and he fell several times. His body remained that of an invalid child. The nature of his upbringing, the inadequacy of his education, the stiff etiquette of his court, his dependence upon his mother and his superstition helped to create a mentally retarded and hypersensitive monarch

    When it comes to underage sex, its just fashionable to assign it to the elite but really you don’t need to look any further than the local pond scum of lowlives in your town around bars and night clubs. But that’s not fun to whine about. Heck, it might even suggest that people could do something.

  61. Morton's toes says

    Agree. I have known of exactly one real life person who had sex with their sibling. Both were horribly traumatized messed up people. There is natural sex repugnace towards sex when adult with people one spent gobs of time with when both were children.

    This is not remotely as common as father-daughter rape.

  62. Supposedly, his sister was quite attractive, though.

    I wonder if incest would have more extreme effects on males being born.

  63. Daniel Chieh says

    The commentator “annamaria” who I believe is a Russian commentator who occasionally pops around Unz to provide her unique view of the world, once provided a complete description of noble rise and fall by claiming that intelligent men repeatedly marry brainless bunnies, eventually turning elite bloodlines into idiots and bunnies(presumably any descending women).

    While hilariously nonsensical, it was such a powerful imagery that I have never seen forgotten it.

  64. Thulean Friend says

    Here’s my political compass.

    https://i.imgur.com/CPD3x4F.png

    I don’t think anyone will be shocked by these results.

    P.S. supporting Hinduism in an Indian context is a liberal position to take. India’s not perfect, but it is still much more liberal than either Pakistan or even Bangladesh. I would strongly state that this is in large part due to religion. Everyone with a humanistic outlook should be pro-India.

  65. Though, I meant to say that the vast majority fathers are protective of their daughters. It is stepfathers that one needs to watch out for.

  66. Bashibuzuk says

    Regarding the Russian elites clothing fashion, I think we have a strong case of Brioni “monkey see, monkey do”. They should wear traditional Russian attire like Hindustani elites do.

    Wearing a snow white biotech produced spider fiber kossovorotka, a khaki Gore-Tex vatnik telogreyka and Vibram biopolymer lapti would be a powerful statement. Plash-palatka could also be added to the outfit to commemorate the Great Patriotic War.

    https://i.pinimg.com/236x/11/a2/09/11a20957c188bb1a20b1de747e89b97b.jpg

    https://images.wbstatic.net/c516x688/new/2600000/2607375-1.jpg

    https://getsiz.ru/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/telogrejka-1.jpg

    That would be skrepotvorno

  67. Daniel Chieh says
  68. The mode on purple ties was in vogue the late 2000s and early 2010s and was prominently noted by Yarowrath at the time, so I don’t think this is Russian elites aping the West – sooner the other way round.

    https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/heideg/33130130/113931/113931_original.jpg

    http://ljplus.ru/img4/y/a/yarowrath/nanotech.jpg

    It is best not to go too deep in that rabbit hole, lest one be driven into madness by revelations too powerful for man to know.

    https://spacemorgue.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/evil.gif

    https://img-fotki.yandex.ru/get/9103/13155000.9/0_c2b6e_88662676_GIForig.gif

  69. Thulean Friend says

    A lot of these security issues should simply be solved by a granular social credit system, empowered with predictive AI. This would effectively weed out the undesireables. There could also be a varieted wagon system, with those with the worst scores in a special wagon or just allowing them to go during specific hours with police presence etc. It shouldn’t be all-or-nothing.

    This is probably impossible in the West for the time being due to cultural reasons (too many “AI ethics” grifters), but I’d wager China will prove its superiority and then it will gradually spread globally. A good system will inevitably win over a bad one.

    While we wait for that, just build bicycle infra. I did 40 km today around Stockholm, taking in the early pangs of spring. The investments the city made over the past decade have been amazing. Yet there is still so much more to be done.

  70. Bashibuzuk says

    Absolutely superb!

    I applaud with both my hands and my feet.

  71. I think in especially in Western Europe’s 20th century changeover to the automobile age, could only have been possible with the “boiling frog” psychology, where the automobile was first introduced in only very limited numbers across the first half of the century.

    In the first half of the 20th century, car numbers were very small in Europe, and highways had an atmosphere (for example, if you watch old films) of almost empty ski tracks, for upper class people to slide across.

    Driving was first experienced in Europe, as a wonderful “transhumanist” pleasure of wealthy people, who had been given by the technology a dreamlike, if expensive, power of sliding around their city and country, as if they were a new kind of animal that lost the design limitations of two legs.

    And the intuitive idea to allow cars everywhere the horse carriages were allowed, didn’t seem so stupid, as number of cars was so small that their negative effects were difficult to notice. (First traffic smug was only noticed in Los Angeles in 1943, when traffic saturation was generation ahead of Europe https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/1943-hellish-cloud-was-most-vivid-warning-las-smog-problems-come-180964119/ )

    In 19th century, Trafalgar Square in London, is a place in the city where you meet, and call for horse carriages. So there is a road system for the carriages in early photos of London, if not in paintings.
    https://i.imgur.com/gCq0Iej.jpg

    https://i.imgur.com/bWGsTis.jpg

    So in the 20th century, London has just intuitively converted the smooth surfaces of horse carriage tracks, into automobile area for cars.

    London had behaved as if cars was the thing as a horse carriage, and the effect was to convert Trafalgar Square into an autobahn station.
    https://i.imgur.com/NbFoqZ6.jpg

    Finally, in 2003 year, they have removed one of the roads, with a design with Norman Foster, and the 21st century situation is improved, as there is a pedestrian zone linking National Gallery to Nelson’s Column.

    https://i.imgur.com/I7rdJqV.jpg

    But, despite improvement, there are still roads on three other sides.

    As tourists you go for photos with the famous historical sculptures, but you only want to stay in such a traffic zone not more than around half an hour.
    https://i.imgur.com/kGGJ7g0.jpg

    people have become so accustomed and conditioned to its deleterious effects that they no longer realise the huge space they have effectively surrended to cars.
    https://i.imgur.com/vDHZ338.jpg

    It reminds of Jacques Tati.

    Jacques Tati was born in 1907, so his later comedy films from the shock perspective of a man who can still remember old Paris, before it was converted into a roadway.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7bTLoBpw0Eo

  72. songbird says

    Thanks, for posting this.

    Though, perhaps, there should be at least a third axis: genetic loyalty. (And we would all like to see your ancestry results too.)

  73. Bashibuzuk says

    One has to cope with the degenerate fashions of the current feeble age and to accept that some great epochs have unfortunately passed without us having had even a chance to partake in their heroic achievements.

    Although we should not despair for the future of the Russian Tsardom, perhaps the broom will swipe again the traitorous dog heads of the corrupt boyars.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day_of_the_Oprichnik

  74. Some good points with some disagreement. There’re examples like the White BLM protestor going up against a mostly Black police detachment. Said protestor is considered “one of the good ones” in modern PC terms. Lavrov’s Othello point brings into play a kind of extreme reverse to an era of Whites doing Black face in cinema and theatre.

  75. AnonFromTN says

    I have known of exactly one real life person who had sex with their sibling. Both were horribly traumatized messed up people.

    This does not establish cause-and-effect relationship. Were they messed up because they had sex with a sibling, or did they have sex with a sibling because they were messed up to begin with.

  76. AnonFromTN says

    It’s April 2nd, but the news sound like April 1st. Russia moved some troops on its own territory. Ukies soiled their pants. Senile Joe called the clown and assured him that he stands firm with Ukraine. He forgot that he could not stand firm for years now. But he has a valid excuse – Alzheimer.

  77. There’s a simple solution – urban decentralization.

    These traffic jams only occur in big, centralized cities. So take them, and break them up into multiple
    well-rounded “sub-cities”. This allows you to keep the cars but with less road infrastructure, and is even better when combined with good, fast public transport.

    Think of it as really upscaled microdistricts – mostly self-sufficient, due to the size, call them “macrodistricts”.

    This way, you can also “stack” these macrodistricts on and on and on, however much you want. You can even make your whole country a giant city – remote work makes this even more easy. The Chinese, I think, are currently taking a similar approach to urban planning, but I’m not sure.

    My “optimal” human urban structure would just be one neverending village spread out between service centers, practicing automated permaculture. Can support a hilarious amount of people, yet is far more ecological.

  78. I think there’s an easy way for wokeism to be stopped.

    I call it cringe-induced self-defense genocide.

    You simply provide them with a far less idiotic worldview-system that promises them power, without having to be retarded troons, and you got half of ’em, as well as 90% of the normies.

    The rest, well, you know what happens to those.

    Without a doubt I consider wokeism a tier one existential threat, therefore it has to be destroyed by any means necessary, even if we have to go back to the stone age forever.

  79. Another German Reader says

    2/10

    would not bang

  80. songbird says

    Would have been the star of Qaddafi’s amazon bodyguard.

  81. songbird says

    Amusingly, Pinker is basically now saying, “abolish the GOP.” Doesn’t quite use that language, of course. But links to this opinion piece: https://theweek.com/articles/974199/hate-cancel-culture-stop-supporting-gop

  82. Bashibuzuk says

    Cool. He is a very talented person. He deserves everything he accomplished. And yes Emergence cannot be stopped!

  83. Abd ul-Rahman Lomax says

    I am looking to team up with people to take down RationalWiki. I have 6.8 million views on Quora. I have been in court over Wikimedia banning my account which was against my rights. I nearly won in court but the case was dismissed Lomax v. WikiMedia Foundation, Inc and I could not continue for health reasons but I would have won the case. I am now looking to file a lawsuit against RationalWiki Foundation. They seem to have recently attacked column writers from here: https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/The_Unz_Review#Contributors

  84. Replying to Daniel Chieh, from https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-146/#comment-4559341

    Interesting. Though in that case the drift may be even more limited than you thought. (I looked this up.)

    Indeed, in Japanese 鬼 nowadays seems to generally mean a rather physical demon/troll. Qua word. But qua kanji or kanji component it can still carry the more ethereal meaning “spirit, ghost” from Chinese. For example:
    – 餓鬼 (gaki) which is the hungry ghost or preta from Buddhism that AltanBakshi had mentioned;
    – 幽鬼 (yūki) or 亡魂 (bōkon), spirit/soul of the deceased;
    – 鬼火 (onibi), ignis fatuus.

    Some funny cases:
    – 餓鬼, as above, was at some point used also for “brat” or “unruly kid”; nowadays though they more commonly use the phonetic alphabet for this word, lessening the ghoulish connotation;
    – 債鬼 (saiki) is a cruel usurer or bill collector, literally “debt ghoul/demon”.

    Cheers.

  85. Mr. Hack says

    http://www.churchofhalloween.com/wp-content/gallery/horror-honchos/rondo-hatton-30.png

    According to his physiognomy, Rondo Hatton must have been a member of the Habsburg genetic family? 🙂

  86. Morton's toes says

    driven into madness by revelations too powerful for man to know

    http://www.ccru.net/digithype/miskatonic.htm

  87. Morton's toes says

    Have you seen any of those Pinker lectures where he tells the mixed audience that jews are smarter than non? And he thinks he is being hilarious while he is bragging for the archives?

    He thinks he is a scientist.

  88. The Wild Geese Howard says

    Purple was the hue chosen for the US’ color revolution.

    Also, check out Revelation 17:4-5

    4 The woman was dressed in purple and scarlet, and was glittering with gold, precious stones and pearls. She held a golden cup in her hand, filled with abominable things and the filth of her adulteries. 5 The name written on her forehead was a mystery:

    Babylon the great, the mother of prostitutes, and of the abominations of the earth.

    Now which suddenly prominent US politician does this passage remind us of?

  89. songbird says

    I vaguely recall a clip where he asked, “Is it good for the Jews?” which I thought was kind of strange. Obviously, it was meant to be a joke, but it is also obvious that he is a very philo-semitic person and loves to name drop any of his 3rd cousins, so to speak.

  90. Bashibuzuk says

    Now which suddenly prominent US politician does this passage remind us of?

    Sorry, I don’t follow American politics close enough to know. Would you care to elaborate!?

  91. Dreadilk says

    The times VS great man theory of history. I definitely lean towards the times explanation.

  92. In the old days, they used to appreciate ugly. I wouldn’t say the appreciation is totally gone. There’s Danny Trejo, for instance, but in general it is more politically correct. They wouldn’t make an ugly blind date joke anymore – at least for a woman.

    These are the days when they will put trannies on billboards.

  93. I heard somewhere (I should trademark this) that hot women on avg have higher IQ.

  94. Gerard1234 says

    We obviously have some Soviet parapsychology between ourselves , Karlin. I was going to write about ties/galstuk/kravat/kravatka on one of your recent threads, where some of the guys were talking about how some of the neighbouring states to Serbia are working at ridiculously stupid levels to pretend their languages aren’t identical to Serbian

    We use “galstuk” – which is either dutch or german in origin in how they came to Russia from the era of Peter the Great.

    The french say “Cravatte” and name it in honour of the croats ,after being impressed from seeing them wearing these around their necks in the 17th century . Poles- eternally trying to pretend to be French for centuries- say “Kravatka” .These faggots implausibly slavicising the ending but not the “Croat” part of the word – just to suckoff and pretend to be french!

    Ukrop official language say “Kravatka” as the poles ( although by some distance g(h)alstuk is the most used term for this on Ukrop land)……but there is no possible way this could have entered the “Ukrainian” lexicon as “kravatka” – not enough time since the term came into use for it to filter into towns and villages, not popular or wellknown piece of clothing in those lands sufficiently at the time…..and most importantly the key parts of Ukraine from which to base a fake Ukrainian “language” – under control of Russia at the time, so no Polish “elite” or king to be seen by the locals wearing it . It could only have been introduced,made and sold on those lands as “galstuk”

    Most probably bored Tsarist governors , possibly acting as predecessors to “globalhomo” – doing stunts on which part of Malorossiya they were controlling- have backdated and introduced falsely these stupid fake polonisms in “Ukraine” to try and make them slightly different to Russians and maybe show some pity to Poles in the century after that!

    So we have the freakshow situation where Poles are trying to be french to show how “western” they are……..as Ukrainians claiming to be “true Slav” are borrowing words from Poles trying to be french, but at the same time Khokhols are trying to be western by claiming to not be Russian…..by often disassociating from Russian words that are derivative of Russian interaction with west and bringing western ideas into east slavic lands…..and to add to this you have Russians trying to encourage this for a joke!

    Many other terms are just like this.

  95. JohnPlywood says

    That would entail that Denisovans lived in the area where their ancient remains were found in Eurasia and not in South East Asia.

    The consensus is that Denisovans lived in Southeast Asia and even crossed Wallace’s line. They may have made it to Australia.

    https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2013/10/131017144406.htm#:~:text=10%2F131017144406.htm-,Scientists%20have%20proposed%20that%20the%20most%20recently%20discovered%20ancient%20human,to%20Australia%20and%20New%20Guinea.

    Scientists have proposed that the most recently discovered ancient human relatives – the Denisovans – somehow managed to cross one of the world’s most prominent marine barriers in Indonesia, and later interbred with modern humans moving through the area on the way to Australia and New Guinea.

    From the actual study, note that it was not haplogroup C and K men “replacing” or exterminating Denisovans — but getting cucked by them. The same thing happened to modern humans in Europe with the Neanderthals.

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258056301_Did_the_Denisovans_Cross_Wallace%27s_Line

    Why did gene flow between Denisovans and modern human populations occur primarily east of Wallace’s Line and not on the Asian mainland? Given that intentional dispersal to Wallacea required the use of watercraft, the first modern human groups encountering the established Denisovan populations were likely to have been of very limited size. Either interbreeding may be more likely under these circumstances, or any interbreeding that does occur is more likely to be preserved as a signal in descendants.

    The genomic evidence suggests that gene flow from the Denisovans may have been largely male-mediated, providing some clues about the nature of the interactions (4).

  96. The Wild Geese Howard says

    Sorry, I don’t follow American politics close enough to know. Would you care to elaborate!?

    Ask and ye shall receive brother:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EEtd3rg6TKo

  97. Thulean Friend says

    Yes, you bring up some fair points. Lavrov’s understanding of Western racial politics is obviously limited. There’s plenty of performative wokeism by white radlibs.

    Rob Henderson calls it “luxury beliefs”, a gatekeeper set of social norms that one must adhere to if you want to remain part of a social class – or join its ranks. People who propagate these beliefs don’t always believe them, but spout them incessantly for status-related reasons. Given enough repitition, the mind fools itself into believing the nonsense. I think this is partly a factor in explaining the woke nonsense.

    We’re seeing the same bizarre dynamics play out even in Sweden, specifically in relation to the Sami. When I was growing up, they were a curiosity at the margins of society. There was no real hostility, just a benign indifference, since their numbers were so low and most of them are mixed with Swedes anyway. In the last few years, more than one woke neoliberal have begun to dig up their 0.1% Sami ancestry as a way to get a minor advantage against their peers and boost their own social status. It’s pathetic and hilarious at the same time.

  98. Thulean Friend says

    Everyday I wake up with the crushing realisation that I am not part of the Tajik masterrace.

    https://i.imgur.com/eRPnXAW.png

  99. Dacian Julien Soros says

    It is unclear what point you are making, but the Denisovans were discovered as irregular DNA. Their skeletons probably look the same as any other humans.

    It is the opposite for Khazars, for whom we have no skeletons, and therefore no DNA.

    You can use DNA to call this or that skeleton 100% Denisovan or 23% Denisovan. You can’t do that with Khazars, unless you are an obnoxious self-confident know-all Fauci.

  100. Yellowface Anon says

    Any forecasts right now will be as good as the ones made for post-Soviet countries in the early 90s.

  101. Shortsword says

    According to world bank their real growth per capita since 1990 is -20%.

    One unfortunate thing for Tajikistan is that Rogun Dam was never finished during Soviet times. It alone would’ve generated about as much electricity as Tajikistan’s current total electricity production. The construction has been very slow since their independence. It’s about to be finished with the help of China but that’s still three decades of delays.

  102. Indiana Jack says

    Did women ever inherit the Habsburg jaw? All of the illustrations that I have seen given as examples of the trait have been portraits of men in the family, not women, and it does not seem to have been inherited by Charles II’s sister. The trait was already been present in the Habsburg family before they became inbred, although inbreeding undoubtedly made it more pronounced.

    https://twitter.com/eduardhabsburg/status/1201434598309351425?lang=en

    Charles II’s father was 56 years old when he was born. So in addition to inbreeding, he also had to contend with the issue of the paternal age effect, which increases the risk of gene mutations.

  103. Not Raul says

    Georgia and Uzbekistan seem to be growing rather strongly, too.

  104. Yellowface Anon says

    Georgia had one of the worst economic collapses among the post-soviets according to the Maddison database (Karlin reviewed last year).

  105. I am not a city mouse, but being a gypsy I have ended up in a few for extended periods of time.

    The only city I have ever fallen in love with is Lisbon. I love the street cars and the food and the fact that it has unique identity and is on a human level. I used to work on the Ajuda Library. When the sun sets over the Atlantic, it is breathtaking.

    Tokyo (3 years) and Seoul (1/2 year) are safe, but soul-crushingly ugly.

    In Seoul, they have this cafe chain called Ediya. It sells hideous food, worse coffee, and it is literally everywhere. Each city block seems to be a clone of the next. Accommodation takes the form of row after row of identical, dehumanising high-rise blocks. The windows in mine were sealed. Otherwise I would have jumped.

    Thessaloniki is slightly less efficient than Tokyo but prettier, I would have fallen in love with it if it has had better air quality. Maybe the new metro will have improved matters. Auckland is quite livable. When I go to London or Los Angeles, I ask myself if this is the future and I lose the will to live.

    I have a special hatred for Melbourne. It is the PC people you meet there. They deserve Dan Andrews.

  106. Not Raul says

    Georgia lost a major war in 1992-1993.

  107. Yellowface Anon says

    I actually prefer a patchwork of Rothbardian “libertarian” ancap petty states, sorta like medieval Italy or Holy Roman Empire, but with modern or futuristic tech. Massive mobilization of resources and labor would be left to large conglomerates, but that’d be a problem if a Schwab-type character managed to yield the influence he has right now.

  108. Bashibuzuk says

    Actually Khazar burials have been discovered. Gumilyov was part of the team that studied their burials in modern day Dagestan. He wrote that they had the same skeleton features as most modern day Dagestani people have. Zelenskyi would probably qualify as a Khazar, Kolomoiskyi probably wouldn’t.

  109. Yellowface Anon says

    Seriously, transhumanism might not be able to resolve the philosophical problem of human spiritual existence, and rather it is materialized and objectified as neurobiological processes that can be manipulated, which belittles the value of human intellect.

  110. Yellowface Anon says

    This, but the 2 types of castes/civilizations would be ideologically opposite to each other and a millennial war with the battlefronts being drawn right now would be waged between them.

    Maybe you should read Martin Armstrong’s blog or even his paid subscription, for his AI-fueled oracles.

  111. Bashibuzuk says

    The consensus is that Denisovans lived in Southeast Asia and even crossed Wallace’s line. They may have made it to Australia.

    Have they discovered any physical remains of Denisovan people East of the Wallace line?

    If not, the consensus they have today (where?) is a Nothing burger. It is only based on the fact that the modern human Wallacea populations have a higher Denisovan genetic imprint. But these human populations have not magically originated in Wallacea. They migrated there after passing through other parts of Eurasia.

    OTOH, when you look at the probable area of origin of human Y haplogroup C and the routes of their dispersal and migration, you see that the core of the haplogroup C populations in the Paleolithic lived nearby the place where actual, physical remains of Denisovans have been found. They co-existed there with the Y haplogroup C people,we can be certain about it.

    From the actual study, note that it was not haplogroup C and K men “replacing” or exterminating Denisovans — but getting cucked by them.

    Well, I don’t see any Denisovans around me nowadays, but there are many (perhaps too many) Cro-Magnon people running around and causing problems worldwide. And I am one of these, therefore we replaced Denisovans, perhaps we had them for lunch.

    About “being cucked ” by these fine Denisovan “sexual supermen” : perhaps modern human females were capable of carrying a mixed species baby and giving birth, while the Denisovan females could not carry a mixed species baby and give birth to the child. Perhaps the size of the mixed baby skull prevented it from being born from a Denisovan female. The opposite probably happened with the Neanderthal, the mixed species children were probably born from the Neanderthal mothers because most Cro-Magnon women had too narrow hips to give birth to any of the hybrids.

    If Denisovan males copulated with a bunch of Cro-Magnon females, then their Y haplogroups would still be lurking around in our genepool. None have been found, therefore the Denisovan Chad cucking the Virgin Cro-Magnon is probably another Nothing burger.

    In Western Africa they found a couple of exotic Y haplogroups (A0, A00) that do not seem to fit in the overall pattern of of human Y haplogroup descent. They might (or perhaps not) be of some other hominid origin. When we discover something so exciting about the Wallacea populations, please make sure you come and write about it.

  112. Gerard1234 says

    Still no excuse for Armenia annihilating them in economic performance over the years. Armenia also had a major war, rail cargo between Armenia and Russia blocked by Gruzians because it goes through their disputed territory, Armenia landlocked and with terrible relations with the comparatively wealthy Turkish neighbour and of course with the oil-wealthy Azerbaijan.

    You could easily put their GDP over ( at least) 20% more if they had these things in their favour ( trade with neighbours Turkey and Azerbaijan, rail transport of goods to and from Russia)

  113. JohnPlywood says

    Have they discovered any physical remains of Denisovan people East of the Wallace line?

    If not, the consensus they have today (where?) is a Nothing burger. It is only based on the fact that the modern human Wallacea populations have a higher Denisovan genetic imprint. But these human populations have not magically originated in Wallacea. They migrated there after passing through other parts of Eurasia.

    Ancient human remains in Eurasia have no Denisovan genetic imprint. The Neanderthal ancestry in modern Eurasians is from Neanderthals (who carried some Denisovan ancestry).

    OTOH, when you look at the probable area of origin of human Y haplogroup C and the routes of their dispersal and migration, you see that the core of the haplogroup C populations in the Paleolithic lived nearby the place where actual, physical remains of Denisovans have been found. They co-existed there with the Y haplogroup C people,we can be certain about it.

    Yet they have no Denisovan imprint and there’s no Denisova remains that are contemporaneous with modern humans in Eurasia.

    Well, I don’t see any Denisovans around me nowadays, but there are many (perhaps too many) Cro-Magnon people running around and causing problems worldwide. And I am one of these, therefore we replaced Denisovans, perhaps we had them for lunch.

    There is no evidence for modern human-Denisovan interactions in Eurasia. They were likely extinct before the arrival of modern humans in Eurasia.

    About “being cucked ” by these fine Denisovan “sexual supermen” : perhaps modern human females were capable of carrying a mixed species baby and giving birth, while the Denisovan females could not carry a mixed species baby and give birth to the child. Perhaps the size of the mixed baby skull prevented it from being born from a Denisovan female. The opposite probably happened with the Neanderthal, the mixed species children were probably born from the Neanderthal mothers because most Cro-Magnon women had too narrow hips to give birth to any of the hybrids.

    We know none of this happened because no modern human (living or fossilized) has ever been found to have a Neanderthal mtDNA haplogroup, and Nsanderthal X chromosomal ancestry is extremely rare.

    On the other hand, there have been Neanderthals found with modern human mtDNA and X chromosomes.

    Due to the absence of Neanderthal-derived mtDNA (which is passed on from mother to child) in modern populations,[124][141][369] it has been suggested that the progeny of Neanderthal females who mated with modern human males were either rare, absent, or sterile—that is to say, admixture stems from the progeny of Neanderthal males with modern human females.[77][122][369][370][89]

    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/07/neandertals-and-modern-humans-started-mating-early

    Researchers sequenced ancient DNA from the mitochondria—tiny energy factories inside cells—from a Neandertal who lived about 100,000 years ago in southwest Germany. They found that this DNA, which is inherited only from the mother, resembled that of early modern humans.

    After comparing the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) with that of other archaic and modern humans, the researchers reached a startling conclusion: A female member of the lineage that gave rise to Homo sapiens in Africa mated with a Neandertal male more than 220,000 years ago—much earlier than other known encounters between the two groups. Her children spread her genetic legacy through the Neandertal lineage, and in time her African mtDNA completely replaced the ancestral Neandertal mtDNA.

    Other researchers are enthusiastic about the hypothesis, described in Nature Communications this week, but caution that it will take more than one genome to prove. “It’s a nice story that solves a cool mystery—how did Neandertals end up with mtDNA more like that of modern humans,” says population geneticist Ilan Gronau of the Interdisciplinary Center Herzliya in Israel. But “they have not nailed it yet.”

    Our results are potentially consistent with the notion that the present-day admixture proportion on the X chromosome was influenced not only by stronger purifying selection, but also by a lower initial admixture proportion p0,X (Fig 4). Lower p0,X is consistent with a bias towards matings between Neanderthal males and human females, as compared to the opposite. Based on our point estimates, and if we attribute the difference between the initial admixture frequency between the X and the autosomes (p0,X and p0,A) exclusively to sex-biased hybridization, our result would imply that matings between Neanderthal males and human females were about three times more common than the opposite pairing (S2 Text). However, as mentioned above, there is a high level of uncertainty about our X chromosome point estimates. Therefore, we view this finding as very provisional.

    If Denisovan males copulated with a bunch of Cro-Magnon females, then their Y haplogroups would still be lurking around in our genepool. None have been found, therefore the Denisovan Chad cucking the Virgin Cro-Magnon is probably another Nothing burger.

    Not true — Y-chromosomes can go extinct fairly quickly. Haplogroup C in Europe has nearly gone extinct in the past 6000 years.

  114. Daniel Chieh says

    It will resolve all things because firepower is always the final answer.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41QFL4QB3NE

  115. Yellowface Anon says

    The rural lower-tech folk (who would not actually be hostile to technology but wouldn’t have much use for them outside of small-scale farming or artisanry) wouldn’t get chipped. They would still have their guns and ammo and they’d put up a resistance with all their effort, however it would be futile.

    You don’t really understand libertarian thought.

  116. I think you’ll find that the Irish are the real Blacks of Europe:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XnRF5zyIKE

  117. Bashibuzuk says

    You don’t really understand libertarian thought.

    I am not a libertarian (thank goodness), I am not a member of that exotic sect.

    Regarding the resistance of the rural folks, let’s see if they manage to resist in the US where they’re all armed, their guns are legal and their right to resist is inscribed in the Construction (for now).

    And in a couple of decades are they gonna use shotguns against drones?

  118. Bashibuzuk says

    China holds the high cards in Iran nuclear negotiation

    China’s new $400 billion investment pact with Iran will undercut the impact of US sanctions and Washington’s JCPOA negotiating leverage

    By DAVID P. GOLDMAN

    https://asiatimes.com/2021/04/china-holds-the-high-cards-in-iran-nuclear-negotiation/

  119. JohnPlywood says

    You will have an extremely difficult time selling your theory to anyone with knowledge of ancient genetics. There is no more Denisovan ancestry in fossil DNA from stone Eurasia than there is in modern Eurasians; hence the consensus that Denisovan DNA went in to Papuans and Australian Aboriginals after they crossed Wallace’s line. The ancestry first went from Denisovan males to modern human females, shedding light on the innate biological cuckery of Cro Magnon “males”.

    And yea, there is no Neanderthal Y-DNA in modern humans — it eventually died out like Denisovan Y-DNA did. And like Hap C will in Europe in another couple millennia. Male hybdrids carrying Neanderthal/Denisovan DNA may have been infertile, limiting their ability to spread Neanderthal y chromosomes. Doesn’t change the fact that modern human males were cucked and that there’s no evidence for Denisovan interactions with modern humans in Eurasia.

  120. anyone with a brain says

    Social credit also helps solve the dilemma of whether a self driving car should crash itself and kill a driver to avoid killing a pedestrian or other driver.

    The self driving car could solve that dilemma by comparing social credit scores and determining which life has less value and then choose to sacrifice that life

    This incentivises good behavior and has a eugenic effect on society.

  121. My own idiosyncratic view about what did in the aristocracy: the potato (and guns).

    As peasant populations exploded, they became more difficult to control, especially in regard to tenant-landlord relations. The relative population of aristocrats shrunk significantly because land is essentially a fixed quantity, making it difficult for them to control the proletariat, especially as armor was worthless against guns. Meanwhile, the expanding population opened up large markets which allowed for merchants to become competitors.

    Probably, the most powerful aristocracy today is the Saudis. They had a few advantages. Polygamy, making for a stronger clan system. And oil wells were easier to control and to use to set up patronage networks.

  122. songbird says

    I guess Charles II was born ten years later than his sister. I don’t think that I’ve seen any young pictures of him, unlike his sister.

    My main theory right now would be that a man’s face has a longer development path – it goes through more changes during puberty – so more chances for things to get messed up. I guess there is also XX – even in an inbred female, in theory, there would be more functioning X genes.

    That’s the reason that women live longer. The test is looking at animals, where the sex is determined differently. Double chromosomes for males.

    Of course, I have seem women with large chins that I thought were otherwise attractive.

  123. Bashibuzuk says

    For those interested by the Great Steppe Iron Age nomadic cultures (Scythians, Sarmatians, proto-Turks, proto-Hungarians) a must read analysis by Carlos Quiles.

    https://indo-european.eu/2021/04/iron-age-nomads-of-west-siberia-of-hg-q1b-r1a-and-basal-n1a-l1026/

    Sargat culture stands of particular significance for all the subsequent historical developments leading to the Migration Period. The relative importance of Y haplogroup N in the ethnic makeup of the late Iron Age and early Middle Age Eurasian populations is increasingly evident.

    Which begs the question: when will people realize that the influence of Iron Age Y haplogroup N populations stretched all the way from the trans-Urals steppe to the northern Fenno-Scandia?

    Ancient Norse traditions, related by Snorri Sturluson in the middle age Islandic Sagas, and describing the Aesir as men from the East, might have had some truth about them after all.

    https://bladehoner.wordpress.com/2017/11/16/snorris-ancestral-stories-about-the-men-from-asia/

  124. songbird says

    Isn’t the difference mostly related to TFR?

    Maybe, it is possible to make predictions like that outside of Africa.

  125. songbird says

    In the early ’70s, (though that wasn’t very far removed from colonialism – and there were still some colonies) it used to be said about the Third World that there wasn’t a country in it that could not feed itself if you took the ten year average of the harvest. Is it still true? Personally, I’d guess not.

  126. Mr. Hack says

    Could you recommend any books relating to this topic and early human formations and migrations that could be used as a sort of primer for the very excellent website “Indo-European.eu” that you cite here? I’m actually a bit envious of your knowledge and ease of extracting this kind of information, while at the same time grateful that you regularly bring this sort of stuff to our attention here.

    Wishing you and the “Celtic” side of your clan a very Happy Easter:

    https://stpetersburgcollection.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/Four-Seasons-Egg-V2-873×1024.jpg

    One of the few Russian (Faberge, “the Four Seasons”) eggs that my sister has included within her fabulous collection of Ukrainian Easter eggs (pysanki). Winter is depicted to the left side and Spring to the right. I couldn’t find one showing Summer and Autumn.

  127. songbird says

    I wonder if the Houthi antagonism towards Jews derives directly from Israel’s perceived connection to the Saudis.

    https://www.jpost.com/diaspora/almost-all-remaining-jews-in-yemen-deported-saudi-media-663486

  128. Daniel Chieh says

    Doesn’t need the potato, just the gun – once numbers began to matter a lot more than years in training, any sort of militant aristocracy rapidly fell from ascendency. The high-low alliance(kings & peasants) against the middle aristocracy is also an ancient story. I tend to mostly treat it as a technological inevitability.

    Probably, the most powerful aristocracy today is the Saudis. They had a few advantages. Polygamy, making for a stronger clan system. And oil wells were easier to control and to use to set up patronage networks.

    The Saudi system produces a lot of waste. Without dedicated US assistance, it probably would not have survived.

  129. songbird says

    When I look at the Enlightenment, I view it more as a product of the potato than the gun. Could be wrong, I don’t know.

    Guess East Asia had wet rice agriculture that was kind of similar (or greater? in caloric output) to the potato. Yet, Japanese peasants seem to have been seriously cowed. Despite Japan having guns. Of course, there would still be a big difference – rice rots quickly if left on the stalk. You need to collect it, and when you do, it can be burnt or confiscated. Unlike potatoes that can be left in the fields, at least for a while.

    BTW, used to get a big kick out of the guys telling starving India that if Europeans could just use TV to teach them 12th century Japanese agricultural techniques, then that would solve their food problems. Pretty bad burn, if true.

  130. Bashibuzuk says

    I have started by reading the books written by Kuzmina and Klyosov, then the Eupedia website and different anthropology blogs, finally I stumbled upon the Indo-European.eu website by Carlos Quiles a few years ago and I also read academic articles along the way. I think Eupedia website and forum are the place to start. Also, if you decide to look into your Y haplogroup you might have it determined at Family Tree DNA or some other similar company.

    https://www.eupedia.com/europe/maps_Y-DNA_haplogroups.shtml

    Thanks for you warm wishes for Easter Mr Hack. The Fabergé Egg is beautiful. There was a time I sold Palekh, Mstyora and Fedoskino Easter Eggs at the Ismailovo tourist market in Moscow suburbs which was quite a place in the early 90ies. This brings back memories.

    Does your church celebrate Easter according to Gregorian or Julian calendar? In case it follows Gregorian calendar I wish you a very Happy Easter!

  131. Philip Owen says

    I have not lived in most of the cities you mention. However, outside Thessaloniki is Panorama. It is delightful. I give Vancouver and Toronto high marks as big cities go. Chicago has a certain humanity but I wouldn’t want to live there permanently. In Russsia, as recently discussed here, I rate Penza as a smaller city. Cardiff, nearby to me, has style too, more than most British cities.

  132. Daniel Chieh says

    Yet, Japanese peasants seem to have been seriously cowed. Despite Japan having guns. Of course, there would still be a big difference – rice rots quickly if left on the stalk. You need to collect it, and when you do, it can be burnt or confiscated. Unlike potatoes that can be left in the fields, at least for a while.

    I don’t know – the Meiji Restoration came hand-in-hand with modernity, destruction of the dominance of the samurai aristocracy, and the attendant rise of the peasant into the citizen along with consolidation of power to the Emperor.

    The oligarchs also embarked on a series of land reforms. In particular, they legitimized the tenancy system which had been going on during the Tokugawa period. Despite the bakufu’s best efforts to freeze the four classes of society in place, during their rule villagers had begun to lease land out to other farmers, becoming rich in the process. This greatly disrupted the clearly defined class system which the bakufu had envisaged, partly leading to their eventual downfall.

    Yes, its true that Japan had guns and maintained the feudal system for some time, although one could also argue that the Tokugawa shogunate made a hard turn toward peaceful “Confucianist” style legitimacy to avoid violence as the arbiter of status, so that the better educated samurai could continue to maintain their status without being tested in battle. At any rate, its interesting how one could argue that a basic high-low confederacy happened once again eventually, strengthening the top monarch and the masses of peasantry, with the aristocracy as the loser.

    This is also the formula for Chinese Legalism, incidentally.

    India’s problems are too endemic to be solved by Japanese techniques…or potatoes, surprisingly enough.

  133. ImmortalRationalist says
  134. Daniel Chieh says

    We have white, black, green, and blue; we still need red magic.

  135. songbird says

    Interestingly, if we take the potato, widespread adoption in Japan does not occur until the late 19th century. And then, I believe, mainly in sparsely populated Hokkaido, where 80% of modern cultivation of it in Japan happens today, since it has cool summers. Perhaps, this accounts for some of the class differences.

    How much less pozzed would Europe be today, if it had had to rely on wheat, barley and rye? Would it be a bit more like Japan? (which unfortunately is increasing in poz) Or perhaps, not, as it was less isolated.

    I’m afraid India’a problems are increasingly becoming America’s. And perhaps, even America is heading to something worse, as Indians have gradations of color that make strong propaganda signaling more difficult.

  136. Saudi Arabia is like a mix of feudal aristocracy with (oil funded) socialism.

    From Saudis I’ve talked with, they seem to support their aristocratic rulers, because they give generously all kinds of free money to every citizen.

    “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs”. In Saudi Arabia, citizens’ need does seem to be paid for by the government, and/or wealthy peoples’ charity. But this socialistic generosity can be perhaps increasing the monarchy’s vulnerability to oil prices change.

    • In the Arab and Muslim world, the feudal aristocracies seem to me as better governed countries (e.g. Oman, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Morocco, Jordan), than the failed states of secular dictators (e.g. Assad’s Syria, Sadaam’s Iraq, Mubarak’s Egypt), sectarian democracies (e.g. Lebanon) or religious Islamists (Iran, Morsi’s Egypt).

    Although perhaps there can be success with some ideological mixes of the above, like Sisi’s “secular dictatorship” in Egypt, and Erdogan’s “democratic Islamism”.

  137. songbird says

    Egypt and Iran are big countries population-wise, so probably naturally hard to govern. I think a lot of the rest of it is ethnic differences.

    Morocco is almost totally Sunni. Jordan is 95% Sunni. Iraq is about 42% Sunni, and has 20% Kurds besides. Lebanon is quite diverse, as is Syria.

    Interestingly, there was briefly a union of Jordan and Iraq, but it did not last because of the coup in Iraq.

  138. I think Houthis are believed to be proxy, or at least partial proxy/ally, of Iran, so they will have to rhetorically oppose Israel as part of Iran’s power projection project to be protectors of Islam.

    • To oppose Israel, has an important prestige position in Muslim world, and in a sense condition of leadership of the Muslim world.

    If you want to be the defender and leader of the Islamic faith, and “protector of Jerusalem”, then you need to oppose Israel, or at least try to pretend that you will remove the current crusaders from Jerusalem.

    Non-Arab powers of Iran/Persians and Turkey/Ottomans are both contending for leadership of the Muslim world, and they see that opposing Israel (if only rhetorically, in Erdogan’s case) allows them to position themselves as protectors of Muslims.

    For Arabs, the Muslim religion should feel like a family heirloom and that they should be leaders of it as a right of birth; but sadly the Turks and Iranians, which are only foreign adoptees of their religion, are regularly dominating them.

    It’s probably not co-incidence, that the same time there emerged the Iran-Israel conflict and Turkey-Israel conflict (although the latter has remained more rhetorical than the former) in the last twenty years, the conflicts between the Arab governments and Israel has eased.

    Arab governments are threatened by the attempts of Iran and Turkey to lead the Muslim world (of which defending Jerusalem is part), and Israel seems to becomes a smaller threat to them.

    A lot of the symbolic nature of conflict between Israel and the Muslim countries, is evident, when you consider how Palestinians are Sunni Arabs identical to those which Iran fights in Syria, and which Egypt even under Morsi was fighting in Sinai, and that the majority of Jordan’s population are Palestinian, and yet Jordan’s government was killing thousands of Palestinians in Black September.

    Israeli society also requires to feel surrounded an external enemy, to unify itself, and Iran’s expansion in the region, has been substituting itself in Israel culture for former enemies of the Arab League.

    If one day, the Islamic world would reconcile with Israel, the conditions for a real identity crisis of Israeli society would begin, and if you were a pessimistic historian that is when you might predict a future “Israeli civil war”..

    Some people would probably predict such an absence of external enemies for Israel, could be like removing a foundation stone under the society, and perhaps without external enemies the country could tear apart from inner conflicts.

    A large part of Israeli culture is also built around the military, and perhaps it could be difficult to envisage a non-militaristic Israeli society, in peace with its region, and that doesn’t lose much of its raison d’être and motivation.

  139. Bashibuzuk says

    An excellent comment Dmitry. I agree on all points. I would just add two things:

    1) The Houthi Zaidi Shia are a very conservative branch among the Shia sects. They are quite ancient and closer to the Sunni.

    2) Arabs have lost the primacy of Islamic civilization to Persians and Turks a long time ago. Arabs are aware of that and have a double complex: a superiority complex (people of Muhammad, speakers of the language of Qur’an), and an inferiority complex (military prowess of the Turks and intellectual and cultural prowess of the Persians). Arabs recognize that their culture is living through an Age of Decadence (Ahd El Inhitat in Arabic) since at least the time of the fall of Baghdad to the Mongols. The attempts of the Arab nationalist movements (strongly influenced by the Western nationalism and often spearheaded by Christian Arabs) to renew Arabic culture and reform Arabs societies have failed. And this failure is only accentuated by the success of the younger and more energetic Israeli society.

    Where Israeli Jews were capable to reform and rebuild a national identity, their Arab neighbors failed in a quite lamentable manner.

  140. Bashibuzuk says

    A Muslim friend once jokingly told me that any Muslim is another Muslim’s heretic. There are so many sects and denominations in Islam, that if one took them all seriously, one would stop thinking of Muslims as a unified ethno-religious group.

  141. Mr. Hack says

    Thanks for the links! Our church celebrates according to the Julian calendar. I’ll be visiting my family in Minnesota during this time, to celebrate Easter. Fishing season starts in May, so I’ll be on the lakes and rivers taking advantage of being with friends, eating shahlyk and having a few beers too. I’m praying (as I know that you are too) that cooler heads prevail and things simmer down in Donbas.

  142. Bashibuzuk says

    I’m praying (as I know that you are too) that cooler heads prevail and things simmer down in Donbas.

    I am afraid the fighting is intensifying with each passing day. The rhetoric on both sides is quite bellicose. I would put now the probability of a major confrontation at more than 65% and of direct open Russian military intervention on Ukrainian soil at around 50%. I hope they will find a way to put a halt on this escalation that will do no good to either country. I also hope that NATO will not be dragged into it directly (even if NATO is represented by the Turks only).

  143. AnonfromTN says

    Well, if Ukies get their marching orders from their masters, they are going to attack Donbass republics. Considering how many Donbass residents are Russians citizens now (with Kremlin blessing), Russia would have no choice but to enforce peace by annihilating Ukrainian military capabilities. I don’t think they would take more than full Donetsk and Lugansk regions: Putin tries to avoid being saddled with a heavier burden.

    NATO would raise a lot of stink but won’t intervene. The US studiously avoids fighting nuclear countries, even as weak as North Korea. Europeans are so emasculated that their fighting capabilities are as close to zero as makes no difference. Turks are more capable, but Erdogan, however dumb, clings to C-400 to avoid being “democratically” bombed by the Empire and its vassals. Besides, he knows on which side his bread is buttered: w/o Russian tourism and economic cooperation Turkey is toast.

  144. Bashibuzuk says

    A lot of people are fed up with this confrontation in both Russia and Ukraine. Recently Poklonsksya (of Nyash Myash fame) has said in an interview that it is time to stop the confrontation in Donbass, drop the “Russkyi Mir” ambitions and allow for a rapid normalization.

    https://www.mk.ru/politics/2021/03/18/poklonskaya-vystupila-protiv-russkogo-mira-i-strelkova.html

    https://russian.rt.com/russia/article/843800-poklonskaya-krym-referendum-prokuror

    Of course we might say that she’s just a dumb blonde and that nobody cares, but Strelkov (of the Russkyi Mir fame) thinks otherwise.

    https://youtu.be/BAGaqv5taFA?t=17

  145. I have a special hatred for Melbourne. It is the PC people you meet there. They deserve Dan Andrews.

    I can relate to that.

  146. AnonfromTN says

    As people say, Strelkov managed to become Girkin in record time (meaning that he quickly evolved from somebody to nobody). He is a frustrated guy with a chip on his shoulder. Poklonskaya showed her intelligence (or, rather, lack thereof) by her statements about Nick II and his monument. She is certainly gutsy and pretty, but is she dumb! I would not put much store in either of them, let alone their opinions.

    Putin plays a big game, but not all his moves pay off. He rescued Yanuk who turned out to be totally useless. He wanted to use Donbass as a lever to keep Ukraine within reasonable path, but failed. So, now he has no choice but to give Donbass something for its firm rejection of primeval tribal banderite nationalism. I think it’s time to write off Ukraine as a hopeless wreck. Even the Empire is close to this decision, trying to spend whatever is left of Ukraine in the suicidal war with Russia, just to create some inconvenience for Russia for all the money they stupidly spent on Ukraine.

    Things are coming to the point when both players want to cut their losses. Neither cares that it’s a death knell for Ukraine.

  147. Thulean Friend says

    Biden Wants You Out of Your Car and on the Train

    His $2 trillion plan even envisons tearing down some freeways. Biden already 10X better than Trump, not that it was stiff competition.

    Americans Are Buying Up Tel Aviv Homes, Destroying the City in the Process

    The eternal burger menace must be stopped, its dangerous advance checked for humanity to prosper.

  148. Yellowface Anon says

    Why not keep a back-up driving wheel on self-driving cars exactly for this kind of situations so everyone would come off safely?

  149. Thulean Friend says

    https://twitter.com/MarkAmesExiled/status/1378044997606457356

    Hard to defend crackdowns on free speech and dissent, whatever one’s position on the UA-RU conflict.

    https://twitter.com/CarlZha/status/1376604351343431680

    Perceptive as usual from Big-Z.

  150. Belarusian Dude says

    Are those the matrix guys

  151. Bashibuzuk says

    One of the last major articles published by Brzezinsky, named “Balancing the East, Upgrading the West”, was indeed quite perceptive. Perhaps a bit too perceptive for the current US elites.

    The articles was published a couple of years after the “Group of Two” initiative, promoted by Brzezinsky in regards to US – Chinese cooperation, failed. By 2012, Big Zbig understood that Chinese wanted the whole shebang and that the other “Barbarians ” had to organize somehow to balance it.

    But the US neocons, that Brzezinsky loathed, were so dumb (again) that they started the whole Ukrainian madness in 2013. And the Globalists that outgrew Big Zbig’s Eurocentric visions, found nothing better to do than attempting imposing a (pseudo) CCP model with Environmentalist characteristics on the West under the cover of the Covid scare (ongoing). These people clearly have trouble understanding the limits and consequences of their actions, something Brzezinsky was capable of.

    Quem deus vult perdere, prius dementat.

  152. Bashibuzuk says

    Both Girkin and Poklonsksya were used by Malofeev. Girkin was too extreme to handle, Poklonsksya was too ambitious for her own good. But both of them probably understand the situation on the ground in the Eastern Ukraine way better than scores of other people. Funnily (or sadly) enough, both agree that Surkov’s rendition of “Russkyi Mir” has proven a failure. In the coming months we’ll see whether it was a failure of tactic or strategic importance. Putin and his buddies are lucky that the Ukrainian elites are so inept and corrupt, the opposite is also true. If either of the sides of this tragic and idiotic conflict had even just Lukashenko’s acumen and competence level, the conflict wouldn’t have lasted for seven years. Sadly, neither Putin, nor his Ukrainian counterparts, were kolkhoz directors…

  153. Russia doesn’t have laws on amnesty, so illegal aliens will always be illegal aliens – this helps keep them living in Russia on a ‘rotative’ or seasonal basis, making money in Russia and sending/spending it back home because the harsh policies on illegal aliens don’t allow for a tranquil life, so they don’t even consider establishing themselves permanently, unlike e.g. illegal aliens from Central America who manage to live quite an undisturbed life once they establish themselves in the United States. The patriotic Russian reality is about to be abandoned. Excerpts from Tass:

    New law will help migrants staying in Russia legalize their status – Interior Ministry

    MOSCOW, April 4. /TASS/. The Interior Ministry is developing a bill that will allow foreigners and persons without citizenship to legalize their stay in Russia, despite the existing violations, the ministry’s press service told TASS.

    “The bill will determine the procedure and conditions for the stay of foreign citizens and persons without citizenship who find themselves in special circumstances,” the ministry’s spokesman said.

    The Interior Ministry reported that the development of the draft law is being carried out as part of a large-scale work on reforming the migration legislation of the Russian Federation in accordance with the implementation of the Concept of State Migration Policy. The concept of the bill has been approved by the government.

    The ministry noted that now the so-called “migration amnesty”, which allows any state agency or official to make a decision on the legal status of foreigners, is absent at the legislative level in Russia.

    “This category of citizens cannot be held administratively liable for violation of the rules of entry into the Russian Federation, the regime of stay (residence), illegal employment or violation of immigration rules, if such violations were identified in connection with the submission by these persons of an application to recognize them as citizens of the Russian Federation,” the official said.

    They will even cancel previous infractions, lol.

    I know that there are Jewish advisers to Putin, at least two, because I checked the names I came across on Wikipedia in the past. I wonder if there’s a Jew somewhere whispering amnesty as a solution for solving the demographic problem. Seriously, I checked Manizha, a Tajik who will represent Russia at Eurovision with a feminist and implicitly anti-male song – lyrics are about evil men and domestic violence, and how it’s sexist to encourage women to look pretty and have children – and I couldn’t believe my eyes when I saw that BOTH writers and producers are Jewish.

    The reaction to the song was negative among some senior (and influential) Russian politicans, Putin allies, wondering what was the process, who’s behind her selection. TV presenter Ivan Urgant came to Manizha’s defense, so I googled who this guy is, and lo and behold, another Jew.

    If today illegal aliens and migrants who violate immigration law are punished (e.g. entry ban), tomorrow they will have the opportunity to become citizens and their brethren back home will be alerted that if they fool the authorities for a long period, they can be awarded citizenship. This is such a subversive law, it reminds me of stories documented by Kevin MacDonald and others on TOO about Jewish activists and organizations using the opportunity presented by the draft process of new laws to sneak in proposals that will hurt the white hosts, often succeeding. Central Asians will love it.

  154. Thulean Friend says

    I know that there are Jewish advisers to Putin, at least two, because I checked the names I came across on Wikipedia in the past. I wonder if there’s a Jew somewhere whispering amnesty as a solution for solving the demographic problem.

    Anti-Semitism is irrational hatred, covering for personal inadequacies. Putin is a moderate and I’ve come to appreciate him more and more as time passes. Russia is an aging society like the West and it needs immigrants, which Putin wisely understands.

    Trying to “blame” this on Jews is just distateful bigotry. First, there’s nothing to blame here. It’s the correct policy. Second, it casts Jews as all-powerful actors while seeking to absolve Gentiles from all responsibility – even when the policies are beneficial!

  155. Jim Christian says

    Concur. And it isn’t merely laying more pavement. With each road expansion you have to move the utilities. Gas, electrical lines, gasoline pipelines, phone, fiber, and that’s just the underground stuff. Above ground you have three times more than that to move. I saw it all in the D.C. Region for forty years. Expensive. Very.

    All this is what you get when Whites have to move away to live a safe distance from Blacks and their murderous tendencies. It’s the ONLY reason for all this endless expansion out from city centers. All of it, because of blacks.

  156. Jim Christian says

    Beneficial to jews you mean. Noticing isn’t antisemitic. It’s merely recognizing who the gangsters REALLY are. I don’t give a shit about the religion of the thieves, only that they’re gangsters. The jew thing, that’s YOUR thing to cover it. Every day, more notice. Jew, Inc. is the structure. It’s just the name of the gang. Nothing religious about it, although the Talmud DOES instruct Jews to lie and cheat and steal from the goyim with alacrity. Can’t dodge that one, Thu.

  157. Mr. Hack says

    I’m always suspicious of Putin’s supposed brilliance in handling all that he touches, however, even I find it difficult to accept your placing Lukashenko ahead of Putin when it comes to either visionary or tactical skills. Just how do you feel that Lukashenko would have improved on the situation within Donbas, had he been intrinsically involved there?

  158. Bashibuzuk says

    Lukashenko is not a visionary, but a practical snd solution oriented person. Donbass crisis has no positive practical solution, either way it’s bad for both Ukraine and Russia.

    A man like Lukashenko wouldn’t have to solve the Eastern Ukrainian conundrum because he simply wouldn’t have gotten into this mess. And if he would have been forced to act, then he would have acted in a straight-forward manner, using the letter provided by Yanukovich in 2014.

    Yanukovich was formally still the elected president, Maidan was still a coup by the nationalist fringe activists with American backing. Kharkov, Mariupol and Odessa were still under the pro-Russian control. Yanukovich formally asked for military assistance against the Maidan insurrection.

    Putin did not oblige, instead he annexed Crimea and allowed the Maidan politicians to legitimate themselves through (fake) resistance to Crimea annexion (they gave up on Crimea starting from day one after the appearance of the Green Men, but pretended otherwise for the masses). Putin allowed and welcomed the election of Poroshenko, while still killing scores of Ukrainian soldiers in Ilovaisk by transborder shelling.

    This was a completely schizophrenic policy and it lasted for a whooping 7 years, while people kept on dying. A simple, practical, solution-oriented person, such as Lukashenko, would have cut it to the core in a half year period: either by completely accepting the Maidan results or by annihilating the Maidanite politicians and installing a pro-Russian government in Ukraine without any annexation of Crimea.

    You either accept that Ukraine is an independent nation ready and able to manage its affairs, or you force it to behave in your interest and manage Ukrainian affairs through a protectorate and use of force, like the Bolshevik did in 1919. Or you destroy Ukraine by completely seizing the Russian-speaking areas and transforming them into a Malorossia/Novorossia/South Rus whatever…

    Putin managed to do neither, he left it all to rot during an incredible 7 years period. It is actually a rather amazing achievement when you think about it. Unless he was actually working towards making any future reconciliation and collaboration between Russians and Ukrainians impossible in principle. This is what Galkovsky wrote about in 2004. He correctly predicted that Putin’s policies will reinforce Ukrainian independence.

  159. Bashibuzuk says

    Buddy, oy vey!

    It’s an open secret: Putin is close to Chabad Lubavitch, just like Trump is. Lo and behold, from Russian Israeli sources:

    https://detaly.co.il/kak-habad-obespechivaet-svyaz-mezhdu-trampom-i-putinym/

    Here is Soloviov / Shapiro (the chief Putinist propaganda mouthpiece) during his pilgrimage to Jerusalem with his Chabad friend:

    https://www.meme-arsenal.com/memes/1e283dfe06c27c475585e29ce4dbc56e.jpg

    When Devil plays chess he plays on the four ends of the table.

    Oy gevalt!

    On my watch it’s 7:40 already.

    Gotta run…

    (Lively Klyazmer music playing in the background).

  160. Bashibuzuk says

    Anti-Semitism is irrational hatred, covering for personal inadequacies.

    https://youtu.be/NCWxgDuT75o

    Trying to “blame” this on Jews is just distateful bigotry.

    Mazel Tov, ThuFri! Your name is now forever inscribed among the righteous. Your matzoh parcel will be delivered soon to your door through a Kashrut certified company.

  161. Why did Gorlovsky feel already in 2004 that Putin’s schizophrenic policies towards Ukraine would pan out to be so beneficial for the cause of Ukrainian independence?

    BTW, I’m of the opinion that because of Ukraine’s size and its past history its yearnings for legitimate independence was and is inevitable. I agree with you, that Putin’s policies have only hastened this process along.

  162. Thulean Friend says

    Aren’t you just jealous that Putin is more successful than you?

    https://twitter.com/nypost/status/1378071630639955970

    Jealousy is often a strong predictor of anti-Semitic feelings.

  163. I guess if Jews in Israel fought each other, in a Lebanon-like civil war, then that would be a kind of anti-holocaust, where instead of forming a permanent social glue, it might be a permanent social solvent, with secular Jews possibly abandoning the identity altogether – if it was a big enough war. Though, I believe such a war is a very outlandish scenario – I think they all realize that they need each other.

    It would be very interesting to watch Israeli TV and see how they attempt to bridge all the gaps, and if there is any signaling of an enemy.

    I wonder if the Knesset could on average bench press more weight than the parliaments of many other governments, since they have the draft. Though, I suppose that parliamentarians tend to very old and early gains might be lost.

  164. Bashibuzuk says

    Jealousy is often a strong predictor of anti-Semitic feelings.

    https://harfordjewishcenter.org/wp-content/uploads/sites/42/2017/12/Tikun-Olam.png

    Another matzoh parcel will be shipped to you shortly!

    Anti-Semitism is a feeling of hate and rejection. I do not reject or hate Jews. I know and understand them (which is worse)…

  165. It’s not my fault that I notice this pattern with alarming frequency. For instance, look at Biden’s cabinet. It’s outright ethnic despotism. One Jew would have been proportional and acceptable, two would be overrepresentation, three smells of ethnic networking and is statistically improbable considering they form slightly less than 2% of the US population, but they have 7 – and in positions which I consider the most important, among them Homeland, Dept of State, and Justice.

    Curiously, their ‘president’ is a feeble man, weak and manageable. Talk about being ruled by a Sanhedrin. Heritage America is almost absent from this administration when you consider its still dominant demographic profile, especially in the 40+ age bracket, where they easily constitute over 60% of the US population. To spread the diversity mantra nonstop and extend it to every aspect of life (the “too white problem” persecution) while shamelessly committing ethnic despotism and having the media cover it and attack anyone who mentions it, is just humiliation of the goyim.

    Russians aren’t merely interchangeable economic units without roots or history, they don’t need to subject themselves to demographic replacement. Japan shows you can manage an aging society without democide. The situation with Russian isn’t abysmal, and there are natalist alternatives that can be worked out.

  166. If it were practical to harvest the metal in asteroids – I think you would need nuclear turbines to power ion thrusters (perhaps fusion technology?) – then I’m not sure the idea that the price of metal would collapse is valid.

    First of all, you could hoard it like de Beers hoards diamonds, and sell it little by little. Secondly, metal is very useful. If you could produce more of it, without increasing the cost, it might lead to more demand, without cratering the price – or if you had the practical technology to move asteroids – then it is obvious that you could use it in space.

    And if you could build O’Neill cylinders then you could really create a growth-based economy.

  167. Bashibuzuk says

    Galkovsky is of Ukrainian ancestry, his father’s ancestors, Malorossian Orthodox, moved from Chernigov to Russia in the early XIX century. He is well aware of Ukrainian history, psychology and identity characteristics. He has never written that Ukrainians and Russians are the same people. Although he has written that he sees Poles as the modern day population closest to what ancient Slavs probably were and I agree with that (I believe that possibly Belarusians are a bit closer to the original Balto-Slav ethnic stock).

    This being said, Galkovsky was seen by many Russian nationalists as a kind of father figure, the Plekhanov of Russian nationalism. Interestingly enough, Galkovsky himself does not acknowledge any affiliation with Russian nationalism.

    He is indeed a very multi-faceted individual, talented, intelligent and hard to categorize. Some think that he is a kind of pseudo-intellectual, a philosophical scammer and an outright fraud. Anatoly strongly dislikes Galkovsky probably because Galkovsky describes Soviet mixed ethnicity people in quite unflattering terms (he invented the slang Новиопы from Новая Историческая Общность – the Soviet pseudo cultural identity that failed to stabilize prior to Soviet fall).

    I personally admire his ability to think outside the box and discover odd facts and present interesting and novel interpretations. One of them, published in 2004 and very famous at the time is concerning Putin’s policies in Ukraine:

    https://galkovsky.livejournal.com/35468.html

    The title of the short essay is based on a Soviet movie for schoolchildren.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attention,_Turtle!

    (In a typical Galkovsky’s style the title is important).

    And this is what people who know Galkovsky well think of this short essays and his other interesting texts in 2019:

    https://paidiev.livejournal.com/793494.html

    Notice Galkovsky’s predictions about Ukraine’s future. If a great war in Ukraine starts, this is how it is probably going to end. With a new Руина juste like in the seventeen century.

  168. Bashibuzuk says

    One Jew would have been proportional and acceptable, two would be overrepresentation, three smells of ethnic networking and is statistically improbable considering they form slightly less than 2% of the US population

    This is not how it works. Any decent Jew is worth at least a dozen mediocre Goyim. The Jews are around 2 -3 % of US population, therefore their proportional and acceptable representation in the US government should be around 30%.

    Simple math.

    And there would be no USA if not for Jewish cultural and spiritual inspiration of the founding fathers and Jewish intellectual influences on the American capitalism. Without the Jewish influence and inspiration on American elites, North America might have ended being a very large and boring Canada…

  169. Perhaps you’re more open to Galkovsky’s opinions than Karlin because you also have some Ukrainian hereditary ancestors in your family tree?

    I look forward to reading the links that you’ve provided (you’re really such a great source of information) when I return from Church today. Thanks!

  170. The letter that Yanukovich wrote is really of questionable legitimacy and motivation. He had already fled the country and quite possibly writing it was a condition of his protection in Russia. Russia used it to legitimize taking Crimea, it was way too late to do anything about Maidan. He never even declared martial law during Maidan.

  171. HenryBaker says

    ‘Russia is aging and needs immigrants’.

    Huh? Are you trolling? I always enjoy your comments but this kind of argument (always asserted with no real evidence) is for dime a dozen 105 IQ people.

    First, could you please elaborate on why you think aging societies need to rely on immigration instead of fixing birth rates or weathering the storm? Second, does this mean you’re just another pro-immigration neolib? That’d be a huge disappointment.

  172. Bashibuzuk says

    No it has nothing to do with my Ukrainian roots. I just always try to be as open minded as possible and try to understand how people think about and of themselves.

    Galkovsky has done a tremendous work upon himself despite his very difficult youth in an impoverished family in Moscow (his family lost their wealth during Revolution and his father was a an alcoholic who developed schizophrenia in his later years).

    Anyone judging Galkovsky or trying to understand him without reading entirely his Magnum Opus, the “Neverending Deadlock” is certainly wrong.

    http://samisdat.com/3/31-bt.htm

    Galkovsky is really a philospher interested in understanding reality, Russian reality first and foremost. Everything else he does, says or writes is of secondary importance. Galkovsky is the man who probably understood the “mysterious Russian soul ” best and that is why despite his deep love for Russians he is sometimes described as a Russophobe. Of course he is not a Russophobe and neither is he an Ukrainophobe. He is just trying to be intellectually honest in his own, something unflattering manner.

    And he has an excellent, if ironic, sense of humor.

  173. Bashibuzuk says

    Where there’s will, there’s way. Anyways, the deterioration and dislocation of political and economic links between Ukraine and RusFed was long in making. Focusing on 2013-2014 is short-sighted. But hindsight is of course also always 20/20. In our time-line RusFed and Ukraine are stuck in a conundrum from which there is no peaceful, mutually acceptable exit. Sooner or later there will be a major confrontation and many Russian and Ukrainian people will die in a conflict that could easily have been prevented.

  174. Anatoly strongly dislikes Galkovsky probably because Galkovsky describes Soviet mixed ethnicity people in quite unflattering terms…

    It would be pretty weird of me, a Russian nationalist who is 65%-70% ethnic Russian anyway, to dislike Galkovsky for inventing terms like noviop.

    I think he has done a lot of damage to genuine Russian nationalism through his inane conspiracy theories which many self-professed Russian nationalists, being poorly read morons prone to cult-like behavior, have latched onto and treat as real history, as opposed to the very elaborate shitposting it actually is. That Galkovsky himself does not identify as a Russian nationalist himself, is a moneyed cosmopolitan in his personal life, and and that said conspiracy theories seem almost perfectly designed to demoralize Russians (“we are a British cryptocolony”, “Russia was founded in the 18th century”, “the world is run by European aristocratic dynasties,” “the birchbark manuscripts are a deep fake”) raise some rather “Galkovskian” questions about Galkovsky himself.

  175. That’s correct, metals are for building in space, not for bringing them back. Once large electric power generating capacity is established, mining lasers can be used to melt metals from asteroids and create large scale structures such as O’Neill cylinders. It will be vastly cheaper and more efficient compared to lifting those structures from Earth.

    As for drives, unless fusion power or VASIMR type tech pans out, we will need a layered drive architecture of the following type.

    1. Hydrogen-oxygen combustion engine. Oxygen will come from the breathing tanks. This is needed for high g operations such as planetary surfaces. Thrust – Mega Newton (MN) level, efficiency – 450 seconds ISP.
    2. Nuclear thermal engine. Needed for medium g operations such as various Moon surfaces. Thrust – kN range, efficiency – 1,000 seconds ISP. Because all a NT rocket needs is a hydrogen tank and a nuclear reactor, and those things are already present for other uses, setting it up is just a matter of adding a few valves and so it should be done easily and it will be well worth it.

    3. Proton based plasma accelerator such as magnetohydrodynamic drive (MHD). It will be the primary user of hydrogen and will be used for low g operations such as asteroids and deep space flight. Thrust – 100’s N, efficiency – 8,000 seconds ISP.

    This should cover vast majority of the solar system with a cheap, abundant propellant. It also helps that in the event of a complete breakdown, people will be able to drink their own rocket exhaust plume and breathe oxidizer from the tanks. This will enable survival for months while rescue mission is trying to reach them.

    While integrating those three drives on a single platform is an immense engineering challenge, all of them exist individually (Japanese even made a boat with MHD back in the 90’s). So none of this is science fiction, just a lot of work and material science development.

  176. I had chance to met Strelkov during Bosnia war in city of Visegrad even at that time his job was collecting information and intelligence Serbian army kicked him from Bosnia . During war in Ukraine I have information from Dejan Beric that Girking was working for Ukies and he is traitor and killed couple DNP officers setting them up plus I forgot names of cities where he purposely did everything possible to be occupied with Ukies
    Here is one video about Dejan in Ukraine . Ukies hate him so much they put bounty on his head
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DkOSbdtE9TE

  177. HenryBaker says

    Also the ‘anti-semitism is covering for jealousy/inadequacy’ is also a classic 105 IQ ‘argument’ usually posited by people who are scared of any real critical discussion about Jews and need to deflect by these kinds of dumb black/white generalizations.

    Sure, some, maybe many anti-semites are losers and a lot delude themselves believing the West would be a utopia without jews.

    But a lot of complaints are simply true. I know quite a few jews myself due to an early stint in far-left politics (where they are of course overrepresented) and while I personally liked all of them, they were usually extremely hostile to any sort of national identity for whites while also seeing any criticism of Israel as anti-semitic. Jews contributed a lot to the West but there’s also a lot to be critical of.

    I’m not very comfortable talking about the topic online though, so I’ll leave it at that.

  178. Rattus Norwegius says

    The health impact of increased physical activtity might allow states to lower their healthcare spending or direct it towards other measures. Increased healthspan might be necessary ageing societies to keep their level of welfare.

  179. Canada has the same disproportionately Jewish bourgeoisie as USA, Russia/Ukraine/Belarus, Argentina, South Africa and Brazil. ​

    Having disproportionately Jewish bourgeoisie, seems to me to be one of the least effective variables, in terms of national outcomes.

    There are dynamic wealthy economies like USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, which have a Jewish elite, and then there are also undynamic unwealthy economies like Russia/Ukraine/Belarus, Argentina, Brazil, which have a Jewish elite.

    There are the most messianic creative, economically and culturally dynamic countries with a Jewish elite like USA, and then there are some of the world’s most unmessianic, undynamic traditional societies like Argentina,

    Considering that a century and half ago, most Ashkenazi Jews were uncultured, provincial immigrants from small villages, they have had a successful recipe for climbing the socioeconomic ladder in the countries where they immigrated; but Jews that climb the social ladders in new countries, are assimilated with a couple generations to the culture of the older bourgeoisie, as well as marrying them.

    Jewish bourgeoisie in USA have adapted the hypocritical moralistic personality, with messianic dynamism, of the traditional American elite (which Tocqueville could write about in the American elites in the 1830s),

    While Jewish bourgeoisie in Brazil and Argentina, have become the lazy snobby latin aristocrats, that lives from rent-seeking, with their own servants, and South American joie de vivre. (Jewish bourgeoisie in Saint-Petersburg could become snobby cultural people, while first generation Jewish elites in Ukraine can still pretend to be Yiddish grocery barterers even in the 21st century.)

    • For comparison with Jews (which doesn’t seem to correlate with national success in either direction), if you look at variables like “English derived legal system”, then there are clearly visible effects in determining the successful and unsuccessful national projects.

    Countries with English legal systems, can be successful not just in Canada, USA, New Zealand, and Australia, but even with majority third world populations like Bermuda, Singapore, Hong Kong and Israel (since the 1950s, Israel became almost majority immigrants from the third world).

    The real reason Israel’s economy is slowly converting into a stable first world country in the first half of the 21st century (despite mass third world immigrations since the 1950s, and incompetent experiments with socialism and import substitution) , is its English originated legal system, which was installed during the British Mandate for Palestine. If Israel had a Spanish or Russian originated legal system, I’m not sure I would bet money on their economy’s development.

    It seems that most places where the British legal system and property rights, was installed will result eventually in stable economies. I guess the final test of British law, will be to see what happens with economic stability in India over this century.

  180. I believe such a war is a very outlandish scenario – I think they all realize that they need each other.

    There is some hint of historical precedent though, in the 1940s, with sinking of Altalena in 1948 (in which Ben Gurion’s Israeli army killed Menachim Begin’s Irgun forces), and assassination of Yitzhak Rabin in 1995.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altalena_Affair
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assassination_of_Yitzhak_Rabin

    Of course, Israel has all this time external enemies, which unifies society, and greatly increases internal cohesion.

    However, in Lebanon in the 1970s, I believe to begin collapse into multi-party civil war conflict only required two enemy groups: Kataeb Party and PLO.

    Initially it only required a conflict of Maronites with the PLO.

    There might also be some elements of class conflict in Lebanon, with the much more middle class Maronites, and lumperproletariat Palestinian refugees.

    • Some Maronite commander at 2:50 could almost be in an advertisement for Ralph Lauren. (He speaks like a Brazilian industrialist was ethnically cleansing the favelas).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0NWwuEIsiZk

  181. Philip Owen says

    Putin’s Brilliance has been almost entirely restricted to economic and political reform domestically. He listened to good advisors, even Kasyanov. On foreign policy, he has conspicuosly failed to advance Russian interests. his models of good practice seem to be the occupation of the Sudetenland, Austria and the Danzig corridor. There is a good reason why the United Nations does not recognize The Right To Protect and insists on unchanged borders. Putin’s foreign policy failures have done conspicuous damage to Russian trade and soft power.

    I regret this. Even up to 2012, I was on balance an admirer of Putin. He could have left power as the saviour of Russia. Every year he stays on, his legacy will diminish.

  182. Lol thanks for reading my comments.

    Well, it’s just my amateur opinions. but it looks to me that America’s upper class will be intermarrying across different nationalities, and Jews will only be distinctive insofar as they become a disproportionate input in the future ancestry of America’s upper class mestizos.

    America seems to have a secular upper class that is increasingly multinational by marriage, and which lost their separate identity as Anglosaxons, Jews, Italians, Irish. That’s except for cases where their are religious restrictions preventing intermarriage, as in e.g. Mitt Romney’s 22 Mormon grandchildren.

    For example, the Kennedy family, are the most archetypical of the Irish political elite in America’s East Coast.

    But John F Kennedy’s only grandchildren are half-Jewish people called “Schlossberg”. On the other hand, Robert F Kennedy’s grandchildren, include half-Italian people called “Cuomo”. (Cuomo is the Italian family that holds the position of governor of New York across the last two generations). ​

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3NjsJ5am_A

    Donald Trump and Bill Clinton’s grandchildren are similarly half-Jews.

    The Bush family seems to be still almost only marrying to protestants. However, George W. Bush’s brother married a Mexican woman. so even the next generation of the protestant Bush family has its “cool half-Mexican” branch on the top right of their family portrait.

    https://i.imgur.com/SkEK4ft.jpg

  183. On foreign policy, he has conspicuosly failed to advance Russian interests.

    In 2007-8, the US was pressing to fast track Ukraine and Georgia into NATO. Now, not even the neocons seriously entertain it.

    Putin’s foreign policy failures have done conspicuous damage to Russian trade and soft power.

    Russian soft power in the early 2000s: Gangsters and prostitutes. Russian soft power now: Little green men and Sputnik V. That’s not a deterioration.

    Agree: Bashibuzuk

    Self-proclaimed Russian “nationalist” again reveals his crypto-Atlanticist agenda, then wonders why I say even Simonyan is more of a nationalist than he is.

  184. Bashibuzuk says

    America is a large melting pot, Western countries look increasingly like America, Soviet Union was also a very large melting pot and you have commented about Israeli society also being quite diverse and multiracial.

    When I look at my extended family it increasingly looks like a kind of little United Nations, and my kids are not even married yet. Kids are growing in a Cosmopolitan mindset, they start to travel early and play videogames online with other kids around the world. I still do my best to keep a sense of race realism and awareness of cultural differences in my children, but of course they are already des citoyens du monde.

    The future is certainly multiracial and multicultural, unless we stop the Globalization. But I don’t think it will happen, even though we see fractures appearing in the global economy and politics. I think Globalization is first and foremost a byproduct of acceleration of flows of information, and I don’t believe this would be slowing any time soon. The Socialist International has been replaced by the Woke Capitalist International, perhaps ThuFri is right and there is nothing anyone can really do about it.

  185. AnonfromTN says

    I am not sure Girkin is a conscious traitor. He looks to me more like a midget with a ridiculous superiority complex. But I’d trust Dejan Beric about 100 times more than Girkin (or Surkov, for that matter).

  186. Bashibuzuk says

    Mr Owen is right, if only VVP left in 2012, he would be today seen as one among the greatest Russian leaders.

    Now I just hope he ain’t gonna end up remembered as a mix of Brezhnev and tsar Nicolas I.

  187. Daniel Chieh says

    Do you mind if I ask you directly: are you Japanese? It’ll be good to have a member from that country contribute his thoughts.

  188. Mr Owen is right, if only VVP left in 2012, he would be today seen as one among the greatest Russian leaders.

    He would be remembered as a gray bureaucrat, and largely by historians only at that.

  189. It’s a bit of both, really.

    Great Men… nudge things.

  190. HenryBaker says

    Deterritorialization by technology will only accelerate as communications continue to improve. However, I’d propose that we may simply see current-day trends accelerating. The West, Russia and China may increasingly cut off information flows from each other, leading to different blocs with denationalized identities. The future may belong to deracinated technocracy, but the West will have a neolib variant, China authoritarian with a one-party state, and who knows where Russia will end up. In my (perhaps simplistic view) the West seems to be trying damn hard to drive them into the arms of China.

    But yeah nationalism is mostly a pointless game at this point.

  191. EldnahYm says

    Jealousy is often a strong predictor of anti-Semitic feelings.

    I don’t think a single conflict in history between Jews and another group can be explained by jealousy.

  192. Daniel Chieh says

    I know this will come as a shock to many of my regular readers, but I will nonetheless ask you to respect my new identity as a Black Trans Russian (#BTR, pronouns: she/her) and support me in my transition.

    You can do that verbally, or even better, financially. Those surgeries don’t come cheap.

    In all seriousness to all posters, please consider making a small contribution to our kind host(ess), especially if you are a frequent poster. Your average Starbucks drink runs you around $5, which is well above the minimum contribution tier for Karlin at $1 and most likely that singular Starbucks drink has not provided you with as much as what you’ve gotten from this small community, whether it be information, support, entertainment or even simply the opportunity to troll. Your every contribution helps Anatoly further focus and dedicate undivided time to producing long-reads and analysis posts, improving this site not only for yourself but for all other members of the community and insofar as his metrics may prove useful to policymakers someday, perhaps could be even considered a net benefit to humanity.

    Thanks in advance to everyone who is reading this that has already been contributing monthly, and if you haven’t, please take a moment to consider doing so:

    https://www.patreon.com/akarlin

  193. Bashibuzuk says

    He had already won the second Chechnya war, successfully fought Islamist terrorism, reigned in the oligarchs and he had made his Munich speech in 2007.

    Also, he had several good years with the high oil prices. Things were looking good.

    Under Medvedev the Georgian war was won and there was a talk of modernization and a reset with the West. It was not bad at all despite the 2008 financial crisis.

  194. Yevardian says

    Damnit, Akarlin is forcing me (with FACTS and LOGIC) to agree with him against his numerous detractors again.

  195. EldnahYm says

    Deterritorialization by technology will only accelerate as communications continue to improve. However, I’d propose that we may simply see current-day trends accelerating. The West, Russia and China may increasingly cut off information flows from each other, leading to different blocs with denationalized identities. The future may belong to deracinated technocracy, but the West will have a neolib variant, China authoritarian with a one-party state, and who knows where Russia will end up. In my (perhaps simplistic view) the West seems to be trying damn hard to drive them into the arms of China.

    If present trends were to accelerate, I don’t think neoliberalism will have any teeth left. Economic growth is decreasing and demographic trends are going in the wrong direction. If I thought present trends were to accelerate, I would predict the end of neoliberalism and maybe a new form of serfdom.

  196. I will try to translate what Dejan sent me year ago
    ” Strelkov is the man we all believed here. However, his actions and betrayals made us change our minds. For me, he was a great hero , and he became a man who is worthless. According to our assessment, he did everything to draw Russia into war, and that would suit America and the NATO terrorist organization. He personally gave me the task of 2014. Kill three of our officers accusing them of betrayal. Of course I refused the order. These were the current Minister of Defense and the commander of special security services. Then he gave the order to hand over Donetsk to Ukrainians and pull on the border with Russia, to bury and give resistance. “

  197. AnonfromTN says

    talk of modernization and a reset with the West.

    You don’t seem naïve enough to believe that this talk was anything more than just talk. As Americans aptly put it, talk is cheap. The Empire continued its work to frustrate Russia at every turn they could, Ukraine is a typical example. A nonentity like Medvedev would have been helpless confronted with any serious problem. One can naively believe that the Georgian war was won “under Medvedev”, but in fact before switching from president to prime minister Putin rearranged power, so he held the key strings, while Medvedev was just a figurehead (he is not capable of being anything more, anyway). Maybe Putin could have found a worthy successor in 2012, but it could not have been Medvedev.

  198. AnonfromTN says

    If Dejan actually said that, it must be true. It it’s true, Strelkov/Girkin is even worse than I thought. I saw him as a pathetic nonentity with delusions of grandeur, but what you write suggests that he is a repulsive scumbag.

  199. Reset with the West was rather overrated.

    Basically, Russia wanted to join World Trade Organization, but Georgia was upset with Russia and vetoed accession. So Hillary Clinton promised Medvedev and Putin she would whip Georgia and force them to drop objections in exchange for allowing a No Fly Zone over Libya. Medvedev/Putin agreed and that cost Gaddafi his life and country.

    Clinton did as promised as well, she beat the Georgians until they relented and Russia got into WTO in 2012.

    But – literally months later, in 2013, Americans unveiled Trans Pacific and Trans Atlantic Trade Agreements, which severely undermined WTO and made Russian inclusion rather hollow.

    I could be wrong but I’m unaware of any major benefits that Russia got under WTO umbrella. Certainly not anything that made sacrificing Libya worthwhile. I think if you took Gaddafi, Zhirinovsky, gave them two camels and a case of vodka in a big tent, Libya would become a Russian fortress. Far bigger gain than dead trade organization. It would also save Europe from diversity increase. But oh well, everybody makes mistakes.

  200. Bashibuzuk says

    Maybe Putin could have found a worthy successor in 2012

    IIRC there were talks of Seegei Ivanov being a potential successor in 2008, but finally Putin chose Medvedev instead of Ivanov. I wonder why Ivanov was not selected in 2008 or chosen in 2012.

  201. Bashibuzuk says

    I would predict the end of neoliberalism and maybe a new form of serfdom.

    A new caste system perhaps ?

  202. Bashibuzuk says

    These are teh internets. Nothing is true or false around here…

  203. AnonfromTN says

    I am not aware of any benefits Russia got from WTO membership. Even if there are some, they are certainly not worth sacrificing Libya. Still, TPP and TTIP are dead and not revivable. WTO, however lame, is chugging along.

  204. Once large electric power generating capacity is established, mining lasers can be used to melt metals from asteroids

    Or, maybe, mylar mirrors. Not sure if that would actually be easier (I think it maybe gets complicated when you think of it like a solar sail.) But I am kind of a sucker for the idea, because I think it would maybe be interesting to apply a giant shade to Venus.

    They used to say in the early ’70s that we had a hundred years to colonize space, before things start to collapse on Earth. And that was “limits to growth” thinking – not HBD or dysgenics.

    Once you start thinking about this stuff though, you wonder about other limits. Someone seizing the military highground of the Moon or of strategic Lagrange points and keeping it for themselves.

  205. Why should we believe you?

    Strelkov was the leading organizer of the resistance in Donetsk. Winning as he did (with some Russian support), why would he give up the spoils? You make no sense.

  206. It is kind of interesting how Israel seems to parallel Egyptian politics a bit: the Rabin assassination to Sadat. And that was an Ashkenazi (who did-in Rabin), I think. I wonder whether there was been any ethnic violence – like a riot, not a madman – that ever occurred between the various Jewish ethnicities. Though, in a way, I guess secular and non-secular are ethnicities – just with less history.

    I would suppose that non-Ashkenazi would have a higher standard of living in Israel. Though, I wonder if any get paid by oil states. (I’d guess not.) Some Arabs claim that Ashkenazi kidnapped the Jews from their countries.

    He speaks like a Brazilian industrialist was ethnically cleansing the favelas

    I wanted to read a book on BOPE (special police in Rio that have a skull emblem) once, but I couldn’t find it in English.

  207. AnonfromTN says

    Nothing is true or false around here…

    That’s what Western propagandists, true heirs of Dr. Goebbels, would like us to believe. Their problem is that 2×2=4 is demonstrably true, whereas 2×2=5.5 is demonstrably false. That’s the main stumbling block of imperial propaganda.

  208. Thulean Friend says

    Could you please elaborate on why you think aging societies need to rely on immigration instead of fixing birth rates or weathering the storm?

    One does not exclude the other. I am in favor of pro-natalist policies and high immigration. There is no mutually exclusive relationship and those who claim otherwise typically have other reasons to oppose immigration (racial) but are afraid to say so publicly.

    P.S. there is no “storm”.

    Second, does this mean you’re just another pro-immigration neolib?

    I am harshly critical of neoliberalism on many accounts but on immigration, at least, they are more correct than rightoids. Note that this in practice just means “less wrong”.

    For one thing, neoliberals have a tabula rasa world view. There is increasing evidence that people’s ethical behaviour is in fact hardwired genetically, much like most of our intelligence. This makes intuitive sense. Think back to your childhood. Most people have likely not fundamentally changed. Kind kids grew up to be kind adults. Shitty kids grew up to be shitty people. There is no perfect linear relationship but it holds more true than the tabula rasa explanation.

    As such, any immigration policy should test not just skills/intelligence but also ethics. We now have limited tools to do this, but there are some heuristics we can use. Women tend to be more ethical than manoids across the board. Hence we should favour women in our immigration systems. Second, intelligent people are more pro-social than less intelligent people on a range of metrics (co-operativeness, less likely to steal, less likely to be corrupt etc etc). These are just some of the ways that we can – and should – bias our immigration policies.

    I’d radically cut down on refugee migration, but increase funding for sites where the needs are the greatest. Generally speaking, I find filters of nationality, race, religion or culture is completely useless. In that sense, neoliberals are correct. But they are too lax on other aspects, where they often fall short.

    In short-to-medium run the world would immensely profit from capping manoids to ~20% of the population. This would be beneficial until we have the genetic engineering tools to remake large parts of humanity to make it less violent, more pro-social and so on. At that point, the ratio could potentially go up, though we still have to ponder aesthetic questions that feminine beauty is far superior to manoid ugliness, so perhaps there is an inherent value in keeping manoids capped at 20% even after we fix their structural deficiencies for the simple reason that streets with women tend to be beautiful than streets with manoids.

  209. Yellowface Anon says

    If we have movement restrictions with the new caste system we’ll end up with only local marriages for the lower castes while upper castes embrace multiracial marriages.

  210. Here is a question of ethnics:

    Britain is food negative. It cannot support its current population with food grown locally, and its politicians are geared in notable defiance of the poxy vote of Brexit to encourage unlimited immigration and development.

    My question for you is, if and when the food supplies are interrupted, will the millions of Indians (and blacks and Arabs) in Britain, thinking of the natives, kindly commit seppuku? And jump into the food processors? (Since it will be difficult to turn housing stock directly into farms.)

    In short-to-medium run the world would immensely profit from capping manoids to ~20% of the population.

    For safety’s sake, let’s try it in a sandbox first. Shall we send you to the man-hating lesbo colony, or the criminal black women colony? What would you say, if you had to pick?

  211. I don’t understand caste that well. My sense is that caste is a conservative system in the sense that it preserves (or exaggerates) differences in social arrangements society wide. So different groups of people have different temples where they worship, different jobs, etc. Modernity destroys cultural differences and eliminates all connection to the past to create a generic consumer. I don’t think there is enough stability in the current system to allow caste systems to develop. Some pathetic white collar or professional types might wish to identify with people who do similar work as them, but their children will have to jump through ever more hurdles just to achieve the same results as their parents(and they will have less children).

    Whereas with techno-serfdom I don’t see any big changes being necessary, just an acceleration of what is already happening. Increased personal debts, less ownership of physical goods and more subscriptions/tenant systems, we’re already on our way there.

  212. Yellowface Anon says

    Nationalism (and maybe ethnic tribalism?) calls for pro-natalism with minimal immigration for the productive. You’re mostly right on how those immigration should be sieved – skills, intelligence and (another set of) ethics. While some personal ethics would be genetic, I’ll give a greater weight in the score to acquired traits, not that people never learn.

    In short-to-medium run the world would immensely profit from capping manoids to ~20% of the population. This would be beneficial until we have the genetic engineering tools to remake large parts of humanity to make it less violent, more pro-social and so on. At that point, the ratio could potentially go up, though we still have to ponder aesthetic questions that feminine beauty is far superior to manoid ugliness, so perhaps there is an inherent value in keeping manoids capped at 20% even after we fix their structural deficiencies for the simple reason that streets with women tend to be beautiful than streets with manoids.

    Crypto-feminist. If you’re one of your so-called “manoids” you’re self-hating just like the woke.

    If we have naturally 50/50 sex ratio, keep it that way. And genetic engineering is one of the tech that should be used either in moderation (or should be banned outright for being Satanist).

  213. Margarita Simonyan:

    “Russians who live in Donbass must live in Russia”

    https://t.me/margaritasimonyan/8182

    Is she signaling that Russia may give up Donbass in case of Ukrainian aggression? Or am I reading this wrong, and she’s implying the region must become Russian?

    I don’t speak Russian, so I can only translate the text on Telegram, but without the context provided by the video, the meaning of that sentence is ambiguous.

  214. Svidomyatheart says

    She is implying that it must become Russian.

  215. Blinky Bill says

    feminine beauty is far superior to manoid ugliness

    https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcQlVPU6teBzJV8PuInmzguv4BBwMpduhrG23g&usqp.jpg

    Expectation vs Reality


    https://www.unz.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/karlin-mtf.jpg

    Be careful what you wish for Thulean.

  216. April 5 RT CrossTalk Follow-up

    Re: https://www.rt.com/shows/crosstalk/520078-ukraine-rhetoric-conflict-escalation/

    The weaponizing of history against Russia is highlighted. A pertinent point was made on how anti-Russian extremist balderdash is coddled within neocon to neolib leaning US foreign policy establishment circles.

    Ben Hodges’ recent gross inaccuracy before an anti-Russian leaning/pro-Bandera Ukrainian-North American gathering should’ve been ideally noted.

    https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2021/03/31/inflating-the-russian-threat/#comment-37236

    Likewise, saying that Crimea has been Russian since the late 17 hundreds should note that a good portion of Crimea had been part of the Rus entity before the Tatar presence there. There’s ongoing propaganda claiming that the Crimean Tatars are the indigenous people of Crimea, along the lines of the Indians of the Western Hemisphere. This spin typically portrays innocent Crimean Tatars against imperialistic Russians. Downplayed, is the slave trade role among Crimea Tatar ranks against Slavs and others.

    Rus was an eastern Slav entity, which is historically, culturally, ethnically and religiously linked to modern day Russia, Ukraine and Belarus. The Russian Empire took Crimea in the late 1700s, partly on account of the periodic raids from that territory, which served as a clear provocation.

    https://www.academia.edu/37358188/Michael_Averko_Consistency_and_Reality_Lacking_on_Crimea

  217. HenryBaker says

    My apologies for the neolib accusation, this truly is the powerful energy that I come to Unz for.

    ‘There is no mutually exclusive relationship’

    That’s true.

    ‘those who claim otherwise typically have other reasons to oppose immigration (racial) but are afraid to say so publicly.’

    I think it’s more that most of our opponents are neoliberals who don’t even table combining the two. The typical guy supporting ‘replacement’ (in the sense of declining/aging workforce replacement) immigration offers it as an alternative to natalism. But this is not a very important point of discussion.

    ‘P.S. there is no “storm”.’

    Well if you say that we ‘need’ high levels of immigration, you will at least have to argue that aging is a big problem. Whether or not you want to call that a storm (just a figure of speech) doesn’t matter to me.

    ‘There is increasing evidence that people’s ethical behaviour is in fact hardwired genetically, much like most of our intelligence.’

    No disagreement.

    ‘Women tend to be more ethical than manoids across the board.’

    I’m sceptical of this claim. I’m no expert on this area, but a quick google search gives you research like this: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-011-0843-8

    ‘Our data suggest that the effect of gender on ethical decision-making is largely attenuated once social desirability is included in the analysis. In essence, the social desirability response bias appears to be driving a significant portion of the relationship between gender and ethical decision-making.’

    The hoary old sexist position is that women, on average, are more avoidant of conflict, more easily swayed by being soft-hearted (instead of principled), and will simply use ostracism and group-think instead of overt violence. There’s some research showing that people with less testosterone bully more, hide their real opinions, and are bullied less often than high test people. https://www.bitchute.com/video/JLXj5VcVxRhI/

    Like I said, I’m no expert, but I find that largely convincing based on my own observations. I think a country dominated by women wouldn’t be violent, but it’d be a disaster for free speech, science, non-conformity, and would see a ballooning welfare state. Harshly principled positions, heterodoxity in general, is very male-dominated. If women dominated politics, we’d have a ramp-up of hate speech laws and you could say goodbye to these little discussions on Unz very quickly.

    ‘In short-to-medium run the world would immensely profit from capping manoids to ~20% of the population.’

    How? Aborting all the male babies? In practise only a few countries would go along with this powerful plan. You’d have to instate polygamy or accept male immigrants for the women who couldn’t find a partner. Plus, more conservative states would see your feminist utopia as weak and easily exploited.

  218. This isn’t a revelation; you can find many references to Dejan’s (low) opinions on Strelkov in Russian and Serbian online, and even a few in English.

    Many of his concrete allegations don’t make sense.

    He says that Strelkov could have held out at Slavyansk for months. That is laughable nonsense.

    He has made some tall claims about how Strelkov ordered his assassination (?!), and betrayed various militiamen to Ukrainians. Which actual said militiamen deny: https://polynkov.livejournal.com/1600073.html

    That he wanted to draw Russia into the war there. Well, duh? That was the entire point. Sure beats becoming “heroic martyrs” and then being forgotten about. Strelkov prevented the LDNR from being suffocated in its cradle.

  219. Classic Thulean Friend poasting, it is distinctly trollish but not in a way one can really put a finger on, nor is it ever clear if it comes from an SJW or /pol/ direction.

    Very Swedish sense of humor, making the rumors TF is a crypto-Indian all the more hilarious.

  220. China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms says

    It shouldn’t least be surprising. China, Iran, Russia are connected by Eurasian Steppes and were each once ruled by Altaics

  221. streets with women tend to be beautiful than streets with manoids.

    Well OK, but what are you going to do when all those women get 20 cats and go crazy? Nobody would ride bicycles in cities then for fear of being chased down by packs of feral cats and eaten.

    Would you give up your urban renewal dream?

  222. Coconuts says
  223. China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms says

    There’s this famous one:

    Chinese: Scholar, e.g 士大夫 meritocratic scholar-official

    Japanese: Samurai

    https://zh.m.wiktionary.org/zh/%E5%A3%AB

  224. Thulean Friend says

    I think a country dominated by women wouldn’t be violent

    Correct.

    but it’d be a disaster for free speech, science, non-conformity

    Your sexism is getting the better of you.

    How? Aborting all the male babies?

    Embryo selection.

    You’d have to instate polygamy

    Polygamy is less ideal than monogamy but it is an acceptable price to pay for the vast benefits that would accrue to the world.

    or accept male immigrants for the women who couldn’t find a partner.

    Or sexbots once the technology will get advanced enough, which is soon enough.

    Plus, more conservative states would see your feminist utopia as weak and easily exploited.

    Co-ordination issues would obviously be the primary challenge, and for this to work it would need to be instituted across the board. In practice, it would likely be imposed on the rightoid countries by force. Luckily, there is an direct orthogonal relationship between social conservatism and economic strength. Once the US empire wisens up it will switch from tranny promotion to matriarchy promotion and then we shall see the powerful effects bloom. I’m not convinced China is a long-term threat in this regard, it has the highest share of female self-made billionaires and women are surprisingly well represented among senior managers etc. One can see the panic among the manoid leadership already, with their cringe “manhood classes” and tacky “boys will be boys” propaganda.

    At any rate, capping manoids at 20% is a short-to-medium term solution, not a long-term one on its own, and optional to boot. The fundamental aim here is to ensure the survival of our species. As we become technologically more advanced, the risks of existential survival tend to rise in tandem.

    Einstein’s quip that “he does not know what weapons will be used in WW3 but that sticks and stones will be used in WW4”. I am not convinced that the biological substrate that got us here can continue to push us into the future. We will need a radical overhaul, not just of our capabilities (intelligence, physical endurance) but also our ethical values. The reason is that our margins will progressively shrink as awesome firepower becomes ever more available to weaker and weaker states.

    We do not need to cap manoids to 20% to achieve this. But why settle for just ensuring the survival and continued thriving of our species when we can improve its aesthetics at the same time? It’s a false choice and it’s time we accept it as such. Beauty is a virtue in of itself and it is one of the highest ones that one can seek in the earthly world – and beyond. We should not be indifferent to it.

  225. Daniel Chieh says

    Embryo selection.

    Embro selection is horrible and should not be chosen, especially as artificial forms of insemination are possible and this would also reduce or eliminate the total rape in the world once worldwide adoption completed and dangerous PIV sex is outlawed. Combined with sexed sperm, total or near total elimination of the male sex is possible.

    https://www.indymedia.nl/node/22259

    The fact intercourse causes so many infections and tears and warts attests to the unnaturalness of intercourse, that it’s not meant to be. The vagina’s primary function isn’t to be penetrated by a penis but to eject a baby for birth. They are two muscle tissues / sphincters pressed against each other to help the baby be pushed out. Penetration of the penis into the vagina is completely unnecessary for conception.

    There’s a reason men need to groom us into it, and why this grooming takes so long- because it’s so grossly violating and traumatising that we would otherwise never submit to intercourse. The only reason we may now not feel raped or have the impression we desired or initiated PIV, is because men broke down our barriers very skillfully and progressively from birth, breaking down our natural defences to pain and invasion, our confidence in our own perceptions and sensations of fear and disgust that tell us male sexual invasion is painful, harmful and traumatic…

    +SCUM Manifesto

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCUM_Manifesto

    “Life” in this “society” being, at best, an utter bore and no aspect of “society” being at all relevant to women, there remains to civic-minded, responsible, thrill-seeking females only to overthrow the government, eliminate the money system, institute complete automation and eliminate the male sex…

    ..Lastly, from a structural point of view, as a class oppressed by men, we are not in any position of freedom to negotiate what men do to us collectively and individually within the heterocage. Men, by whom we are possessed, colonised and held captive, are the sole agents and organisers of PIV. Men dominate us precisely so we can’t opt out of sexual abuse by them; intercourse is the very means through which men subordinate us, the very purpose of their domination, to control human reproduction.

    Women of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your metaphorical injury inducing penii of the world!

  226. Manoids at 20% of the population will result in at least a halving of innovation, given that manoids are responsible for ~95% of it. (Probably the fall will be even bigger because the remaining manoids will be enjoying life poolside instead of wasting time on autistic shit, but I digress).

    I suppose that by then AI could have advanced sufficiently to drive to singularity just by itself, but in that case the whole issue would have become moot anyway.

    Once the US empire wisens up it will switch from tranny promotion to matriarchy promotion and then we shall see the powerful effects bloom.

    My theory now is that Thulean Friend is a Swedish lesbian TERF.

  227. Abelard Lindsey says

    I was in L5 back in the day. I remember all of the “limits to growth” rhetoric of the 70’s when I was a kid. “Climate change” seems to occupy the same “meme niche” today that the limits to growth did in the 70’s. As I recall, the limits to growth was supposed to cut in around 2000. At least thats what Jimmy Carter told us. The limits to growth thing was discredited by the 80’s, except for oil. Franking put the meme away for oil.

    Today its HBD and dysgenics that’s considered the existential threat, at least by the dissident right (for the left, its always racism and climate change!). So I guess we would need to be in space sustainably by, what, 2070? 2100? Presumably Musk and Bezos will get us there, or at least spur on competitors to do the same.

  228. Daniel Chieh says

    My theory now is that Thulean Friend is a Swedish lesbian TERF.

    Thulean Friend, tell us about J.K. Rowlings. What does she mean to you? Have you ever felt inspired or impressed by her? Have you ever had sexual fantasies involving her or characters in her written work?

  229. HenryBaker says

    Your sexism is getting the better of you.

    First off, that really is something to say from someone who calls men ‘menoids’ and thinks they are a danger to the continuation of the human species. But sure, I hold some sexist beliefs about women, what of it? You have far stronger sexist beliefs about men, yet I’m not heckling you about that.

    Secondly, and more importantly, this thing I’ve seen you do where you quickly deflect different views as racist, sexist, anti-semitic without engaging with the position seems to indicate you’re not very interested in any sort of dialogue. You haven’t disproven anything I said.

    The evidence behind my point is obvious. Historical female support for mainstream positions as soon as they became mainstream; lack of women in heterodox/radical movements; lack of female scientists in progressive countries; lack of women in innovative pursuits like transhumanism or rationalist think-tanks, whatever. The research posted above shows women are not more ethical as soon as you factor in a tendency to conformity. They support hate speech laws much more than men do. Here’s another piece of research: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~sdellavi/wp/GenderGenerosityAERPP2013Final.pdf

    ‘When put under pressure, women may give
    more, and contribute more to public goods because they are more likely to be on the margin, and
    hence sensitive to an extra push. But they may say no if given a simple option to do so’

    Having a long back and forth therefore seems somewhat pointless to me. I doubt you’ll change your mind on anything.

    In practice, it would likely be imposed on the rightoid countries by force. Luckily, there is an direct orthogonal relationship between social conservatism and economic strength.

    Pipe-dream. Refer to what Karlin said above.

  230. AnonFromTN says

    History shows that greed makes people of both genders sociopaths. Eliminate the rewards for greed, and you would have a lot less sociopathic behavior of either gender.

  231. Classic Thulean Friend poasting, it is distinctly trollish but not in a way one can really put a finger on, nor is it ever clear if it comes from an SJW or /pol/ direction.

    Swedish transhumanism?

  232. The worst case scenarios had the collapse (die-off) starting in 2020. I am inclined to think that there was a psychological bias for picking that year, different people using it for different things, over the years, some of them utopian.

    Almost tempted to peruse some of the old limits to growth literature. I know it’s been discredited on many levels, but I still find it interesting for two different reasons.

    One is that, in small part, it is a discourse on long-term trends in fertility – where you get in 500 years, if you have reliable 2% annual growth. (I think that was standing room only, on the Earth’s surface, including polar regions and oceans.) This sort of thing has made me think of Anatoly’s “breeders.” No one thinks on that timescale, and it’s interesting, even if it seems outlandish.

    The other reason is that, though the language has changed a lot, I wonder whether it’s still an active political force. People invoke “climate change”, but a lot of their thinking seems to be indistinguishable from old “limits to growth” thinking. The idea that we should eat bugs or be vegetarians. That we should get rid of cars. I wonder if oligarchs might still be thinking in “limits to growth” terms.

    The hard thing to reconcile is their support for open borders, but maybe there are ways that can be explained. Get people into Europe and the US, in order to get their TFR to collapse.

  233. I wonder if one could make a model of invasion by the Third World based on famine.

    -America (essentially the land of plenty) invaded early.
    -Most of Europe in the middle.
    -Ireland and Finland (both big famines in the 1800s), invaded late.

    -Russia, Ukraine, and China, big famines in the 1900s

    -India also famine in 1900s, but maybe it doesn’t count as it is a sun people country.

  234. Why would there be a conflict between “nationalism vs globalization”, when historians would usually view them as part of the same trend – or the former as a weaker version of the latter.

    Before the 19th century, most people would identify themselves with their native city or village, and the concept of nation was difficult to understand for them, and before mass implementation of steam engine, it could be very hard work just to visit a neighbouring city (Kant never visited outside of his native city).

    In terms of transport, easy intranational movement (supporting national identity) becomes possible with the railway system in the 19th century, and international movement (supporting international identity) with airplanes in the 20th century.

    Before modern transport upper classes had more freedom of movement, and sense of national identity, but had formed an international marriage system at the top.

    While among the minority of literate people, learned societies had formed an international communication system, and a lifestyle based on letters, which allowed e.g. Kant’s mind to change the world from his desk. (If Kant has an account on “tripadviser”, it couldn’t have anything more than reviews of pubs within 1 kilometre radius of his house. Pedantic abstraction of Kant’s writing, is maybe the most famous example of a genius’ response to a lifestyle that provides lack of external stimuli.)

    There is also such a pre-internet mental internationalism, among e.g. freemasons, among religious education, in the Church, and among Jews; who could form international networks of letters.

    • Concepts of national identity, requires internationalism, and in much of Europe this was only possible on a mental level among the minority of society which had literacy.

    In Germany, in the framework of Kant’s categories, the national identity emerges among the literate middle class, as a response to a self-perceived sense of provinciality and underdevelopment, in comparison to France.

    In response, to French clarity, wit, and light-feet; German language was viewed as heavy and unstylish. But the German philosophers’ response is to romanticize your supposed weaknesses – they view that the German soul is more profound and deep, while the French are superficial, and obsessed with appearances. While France has “Zivilisation”, Germany has “Kultur”.

    All these postkantian debates, was soon imported uncritically from Germany into Russia, where the German philosophical discussion about “Zivilisation” vs “Kultur” debate is localled grafted on a discussion between Westernizers and nativists.

    In Russia original ideas, have been outsourced to Germany and France, and as a result the local discussions usually becomes a lower quality copy of German philosophy (where a Russian soul is “more spiritual” than a Western one, as a German Kultur had been more spiritual than a French Zivilisation).

    I guess it’s similar to USA and Latin America’s, relation to Europe. While literature and music, can be more fertile in the periphery, than in the centre; the philosophical categories (like luxury automobiles) are imported to the periphery, from Germany, France and England, and believed more uncritically than in their home soils.

  235. Well a few days ago I was writing here about the metro system in London.

    And I remembered one of the funny things, is that it costs £5 (this is like $7), for a single ticket to travel between stations, in London.

    But when I was in the metro station, after paying £5 for my ticket, there are often an advertisement of a lowcost airline, saying something like “Fly to Crete for £19”.

    So you can fly from London to Crete for £19, but you have to pay £5 to travel a few hundred metres inside London.

    • A concept London itself, was partially created (or strengthened) when the metro system was introduced, that created an coherent whole of the city, through its Platonic underground reflection, and allowed a people to travel across all its sides and areas, in a single day.

    Even today, cities without a fixed rail transport (e.g. Tel Aviv currently, before the Chinese tram will be introduced in 2022) feel to us more like agglomeration of villages.

    And our concept of a coherent nation, was strengthened, or partially created, by the steam engine, and system of internal railway networks.

    But in the early 21st century, it becomes cheaper (although of course, still much more unpleasant) to travel between London and Crete, than to travel 4 times within London itself. In a real sense, London and Crete, can become more like a single territory, as one of the main determining factors that bind locations, is the transport connection (of which nowadays geographical distance just correlates usually, rather than necessarily).

    • This is also reminds me of the concept of “flyover country” in America. That is, since mass use of air travel for internal transport in the 1970s, Los Angeles and New York, start to feel closer and easier to access between each other, than does New York and Ohio, or New York and Oklahoma.

    This national fracturing in America, is partially a result of the transport technology, and the statebuilding project in America would benefit from invest in high speed rail, to integrate its landlocked interior of the country with its economically booming coasts.

  236. Abelard Lindsey says

    The L-5 Society was started in response to the “limits to growth” rhetoric. Tthe L-5 people believed in the limits to growth (on Earth) just as much as the limits to growth people themselves. The whole space colony endeavor was to be paid for by building solar power satellites and beaming the energy back to Earth. It was almost like a religion. It was the deregulation of natural gas and oil starting with Carter and later Reagan that essentially ended the L-5 cause starting in 1981. That Keith and Carolyn Henson had a messy, public divorce that same year certainly did not help matters.

    I really do not believe there is any material cause to go to space as even PGM’s are really not that rare on Earth (although Karlin’s “super breeder” hypothesis would make it necessary at some point). I consider myself “pro-space” simply because it is a frontier and I like the ability for self-interested groups to be able to leave and create their own future. Consider it a societal equivalent to MGTOW.

  237. HenryBaker says

    Very nice post.

    Why would there be a conflict between “nationalism vs globalization”, when historians would usually view them as part of the same trend – or the former as a weaker version of the latter.

    Hm, well, you might see nationalism as a step in the road of globalization, and de-territorialization as a follow-up. Depends on how you use the words. It’s true that nationalism itself became stronger due to intensified foreign contact and a more abstract state-loyalty overruling local lords; as well as the creation of national market-places. Of course, you shouldn’t underestimate the extent of contacts of even the medieval epoch- while it’s true we don’t have a clue as to the beliefs of sub-alterns, literate medieval writers conceived of nations and could be quite mobile.

    The conflict between nationalism and globalization comes in when the latter, instead of boosting the former, becomes so intense that it starts to overpower it. It’s one thing to have national markets and some trade- it’s quite another to have near-constant interaction with other peoples through technology and language exchange.

    For example, I’m not from an English speaking country myself, but I spend a lot of time speaking to people from all over the world on-line in English. Indeed I arguably feel more affinity with a ‘transnational community’ (community is a gay word, but you know what I mean) of heterodox people than my own country, if I’m honest with myself. Indeed, it is now possible to acculturate more to ‘internet territories’ like social media platforms, than any sort of national culture. Hence why much of the nationalist right is ironically quite trans-national in taking its subculture and politics from American sources. The nationalist right becomes a de-territorialized global subculture instead of an authentic national creation, in that way.

    Another example is that quite a lot of my friends have girlfriends or spouses that come from other countries, or from mixed families. Everything just gets more and more mixed up.

  238. HenryBaker says

    Very nice post.

    Why would there be a conflict between “nationalism vs globalization”, when historians would usually view them as part of the same trend – or the former as a weaker version of the latter.

    Hm, well, you might see nationalism as a step in the road of globalization, and de-territorialization as a follow-up. Depends on how you use the words. It’s true that nationalism itself became stronger due to intensified foreign contact and a more abstract state-loyalty overruling local lords; as well as the creation of national market-places. Of course, you shouldn’t underestimate the extent of contacts of even the medieval epoch- while it’s true we don’t have a clue as to the beliefs of sub-alterns, literate medieval writers conceived of nations and could be quite mobile.

    The conflict between nationalism and globalization comes in when the latter, instead of boosting the former, becomes so intense that it starts to overpower it. It’s one thing to have national markets and some trade- it’s quite another to have near-constant interaction with other peoples through technology and language exchange.

    For example, I’m not from an English speaking country myself, but I spend a lot of time speaking to people from all over the world on-line in English. Indeed I arguably feel more affinity with a ‘transnational community’ (community is a gay word, but you know what I mean) of heterodox people than my own country, if I’m honest with myself. Indeed, it is now possible to acculturate more to ‘internet territories’ like social media platforms, than any sort of national culture. Hence why much of the nationalist right is ironically quite trans-national in taking its subculture and politics from American sources. The nationalist right becomes a de-territorialized global subculture instead of an authentic national creation, in that way.

    Another example is that quite a lot of my friends have girlfriends or spouses that come from other countries, or from mixed families. Everything just gets more and more mixed up.

  239. Perhaps assassination of Yitzhak Rabin will be seen as partially a racially motivated crime.

    Rabin was a idol of the Ashkenazi elite, while the assassin was Yemenite, and had been rejected for marriage by an Ashkenazi woman due to his nationality the year earlier.

    It seems symbolic that he killed an archetypal hero of the Ashkenazi Jews, within a year of being rejected by an Ashkenazi woman’s family due to racism.

    “In 1994, during his university studies, Amir met – and began a (non-sexual) relationship with – Nava Holtzman, a law student from an Orthodox Ashkenazi family. In January 1995, after five months, Holtzman ended the relationship after her parents objected due to Amir’s Mizrahi background. She married one of his friends soon afterwards. Amir, who attended the wedding, went into a deep depression.”

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yigal_Amir

    I wonder whether there was been any ethnic violence – like a riot, not a madman – that ever occurred between the various Jewish ethnicities

    I think it’s quite common from the news reports. You read in Russian Israeli media, that there often are reports of brutally violent attacks on Russian speakers in Israel, from Ethiopians and Moroccans.

    Also there is a famous racism against the Kurdish Jews in Israel, from the Arab Jews that had an Arab identity. For example, the Arab Jews’ slang for “ugly” in Israel, is apparently to say “Kurdi”.

    And there are a lot of news reports about racist violence between immigrants in Israel,* often due to local conflicts in immigrants’ country of origin.

    Among other things, Israel is a country that has too many immigrants from Ukraine for its own good.

    • E.g. of Ukrainian political violence in Israel

    https://politexpert.net/64989-ogoltelaya-rusofobiya-ukrainec-chut-ne-ubil-ukrainku-pereputav-ee-s-russkoi

    https://rg.ru/2018/06/19/ukrainec-ubil-moldavanina-za-slovo-hohol.html

    I would suppose that non-Ashkenazi would have a higher standard of living in Israel. Though, I wonder if any get paid by oil states. (I’d guess not.)

    Israel can be quite egalitarian in my opinion, although in eccentric or unpredictable ways.

    For example, in the building environment, some of the later constructed low income Mizrachi cities, can have a surprisingly high building quality.

    For example, Ashdod, is a low income city in Israel, that housed former Mizrachi refugees, but they invested in high quality (if souless) construction in 1980s.

    Meanwhile, high income Ashkenazi hipsters can still live in third world building environment in Tel Aviv.

    So, a majority Mizrachi city of Ashdod, have a very well designed urban environment, and got a good living standard from it. Even the cheap pedestrian areas seem much better designed than some rich parts of Israel
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbJalV4xYj0

    Some Arabs claim that Ashkenazi kidnapped the Jews from their countries.In its early years of the 1950s, the Mizrachi Jews were dearabized and integrated by Israel, in a quite brutal way, from the history books I have read. For example, on arrival, they were often washed with toxic chemicals as a “delicing treatment”, and a lot of Yemeni Jewish children were kidnapped from illiterate large families, and given to infertile Ashkenazi families as adopted children.

    Mizrachi Jews in Israel, were native Arabic speakers ,which were imported to become half of the country’s Jewish population in 1950s, but Israel was successful to scare them somehow into instantly losing the Arabic language, and to become Hebrew speakers, within a few years.

    It was very successful from the point of view of statebuilding, and I’m not sure there is another example like it, even in Soviet times, where you can change a nationality’s language almost instantly. I can’t even imagine how they made them lose their Arabic language like that, but the Mizrachi Jews in Israel are now all speaking Hebrew (they cannot speak Arabic).

  240. No, the Hindu-Dindu is frustrated so he resorts to anti-Western trolling.

  241. I would tend to agree with this. There’s certainly a use case for reusable rockets for space launch and for fast global transport/cargo delivery, but I’m not sure how the economics of asteroid mining are supposed to work out.

    The one thing that asteroid mining would be much more efficient for is building large space structures. What will we need them for? If Earth needs more energy – that is, several orders of magnitude more energy, for which you will eventually need space-based solar power. For what? In the technological runaway scenario, simulating septillions of emulated minds or AIs. In the AoMI scenario, after a few centuries, feeding people once the population goes much beyond 100 billion and the bulk of agriculture has to shift to very energy intensive indoors facilities.

  242. “In Russia original ideas, have been outsourced to Germany and France” – Borrowing and appropriation is not outsourcing. To outsource something you need to have it in the first place like when a large corporation shuts down its check cutting unit and outsource check cutting to external company created by the nephew of the CEO that hires cheap labor with much lower benefits than the original source company. This makes the CEO double-happy.

  243. Western supremacism will be crushed under the boot of globalism. Thulean Friend is riding the wave of the future.

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuwvbrOXMAAjY1y.jpg

  244. Thulean Friend says

    I doubt you’ll change your mind on anything.

    You just haven’t made a convincing argument. Women may be less prone to have widely divergent views but that is simply because women are more consensus-oriented. This can be smeared as “conformist” by manoids. In reality, it’s about finding the minimal acceptable threshold for social stability.

    Innovation does require people to think differently, but the fallacy you commit is that women’s predilictions would be constant. I am arguing for far-reaching genetic engineering to fundamentally change humanity as we know it. This would obviously include all women.

    That’s why I noted that capping manoids is only a short-to-medium run solution, and an imperfect at that. Any long-term solution would need to make homo sapiens so different from today that it would be questionable if it is even the same species anymore (just as we once evolved from Homo Erectus). So all your prior heuristics about how the two sexes interact would no longer be relevant.

    The question about beauty should not be avoided or shirked. Imagine being surrounded by people at age 800 who look like this:

    https://i.imgur.com/fW0t55t.jpg

    Beauty matters and it needs to be fought for. Manoids are permenanetly crippled in this regard and you surely cannot argue otherwise.

  245. Manoid Supremacist says

    I’m as much of a futurist as it gets but I sincerely hope that before our ascent to the stars the world devolves into an orgy of chaos and violence ruled by a new breed of beautiful and terrible overmen, themselves selected by an environment where morality is decided at the end of a blooded blade — just so that people like you find their rightful place in the order of mankind: human chattel in servitude to their physical superiors, performing any and all base tasks that your betters deign to allow you to subsist on.

  246. songbird says

    Women with tattoos should be banned and expelled from Ice People’s countries and sent to the Global South.

  247. Daniel Chieh says

    That looks like disgusting flesh. Flesh is weak, is prone to mutation and rot, requires constant input and dependance on complex systems of liquid and gas, also prone to mutation.

    No.

    Embrace the purity and perfection that is Steel.

    Transcend the Clay, ascend the Spirit!

  248. Rattus Norwegius says

    Do you think that Putin staying in power makes Russia more predictable ?

  249. Is this a self-dox?

  250. AltSerrice says

    Thulean Friend is henceforth to be known as Thulean Foid.

  251. AnonFromTN says

    Beauty matters and it needs to be fought for.

    Does the fact that available-looking chicks only appear beautiful to manoids affect your judgement?

  252. Mitleser says

    Not bad, but not great either, hence gray bureaucrat and not “one among the greatest Russian leaders”.

    He had already won the second Chechnya war, successfully fought Islamist terrorism

    By seceding Chechnya to a more cooperative bunch of Chechen Islamists.

    An improvement compared to the situation in the 90s, but certainly not a great solution.
    The re-unification of Crimea with the RF looks much better than the outcome of the second Chechen war.

  253. Yellowface Anon says

    Horseshoe effect in full swing.

  254. Yellowface Anon says

    If you can’t wait for the edifice to collapse, be the arsonist.

  255. Another name says

    Two points

    1. buying paper tickets in london is a scam by the metro provider. They want you either to give them your card details or to sign up for there in house card system. If you buy paper tickets they overcharge for travel.

    A concept London itself, was partially created (or strengthened) when the metro system was introduced, that created an coherent whole of the city, through its Platonic underground reflection, and allowed a people to travel across all its sides and areas, in a single day.

    Even today, cities without a fixed rail transport (e.g. Tel Aviv currently, before the Chinese tram will be introduced in 2022) feel to us more like agglomeration of villages.

    London’s concept of itself goes back millenia, greater london was noted in the 1960s and 70s and upto the 80s as a aggromeration of villages rather than a singular whole, this despite having internal railways since 1830.
    The problem with london is that since the 1960s it has had a probable 80% population replacement (not all white british 45% are going to be english let alone londoners) with a government which actively tries to disrupt any group identity when it reaches a certain size (perceives it to be a threat to their power/money), obvious with the native ones but also the case with others.

    My guess is that the govt. Of tel aviv/israel didn’t actively disrupt the cultures that sprang up in the neighbourhoods.

    I think transport tech plays an insignificant role in the process you outline, and london/england would be why but you’d have to understand the place prior to the 2000s

  256. Abelard Lindsey says

    This is the reason why space colonization will not happen until it becomes cheap enough that it is self-financing for the people who want to do it. This is the “Pilgrims, Saints, and Spacemen” argument about space colonization.

  257. Not Raul says
  258. Shortsword says
  259. Shortsword says
  260. AnonFromTN says

    Reports from Banderstan always sound like news from a lunatic asylum. Hardly worth noting.

  261. Sure my analogy of outsourcing is not perfect; but let’s just say that most higher ideas and categories in the Russian mind, has been imported, and a lot of it is from Germany.

    This was not a bad thing at the time, as the source of the ideas were usually high quality writers, and educated people knew the complicated context these ideas had originated in, and that they would have to study German (or at least read translations carefully of original texts) in order to participate in discussion about them.

    However, it also results in a vulnerability of the culture, once the ideas that originate in the higher culture, begin to infect the minds of people who don’t want to study German philosophy.

    Today, we have a situation, where the “intellectual” discussion in Russia, constitutes people discussing ideas and concepts that originate from Kant, but which have been filtered through two or three generations of people who never read Kant.

    As a result, reading “intellectual debate” in Russia, feels like a proverbial Saudi Arabians trying to understand the F-16 they have imported.

    There is a situation today, that there are even sometimes Marxists, which are not studying Kant, and which therefore won’t understand anything about Marx’s project. (Of course, the understanding of Marx has been horrifically raped by Lenin).

    For example, in this forum thread, people are talking about “globalism”.

    This debate of “globalism vs nationalism”, just inherited concepts from Kant’s writing, and in Germany this debate usually centred discussion of the Greek miracle.

    In theory “globalism” should be the most effective solution, but when Philip unifies Greece – and eventually Alexander destroys Thebes – the dynamism of Greek culture seems to have been lost, and the Greek miracle is ended.

    Kant was writing about these topics in the 1780s, and it becomes a kind of script in Russia.
    https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/ethics/kant/universal-history.htm

    So if you read the “third thesis” – there is task given to Hegel, which was later solved by Marx.

    “Fourth thesis” was a research topic adopted by Nietzsche in the beginning of his career.

    Fifth, Sixth and Seventh thesis – Kant is presenting what internet users call “globalist view”, for “one world government”, (in its most “low IQ” reflectiom, it became Trotsky’s theory of “world revolution”).

    When the ideas like “globalism” or “nationalism” are read in the articles of the writers who originated the discussion (e.g. Kant), then they are interesting concepts. However, in later centuries, stupid people might start to say “I am an nationalist”, or “I am an internationalist”, as if one or other idea can be true, when the point of the discussion is to to show that neither side is simply correct.

    These discussions were introduced for Kant to illustrate the complex problems. And intended response for his readers, was to “sting” them into some state of aporia on this topic.

  262. Maybe, the reason that 5 y.o. Kenyans don’t pass the mirror test is that Africa is full of flies and people are blase about them.

  263. Daniel Chieh says

    As a scientist and a man of knowledge among us, I would appreciate your thoughts on the CRISPR thread “China Torpedoes Biosingularity Bid.”

    Thanks.

  264. Sure, they should be seen as different concepts. But for many historians, if they zoom out by a few centuries, it will appears more like an extension of the same trend. If in the 19th century, ordinary people could start to easily interact with those from different villages; then in the late 20th century and early 21st century, it became possible to easily interact with people from different countries for the first time.

    And in some of this will be inevitable result of technology. Imagine, if by the end of this century, we have installed hyperloops between London and Moscow – or if our socializing will be mostly on virtual reality games for which your real location is irrelevant. With such technology, then socialization by only national identity will be something lost to past centuries (as socialization by village location, was lost in the 19th/20th centuries, when our ancestors was for the first time meeting people from different villages)

    It’s one thing to have national markets and some trade-

    And the main thing to notice is objective bad, (for 90% of citizens), is flooding of developed countries, with culturally randomized labour from less developed countries.

    In the less developed countries, usually with the most dysfunctional populations, and in the worst example with an aggressive Islamist ideology. It’s rather difficult to understand how stupidly a country can allow unfiltered immigration that resulting terrorists driving around Paris shooting people with Ak47s.

    But for me, watching coronavirus crisis, was a new view into how incompetent most countries’ governments are; so even if there was a ideological change (e.g. in leaders like Orban), I don’t think there is much hope for a competent immigration policy to emerge in many places.

  265. Blinky Bill says
  266. songbird says

    Is Tibet really that bad, if you have sunscreen and the right, high-altitude mutations?

    The Outback and the Sahara could be made livable, by geoengineering, IMO.

    I see a few green areas that look like hellscapes in real life, like Somalia. Personally, I think most of Africa seems like a horrible place to live, even the greener parts. Maybe, much of the tropics too? Any place full of nightmarish parasites, clouds of flies, and high UV.

    It would be funny, if someone broke this up into racial versions. Good place to live, if you are black (away from Africa.) Good place to live, if you are white (away from urban centers in the West, away from South Africa).

  267. Philip Owen says

    There was substantial AngloSaxon settlement on Crimea in Byzantine times. 350 ships worth. AS aristocrats fleeing the Norman conquest to join the Varangrian guard. Russian princes of the time, Vladimir II but not only, had AS brides.

  268. Philip Owen says

    British history is full of viscious warrior Queens. Boadacia, Aethelflaed of Mercia, the Empress Matilda, Isbella the She Wolf (wife of the king), Mary, Elizabeth. When women do break into open conflict, there are no rules.

  269. Shortsword says
  270. Philip Owen says

    The gravity model of trade is what you seek. Transport technology changes distances relationships. From the Neolithic to the Romans, water transport was the easist way to travel. Rome and Carthage were both in the middle of the Mediterranean. Greece flourished when ships were slightly less developed. People around the North Sea spoke Germanic languages, along the Atlantic, perhaps Morrocco to Scotland, Celtic.

    Now we have aeroplanes and retirement villas in Spain can be closer to London than northern English cities like Leeds in both time and cost, as you show for Cyprus.

    The relationship is the inverse square of the distance. Closer is much more important than distant but the distance when considering people is measured in time not kilometres.

  271. Svido bimbo.

  272. Coconuts says

    However, it also results in a vulnerability of the culture, once the ideas that originate in the higher culture, begin to infect the minds of people who don’t want to study German philosophy.

    Today, we have a situation, where the “intellectual” discussion in Russia, constitutes people discussing ideas and concepts that originate from Kant, but which have been filtered through two or three generations of people who never read Kant.

    Not only in Russia…

    The recent ‘Woke wave’ in the Anglo countries got me interested in Woke ideology and the more I read into it, the more certain underlying foundations of the thinking became visible; back to Marx, Hegel, Fichte, Feuerbach, then Kant.

    At one time, academic philosophy in Britain was heavily influenced by German idealism (late 19th, first decades of the 20th century) but it died out and was replaced by the emerging Anglo Analytical tradition. Apart from Kant and Marx I knew hardly anything about the thought of the others and I think even though they are influenced by it in a variety of fields (Protestant religion being one), neither do that many other people.

  273. The West can only abandon idpol if the demographics start reverting, its an inevitable reaction to the secular decline of the majority. The lines on the map and laws on the books don’t reflect demographic realities.

  274. It’s rather difficult to understand how stupidly a country can allow unfiltered immigration that resulting terrorists driving around Paris shooting people with Ak47s.

    Western society since 1914 has been in a state of cultural collapse, and increasingly believes its own self-preservation is immoral.

  275. Laugh perhaps, but this belief is apparently quite popular in the US military’s “war colleges”.

  276. Thulean Friend says

    Biden may restart border wall construction

    I have often pointed out, do not confuse woke rhetoric done for domestic consumption with genuine policy.

    Global corporate tax deal edges closer after US backs minimum rate

    Tax havens will have a lot harder time if this gets passed and seriously implemented. Even neoliberals like Larry Summers are calling for beefing up the IRS to get to trillions of avoided taxes shifted abroad.

    This was never a mystery to those of us who never bought the rhetoric that “entitlements” was the main fiscal issue for the US. That is mostly a reflection of a broken healthcare system that is too privatised with too many rentseekers. The real issue is the gaping fiscal hole left by huge amounts of tax avoidance by the rich. That the US is now going for this is a sign they’re getting serious. Competition with China is doing wonders to sharpen their minds.

  277. Why do you hate Chads so much?

    Manoids are Love, Manoids are Life. Manoids are the fountain of Justice.

    Only Soyboys want androgynes. And virgin weaklings like yourself.

    Prepare to be BTFO’ed by the worshippers of the Sky Father. Manoids are the future.

  278. Bad mutations are more apt to be manifested in the Male than Female:
    https://atavisionary.com/free-book-smart-and-sexy-the-evolutionary-origins-and-biological-underpinnings-of-cognitive-differences-between-the-sexes/

    Since the Male doesn’t have a backup X-Chromosome in case the other X-Chromosome turns out bad.

    Bad mutations get unmasked and selection would more often take the Male out of circulation.

    Being Male is more of a gamble by their existence.

  279. TheTotallyAnonymous says

    I’m curious, you seem to be a VRS (Army of Republika Srpska) war veteran?

    I would appreciate it if you could tell me about some of your experiences during the war (nothing revealing or exposing sensitive things about certain players, say Ljubisa Savic Mauzer’s assassination, of course)?

    I had chance to met Strelkov during Bosnia war in city of Visegrad even at that time his job was collecting information and intelligence Serbian army kicked him from Bosnia .

    That’s interesting, Strelkov’s memoir doesn’t mention anything about him being kicked out by the VRS (or any other formation) but rather that he left of his own accord because he started to feel disappointed, disillusioned and fatigued by the Bosnian War (his memoirs aren’t actually too positive about his experiences with Serbs from 92′-93′ in East Bosnia, although he still feels it was overall worthwhile fighting for the cause of Republika Srpska and a Serb Bosnia).

  280. TheTotallyAnonymous says

    Competition with China is doing wonders to sharpen their minds.

    Doesn’t matter. USA has already practically lost to China. It’s not a matter of if, but when and how.

    China will liberate Taiwan very likely in the next few years and the USA can’t meaningfully do anything about it besides starting a conventional or nuclear war over it. Even if they do, they are likely to lose it anyway.

    https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/blog/u-s–china-relations–from-bad-to-worse/

    https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2021-03-21/niall-ferguson-a-taiwan-crisis-may-end-the-american-empire

    Even though Niall Ferguson is an Anglo cuckservative who shills nonsensical pro-Germany WW1 historical revisionism (and retarded bullshit about the Bosnian War, of course), he’s absolutely correct about how a Chinese liberation of Taiwan will cause the end of the US Empire (it’s absolutely hilarious to realize how hard Jake Sullivan is going to get his skull smashed by China “no they don’t want to militarily compete with us in the West Pacific” lmao).

    Once the US economy crashes as a consequence of a Chinese victory, there’ll be a collapse that will make the Soviet one look pretty and smooth (perhaps even the Yugoslav one as well).

    Literally it will come down to people desperately trying to flee and escape the USA and Western countries intimately subordinate to the USA for other places in the world with ethnic diasporas being first to bail. Some Anglo-Americans and West-Euros themselves will even likely leave their empty shells of countries once any facade of normalcy or functionality comes undone.

    It’s amazing to me just how many people don’t understand the historical moment and time period they are living through and what’s imminently coming their way …

  281. Blinky Bill says

    Total increase in the world’s gross domestic product in the five years through 2026, based on IMF forecasts published Tuesday. Global GDP is expected to rise by more than $28 trillion to $122 trillion over that period.

    https://assets.bwbx.io/images/users/iqjWHBFdfxIU/idibMrWVgwv8/v0/1200x-1.jpg

  282. TheTotallyAnonymous says

    Thanks (can’t press the button because i haven’t commented enough recently).

    Btw, i love your recent debunking of A123 claiming China would run out of coal in a USA-China war over Taiwan (LOL).

    Also, I read on r/Sino that apparently the CPC always writes up discreet 2 year deadline-ultimatums in the People’s Daily, Xinhua or whatever (not sure which exact media/news outlet it’s called) specific newspaper/media outlet before China goes to war (it apparently did that in its wars against India, Vietnam and even Soviet border clashes). Apparently such an ultimatum has already been released over Taiwan with a deadline to expire by December 2022. This could just be nonsense of course (wish i screenshotted that in r/sino), but it would be quite amazing if it was legit. I guess we’ll see whether China goes after Taiwan before December 2022 or not.

  283. Nope, as mentioned I looked up most of that info. My superficial knowledge of Japanese is ex ex (meaning, it stems from a past girlfriend ;‑) and a short study of the language I did during the period of her exchange studies at my university. Although a rather short affair, both the study and the relationship, they left me with a deep appreciation for that language and its Chinese characters (to say nothing of Japanese girls ;^).

    I join mine to the voices welcoming the dissident thoughts of an actual 日本人 free-thinking 釘 (surely 1 or 2 remain unhammered ;‑). (Or any other oriental thoughts, of course.)

  284. Thanks. So 士 (shi) in Japanese would carry the “aristocratic warrior/gentleman” (i.e. samurai) meaning. They certainly seem to have diverged, with Japanese leaning somewhat more toward the “warrior” notion than the Chinese “scholar” (e.g. 飛行士, is an aviation 士, a pilot; 騎士, is an equestrian 士, a knight), but I guess we can see some commonality if we focus on the “gentleman/aristocrat” and “scholar/ministerial officer” parts on each side. For example, in both societies they comprised a class above the commoners. (Also interesting is that already in Chinese 武士 (wushi) [war officer(?)/warrior/soldier] we find the bushi of Bushidō, 武士道, the chivalrous Way of the Samurai.)

    But interestingly the most common kanji for samurai qua word is apparently 侍, which in both languages seems to carry the “attendant, servant” meaning, perhaps reflecting their subordination to the noble class of Daimyō lords.

  285. The research posted above shows women are not more ethical as soon as you factor in a tendency to conformity. They support hate speech laws much more than men do. Here’s another piece of research: https://eml.berkeley.edu/~sdellavi/wp/GenderGenerosityAERPP2013Final.pdf

    ‘When put under pressure, women may give more, and contribute more to public goods because they are more likely to be on the margin, and hence sensitive to an extra push. But they may say no if given a simple option to do so’

    Reminds me of an old post by Spandrell:

    interesting post from Psychology Today (yes, the place where Satoshi Kanazawa used to blog before being busted for having good taste in women).

    Read the whole thing, but let me stress the important points:

    • When men watch wrongdoers getting punished, there is activation in reward centers of their brains, whereas women’s brains show activation in pain centers, suggesting that they feel empathy for suffering even when it is deserve (Tania Singer and collaborators).
    • Women are more likely to factor personal cost into decisions about whether to punish an unfair stranger, which suggests that women are more context-sensitive, and men adhere to principles (Catherine Eckel and Philip Grossman).
    • Women were twice as generous in a game that involved dividing $10 with a stranger (Eckel and Grossman, again).

    Ok read this carefully and tell me how it is not obvious that women should not be allowed to vote or be voted. Women do not belong in political society. Period.
    […]

    https://spandrell.com/2011/11/17/women-dont-belong-in-political-society

    Other items from the (quite PC-worded) article referenced by Spandrell (https://archive.is/J7gbq):

    • When looking at pictures of immoral acts, women’s judgments of severity correlate with higher levels of activation in emotion centers of the brain, suggesting concern for victims, whereas men show higher activation in areas that might involve the deployment of principles (Carla Harenski and collaborators).
    […]
    • Women are more likely than men to think it is okay to imprison a person on trumped up changes in order to stop violent rioting in the streets (Fiery Cushman and Liane Young). But women are also less likely to endorse diverting a runaway trolley down an alternate track where it will kill one person instead of five (John Mikhail).

  286. AnonFromTN says

    Bad mutations are more apt to be manifested in the Male than Female:

    Evolution often experiments on males first. Then, if something new proves beneficial, it is used in females. That makes biological sense: the number of breeding females determines the survival of the species, whereas you don’t need many males for that (say, one bull is sufficient for the whole herd of cows).

  287. Vishnugupta says

    https://www.mirror.co.uk/tv/tv-news/jodie-turner-smith-stuns-first-23485130

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-9445717/Jodie-Turner-Smith-awaits-tragic-fate-LOOK-Anne-Boleyn-miniseries.html

    Ok so apparently we will soon be treated to a ‘historic’ mini series with an African actress cast as Ann Boleyn.

    Amazing!Apparently there is now a broad commercial market for these types of programs.

  288. Bimbo Alert

    Dumb as a rock, the below self described “Russian-Ukrainian”, blatantly ignores the overwhelming preponderance of culpability from the Kiev regime side. Her “pre-meditated manufactured garbage” point is 100% projection.

    https://twitter.com/OlgaNYC1211/status/1378372408571269125

  289. Blinky Bill says

    CHINA’S NONMILITARY RESPONSES: BUYING TIME

    Examination of China’s nonmililtary options for responding to a loss of seaborne oil supplies. China has various options for offsetting a loss of seaborne crude oil and refined-product supplies. The potential responses span a range of time and cost dimensions. China’s initial nonmilitary responses to a distant oil-and-refined-products blockade likely would emphasize two core elements: (1) minimizing domestic oil demand to extend the life of commercial and strategic crude-oil stocks, and (2) maximizing nonmaritime liquid-fuel supplies by working to augment overland imports of crude oil and refined products, as well as blending domestically pro-lduced “extenders” such as coal-derived methanol into the gasoline and diesel-fuel pools to reduce the demand for crude oil.

    The intent would be to maintain the ability to fuel the military and to support as much civilian economic activity as possible, with the ultimate goal of holding out long enough for the U.S. political will to sustain the conflict to wane, potentially opening the door for a peace settlement more favorable to Chinese interests.

    Demand-Side Options

    Conservation through rationing would be among the lowest-cost and fastest responses to a seaborne energy embargo. The experience of the United States during World War II offers perhaps the most applicable case study for assessing potential parameters for rationing in China. The America of that era was just as contemporary China is a world-class industrial power that was heavily mechanized, and for which petroleum was an irreplaceable strategic economic input. Between 1941 and 1944, the United States used a mix of voluntary and compulsory measures to decrease private and commercial highway gasoline consumption (i.e., transportation-driven gasoline demand) by 32 percent.

    As transportation expert Bradley Flamm points out, the U.S. achievement was especially noteworthy because it occurred “at a time when population, employment, and income growth would normally have led to large increases in auto ownership and gasoline consumption.”

    China remains in a period of similarly dynamic growth in personal car ownership. Yet there are important differences that credibly suggest that China could reduce motor-fuel demand more rapidly than the United States did during World War II, and perhaps circumscribe demand even more severely if circumstances warranted.

    First, by 1940 the United States already had more than two hundred private cars per thousand persons approximately twice the current ownership rate in China. Second, many Chinese still use public transit as their primary mode of transportation to work and for daily activities, so a move to curtail auto use likely would spark less resistance than it did in the United States, where the government faced stiff pushback from many car owners who chafed at gasoline supply restrictions. Third, Chinese car owners in key markets, including Beijing, already regularly face serious restrictions on their driving for instance, via administrative decrees that only cars with even or odd numbered license plates can be used on certain days.

    So what would it mean in concrete terms if China responded to a seaborne oil and products embargo by imposing rationing that reduced gasoline demand by a third relative to preblockade levels? The International Energy Agency forecast that China’s gasoline demand in 2017 would be approximately 3 million bpd. Thus, a 33 percent reduction in gasoline use—a million barrels per day would decrease China’s total estimated oil products demand by more than 8 percent.

    Oil demand likely would decline further as economic activity slowed because of the blockade and as civilian consumption of diesel and middle-distillate fuels (which are critical to air and naval operations) fell. “Involuntary” rationing likely would accelerate as export-oriented factories shut down and trucking activity fell. The average heavy truck in China consumes approximately 144 barrels of diesel fuel per year. Under such conditions, idling 5 percent of the Chinese heavy-truck fleet a plausible and conservative projection for the likely effects of an oil blockade—would remove a diesel-demand volume equivalent to the entire daily consumption of the Shanghai municipality approximately 112 kbd.

    Rationing also would facilitate the redirection of fuels to the Chinese military and critical internal-transport activities. Even during the peak of U.S. military operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and “normal” training activities and force movements, the Defense Department’s daily average fuel use was nearly four hundred thousand barrels per day an amount equal to slightly more than 10 percent of China’s domestic crude-oil output. Even if some fuel use was not included in this figure for instance, that by transport aircraft and ships transiting multiple countries to support operations it still strongly suggests that China’s domestic crude supplies alone would be more than sufficient to fuel the country’s military operations for a very long period, particularly since the PLA does not face the “tyranny of distance” and the fuel-use intensity it causes to nearly the degree that forward-based U.S. forces would. Furthermore, China’s rapidly growing domestic air-travel market likely would cease to operate during a conflict, owing both to reduced travel activity and to the need to reroute domestic kerosene consumption now nearing seven hundred thousand barrels per day to support military activities.

    Finally, the domestic rail system, which moved 13 percent of the country’s freight volume in 2015 (as opposed to the 32 percent of freight volume that moved by highway), also likely would receive priority fuel allocations. Rail is a high-volume coal mover in China, and would become more important if a blockading power threatened the coastwise coal shipping that currently moves several hundred million tons of the fuel per year from northern to southern Chinese ports. Railroads are highly fuel efficient. Indeed, based on the estimates in the previous paragraph and fuel-efficiency data from the Union Pacific (UP) and BNSF railroads, shutting down 5 percent of China’s heavy-truck fleet potentially would free up middle-distillate fuel sufficient to move roughly 1.5 trillion ton-miles of goods. This volume would be equivalent to 13 percent of all freight goods transported in China during 2015, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

  290. AnonFromTN says

    Water is wet. Ukies are liars. What else is new?

  291. Blinky Bill says

    Meet Blinky Bill’s creator

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yoram_Gross

    The Jewish Holocaust Centre in Melbourne will host a special event attended by iconic animator of “Blinky Bill”, Yoram Gross and filmmaker Tomasz Magierski later this month.

    On June 20 at 7.00pm, the film, Blinky & Me (2011), will be screened, followed by an interactive audience discussion with Gross and Margierki, the film’s director, who is visiting from the United States.

    Gross’ powerful animated stories shaped the identities of countless Australian children who grew up watching them on film and television. Yet it is a little known fact that the many adventures of Blinky Bill, Gross’ depiction of Australian history in The Little Convict (1979), and many other influential narratives, were heavily influenced by his own personal experiences as a Holocaust survivor and the events that took place in Europe during that turbulent period.

    Shedding light on this intriguing facet of Australia’s cultural history, Blinky & Me tells the story of Gross’ childhood experiences in Nazi-occupied Poland during World War II. Travelling to present day Krakow with his grandchildren, Gross recounts how he narrowly survived persecution and reflects on the role of artistic creation throughout his life.

    This screening is part of a broader series of films viewed and discussed by the JHC Film Club, a joint initiative of the Holocaust Centre and Deakin University. Since April 2011, the Film Club has hosted monthly screenings of important and little-seen Holocaust, genocide and other human rights-related films.

    Mr Warren Fineberg, Executive Director of the JHC, said that “the Film Club is an immensely important part of the Centre’s work and has provided yet another way for us to engage with local communities who have suffered atrocities in the recent past.”

    Dr Deb Waterhouse-Watson, a lecturer at Monash University who spoke at a screening of My Mother’s Courage last August, said that “these events make a valuable contribution to advancing knowledge of human rights abuses around the world. They speak volumes for how the Holocaust Centre takes on a pivotal role in commemorating genocide and educating the community.”

  292. Blinky Bill says
  293. Blinky Bill says
  294. Blinky Bill says
  295. Philip Owen says

    Add up the EU+UK just on that chart and it’s ahead of India. So much for Brexit.

  296. Daniel Chieh says

    You seem awfully interested in someone you supposedly blocked.

  297. Blinky Bill says
  298. Blinky Bill says
  299. reiner Tor says
  300. songbird says

    Apparently there is now a broad commercial market for these types of programs.

    I don’t know if television media or movies are similar, but I know with video games in the UK, there is something called “Video Games Tax Relief.”

    There is a kind of complicated formula. I don’t know the ins and outs of it, but you get points for having a UK setting, but that by itself does not allow you to cross the threshold. You can also get points for “cultural diversity”, which is what many companies do.

    It seems increasing hard to find anything with a European historical setting and a Western European production that isn’t afflicted by diversity. I hope it is all burned one day and only stills remain to teach schoolchildren about the insanity of our times.

  301. Philip Owen says

    5 is not an option. They’ve been rowing away. Syria and Iraw have no claim to Europe. Belarus, Ukraina and Russia on the other hand … . Even Kazhakstan.

    Lots of potential for catch up growth and huge productivity gains there.

  302. Philip Owen says

    Meanwhile the firebombing has started in the UK. All the Celts are restless.

  303. China used to have a Warrior Aristocrat Class of Charioteers. But over time as a result of prolonged warfare they proved to be too expensive.

    As well as the fact that the Infantry which more often came from Peasant stock didn’t care about Chivalric Values which often led to the deaths of those Charioteers.

    They were very much like Samurai but attrition made it unfeasible. Instead that Aristocratic Class became divided into the Scholar-Bureaucrat class and Generals.

  304. Daniel Chieh says

    Yes, I think its fair that chariots fit most of the requirements of a warrior aristocracy: expensive, requires skill, etc. They’re still mentioned in Sun Tzu, but seem to be a limited use compared to infantry, especially due to the ever-increasing proliferation of the crossbow. By Sun Pin’s time, cavalry is more adopted though existing primarily as light scouts and chariots seem to have mostly phased out.

  305. TheTotallyAnonymous says

    Thanks.

    China’s economies of scale are truly impressive, awe-inspiring and a bit frightening tbh.

  306. Hideyoshi and his Tokugawa successors in Japan separated the peasantry from the warrior class and conducted sword hunts to prevent the peasants from arming themselves. There military population remained large relative to the total population and Japan was split into han domains that made large-scale organisation among the peasants hard.

    Prior to that, Japanese peasants were anything but passive.

    There were various militant peasant organisations called ikki.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikk%C5%8D-ikki

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sh%C5%8Dch%C5%8D_uprising

    When the new airport at Narita over farmland to the east of Tokyo, the locals responded with extreme violence.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs6jhn_9xaU\

    Anyone who thinks the Japanese are necessarily passive has never lived in Japan.

    Peasant converts to Christianity and some of the more militant Buddhist sects gave the samurai a run for their money

  307. Coconuts says

    If Syria and Iraq have no claim to Europe neither do Bradford, Birmingham or Paris.

  308. Coconuts says

    Looking at the photos it looks like the oppressive rule of Lukashenko is still preventing Belarusians from enjoying the benefits of racial diversity and celebrating Blackness.

    Many still do not have the opportunity to realise that they are transgender or have a marginalised non-binary identity. It is very dark.

    There are also insufficient IKEA stores.

  309. China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms says

    How do you find studying Japanese or have you studied other languages?

    There’s also a backflow from Kanji to Chinese, besides the obvious ones e.g. Jap-specific 寿司 Sushi. The vocabs that acquired from Rangaku 蘭学 „Dutch learning“ or „Western learning“, Chinese vocab that were imported from West through Japanese

    A very long list which includes—

    Philosophy, Nature, Ideology, Theory, Mathematics, Physics, Chemistry, Science, Process, Officer, Capital, Capitalist, Capitalism

    哲学、自然、思想、理论、数学、物理、化学、科学、手续、干部、资本、资本家、资本主义

    Another interesting case is when newer technical terms are introduced in West, Japanese and Chinese make different decisions in Character selection. For example,

    In math, Manifold is the generalized concept of a surface, such as Earth’s surface which is a curved surface

    In Japanese its rendered as 多様体, exact same in meaning as English or German Mannigfatigkeit, or French Variété

    In Chinese its rendered 流形, Flowing Shape, a more visual description

  310. Yellowface Anon says

    Most importantly, Belarusians do not enjoy the city-improving benefits WEF see in locking down and emptying the streets. Lukashenko also can’t get IMF funding conditioned on lockdowns.

  311. Daniel Chieh says

    武士 is also the most common word I know for samurai in Chinese. So it comes out to “the honorable gentleman class [that is war-related].”

  312. songbird says

    We should promote the Chinese zodiac within the West, and fuse it with the Gregorian calendar. Three reasons:

    1.) we need a system of civilized superstition (zodiac), to take the place of uncivilized superstition (anti-racism) which currently reigns.
    2.) it would be salutary and economically beneficial to promote pigs, a traditional food of Europe, with a year dedicated to them. Ditto, for dogs, the traditional companion animal.
    3.) we need to end the intergenerational strife. Do away with these soul-less marketing terms like gen-x and gen-y. And replace it with a cycle that randomly unites people who are twelve years apart, demonstrating our commonality, and putting the fear of aging into the youth.

  313. Shortsword says

    Five posts about Navalny on /r/worldnews/ right now. The posts are more or less the same news repeated from different sources. Usually the subreddit will remove duplicate news posts but such rules doesn’t seem to apply for Russia related news.

  314. Shortsword says
  315. Morton's toes says

    Why not link the video?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vquKyNdgH3s

    1. No doubt it’s pretty bad but it is impossible to be worse than any other version including the original Tolkein text.

    2. The Shire with snow drifts! I laughed any way.

  316. Morton's toes says

    At least they didn’t pick it up and toss it through the window of the American embassy.

  317. HenryBaker says

    Anatoly, did you ever write a longer post on why you think Ukraine is an illegitimate state? It mostly seems to be the old argument that they are ‘little Russians’ that just don’t know it or acknowledge it. But say the Germans suddenly grew aggressive on Austria as being ‘just Germans’ and wanted to incorporate it against their will, we would see that as pretty morally despicable.

    If the Germans started to call us Dutch ‘little Germans’ that needed incorporation I would find such presumption pretty despicable as well. But they could do so (and the nazis did), coming up with some bullshit about how we were artificially severed from the Reich in the Late Medieval Epoch and have a language with similar roots, and now we can be annexed even against our will. Not to be too sarcastic, but maybe they can go after the Swiss too, while they’re at it? Perhaps Britain can go after the ‘little Englishmen’ in the colonies again?

    Also, how do Russian nationalists ever hope to integrate Ukraine given that you seem to dislike Ukrainians quite actively, and vice versa?

    Yes I’m a liberal who believes in national self-determination, which is easily disparaged as naive, but I don’t consider incorporating unwilling populations as being any better. Of course, while this is all very critical, I’m just not an expert in Russo-Ukrainian history- I likewise fail to understand why Ukraine is so hostile to Russia.

  318. I skimmed over those threads. I suppose you are bringing the subject of language learning ability versus IQ and the correlation or utility curve thereof. But are you trying to make any point in particular?

    Since 三国之浪漫士 (just invented this) was also asking me about learning Japanese, I could offer a comment or two.

    Fist I should repeat that I’m not an expert at all and certainly didn’t go anywhere near the field of Classical Chinese/Japanese mentioned by Razib Khan’s commenter. However, in my observation there are at least two aspects that should greatly help in learning extensive and ideographic languages like C/J (in comparison with, say, other more grammatically complex but phonemic/alphabetic languages) and those are memory and “high cortical connectivity”. With the first I mean simply the availability of a decently-sized pool of mnemosubstrate for storage of concepts. With the second I mean the ability to efficiently draw connections and relationships between concepts, rapidly creating a firm scaffolding for new concepts (ideograms and their properties, in this case) as they become supported by and themselves support other concepts in a coherent structure. I’m sure that these aspects of memorisation and reasoning play an important role in the compound we call intelligence, but they might not be the ones most directly associated with abstract mathematical and spacial thinking (i.e. real intelligence ;-). Furthermore, it’s not clear which are the IQ measurements that Khan claims are “not perfectly” correlated with language-learning ability, and how accurately they are supposed to capture these processes (actually, now I see Khan opined that facility with languages is not just “imperfectly” correlated but orthogonal to IQ scores).

    Overall, though, my impression would be closer to that another of the commenters: one probably starts getting diminishing returns in terms of language-learning ability once a certain IQ threshold is reached. Following Gomes’ analogy, rather than CPU-bound, the process might be memory+bandwidth+switchboard-bound (or FPGA-bound ;-), so to speak.

    Notice too that both Gomes and Khan may be biased in their opinions: Gomes thinks CJK learning is highly “g-loaded”, but he desisted due to the perceived difficulty, while Khan thinks it’s an orthogonal ability, but by own admission he is generally unskilled with languages. I wonder if Lazy Glossophiliac has written anything about this. Apparently he taught himself a bunch of languages, the latest one being Mandarin Chinese.

    One thing in which I do tend to agree with Gomes, based my anecdotal experience, is that a difficult language may indeed serve as an evolutionary “filter” or selection-pressure mechanism: maybe not so much in the academic settings of which Gomes spoke, where other filters/barriers are already in place (or were anyway, before widespread anti-meritocratic policies), but certainly in society at large. There is also a different sense in which a difficult language may work as a filter/barrier: mastering a complex language demands high investment, and an extensive language moreover demands continuous investment. This leaves fewer resources to allocate into learning others. When a foreign language becomes a pathogenic vector, this costly hurdle may be better viewed as moat and bailey and motte. Chinese, Japanese (defences cracking only after decades of vassalage), Russian, Hungarian: check. Suomi: ?

  319. Interesting. I went and looked at the Tai Kung Liu Tao and it turns out the word for charioteer used by Jiang Ziya even includes 士. So there we have another parallel. (Also, I’m now thinking that “scholar” may be a bit too specific [“scholar” makes me think of school/academia], so perhaps “specialist” or “expert” could be more widely applicable.)

    Infogalactic says 战车/戰車 (zhànchē) for “chariot”, which incidentally is the Japanese for “tank” (the armoured vehicle). This would be “war car/carriage”, I guess. (It is amusing for me to discover now how 車 may be pictographically interpreted as a chariot’s cab viewed from above/below.) The version of the Liu Tao I found uses 武车/武車 (“martial” instead of “war”), and charioteers Tai Kung advises King Wu (confusingly, the king’s name is also 武) to call 武车之士/武車之士. 之 seems to be just a possessive particle (like の), so this would literally be “Specialist of the Martial-Carriage”. The English translation did use “warrior”, though, like me the other day.

    While I read that chariots were operated by a crew of 3 (driver, archer, and a kind of halberdier), I find another hanzi/kanji curiosity: the driver was called 御者 (yu zhe) or 御車 (yu che), with 御 meaning “to drive/conduct/manage”, but that’s the same character which in Japanese serves as a kind of (slightly archaic) honorific prefix: 御機嫌よう (a salutation), 御太陽/お太陽 (“Oh Sun”, or “Sol-emn” ;‑).

  320. I was wondering what took cavalry so long to replace chariots. Turns out they used to have rather small horses:

    https://www.ancient-origins.net/sites/default/files/styles/large/public/Bronze-driver.jpg?itok=OdZOIxd-

    https://www.ancient.eu/uploads/images/6851.jpg?v=1613745907

  321. Pretty good, though a bit of a mouthful LOL.

    But maybe that’s that’s something that could happen with ideographic languages: concepts could be formed through a kind of meaning accretion:

    In those of the northern hemisphere (on whose Ursprache there is very little data in the Eleventh Volume) the prime unit is not the verb, but the monosyllabic adjective. The noun is formed by an accumulation of adjectives. They do not say “moon,” but rather “round airy-light on dark” or “pale-orange of-the-sky” or any other such combination. In the example selected the mass of adjectives refers to a real object, but this is purely fortuitous. The literature of this hemisphere (like Meinong’s subsistent world) abounds in ideal objects, which are convoked and dissolved in a moment, according to poetic needs. At times they are determined by mere simultaneity.

    The only issue is, as previously discussed, that those concepts can then seep into the component ideograms. After centuries, many characters are encrusted all over with the semantic sediments of the past. If not for the blessing of oblivion, they would eventually turn unwieldy, too shifty. Funes would have found it impossible to write Chinese.

    I wonder what’s the rate of meaning growth of hanzi compared to alphabetic words. Would Chinese dictionaries grow at a greater rate than alphabetic ones, or vice versa, if they could be kept apart?

  322. Boomthorkell says

    Tibet is great for your health (with the right mutations if you stay too long), but agriculturally troublesome, with most of your diet being the milk and butter of yaks mixed with shitty (cheap bulk leavings with twigs in it) tea and baked barley grains. Tampa is the national food because it is the only food for most Tibetans historically. This is also why Tibetans are a tiny minority in China (hard to have a gargantuan population in a high altitude, fairly cold, garden.)

    So, the few who live there and maintain a steady supply of yak-supplement are probably healthier than the average peasant, but they weren’t super men tearing Chinese soldiers in half.

    Africa is a mixed bag. Much of South Africa is quite literally a Mediterranean climate, so if you like Southern California or Southern Europe, you’d like that. A lot of the inner Savannah is also nice and disease free. Great for ranching and beekeeping. Full of Bantus, of course, but we’re speaking strictly in terms of Geography. One could it almost think of it like a Blacker Australia I guess.

    Java is basically jungleless flood plains on volcanic soil, so an even more farm-friendly Hawaii. Still, I agree, I don’t want constant tropical warmth.

  323. Boomthorkell says

    She should dream bigger when she does her EU\HOI playthroughs.

    Having said that, she would hate the maps I’ve made.

  324. Boomthorkell says

    The problem here is what you’re comparing. The Netherlands (and its various constituents), Switzerland and Austria existed separately and amongst the other German principalities and Kingdoms for centuries. Mittleeuropa was only ever unified in fits and starts under a few Empires, but was otherwise a rather loose collection of countries and free cities who competed and worked together. Remember how hard it was to even get Bavaria to back any central power! God, and don’t even get us started on the Kingdom of Bohemia. It’s because of those little jealous bastards Frederick had to declare himself King IN Prussia, ha ha.

    I say all this because Ukraine, as we call it, existed in a very different context. Rus was a united Empire, and remained so for several centuries until the Mongols came smashing in. Even when it was sundered, it remained somewhat united under the Empire, but the borderlands (The Ukraine!) were largely depopulated. Some peasants got fed up with being serfs of nobles and slave raid targets of tatars and became land pirates (Cossacks). History ensues, Lithuania and Muscovy grow, and eventually Common wealth and Russia compete for this largely empty, but still mostly East Slav\Orthodox region (the far western portion in Carpathia retained an interesting Uniate-Rusyn identity different from the identity of Galicians). Russia wins. Russia then encourages settlement of the region, and with the destruction of the Tatar power, populations are able to grow unmolested. There was briefly an independent Hetmanate, but it was absorbed. Anyhow,Rus expands again, though the lands further west in Galicia start developing a Catholic and distinctly “Galician\East Slav” identity born from East Slavery struggles with Polish nobles and Urban Jews, and later German Austrians (who at various times empower them). The Catholic part becomes important later.

    Anyhow, come WWI, there was actually a strong Russian-Unity movement in Galicia, but Russia lost to itself, and as Karlin has said before, people love winners but hate losers.

    Ukraine before then didn’t really have an identity. There were Poles, and Jews, and Russians, and Russians with a different dialect who were generally very poor, with some local variations. They all lived on the border. The Ukraine.

    Then, there were the Galicians, and their identity was born of Hate and Struggle and Blood and Righteous Crusade Against the Unbelievers, like all good ethnogenisis.

    The Communists take over, and tell everyone in the region called “The Ukraine” they are “Proud Border people” a brave and long lived ethnicity the mean Moskalis..sorry, Great Russian Chauvinists, oppressed.

    Galicia had its own birth struggles ongoing in Nationalist Poland. WWII happens, and Galicia gets a boost from the Germans (North, this time) again, this time East. War ends. Soviet Union is now doing Brotherhood of People, but earlier damage was done, and now the West tries to spread Galician identity to all of the Border People. USSR collapses, and the Borderlands take independent form.

    A fake nation, in a sense, one quite naturally a part of larger cultural and economic spheres (mostly Russian), and without any independent history, or really, even long independent cultural history (remember the era of it basically being an empty steppe patrolled by Tatar slave raiders), but as with all fake nations, enough school, enough propaganda, and enough belief and existence manifests itself in reality.

    Ukrainians exist now, and Ukraine exists. Will it forever? Probably not in its current form. Austria, Switzerland, and Netherlands have greater stability there these days.

  325. AltanBakshi says

    Yes, Netherlands has a long historical existence as it’s own state with it’s own institutions, therefore it has a strong legitimacy as proper nation, but Ukraine? Did Cossack Hetmanate, that had mostly autonomous existence under imperial powers, even have any national consciousness? And even if they had some, it was clearly not on the level of the Dutch or the Swiss, who both fought for long and ferociously for their independence and nationhood, therefore it could be said that both nations clearly had people with strong cohesion and unity, same cant be said of Ukrainians. The power discrepancy between Ukraine and Russia is in actuality much smaller than it was between the Dutch and Habsburg Empire, or the Swiss who also fought against Habsburgs.

    It could be said that even in state of extremely hostile relations, both Ukrainians and Russians fight each other half heartedly, which is a true sign of their deep cultural and spiritual bond, that even in such negative situation, created by strange external and historical factors, there is no endless spiralling of hate.

  326. AltanBakshi says

    Yes, Netherlands has a long historical existence as it’s own state with it’s own institutions, therefore it has a strong legitimacy as proper nation, but Ukraine? Did Cossack Hetmanate, that had mostly autonomous existence under imperial powers, even have any national consciousness? And even if they had some, it was clearly not on the level of the Dutch or the Swiss, who both fought for long and ferociously for their independence and nationhood, therefore it could be said that both nations clearly had people with strong cohesion and unity, same cant be said of Ukrainians. The power discrepancy between Ukraine and Russia is in actuality much smaller than it was between the Dutch and Habsburg Empire, or the Swiss who also fought against Habsburgs.

    It could be said that even in state of extremely hostile relations, both Ukrainians and Russians fight each other half heartedly, which is a true sign of their deep cultural and spiritual bond, that even in such negative situation, created by strange external and historical factors, there is no endless spiralling of hate.

  327. HenryBaker says

    The Netherlands (and its various constituents), Switzerland and Austria existed separately and amongst the other German principalities and Kingdoms for centuries.

    Well, let’s clarify the argument I’m making. What I’m saying is that if you want to make some claim on national identity, you can make up a lot of stories swinging a lot of ways, and it’s hard to say which one is objectively more legitimate. I find it dubious to use a story to incorporate people against their will.

    If you look at the Netherlands again, you should consider the entire story. What is striking about my country is the complete artificiality of its original national construction. It’s basically a nation by accident. We weren’t even a separate territory within the HRE until the Burgundians started to unite the Lowlands through various inheritances and wars. They introduced some centralization throughout ALL of the Lowlands, including Belgium. But the Lowlands themselves were still a patchwork of dialects, many of had more in common with those spoken in other German princedoms. This took shape at a time when there WAS a German identity: https://www.amazon.com/Shaping-German-Identity-Len-Scales-dp-1107460344/dp/1107460344/ref=mt_other?_encoding=UTF8&me=&qid=

    We were then simply passed over to the Habsburgs by inheritance, and would end up in Spanish hands. Even this wasn’t meant to be some sort of separation: Both the HRE and Spain were in the hands of Charles V. He gave one part (the HRE) with the exception of the Lowlands to his brother Ferdinand, and Spain to his son Philip. The two were still supposed to function as a cohesive dynastic whole, and the Lowlands were supposedly part of the HRE while being ruled by Spain.

    Does this seem like a good recipe for national identity? Of course not. The reason we revolted had nothing to do with that- it was because Philip was raising taxes and didn’t tolerate Calvinists. Originally, the demand was simply that he should give more autonomy to us; when he did not do so, only then was independence declared.

    And the independence of what? A northern rump state that wasn’t even in control of all of the Lowlands. Ruled by and for Calvinists, originally a minority in their own country. The southern catholic provinces in the Netherlands are here because we conquered them. Belgium is not because we didn’t, and the Lowlands would remain forever split. In the 20th century catholics were taught about how violent and nasty and illegitimate the revolt was; protestants were taught about the glorious national revolution, etc.

    Succintly put, my beloved country is entirely accidental. If the Burgundians didn’t have their short bout of success, it would never have existed. If Philip hadn’t been so obstinate, We’d probably have some unison with Belgium or who knows what. Maybe he’d have given us back to Austria eventually. If only we’d have had a little more success, and we would have united the Lowlands.

    We didn’t even have a shared national narrative until Pillarization was over.

    So some Germanic nationalist might very well argue all this (and the nazis did) and say we should be part of Germanic ‘civilization’ or whatever. But I’d say that’s besides the point. We exist as a separate nation now and want to continue to do so. When the nazis invaded us, we did not feel we had much in common with the Germans and wanted them to fuck off. And they of course had their stories about Kleinstaaterei and how any ‘small-German’ state was illegitimate and all should be part of a greater German civilizational/racial state, whether we liked it or not. But the moral of the story is: all these stories don’t matter and the Germans should’ve fucked off because they weren’t wanted by the people they claimed to represent (us). Simple as that.

    Not to compare Russians to nazis in any way, but it’s hard not to notice how arrogant Russian nationalists are about Ukraine and Ukrainians. They are treated like errant children (really a little like how the Germans liked to treat us). Okay, even assuming that it was indeed an identity propped up by the bad commies and West (a little too convenient, but okay) you can’t deny that nowadays Ukraine is a nation, well, built. The Ukrainian language has been more or less imposed, they have their own myths (fake or not, doesn’t matter). It won’t disappear just because you say it’s fake. It’s simply here. Any unification would be against their will and would be an entirely forced construct which would be paired with repression and, indeed, oppression.

  328. AltanBakshi says

    yaks mixed with shitty (cheap bulk leavings with twigs in it) tea and baked barley grains. Tampa is the national food because it is the only food for most Tibetans historically.

    Yak butter tea is delicious, and it’s Tsampa, not Tampa. I have understood that childbirth is harder for Han women in high altitudes, I have a faint memory of reading a research paper that said that Han women have problems with pregnancy and menstruation in Tibet, but now I can’t find that paper by googling. Anyway there is no danger of Tibetan plateau becoming Han, most Han are just not adapted to extreme climate and altitudes.

    The Tibetans, who have been living in this region for 3,000 years, do not exhibit the elevated haemoglobin concentrations to cope with oxygen deficiency as observed in other populations who have moved temporarily or permanently at high altitudes. Instead, the Tibetans inhale more air with each breath and breathe more rapidly than either sea-level populations or Andeans. Tibetans have better oxygenation at birth, enlarged lung volumes throughout life, and a higher capacity for exercise. They show a sustained increase in cerebral blood flow, lower haemoglobin concentration, and less susceptibility to chronic mountain sickness than other populations, due to their longer history of high-altitude habitation

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-altitude_adaptation_in_humans

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3046130/

  329. HenryBaker says

    And even if they had some, it was clearly not on the level of the Dutch or the Swiss, who both fought for long and ferociously for their independence and nationhood,

    Like I said above, we only demanded independence after Philip refused more autonomy. National identity was mostly reserved for calvinists (and grew afterwards, not before the revolt) and southern catholic territories were legally treated as occupied lands, not independent provinces within our confederation.

    Did Cossack Hetmanate, that had mostly autonomous existence under imperial powers, even have any national consciousness?

    Again said above: who cares? They have it now and it’s not just going away. You can always come up with some story saying how someone has to be incorporated against their will.

    It could be said that even in state of extremely hostile relations, both Ukrainians and Russians fight each other half heartedly, which is a true sign of their deep cultural and spiritual bond, that even in such negative situation, created by strange external and historical factors, there is no endless spiralling of hate.

    Serbs and Croats are arguably even closer (variants of one language, while Ukrainian is not intelligible to Russian) but that didn’t stop the very hateful Yugoslav Wars. Indeed, in the Spanish Civil War the Nationalists shot more Castilians than minorities. Brother Wars can very well be more brutal than other wars.

  330. AltanBakshi says

    Majority of Dutch were Calvinists in the early 17th century and clearly threatened by Catholic Spain and Habsburgs, so to me it’s not incidental if people in such circumstances feel need for their own nation, as well you could say that it’s incidental that Portugal or Switzerland are their own nations, or that Castile, a frontier county of kingdom of Leon, United most of the Iberian peninsula. Dutch have a longer history as an independent and united nation than Germany or Italy has, so it’s not like Netherlands is lacking of historical legitimacy in a political sense.

  331. AltanBakshi says

    Serbs and Croats are arguably even closer (variants of one language, while Ukrainian is not intelligible to Russian) but that didn’t stop the very hateful Yugoslav Wars. Indeed, in the Spanish Civil War the Nationalists shot more Castilians than minorities. Brother Wars can very well be more brutal than other wars.

    You are now overtly simplifying matters. Russia and Ukraine are now separate states, so a civil war between them is an impossibility, but if they had as much pent up anger as Yugoslavs had against each other, they would had killed each other in greater numbers during these last years. Yugoslavia had a population around half of Ukraine, and more than 100 thousand died in their Civil war, but in war in Donbass there are only aroundn 10 thousand deaths. Weren’t there about 100k deaths in Bosnian war alone? A war that lasted only for three years.

    Like I said above, we only demanded independence after Philip refused more autonomy. National identity was mostly reserved for calvinists (and grew afterwards, not before the revolt) and southern catholic territories were legally treated as occupied lands, not independent provinces within our confederation.

    Calvinists were harshly persecuted by Spanish, there’s nothing new in revolt and rebellion caused by religious repression, actually it would have been more incidental if Calvinists would have not revolted after such treatment.

    Again said above: who cares? They have it now and it’s not just going away. You can always come up with some story saying how someone has to be incorporated against their will.

    People care, that’s who, people who have a historical narrative of shared sufferings and victories naturally feel a stronger bond with each other, that’s why Austrians were quite happy in the beginning of Nazi rule or occupation, and why Dutch were not. And that’s why Germany still exists, but Austro-Hungarian and Ottoman empires don’t exist anymore.

    Oh and the Catholics were a minority, a substantial minority, but still a minority in the United Provinces.

  332. HenryBaker says

    Majority of Dutch were Calvinists in the early 17th century

    Bit of a pedantic nitpick but: ‘Indeed, until about the middle of the
    seventeenth century, Calvinists made up a plurality rather than a majority
    of the young state’s population’. https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108687447.046

    so to me it’s not incidental if people in such circumstances feel need for their own nation,

    Sure, but it’s just as legitimate for Ukrainians to fear the suppression of their language if Russia ever re-imposed itself on the territory. It could also, of course, only become a plurality and then a majority because of the success of the rebels; the revolt happened way before the calvinists were even a plurality (back in the 16th century) and partially imposed itself on the traitorous Belgians.

    as well you could say that it’s incidental that Portugal or Switzerland are their own nations, or that Castile, a frontier county of kingdom of Leon, United most of the Iberian peninsula.

    Yes, these are all accidents of history.

    Dutch have a longer history as an independent and united nation than Germany or Italy has, so it’s not like Netherlands is lacking of historical legitimacy in a political sense.

    But you see that this is strange logic? A nation is fake up until the point it has existed long enough to say it is now legitimate? If you’re around for just a few years, I can call you fake and impose myself until you unless you manage to stick around for a few centuries?

  333. HenryBaker says

    You are now overtly simplifying matters.

    I’m not. What I was pointing out was that you can’t really say that peoples must feel/are close because they don’t fight bloody wars, because peoples that do feel/are close can still fight very bloody wars. Of course, almost by necessity such wars tend to be civil wars because culturally close peoples tend to be so close because they were in the same state.

    Calvinists were harshly persecuted by Spanish, there’s nothing new in revolt and rebellion caused by religious repression, actually it would have been more incidental if Calvinists would have not revolted after such treatment.

    Sure, no disagreement, but the repression itself wasn’t a historical necessity or anything like that.

    People care, that’s who, people who have a historical narrative of shared sufferings and victories naturally feel a stronger bond with each other,

    No-brainer, but such a narrative clearly has no attraction for Ukrainians today.

  334. HenryBaker says

    Oh and the Catholics were a minority, a substantial minority, but still a minority in the United Provinces.

    They were a majority when the revolt started, which was centred around Zeeland and Holland. Of course, the Belgian treason at Atrecht cut off most of the catholics.

  335. AltanBakshi says

    Bit of a pedantic nitpick but: ‘Indeed, until about the middle of the
    seventeenth century, Calvinists made up a plurality rather than a majority
    of the young state’s population’.

    Thanks for the correction. It seems that the uniting idea of the Dutch was not only Calvinism, but that one’s faith is a deeply personal matter and individual choice, in comparison with Catholic thinking. Especially if there were so many liefhebbers as your link says.

    Sure, but it’s just as legitimate for Ukrainians to fear the suppression of their language if Russia ever re-imposed itself on the territory. It could also, of course, only become a plurality and then a majority because of the success of the rebels; the revolt happened way before the calvinists were even a plurality (back in the 16th century) and partially imposed itself on the traitorous Belgians.

    Ukrainian language was not suppressed in Soviet times, and how Russian Imperial suppression of Ukrainian differed from as example of German suppression of Low German, which, unlike Ukrainian, had long literary tradition as an official language of Hanseatic league.

    But you see that this is strange logic? A nation is fake up until the point it has existed long enough to say it is now legitimate? If you’re around for just a few years, I can call you fake and impose myself until you unless you manage to stick around for a few centuries?

    Now our discussion is taking a deeply philosophical turn. Never underestimate the power of convention. Nations and religions don’t follow same logic as individual beings and their lives. Why the yellow is called yellow in English language? Surely there has been other terms for the colour yellow in ancient past? Why then we call yellow a yellow? Because it’s a mutually agreed common convention, there is no deeper rational logic behind it.
    Okay now I’m just half serious.

    A true reason is that historical continuity is a sign of stability and trustworthiness. Think about it. If there is one university established in 1991 and another established in 1588, which would seem to you more legitimate and prestigious as an institution?

    If China would not had united after the collapse of Han dynasty, the modern Chinese could very well have same relation with their ancient United empire as modern Romance people have with the Roman Empire. They could be a collection of separate states, especially in the mountainous Southern China, but centuries of existence in a common state has welded them to be a one united people.

  336. AltanBakshi says

    Sure, no disagreement, but the repression itself wasn’t a historical necessity or anything like that.

    I can’t surely say if it was a historical necessity, but it was the spirit of the times.

    No-brainer, but such a narrative clearly has no attraction for Ukrainians today.

    Ukrainian narrative is divided, people in the east would not be hostile against Russian occupation. In my knowledge there were no such geographical divisions in Dutch society during WW2 in relation with the German enemy.

  337. You are asking about my personal impressions as a student? If so, you can read some below (and in a previous reply to Blinky Bill), otherwise, please ignore it.

    There’s also a backflow from Kanji to Chinese, besides the obvious ones e.g. Jap-specific 寿司 Sushi. The vocabs that acquired from Rangaku 蘭学 „Dutch learning“ or „Western learning“, Chinese vocab that were imported from West through Japanese

    Of course. Actually, the other day when considering 武士/wushi/bushi I was just about to say that “while, for historical reasons, one might presume that the borrowing or influence of words is typically in the C->J direction, this isn’t clear in this case” and that “ultimately, it may be pointless to try to determine it, given that more or less the whole CJK stew was cooked in the same civilisational pot”.

    And indeed, the case of ateji spellings (like 寿司) was one I recently brought up in discussion with Daniel Chieh. Just a while ago I was looking up “romance/romantic” and found 浪漫 (rōman). I’m not completely sure but it sounds like another ateji. It is also the same hanzi in C, so perhaps it’s another J->C import?

    In math, Manifold is the generalized concept of a surface, such as Earth’s surface which is a curved surface
    In Japanese its rendered as 多様体, exact same in meaning as English or German Mannigfa[l]tigkeit, or French Variété
    In Chinese its rendered 流形, Flowing Shape, a more visual description

    I like this evocative style of coinage more than literal translations, ceteris paribus. It feels more poetically arousing (even though such “poetic interpretation” may be entirely subjective or unintended); e.g. 風物詩. It has to be a new word though, I don’t really like ateji much, they fudther complicate the reading combinatorics.


    About my own impressions of Japanese. In truth, I haven’t studied it for years and have forgotten much (it’s remarkable how the writing fades much sooner than the reading and it’s been ~8 years already since the last time I sat down to practice in earnest). Mastering any language requires forcing oneself to abandon the comfort of the native tongue, and the availability of an environment dominated by the target language in which to immerse one’s senses. I still tell myself that I should resume it and get JLPT certification, but in my now much busier daily routine it’s no longer so easy. Plus, nowadays the most common situation where I can find Japanese/kanji in my everyday life is in the 道場, which is not much. Well, sometimes I still take my practice flashcards with me when going for a walk, so it’s not completely abandoned.

    In any case, about the language I can say that from the beginning I liked the sound, the clear and open vowels, the assonance, the sonority of some syllables (in this respect Chinese can, to my ears, sound both better and worse: I like a lot the sonority of e.g. Tai, Kung, Liu, Tao, but I’m not much enthused by Jiang, Ziya, Zhe, Che; although these are not so bad in a woman). Of the writing though, my first impressions were those of wastefulness and madness ;‑). Thousands upon thousands of complex characters, often with several pronunciations each! For a long time I was impressed by the native’s ability to understand a language with such low ratio of phonemes to symbols. Such low injectivity had to imply a very large degree of ambiguity, so I remember being worried about accidentally saying something misleading (or inappropriate) by simply mistaking 1 or 2 syllables. (I think this ambiguity is why a great % of Japanese jokes hinge on character puns.) However, once I actually tried to learn some of it and realised it was not, after all, total chaos and despair, that despite the many exceptions there is, in fact, method and structure to be found, I was able to develop an aesthetic appreciation for it too. Some characters I find visually elegant due to beautiful symmetries, others I like for the (apparently) logical or poetic or funny composition of radicals, others for the pleasant flow of strokes, etc.

    https://i.imgur.com/mG4cfjm.jpg

    Related, this prior exposition of mine to traditional hanzi/kanji, and the personal “taste” developed from them, makes me slightly biased toward the unsimplified variants which from my PoV seem somewhat “damaged” by the simplifications. But I do understand the utility of the simpler forms: some traditional characters may be fanciful or even beautiful but they surely are expensive.

    Grammatically, Japanese feels quite “bare-bones”. As a beginner one feels a bit like devolving toward “caveman-speak”: head-which red-of fish-to eat cat ;‑). It takes a while to convince one’s mind that accurate messages can in fact be conveyed without all the Indo-European inflectional paraphernalia (though it still doesn’t feel the same, at least to me). Word declension is more limited than in English and far more than in Romance languages, to say nothing of Latin (or Russian, I guess). The relative lack of dependence between speech-part particles means that, if not for conventions, sentence parts could be rearranged in various ways.

    https://blog-imgs-119.fc2.com/y/a/r/yarakan/111_20180821110621057.jpg

    Also, the colloquial speech feels, at first, a bit loose/lax (or not as rigid/rigorous as English, anyway) with lots of small variations which convey mostly “mood” or “style” (including properties of the speaker, like sex or rank, rather than of the message itself). Another surprising thing I remember was discovering the great variety of personal pronouns people can use. Once again the difference is the “contextual” information they convey rather than in pronominal significance. Other aspects of polite speech can also appear strange to westerners, such as the various verb conjugations conveying different levels of “humility” (although, in truth, I never really paid much attention to 敬語). Honorifics too, but less so, since most are at least familiar with things like Mr and Sir and Don (and Comrade?) and diminutive inflections like those in Romances.

  338. HenryBaker says

    I’ll reply to your larger post later, I’ve got some work to do.

    I can’t surely say if it was a historical necessity, but it was the spirit of the times.

    True, but de facto tolerance was also around, which is I think proven by the fact that the Netherlands did not themselves persecute catholics- and the peace of Augsburg. I think Philips obstinate personality played a large role in the failure of the Spanish to reach any kind of meaningful settlement.

    Ukrainian narrative is divided, people in the east would not be hostile against Russian occupation.

    Press X for doubt. Aren’t Russian speakers a minority even in Donetsk and Luhansk nowadays? And even if not, that’s two provinces, not the entire east of Ukraine.

  339. AltanBakshi says

    True, but de facto tolerance was also around, which is I think proven by the fact that the Netherlands did not themselves persecute catholics- and the peace of Augsburg. I think Philips obstinate personality played a large role in the failure of the Spanish to reach any kind of meaningful settlement.

    Catholics universally persecuted protestants in the early modern era, there was no realm where Catholic authorities were ready for a long term peaceful relationship with them. Even in France the toleration of protestants was only a temporary situation, forced upon Catholic authorities.

    Press X for doubt. Aren’t Russian speakers a minority even in Donetsk and Luhansk nowadays? And even if not, that’s two provinces, not the entire east of Ukraine.

    Better then not to argue about this topic, think as you like. I’m a Russophone, I have lived a great part of my life in Russia, I have visited Ukraine and I have both Ukrainian and Russian acquaintances, from what I have gathered in my life, there is no true national unity among the people of Ukraine’s east and south, but you are free to have your own opinion, I have had enough of endless arguing and debating about Ukraine and Ukrainians here on unz.com. In the end great part of Ukrainians are politically apathetic and don’t have a faith in their leaders or political institutions, likewise few of them trust modern Russia to be any better.

  340. HenryBaker says

    Better then not to argue about this topic, think as you like.

    That’s overly hasty, I think you’re much more qualified than me on this topic, now that you’ve explained why you have this opinion and where you come from. So, in your opinion, even Ukrainian speaking eastern Ukrainians would not be hostile to Russian occuption? Why do you think that is?

    I have had enough of endless arguing and debating about Ukraine and Ukrainians here on unz.com.

    Heh, I can understand that.

    In the end great part of Ukrainians are politically apathetic and don’t have a faith in their leaders or political institutions, likewise few of them trust modern Russia to be any better.

    Both reasonable beliefs, imo.

    Catholics universally persecuted protestants in the early modern era, there was no realm where Catholic authorities were ready for a long term peaceful relationship with them. Even in France the toleration of protestants was only a temporary situation, forced upon Catholic authorities

    Yeah, you’re right.

  341. In the end great part of Ukrainians are politically apathetic and don’t have a faith in their leaders or political institutions, likewise few of them trust modern Russia to be any better.

    These are pretty much universal beliefs held by a majority of people in the world today – that their government leaders do not represent their interests, but rather jockey for power to enhance their own mostly economic interests. This doesn’t mean that the people don’t feel a certain allegiance to their own parochial and nationalistic interests, regardless of how their leadership behaves. In Ukraine’s case, they’ve had at least two leaders that have promoted Ukrainian national issues, Yushchenko and Poroshenko. No Ukrainian leader, unfortunately, has been able to appreciably lift the economic plight of the Ukrainian people, due mostly to their reticence in tackling the big problem of corruption, although the current one, Zelensky, looks like he’s actually starting to make some headway in this direction.

  342. There is a strong case to be made that Austria being a separate country from Germany is illegitimate.

  343. Boomthorkell says

    Spelling error, I meant Tsampa. Autocorrect most likely.

    Oh, I’m not dissing yak butter. I liked it when I had it. I’m just saying why Tibet is not a top tier livable zone for huge populations. Yak butter does not a megacity make.

    As for Chinese settlement, yeah. I think China’s real success will be in the economic and social control and schooling of Tibetans. One doesn’t need to drown them out. One just needs to make them sinicized and loyal.

  344. Boomthorkell says

    I gave the Netherlands credit as an independent group when you guys started going toe-to-toe with the world. A hundred year revolt, fighting off France, and fighting the world’s first world war are impressive feats of nation building. Even after losing that war, you guys still owned Dutch Indonesia and gave us the Amish and Africa’s only country to make a nuke cannon. Quite the civilizational spread.

    Everything later is just the travails of history and existence. That your government opted to ignore the people and opt you back into the HRE or Nazi Germany 2.0 Rainbow edition…well, I can’t really blame them. The old days are gone, and the Netherlands is probably stronger a part of a whole rather than on its own these days. Similar to why Ukraine and Belarus should be with Russia.

    Anyhow, if Ukraine can go toe-to-toe with the world, and maybe colonize Indonesia or defeat Russia, and mold some silly identity based on Scythia, then they are also welcome to the respect of the no-longer-fake peoples. Their last 30 years hasn’t given much to show, though…or rather, it’s shown too much.

    Has Spain decided yet to give Catalonia its freedom, or are they still be German Supremacists about it? How about Flanders?

  345. HenryBaker says

    Similar to why Ukraine and Belarus should be with Russia.

    Imo the EU should just be less gay and all three should be in. There is no fundamental difference between Slavs and other Europeans- at least not one bigger than between the eternal Med and Germanics. The idea of Russia as a separate civilization is completely delusional- it barely has the GDP of France. It can join us on equal terms and in that way balance out American influence on Europe and hopefully counteract the contemporary gay trends, which would be a very good thing. Or it can be Chinas bitch. This is probably one of my strongest beliefs. It’s just a shame all ‘pro-Europeans’ support the gay conception of Europe.

    Has Spain decided yet to give Catalonia its freedom, or are they still be German Supremacists about it? How about Flanders?

    Heh, very true. Of course this is also about money (rich provinces), but every state works against losing power and people.

  346. HenryBaker says

    Didn’t Austria separate to LARP as non-Germans and avoid war guilt that way? As long as they want to keep up the LARP, that’s legitimate enough for me.

  347. What to make of AfD backing Dexit and getting off the Euro? Is AfD cucking? Will they pull a Farage?

    Or is it a good idea, to demolish what cannot be reformed? Is the dissolution of the EU a necessary step to stopping the invasion of Europe?

  348. Blinky Bill says
  349. Philip Owen says

    Russian speakers are a majority. Ethnic Russians are (were in 2001) a minority, about 40%. You don’t have to speak Gaelic or even Scots to be Scottish.

  350. China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms says

    The stirrup, which gives greater stability to a rider, has been described as one of the most significant inventions in the history of warfare, prior to gunpowder. As a tool allowing expanded use of horses in warfare, the stirrup is often called the third revolutionary step in equipment, after the chariot and the saddle.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stirrup

  351. China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms says

    I’m a native Mandarin/Hanzi speaker so cannot speak on its difficulty as second language.

    I would say Classical Chinese is certainly a bottleneck. I can read the Ming era novels Romance of Three Kingdoms, Water Margins without difficulty, because although they are written in archaic language, but nevertheless written vernacular Chinese 白话文.

    But Tang era poetry of Li Bai 李白and Du Fu杜甫, philosophical texts of Zhu Xi 朱熹(Song era) and Wang Yangming 王阳明(Ming), much less earlier texts, I certainly require annotations for full appreciation.

    In this regard I can understand PRC’s motivation to simplify Hanzi, and Korea/Vietnam’s (hopefully not eternally) abandoning of it.

    Difficulty of language learning I think is dependent if you already are comfortable with some grammatical features. If you already know heavily inflected language such as German/Russian/Latin, to learn another inflected language is easier than for an English/Mandarin speaker.

    Similarly, if you already know an agglutinative language like Turkish/Mongolian, to learn Japanese is much easier than starting from scratch as an English or Chinese speaker.

    It is however quite nice to enjoy Kanshi 漢詩 without actually knowing Japanese.

  352. China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms says

    I like your translation of my handle, thank you.

    The term I was looking for is Wasei-kango 和製漢語 “Japanese-made Chinese words“

    敬語 is familiar to Korean and I believe Mongolian, but not to Chinese speakers which only has two levels of formality like German/French.

    Getting Japanese to read Chinese Hanzi also leads to charming results.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-E6vHCT0wpw

  353. AltanBakshi says

    Similarly, if you already know an agglutinative language like Turkish/Mongolian, to learn Japanese is much easier than starting from scratch as an English or Chinese speaker.

    What Japanese is agglutinative? This is news to me. Even so it’s a worthless language to learn, if one does not live there or work with Japanese.

    https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/media.agentika.com/user/53a25899-ba20-49ef-8894-e484bca10b83.jpeg

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Inside_the_St._Petersburg_Buddhist_Temple_%282%29.jpg

    One of the most beautiful scripts used by Mongols is the Phagpa script of the Yuan Dynasty, one can see on the left and right side of altar of our St. Petersburg temple, that there is something written in Phagpa script.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ʼPhags-pa_script

    https://b1.culture.ru/c/93612.jpg

    https://peterburg.center/images/places/78_image.jpg

    Our Buddhist temple, Datsan Gunzechoinei in Saint Petersburg.

  354. Shortsword says

    https://twitter.com/MaxBlumenthal/status/1381796622531760129

    Twitter blocks SouthFront links. Don’t know if it’s a new thing or not. How many sites is Twitter blocking?

  355. The stirrup was a pretty big deal, but it was not why people abandoned chariots. Romans only used them ceremoniously. Spartans did not use chariots, and that was hundreds of years before the stirrup, when the Persians were still using them.

    Rather, it had to do with changing tactics. Ground troops were trained to form disciplined ranks, to split ranks to allow a chariot to pass, but not to scatter. As it was passing, they could attack it from behind. Any sort of phalanx or pike would also make chariots very impractical.

    People could still ride horses into combat, when they were smaller. It just wasn’t heavy cavalry. There were still advantages. Smaller horses eat less.

  356. I didn’t realize that Estonia was the biggest polluter in Europe.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_carbon_dioxide_emissions_per_capita

    It’s probably a good thing that their birth rate is so low, because the planet cannot sustain big polluters such as them.

  357. AltanBakshi says

    “I didn’t realize that Estonia was the biggest polluter in Europe.”

    Here’s the reason:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oil_shale_in_Estonia

    But if Estonia were a part of Russia, they could use pollution free Nuclear Energy…

  358. That was interesting, thanks. I even learned a bit (e.g. I now know 圓 also means “round/circle”, after the coin, and that 円 is a derivative form).

    我想回家
    不要勉強

    These were recognisable to me. I got close to the first one ( ) and in the second there are two actual J words (but the second is a bit misleading). But are these grammatically-complete sentences? They rather look like those 4-letter Chinese aphorisms.

    王阳明

    Nice name.