Open Thread 164

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. According to intelligence researcher Kenya Kura, Japanese are more warlike than Chinese or Koreans because of their 30% Jomon ancestry.

    Trying to wrap my head around it, but don’t know much about the Jomon. Can anyone posit a reason why they would be more warlike? Is it in the archeology?

    Or is it an assumption based on them being less agricultural, more like hunter gatherers? So, it like he is saying they have less wet-rice DNA.

  3. Cultural news.
    Monuments to Leonardo and Raphael made of steel have been erected in Volgograd. In the future, it is planned to install monuments to Michelangelo and Donatello

    https://i.redd.it/4hby3b7wwpl71.png

    https://b.radikal.ru/b07/2109/1b/02cd25127019.png

  4. Never did like the way Raph holds his sais. When you have so few fingers, it would be a shame to lose one to someone’s sword.

  5. I need all of your help with an important project.

    N

  6. I

  7. Daniel Chieh says
  8. Daniel Chieh says

    Can anyone posit a reason why they would be more warlike?

    Consuming so many chickens made them part chicken, which as we know, are pure evil so they became part evil.

  9. The second one is not really all that funny, because if it ever came true we’d have the era of Queen Kamala…Let’s hope that Biden makes it through to the end of his term, doesn’t start any new wars in the Mid-East (Iran?), and then is replaced with somebody like Trump, or somebody even better.

  10. “Russia Puts Europe To Its Knees”

    Gas prices are exploding in Europe to all time highs. Energy prices are spiking. Electricity bills are soaring. Industry may close factories in the winter. Russia now refuses to sell additional gas volumes via the Ukraine route.

    LNG can’t help, as higher prices in the Asian market drawed supply away from Europe. Coal plants were closed or face high carbon tax to operate.

    Solar and wind ended up unreliable.

    Only the new Nord Stream 2 pipeline can save Europe, or the continent faces energy crunch.

    https://fortune.com/2021/09/10/europe-net-zero-energy-bills-nord-stream-2-russia/

    https://www.ft.com/content/0c3650e4-e717-4170-b0c2-60ad0dcb498f

  11. Blacks probably have more prestige than Jats (or any other subcontinental group for that matter, Pashtuns excepted). Sure they may commit more crime, but they are also at the top of the game in sports and athletics. What are Jats known for? Driving taxis in Toronto. Sad

    Also.

    G

  12. Russian hens capable of laying eggs that can incubate virus stock for vaccines are finally bred. Now the flock just needs to be scaled up to millions and Russia can make vaccines without erractically available imports.

    https://abnews.ru/2021/09/06/v-rossii-vyveli-unikalnuyu-porodu-kur-proizvodyashhih-yajcza-dlya-vakcziny/

  13. But she also has some “African” heritage on her paternal Jamaican side. She might also have some “Aryan” (white) heritage on her Indian side? In the past, when you were the offspring of a mixed race marriage, you were classified as a “mulatto”. You don’t hear this term used much today? Funny, when I used the spellchecker to write this comment, it didn’t offer any correct spellings of the term. Looks like Orwell’s thought police are forever busy? 🙂

  14. Morton's toes says

    Headless chicken running around flapping wings slaughtered butchered beheaded decapitated like mike

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXCk6Tc66hs

    NSFW if you have vegan ladies in your office. : )

  15. My theory why chickens are the most evil animal that ever lived:

    1.) Descend from dinosaurs (ex: can turn head completely around)
    2.) Originated in SE Asia, where they were competing against other vicious animals for millions of years, after dinos died out: tigers, komodo dragons, pythons, etc.
    3.) Super oviparous – and they are looking for vitamins and minerals to lay all those eggs
    4.) Originally raised not for food but for fighting
    5.) Catholics bred them to increase their already extreme egg-laying ability for Lent.

    Know it is not complete and am still trying to add points and vainly play catch-up, as they continue to relentlessly advance.

    For example, in DR, they breed some especially for their claws, cut them off, and then glue them on other chickens bred to have more fighting spirit. They often fight to the death, and so that spirit is increasing, with each new victorious sire. One day, they might accidentally crossbreed the two and give us Dominicanized chickens.

    Sometimes, I wonder if that will be our great filter. In order to be safe, I advocate that we kill them all off now, before this civilizational cycle ends, and transition to eating ducks or other fowl. Or, at the very least, glass the areas, where they continue to improve its fighting ability.

  16. Trouble with Haiti is that it is very hilly and so fighting chickens could be protected from the shockwaves in the smaller valleys, thereby gaining a mutational advantage from the fallout.

  17. arizonaicedtea says

    Apparently Russian soldiers drink sewage?

    https://twitter.com/CityBureaucrat/status/1435669910659686406

  18. No new investment in uranium mines for decades + end of swords for ploughshares program + EMs disregarding atomophobic propaganda and investing into nuclear power –> uranium prices spiking.

    Speculators are betting on a second Golden Age of nuclear. ⚛️

  19. It was recently revealed that the Japanese emperor’s paternal lineage, as well as most Samurai lineages, are of Jomon origin. This was groundbreaking news and confirmed earlier anthropological research suggesting that the Japanese ruling class was heavily mixed with non-Yayoi aboriginals.

    Results of various Japanese emperor descendants and several Samurai descendsnts are found here:

    https://www.familytreedna.com/public/SamuraiDNA?iframe=ycolorized

    Long before this, C. Loring Brace identified the “Ainu” as the anthropological root of Japan’s martial elite, back in the late 1980s.

    https://www.science-frontiers.com/sf065/sf065a01.htm

    “Dr. Brace said this interpretation also explains why the facial features of the Japanese ruling class are so often unlike those of typical modern Japanese. The Ainu-related samurai achieved such power and prestige in medieval Japan that they intermarried with royality and nobility, passing on Jomon-Ainu blood in the upper classes, while other Japanese were primarily descended from the Yoyoi.”

    The reactions of Japanese scientists have been muted so. One Japanese anthropologist did say to Brace,” I hope you are wrong.”

    So yes, the Jomon were more warlike than the Korean-like Yayoi immigrants and formed the nucleus of Japan’s ruling class.

  20. Carbon neutral on a worldwide scale is impossible without more nuclear power, so yes.

    Russia, who leads the world’s nuclear market, has it covered with its coming generation 4 closed fuel cycle lead cooled Brest reactor.

    But also there will be a golden age for natural gas, as a fuel replacing coal. So bullish on nuclear and bullish on nat gas.

    Nuclear plus natural gas = energy superpower of the 21st century. Guess who leads in both of those.

  21. 40 Lashes Less One says

    Is Solana the ethereum killer?

  22. Lester Holt is an out and out flack. An example of Tucker’s limits on Fox:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hVFCGUe9Eic

  23. Wonder if there is some special bomb that we could hit chickens with that would either kill them off entirely or else necessitate that they transition from getting their energy from the Krebs cycle to some decay reaction of strontium-90.

  24. Quite interesting.

    I recently heard that archeologists can basically identify the Yamnaya, by one look at their skull as soon as it is dug out. Much more robust than EEF. Much less gracialization.

  25. Here’s a view on how few people can be driving for the tech industry in the Middle East.

    Just 20,000 people drive Israel’s tech industry – study

    Sparks Consulting Group finds that concerns about a brain drain of Israel’s elite group of talented people are well founded.

    Israel’s technology industry relies on 20,000 talented people who are responsible for the sector’s technological, economic and competitive value on the international market, according to a study by Sparks Consulting Group, commissioned by Israel’s Business Roundtable for the conference of the 100 most senior CEOs in the Israeli economy.

    The study found that, in 2020, Israeli tech had 335,000 employees, of whom 50% were tech staff and the other half support staff in marketing, finance, human resources etc. According to Sparks, the success of the sector depended on a small group of about 6% of total employees, or just over 20,000 people.

    Tzur thinks that concerns about a brain drain of this elite group of talented people are well founded. Brain drains can be expressed in more talented people moving to multinational giants like Google, Facebook, Amazon and Apple who offer fantastic conditions and salaries. These corporations may work in Israel but their IP is transferred abroad. The other option is physical migration of these talents to other tech centers like Silicon Valley.

    “One of the interviews that I conducted for the study was with the manager of a large Israeli venture capital fund. He told me that one of the multinational corporations had in recent months contacted almost all the talented employees at his 30 startups and offered three times their salaries. In order to keep these talented employees in Israel and with Israeli companies, the state has to build a program that creates a connection and a commitment for them to this place, for the sake of the prosperity of Israel and the Israeli economy in the coming decades. These people can’t be kept here by money alone, because eventually they’ll always be somebody who’ll pay them more,” Tzur said.

    According to forecasts, haredi society made up 11% of Israel’s population in 2015 and is expected to grow to 32% by 2065. The Arab population is expected to maintain its relative size and its participation in the tech sector is also low – only 2% of tech employees are Arabs.

    The second macro trend that the report relates to is the growing competition for talent worldwide because of the intensifying struggle between the US and China for global supremacy. As part of this struggle, the two super-powers are significantly increasing their investment in technology research and are striving to attract talent from around the world. In this situation, the study postulates, “Israel and Israeli companies must ensure the commitment of their most valuable people.”

    The intersection of these two macro trends can create four different scenarios. The first and the most positive is that the State of Israel maintains its technological advantage, which is reflected in those 20,000 talented employees, and in addition is successful in integrating the haredi and Arab populations into society and the economy. A less positive scenario is that the country maintains its technological advantage, but does not succeed in integrating the haredi and Arab populations, which creates a society with large economic gaps. Two other scenarios are that the country loses its technological advantage with or without integrating the haredi and Arab populations.

    Full article was from here –
    https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-just-20000-people-drive-israels-tech-industry-study-1001384225

  26. Here’s how Moscow is going faster with electric buses than even London, let alone New York.

    New York has 25 electric buses, London has 485 electric buses, (Mosgortrans) Moscow alone has over 600 now and will have over 1000 electric buses by end of this year.

    All these cities have become less cities than networks of highways that some buildings attached to, and extremely fast need to find ways to improve their air quality (reduction of traffic noise from electric motors will be a side benefit).

    Moscow goes green: Russian capital eyes fully electric bus fleet by 2030

    Moscow plans to nearly quadruple the number of electric buses it operates in coming years and replace all petrol or diesel-powered public transport vehicles with greener alternatives by 2030, a senior city transport official has said.

    Mosgortrans, which runs Moscow’s vast bus and tram network, said its fleet of around 600 electric buses would be expanded by 400 vehicles by the year-end, by another 420 the following year, and then by 855, bringing the fleet to more than 2,000 e-buses.

    “Every year the plan will be to replace all wheeled public transport vehicles with electric buses,” said Artyom Burlakov, deputy head of the innovative projects department at Mosgortrans.

    Environmental activists have welcomed the initiative.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-russia-environment-electric-buses-idUSKBN2AJ1J5

  27. I have noticed that the Wikipedia descriptions of Russian and Korean sounds are complete garbage; anybody else notice this?

    https://eharding.substack.com/p/dont-trust-wikipedia

  28. Energy is all well and good, on the whole I’m not too terribly concerned about that, from US perspective at least.

    Where US can get in trouble is monomer/basic chemical feedstock. A lot of it comes from China, and while US/German chemical industry is very powerful, they focus on higher value polymers and such.

    You can’t make higher value polymers without basic monomers.

    Can US build basic trains to make feedstock materials? Technically yes. But in reality, those processes are incredibly dirty and dangerous – we all read horror stories about Chinese peasants getting drenched in benzene or something. So while technically feasible, I don’t see Western countries granting permits for such “low value” production. So we are going to be at the mercy of Chinese.

    And to underscore the point. Our entire civilization, the entire world that you see around you, is based on only two branches of material science – metallurgy and industrial chemistry. Nothing else matters.

    If computers disappeared tomorrow we would just go back to the 1950’s, which would suck but it wouldn’t be the end of the world. If industrial chemistry disappeared, it’s back to the Middle Ages, even water treatment plants wouldn’t function. We would literally have to rent caves.

    Given current relationship with China, it’s not something I would want them to have the power to do. Basic train lives matter. 🙂

  29. North Koreans are warlike to the extreme, and Japanese don’t have 30% Jomon ancestry, they don’t even have 10%, so I don’t buy this theory. However, we do know that even several drops of Black blood can have powerful effects on the White mind -see Puerto Rico as an example.

  30. Then “slave boffing” it is. In her own words:

    Harris wrote that her Indian-born mother “understood very well that she was raising two Black daughters. She knew that her adopted homeland would see Maya and me as Black girls, and she was determined to make sure we would grow into confident, proud Black women.”

    https://heavy.com/news/2020/08/is-kamala-harris-black/

    I always assumed that she was of mixed racial heritage, as her wide nose resembles that of so many Blacks. However, it’s not her racial pedigree that keeps me from admiring her.

  31. Posters, any theories as to why Polish and Vietnamese are underrepresented in general accomplishment relative to their countries’ population size and national IQs?

    https://twitter.com/Enopoletus/status/1432553553902583811

  32. Naipauls quotations says

    When someone puts a dot on their forehead, it is a signal that means “my head is empty”.

  33. Russian GDP is going wild, wilder than college girls in Florida during Spring Break.

    Росстат зафиксировал рекордный с 2000 года квартальный рост ВВП России
    Во II квартале экономика страны выросла на 10,5% в годовом выражении

    https://www.vedomosti.ru/economics/news/2021/09/10/886196-rosstat-zafiksiroval-rekordnii-za-21-god-kvartalnii-rost-vvp-rossii

    Record GDP growth since 2000, 10.5% annualized.

    Inflation shamflation. There’s nothing wrong with inflation if it’s done right and with Nabiullina’s banking reform that shut down a bunch of rogue banks and cartelized the sector I had good confidence it would be allright. Give Nabiullina some flowers and champagne.

    And thats with government running budget surplus that really shouldn’t be happening – budget surplus is a drag on GDP growth.

  34. anyone with a brain says

    Indian women are the most beautiful women in the world. As are Slavic women. Why? because they are the same except for different shades of skin. Slavs are not just light-skinned and lighter hair and eyes version of Indians. That would be too reductionistic. But! I offer to you a thought experiment, picture a half-Slav, half-Indian individual, and what do you see? Most likely an lighter or darker Slav or Indian. You don’t see an identifiably mixed-individual, why? because the visual differences are only in color. Try that experiment with pairings of Western Europeans, sub-saharan Africans, Arabs, East Asians, Amerindians and the difference will be obvious.

    This is a really late comment about Steve Sailer’s article about student racial composition and cognitive performance https://www.unz.com/isteve/new-racial-admixture-and-cognitive-performance-study/, the surprising result that children with single digit percentage of ancestry different from the majority ancestry perform better kind of makes sense. I think hybrid vigor and attraction is achieved when an individual has some but very little exotic ancestry. Regrettably to get to an individual that has single digit exotic ancestry you have to have an individual with 50% exotic ancestry and those individual have a hard time due to genetic and cultural reasons.

  35. Yellowface Anon says

    Serious socialism. Even China is a bit underrepresented relative to its size.

  36. Yellowface Anon says
  37. Yellowface Anon says

    Let me tell China Japan and Korea Bromance of Three Kingdoms the historical fact that even when the Ming state ideology was a spent force, if Emperor Wanli hadn’t withdrew himself from court politics without delegating decision-making to a Prime Minister (leading to court paralysis), Ming would not have acutely declined after 1600.

    Zhang Juzheng’s time as Grand Secretary was actually one of the best eras of Ming and maybe post-Mongol China. He could have lived for another decade if not for hemorrhoid but Wanli’s neglect was beyond his lifetime.

  38. Almost Missouri says

    I don’t remember where I read it, but unlike most of the world, where expanding settled-agriculture civilizations overwhelmed and exterminated/absorbed adjacent hunter-gatherer cultures, Japan was was one of the rare (only?) cases where a hunter-gatherer culture conquered and ruled the adjacent settled-agriculture society. Given the vast numerical superiority of agriculturalists vs. hunter-gatherers, agriculturalist ancestry predominates among Japanese today, but nevertheless the hunter-gatherers had an unusual amount of influence and ancestry on Japan compared to other civilizations.

    I think Crum is saying the same thing, only with more precise language: Jomon=hunter-gatherer, Yayoi=agriculturalist, etc.

  39. The FSB has been quite busy in Crimea lately. As you recall, when Crimea voted to join Mother Russia again, Russia sent in some FSB specialists to look for any cells that were working against the idea of Crimea being with the Russian Federation. Well, they found them and those radicals that had some ” training camps” up in the hills, that were affiliated with a certain Tatar group were purged and the leaders – exiled for 5 years. A few of those Leaders were well known and had even worked close to the Crimean Gov. during Ukrainian times.

    Every now and then we would catch an article or rant from those leaders , thru Kyiv, asking the good Tatar folks to rebel against those nasty Russians that stole Your Crimea. I even remember when our power grid running from Ukraine was sabotaged and we lost power for a long F… time.

    As we can see from that Huge beautiful new Mosque in Simferopol, the Islamic community has plenty of money to spend and they certainly have the backing from Turkey and other Islamic countries in the Mid East. But fear not , this week the Jews have declared that they too will build a beautiful new Synagogue in Crimea. With all these NEW monuments to religion coming to Crimea – they can bring with them the radical groups that love to hide within the good folks that are true to that beliefs. Who will be coming to Crimea , now that the, almost unknown peninsula in the Black Sea, has been turned into a geopolitical pawn – al Qaeda, Isis, the Zionists, Muslim Brotherhood.

    Well, one thing is for sure – those peaky Jehovah Witnesses won’t be back. Now there was a threat.!

  40. Nothing wrong with Jews or Muslims as long as they are loyal to Russian sovereignty.

    I mean, Kadyrov clan used to actively fight against Russia, and now it’s all good.

    It’s not complicated – reward tribal friends to eliminate your enemies. It’s a win-win policy.

  41. Given that they already have a trolleybubus infrastructure and manufacturing capacity, it’s not that hard. Just put batteries in the trolleybusses and they can charge whilst on the wires.

  42. Speaking of nuclear, 2 meme (in multiple ways) factions of Serbian nationalists brawled over solar vs nuclear…

    They’re also not really nationalist, since they seem to dislike my imperialist pragmatic hypernationalism – and their general pathos and incompetence

  43. Allowing your whole civilization to be blackmailed by a rival because you’re too much pussified to open a chemical factory because “ree low value dirty industry!!1”

    Christ. Perhaps the Great Brownening is a good thing – will fix the autism. We’ll solve IQ later.

  44. Electric buses and vehicles are a meme. Anything with a battery, really.

    They should replace them all with trolleybuses – iconic.

  45. But! I offer to you a thought experiment, picture a half-Slav, half-Indian individual

    Olympic champion in gymnastics Margarita Mamun is half Indian and half Russian.

    https://i.trbna.com/preset/wysiwyg/c/78/6a5e41b4c11ebb060d88e8b7aa0ca.jpeg

  46. No Hebrew?

  47. Japan was was one of the rare (only?) cases where a hunter-gatherer culture conquered and ruled the adjacent settled-agriculture society.

    The same thing happened in Scandinavia.

  48. Solar and wind ended up unreliable.

    Mmh. Not unreliable in the sense that is not a good technology, but yes unreliable in the sense that its input cannot be controlled. I think the better word is “too variable”.

    Only the new Nord Stream 2 pipeline can save Europe, or the continent faces energy crunch.

    Which further strengthens the position of Germany in Europe.

  49. YetAnotherAnon says

    If you have two cockerels (even if father and son) they will fight to the death. We had to keep the son apart from Dad after he nearly killed him (he lost an eye and a lot of blood but recovered, though never the same again, I guess the humiliation plus the injuries). Bantam cocks are feisty.

    Elsewhere, the Guardian celebrates a billionaire winning an election. I remember when that would have been a Bad Thing.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/11/moroccos-king-appoints-billionaire-akhannouch-to-head-government-after-election-win

    Morocco’s King Mohammed VI has named businessman Aziz Akhannouch to lead a new government after his liberal RNI party thrashed the long-ruling Islamists in parliamentary elections.

    The king appointed Akhannouch “head of the government and tasked him with forming a new government”, following Wednesday’s polls, a statement from the palace said on Friday.

    The RNI won 102 of parliament’s 395 seats, trouncing the moderate PJD Islamists, which had headed the governing coalition for a decade but took just 13 seats, according to results released by the interior ministry.

    Akhannouch hailed the results as “a victory for democracy”.

    Elsewhere – why doesn’t Russia simply ban Google or their app store? China seem to have them under control.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/sep/10/russian-minister-complains-to-us-about-role-of-digital-giants-in-election

    According to a ministry statement on Friday, the deputy foreign minister, Sergei Ryabkov, claimed Russia “possesses irrefutable evidence of the violation of Russian legislation by American digital giants in the context of the preparation and conduct of elections to the state Duma”.

    The statement said Ryabkov had expressed the “categorical inadmissibility of interference in the domestic affairs of our country” during the meeting with Sullivan.

    The statement did not give details of the complaint, but Russian authorities have pressured Google and Apple to remove apps belonging to the Smart Voting initiative designed by the team of imprisoned opposition leader Alexei Navalny.

    The programme aims to advise voters which candidates are in the best position to defeat candidates from United Russia, the party that dominates parliament, in the 19 September election.

  50. YetAnotherAnon says

    We recently watched an episode of the TV show University Challenge featuring two young men (Shetty and Sundar) who would be considered handsome whether European or Subcontinental. Not my verdict – wife and a daughter (they didn’t put it that way either).

    https://www.thenational.scot/resources/images/12978813.png

    (Note that only 3 out of 8 of these brightest students from elite universities are of British descent)

  51. And thats with government running budget surplus that really shouldn’t be happening – budget surplus is a drag on GDP growth

    Have you turned MMT?

  52. Marginal lands unsuitable for primitive agriculture – Scandinavia is mostly glacially rekt taiga, except in the far south (the Sarmatic mixed forests ecoregion) which has recovered a bit more but still couldn’t be properly utilized until the carruca was invented, Japan is mostly very rugged mountains that also tend to explode, with the rather fertile lowlands being scattered and too small to support massive agricultural civilizations that would convert the hunter gatherer marginal land people into pastoralists

  53. It really depends on the “blend”.

    North and west Europeans are actually the most marginal whites – and being the majority of people in the position to race mix, the end results are usually rather ugly.

    The inverse is true for south and southeast Europeans. I know some half-black people – in the US they would pass as quadroons or even octaroons, for example. Heck, they look whiter than Kamala. All rather handsome.

    I would guess this applies to all “edge cases” – east Slavs make damn cute hapas, for example. And since the Indians are in this group too, the results of that are good too.

    Conclusion: West Europeans should be prohibited from race mixing with anything more distant than the Arabs

  54. If I picture a half-Slav and half-Indian individual the image that comes into my mind is of a Eurasian; not dissimilar to the kind you could see in British India, or when you see a person who is half Roma and half Belarusian, i.e. someone you would think is mixed.

    Part of the problem is that terms like Slav. Indian, ‘Western European’ (this is the worst) are not that useful when describing human phenotypes. The site Yellowface Anon linked to has IMO a more useful categorisation of different typical phenotypes. The female of the ‘Aisto-Nordid’ type they illustrate seems to me closest to the archetype of ‘beautiful Slavic woman’.

    On that site you can also see that the European type most closely resembling the typical Indid is the Southern European and Middle Eastern Mediterranid, which fits with what came into my mind; mixes between Spanish or Southern Portuguese/Italian and typical Northern Indid would be less obviously mixed race than between East Europid/Nordid type Slavs and these Indians.

  55. Wholly f*cking jeesus chryst, what a lovely specimen, thanks mate. Gonna be on the look out for the Slav-Indian mix.

  56. I think it might flip ETH if Eth2 sees profound execution failure. DeFi is so much easier and cheaper on Solana and TVL is already close to 10% of ETH’s.

    I probably wouldn’t buy much now though, it’s probably overheated right now.

  57. “Japan was was one of the rare (only?) cases where a hunter-gatherer culture conquered and ruled the adjacent settled-agriculture society”
    Isn´t it the same which happened with Info-Europeans conquering Europe?
    Anyway I thought the Jomon were there first.

  58. Yellowface Anon says

    It’s kind of meaningless to blanket-ban Google Play Store if you can access its alternatives (e.g. APKPure) or use VPN to download from another country’s store.

  59. Yellowface Anon says

    Since the Russian COVID thread is long dead let me just put these here:

    1) A sweeping COVID vaccine mandate for productive industries, what Biden has announced, will directly reverse all the “progress” that’s made in reducing the formal unemployment rate, I think anywhere by 5-15%. Millions of antivaxx workers will pull out of the formal economy and enter agorist sectors (sometimes more localist and sometimes simply ignoring such a mandate), and the impact on GDP numbers will be little different from the initial lockdown shock. It won’t recover since the mandate implies excluding a significant segment of the working population, who have their justified fears, from their jobs.

    2) “Biden” has a good chance of breaking weak American supply chains with this mandate alone if enough workers in critical and strategic industries quit, which will be in line with what the WEF is anticipating or facilitating.

    3) I see how concentration camps can be set up – A simple mandate for all citizens, regardless of age (since now children are eligible for COVID vaccination), and indefinite detention for those still resisting.

  60. Remarkable how widely estimates of Jomon ancestry vary. Can’t think of anything analogous to it.

    Sometimes wonder which are more dangerous Puerto Ricans or Dominicans. The jokes and the reputation seem to be about Puerto Ricans, but maybe that is just because they got here first.

  61. Totally agree Mal, when I first came to be in Crimea , the people all got along just fine. I learned alot then, and still are. I just don’t want Crimea to change – in that way. But today, the Crimean and Russian Federation Governments have to be on the lookout for those enemies of the state. And there are many.

  62. Thought I heard somewhere that the Haredi are now only expected to peak at around 20%.

  63. Kura also claims a 7 point IQ gap between Northern Japan and Okinawa. I wonder how much that would track with Jomon ancestry – though some estimates of it seem quite low.

  64. Thorfinnsson says

    G

  65. Yellowface Anon says

    5-15% is too low. I’ve just estimated that, if 35% of 100M workers covered by the recent mandates quit their jobs without finding a comparable one also affected by the mandate (a not unlikely ratio if one of the charts produced by Audacious Epigone showing % of definite antivaxxers is to be trusted), the formal unemployment rate will rise from 7.4% (included people that should have been in the labor force but stop being counted) to 28.6%. That would surpass the height of the Greek Debt crisis (27.5%) and far above 1998 Russia (13.3%) and 1999 Ukraine (11.9%). Only Armenia (~36% in 1997-2001) was comparable among post-Soviet states.

    However, in practice, this involves largely of a change in occupation away from the formal sector and at the most extreme, subsistence agriculture. All of them will still be counted as employed (even if informal).

  66. Triteleia Laxa says

    I’m not sure signing up to the Quiz Club actually marks you out as “smartest”.

  67. YetAnotherAnon says

    “I’m not sure signing up to the Quiz Club actually marks you out as “smartest”.”

    Maybe the very brightest have better things to do, but the teams are usually pretty bright. Sundar was particularly impressive.

    These two were amazing a few years back.

    https://inews.co.uk/culture/television/eric-monkman-bobby-seagull-university-challenge-bbc2-genius-adventures-198480

  68. Morton's toes says

    Priss Factor posted this on newslinks already. Curtis Yarvin on Tucker Carlson.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsGbRNmu4NQ

    Now Curtis Yarvin is a buffoon but seeing him on network television is a milestone for all internet nerds ever and I have to applaud. Also Carlyle is like the worst writer who ever got published in the history of the human race.

  69. Triteleia Laxa says

    They’re certainly extremely intelligent, but quiz club is a very niche activity, because spending your free time learning lots of general knowledge is only going to appeal to a small subset of people. It isn’t even really thinking, but more akin to collecting.

    Like collecting stamps, but with less of a sense of touch and adventure.

  70. North Korea’s “real” ideology has its genesis in Imperial Japanese ultra-nationalism from the colonial era. You know, the stuff that was so effective it would eventually produce the kamikazes?

    Genetic explanations are not required.

  71. Yarvin’s not a bad guy, but losing your wife in such a painful fashion is not the kind of experience you want to go through immediately before your public profile explodes.

  72. I wonder if the ancient Jomon were big seaweed eaters.

    The discovery, described April 7 in Nature, started with Roscoff biologist Jan-Hendrik Hehemann’s analysis of  Zobellia galactanivorans, a common marine bacteria. In it, he found an enzyme that breaks down porphyran, a carbohydrate found in the cell walls of red algae. “In a marine bacteria, we identified an enzyme that is very specialized for degrading algal cell walls,” said Mirjam Czjzek, a biologist at France’s Station Biologique de Roscoff. “The only other place we find this enzyme is in the human-gut bacteria of Japanese individuals.”

    According to the researchers, the enzyme helps Z. galactanivorans eat red algae, which westerners know best as the nori seaweed wrapping around sushi rolls. At some unknown points and in some unknown stomachs in the Japanese past, the enzyme-coding gene passed from Z. galactanivorans and into B. plebeius. That lucky microbe would have benefited from a new-found ability to process red algae, spreading through its stomach environment and eventually through the human population, which in turn derived more nutrients from an algae-rich diet…

    …The researchers also don’t know when the gene jumped from marine to human microbes, though Czjzek suspects it happened long ago.

    https://www.wired.com/2010/04/sushi-guts/

  73. No; Turkish is more important than Hebrew.

  74. This is fascinating.

    Pictures are one thing, but now I truly understand the old story:

    A rich man had sent his son so that Socrates might look him over and judge of his talents. “Well, then, my lad,” said Socrates, “speak, so that I can see you.”

    Yarvin might have the most Jewish physiognomy of all time. His is, undoubtedly, a very cunning phenotype; one which implies intelligence and vitality, but at the same time unmistakably conveys a certain shiftiness. The way his eyes can be extremely animated when he speaks, and yet remain flat and dull. The way he tilts his head downwards when he speaks, and looks up from under his arched brows. The ultra-feminine body language. Now just imagine Yarvin gets a haircut and starts ​wearing little round glasses — like Trotsky, Sam Hyde, or the “Qui” guy. Just to gaze upon such a face would shock you. Even now, he literally looks like a Nazi propaganda poster.

    That aside, I think that he’s generally alright, and I agree with him more often than not. But it is a horrible thing to watch 75 minutes of video just to hear a man slowly repeat two or three ideas, all of which he has already written about at length. Video and radio are terrible mediums for the communication of abstract ideas.

  75. Well, one thing is for sure – those peaky Jehovah Witnesses won’t be back. Now there was a threat.!

    Not too many Ukrainians visiting and vacationing in Crimea nowadays too. Don’t worry, there aren’t any new Ukrainian churches slated to be built there either, as even the few Ukrainian Orthodox churches that were there in the first place are quickly disappearing. Recently, a small Ukrainian Orthodox skeete has been fined for ‘unlawful missionary services” as two Russians appeared for divine liturgy within their small church. The telltale signs of a modern state is one that allows its citizens to worship God in their own language, according to their own conscience. As long as Russia tries to control the religious expression of its citizenry, it will be confined to the role of a medieval, authoritarian state.

    https://khpg.org/files/img/1608810750.jpg
    Archimandrate Damian, 8/25/21: “They were not able to name a single fact of ‘unlawful missionary activities’ on my part. I didn’t say a word to these ‘wolves’ who arrived in the church as we had already begun the liturgy.”
    https://khpg.org/en/1608809461

  76. It is thus logical to believe that Kamala had plastic surgery to make he nose appear more African and less Indian.

    I’ve known a couple of individuals that have had their nose features greatly modified after being involved in a physical altercation…

    If she would go to such extremes to appear African, I say let her wish come true. Michael Jackson was trying for a different look, wasn’t he? Like I’ve said above about her ” it’s not her racial pedigree that keeps me from admiring her.”

  77. The Big Red Scary says

    Moldbug went on Tucker to pick up chicks, not communicate ideas. I hope he got the make-up artist’s number.

  78. The second picture is one of Kamala’s parents, not Kamala herself

  79. She has the facial features typical of roma

    Definitely this statement does not correspond to reality (unless you count the dark eyes and hair as exclusively gypsy appearance)

    https://img2.ntv.ru/home/news/20171104/mamun_io.jpg

    https://www.peoples.ru/images/interesting/interesting_2019123114214819.jpeg

    http://i43-cdn.woman.ru/womanru/images/gallery/8/2/g_82cb71c7d51470587bf76a3fbc8d7ca2_8_800x600.jpg?02

    Mamun has an unusual face but it does not look like a gypsy
    Mamun bears a strange resemblance to another Olympic champion-Alina Zagitova (who comes from the Kazan Tatars).
    https://images11.cosmopolitan.ru/upload/img_cache/7b1/7b1ea67f947903cabb72b349e69a4550_cropped_1280x1600.jpg

  80. C. Washington says

    The answer is in Lobachevskis work on Ponerology. It is the same as with Americans. As if a genetic psycho-structure has been imparted to the progeny of the woman and of the serpent. The most absurd and stupid pretext seems to elicit a kind of behavior we can clearly see in the past 270 years of American history which has never abated. Chickens are only peripheral element in their MO. The same as when Anatoly has to mention in every other article that VVP reads his work.
    There seems to be a sizeable source material for this view in the Scripture itself, which I understand is not that fashionable on these pages.

  81. She looks Mediterranean

  82. An interesting genetic curiosity – the son of this Mamun has a purely “Nordic” appearance. Although it may get darker with time.

    https://mtdata.ru/u28/photoD145/20796977508-0/original.jpg

  83. Not rare. Sumerians conquered by herders. Aryans in India I think were herders. Iron Age white conquerors of Europe, eg Dorians of Greece like Sparta, were more primitive. Mongols conquered China.

    You get poor nutrition from agriculture but more kids. Farmers can make good workers but might not stay in charge.

    Chaos vs order.

  84. He should have left his nose alone.

  85. Almost Missouri says

    Thanks, I didn’t know that.

    Japan and Scandinavia both have introverted cultures with an austere aesthetic.

  86. Almost Missouri says

    I think anthropologists categorize the Indo-Europeans conquerors of most of Eurasia as nomadic-herdsman people rather than as hunter-gatherers. The difference being that whereas hunter-gatherers are dependent on the whim of nature for their sustenance, nomad-herdsmen have taken part of the animal kingdom under their own control, while agriculturalists have taken part of the plant kingdom under their own control, thus increasing their numbers if not always their robustness.

    I don’t know what the genetic archeologists say about the origins of the Indo-Europeans. Most genomic surveys only break down the categories to, e.g, EEF (farmers), WHG (hunter-gatherer), WSH (nomad-herders), etc. Though I suppose if you go back far enough, everyone is a hunter-gatherer.

    And yeah, I think the Jomon were there first, but hunter-gatherers were also there first everywhere else before getting rolled over by the agriculturalist juggernauts, except in Japan and, apparently, Scandinavia. Probably because the land couldn’t support a critical mass of agriculturalists.

  87. Nikki Haley (Nikki Randhawa before marriage) is Indian Sikh, and looks like a stereotypical American housewife (i.e. Italian-American, Jewish-American, Greek-American housewives).

    This is the Indians from latitude 25-35° can have light skin when not in summer.

    Although if you have met Indian people in real life, you notice the eyes (same also with Iranians, Armenians, etc) is different to European people, and Haley has a kind of stereotypical Indian eyes.
    https://i.imgur.com/0rJFxsd.jpg

    But her (I guess half-India) daughter looks more stereotypical European face, with stereotypical Indian skin.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/COMGNo_h3KY/

  88. Almost Missouri says

    Sumerians, Aryans, Dorians, Mongols, etc. were AFAIK nomadic herding people rather than mere hunter-gatherers. They had large nutritional reservoirs in their herds that allowed them to concentrate greater numbers than hunter-gatherers ever could, plus they had the superior tactical and strategic mobility from horses.

    But yes, most of the world’s agriculturalist empires were at some point subjugated by nomadic herding peoples, some of them repeatedly. Typically, after the conquest, the nomads became much less so, and eventually merged into the much more numerous Borg of the agriculturalists they conquered. C.f. Kublai Khan and the pleasure dome, Odysseus and the lotus eaters, etc.

  89. her (I guess half-India) daughter looks more stereotypical European face, with stereotypical Indian skin.

    Nikki Haley’s husband might be half African American I guess. He looks like a famous jazz musician. Haley’s family could be a kind of Republican Obamas.

    https://twitter.com/nikkihaley/status/1209867195322437632

  90. Lol I wonder if the most optimistic assessment will be that the Negev Bedouin can peak at only 20% of Israel’s population.

    With Haredim, I wonder if there might soon become not much space to “push down” their fertility. Normally fertility rates fall with rise in female education and employment rates.

    At the same time, Haredi women are the income-earners of their family, and have only slight less employment rate as secular. (The problem is that half of the Haredi men are unemployed).

    https://i.imgur.com/RPVsg2Y.jpg

    Many Haredi women in tech are some unmarried virgins, so perhaps there is potential that fertility rate will fall among those.

    “About 71% of haredim working in tech were women as of 2020. Interestingly, many of these women were under 28 and single. Perhaps due to the young nature of the tech world and the long-term career prospects within this industry, younger haredi women are heading to tech, as opposed to older haredi women.” https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/women-dominate-the-haredi-workforce-672565

  91. This is the Indians from latitude 25-35° can have light skin when not in summer.

    Parents of Margarita Mamun. I don’t know if Margarita’s father can be considered light-skinned (by Indian standards)

    https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EISVRDBW4AkNLIe.jpg

    It is curious that if you look at children’s photos, Margarita Mamun, depending on the background, looks like a typical Indian child or a typical European child

    https://s50.radikal.ru/i129/1606/48/ecbd42523792.jpg

    https://dan.m57.com.ua/upload/medialibrary/b7e/b7ee7f9a691bf6c615127706a0602182.jpg

  92. The Chukchi (hunters of large sea animals) kept the entire eastern Arctic in terror. If there were agricultural tribes near them, they would probably force them to pay tribute

    https://d.radikal.ru/d14/2006/ed/f9cf617f8b0c.jpg

    You get poor nutrition from agriculture but more kids. Farmers can make good workers but might not stay in charge.

    This statement would probably have amazed all sorts of Goths, Franks, vandals and similar classical barbarians

  93. Is shyness due to our not having lived among large populations? Is it monogamy (shy male can’t easily be Don Juan)? Is it civilization somehow or a lack of civilization? I wonder if Pacific Islanders are shy, probably not.

    I suspect it’s due to small groups needing to compete against nature, so evolution towards group unity. So, I suspect Nordics and ne Asians are non-individualistic with regard to their shyness.

  94. In the USSR, there was much investment in electrified transport – electric trams, trolleybus, metro trains and beginning of electrified trains (even partly electrified for cargo trains) which at least has continued in postsoviet times.

    The Soviet Union was like the dream country of Elon Musk with rockets as well.

    Unfortunately, it was still very insufficient connectivity in Soviet times, and in the postsoviet the car and the highway has become increasingly dominant with every year, as has car ownership becomes dominant, and the mistakes of the American 20th century are imported.

    Mulilane highways were already a curse of Moscow in Soviet times. But apparently, Luzhkov (I’m no expert) especially is responsible for converting Moscow into multilane highway networks with some buildings attached.

    By electrifying buses and then taxis and automobiles, at least some of the negative externalities of these mistakes can be reduced. That is, the negative effect on air (residents’ health) and on noise.

    Soviet 4 lanes was just bad.
    https://i.imgur.com/QhM71jd.jpg
    But now the same roads can be 9 lane dystopias
    https://i.imgur.com/tf8B0iH.jpg
    https://i.imgur.com/9pQT6WA.jpg

    Smoking cigarettes is one of the great pleasures of civilized life. And here residents can enjoy some of the benefits of cigarettes for your lungs, with the pleasure of the nicotine removed.

    https://i.imgur.com/LkS8wjB.jpg

    https://amsrus.ru/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/Novaya-estakada-na-Businovskoj-razvyazke-1200x545_c.jpg

    Applying the electric bus will be the most rapid way to begin a reduction of the negative externality in terms of air, as the bus operates all day. Then there can be laws mandating application of electric taxis.

    Private automobile will only electrify very slowly (and in the 2030s, they could begin to reduce oil demand, which will be another issue for the authorities – but I guess this might be still some years away so they have to time to plan for it).

    Moscow has excellent public transport infrastructure, and yet still it was flooded with private automobiles. As the electrified transport becomes more common, at least they can operate strict congestion zones in the inner rings where non-electric cars can pay a toll for the effect of extra emissions and extra noise.

  95. The Big Red Scary says

    a medieval, authoritarian state.

    You say that like it’s a bad thing.

    The telltale signs of a modern state is one that allows its citizens to worship God in their own language

    Are you saying that Ukrainians are even stupider than Bulgarians and Serbs, who have no difficulty with Slavonic?

  96. It’s the Indian facial features, not only eye and hair color (which may be dyed). Mamun:

    https://vestikavkaza.ru/upload/fbig/nvk/2015_Jun/Margarita-Mamun-%E2%80%93-chempionka-Evroigr-v-uprazhnenii-s-obruchem-1.jpg

    https://s2.cdn.teleprogramma.pro/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/762a891297b270de0941b4f42c23526a.jpg

    Roma:

    https://www.cesr.org/sites/default/files/roma_woman_and_child_osce.jpg

    Mamun, of course, has the physique of an Olympic athlete.

    You are correct that there is a resemblance to Zagitova.

  97. The first I’ve heard of that nation.

    The Sumerians would agree with me. Grain gives calories, little more. Cabbage and carrots are nutritious, but meat and dairy are also important. You can grow strong on meat. Greenlanders eat mostly just meat.

  98. I clicked the mouse and Yandex found a lot of similar photos. But I didn’t find any gypsies among them

    https://a.radikal.ru/a39/2109/41/50764a0ce912.png

  99. Her father looks like one of an “African looking Indian” kind of people.

    I know Indians in real life, and some of the people look more like Europeans, and others are more like Africans. Probably – India is like they say about China, more of a continent than a country.

    India might not be so much like a single nationality, but a complex of many different nationalities.

    Mostly my experience is that Indian culture is that they mostly superficially friendly, charming and responsive people (which reminds you of extroverted culture of Italians, Irish, Jews, Spanish, Poles, Mexicans etc) – but then unlike Italians, Irish, Jews, Spanish, Poles, Mexicans etc, Indian culture people often does not want to socialize outside of an office.

    I wonder if this more typical of third world countries’ culture where people traditionally socialized with their religious, family and tribal circles, and still feel cautious about outsiders.

    Also they are mostly charming people (like Italians, Irish, Jews, Spanish, Polish etc), but the Indian workers are talking a lot about themselves. This is beyond the European normal level of talking about yourself. (But Americans can be like this too though, so not perhaps only part of the third world countries’ culture)

  100. I you enjoy living in a medieval, authoritarian state, good for you. Not everybody does, probably not every Russian does.

    Did you ever consider that Bulgarians and Serbs may have difficulty communicating in their own native language? 🙂

    I understand, you’re regressing back in time to when the whole earth spoke in the one indivisible Church Slavonic.

    https://thumb.tildacdn.com/tild3666-6432-4764-a165-633538656363/-/format/webp/55gaeg4mgjgb7qj7.jpg

    The communists tried to build their own tower of Babble, by positioning the Russian language at the very top. Why not today’s Russian Empire builders? It’s not for Ukraine, though.

  101. Church Slavonic isn’t Russian. If anything, it’s the svido Ukrainians who take Orthodox Christianity to a different level with their Ukrainian language use in services.

  102. Why is that? If you’ve ever attended a ROC church service in the US, they’ve all but eliminated Church Slavonic and Russian from their liturgies, in favor of English. I don’t see you complaining about this anywhere?…Church Slavonic has been eliminated from the Ukrainian Orthodox liturgies from at least 1919, in favor of the vernacular Ukrainian. No big alligator tears there from anybody. The Roman Catholic church has abandoned Latin since the 1960’s, in favor of the local vernacular tongue, no big problems there either. You’re neither an Orthodox Christian, nor very fluent in Russian AFAIK, so I don’t see how these sorts of issues could hold any relevancy for you anyway?…..

  103. Obviously translated by someone who’s not a native speaker, nor bothers to explain obscure local Russian political jargon to the intended readers. I’d be surprised if anyone manages to read all of that without giving up in frustration part way through.

    I suspect the point of that translation even being there was not actually to be read by anyone, but merely for the prestige of having a supposed English translation.

  104. Recording his speech in his basement, properly masked, would be quite nice, I think. Don’t forget to mix in the applause track, level “enthusiastic”.

  105. The Sumerians would agree with me. Grain gives calories, little more. Cabbage and carrots are nutritious, but meat and dairy are also important.

    The Assyrians followed the same diet as the Sumerians. And the Assyrians were among the most successful (and most terrible) warriors in history

  106. With any comments about India that may be interpreted as negative, we need to qualify that this is the country trying to save world civilization in banning TikTok.

    India permanently bans TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps

    India’s ministry of electronics and information technology has issued fresh notices to make permanent a ban imposed on video app TikTok and 58 other Chinese apps in June, Indian media reported late on Monday.

    When it first imposed the ban, the Indian government gave the 59 apps a chance to explain their position on compliance with privacy and security requirements, the Times of India reported on Monday.

    The companies, which include ByteDance’s popular video-sharing app TikTok, Tencent Holdings’ WeChat and Alibaba’s UC Browser, were also asked to respond to a list of questions, the newspaper said.

    https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Technology/India-permanently-bans-TikTok-and-58-other-Chinese-apps

  107. Morton's toes says
  108. Morton's toes says

    He doesn’t have the vigor to do it.

    They could get a crowd of 5000 uniformed active duty soldiers and order them to applaud if he was up for it.

  109. Extra weight of the electric cars can contribute to increase of brake and tyre dust, which is a type of air particulate pollution (although relatively localized to near the road).

    But there is an argument that regenerative braking could reduce the problem.

    New analysis by the University of Birmingham, suggests that regenerative braking, where the electric motor slows the car, should mean electric vehicles are less polluting in urban areas. A study in Los Angeles found that brakes on electric cars are used for about one-eighth of the time of those on oil-fuelled cars. However, the extra weight of electric cars means they are likely to emit more particle pollution on high-speed motorways.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/jan/29/pollutionwatch-how-smart-braking-could-help-cut-electric-car-emissions

    Pollution warning over car tyre and brake dust

    Dust from car brakes and tyres will still pollute city air even when the vehicle fleet has gone all-electric, a report has warned.

    Fragments of microplastics from tyres, road surfaces and brakes will also flow into rivers, and ultimately into the sea, government advisers say.

    Ministers say they want to pass standards to improve tyres and brakes.

    But critics say they need to go further by developing policies to lure people out of private cars.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/business-48944561

    Electric vehicle introduction will improve the air pollution problem, but it won’t completely eliminate it.

    Of course, there still needs to be priority to stop people driving private cars (even if electric) in urban areas, and increase public transport availability.

  110. agreed, highways inside a city are to be avoided like the plague. Perhaps putting a few “express roads” between “megablocks.”

    The microdistrict system is good on paper, and can be greatly upgraded into a mixed system. Large boulevards (3 lanes per direction MAX, and probably keep one on each side as a dedicated bus/trolley lane). With trams in the middle preferably, if the terrain allows it.

    Then, scatter the central contents around the city and on the edges. Bam, traffic solved.

    A city central zone should be roughly 7.5km in radius, surrounded by an express road, with a ~3.75km radius surrounded by an inner ring road. Beyond we have a 15km radius peripheral zone, and beyond that a 30km suburban radius. Suburbs should themselves be small 3.75km radius zones, more like tiny little satellite cities, with agriculture taking a major part in the economy (unless your city is like in the arctic or something).

    Blocks are roughly 500×500 meters, surrounded by boulevards (or if they’re on an edge of a zone, the bigger road, or railway, whatever) and also roughly self contained – this would work differently in the peripheral zone, where a block would be more like a 1kmx1km thing.

    This way you can theoretically create infinitely sized cities because they’d inevitably decentralize, as in be a collection of smaller cities surrounding a core city

  111. Wait… I thought Kamala was our first black vice-president? Or was it the first Asian vice-president? The first woman vice-president? Or only a “vice”-president when she was with Willie Brown? With her skin tone maybe she’s just a crypto-Sicilian?

    I’m so confused by the whole thing!

  112. I wonder if this more typical of third world countries’ culture where people traditionally socialized with their religious, family and tribal circles, and still feel cautious about outsiders.

    From my experience, Indians don’t even socialise outside of their ethno-linguistic group. Hence in London, people from North-West India (Punjab, Western UP etc) get along more with Pakistanis than South Indians from Andhra Pradesh (translation: “Southern State”), the group that makes up the majority of H-1Bs in America.

    Her father looks like one of an “African looking Indian” kind of people.

    Her father is apparently Bangladeshi. He kind of reminds me of the founder of Khan Academy, Salman Khan.

    https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d2/Salman_Khan_TED_2011.jpg/800px-Salman_Khan_TED_2011.jpg

  113. Today’s my housecleaning day, and I’ve put aside a new beer that I recently ran into called “Bojan” for this evening when the work is done. It’s a fruit beer highlighting raspberry. The Polish answer to a Belgian Lambic frambois? 🙂 A cold can of Samuel Smith’s Nut brown ale is in reserve, in case the Polish variant doesn’t work out very well. In either case, I’ll feel good about knowing that I’m increasing my vitamin B input.

  114. It’s the same brewery, I’ll let you know what I think after I’ve tasted it. I can’t share your enthusiasm for IPA beers, for I can only appreciate hops to a certain extent. Life can be quite bitter at times, so why accentuate the bitterness of your beer? 🙂

    http://www.euroliquors.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Screen-Shot-2021-07-19-at-9.31.34-AM.png

  115. boulevards (3 lanes per direction MAX, and probably keep one on each side as a dedicated bus/trolley lane). With trams in the middle preferably, if the terrain allows it.

    Roads can be allowed open for service vehicles, and trams can displace the private vehicles.

    They were able to achieve this in the central roads of Jerusalem in around 10 years of work (to install the trams).

    It’s perhaps an unusually easy situation there because it is a religious population, and those people (religious Jews) have low rates of car ownership in the beginning.

    But the pedestrianization of the main roads in the city centre of Jerusalem allowed that service vehicles and police vehicles can still pass over.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioWBOSDvr5k

    Suburbs should themselves be small 3.75km radius zones, more like tiny little satellite cities,

    With the low cost of LED and LED bulbs (thanks China), then even indoor agriculture is already now become cost effective.

    You avoid the problem of caterpillars and pigeons eating all your cabbage, and need for pesticides.

    Everytime I tried to grow vegetables outside, half of them are eaten by the snails, etc.

    There can be basements under the city where agriculture could be installed. But it would likely be dominated by private companies, rather than local city residents.

    But for urban residents there could be this kind of infrastructure installed into central cities for private rental.

    Just there would need to be a way to replace underground robots to grow these plants for us instead of hipsters.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uwH6Uux9f-g

  116. Everytime I tried to grow vegetables outside, half of them are eaten by the snails, etc.

    Same here. It’s very annoying. I’d swear that this is why medieval knights were always fighting snails — the mysterious snails very likely represented entropy and disorder, and were the most ubiquitous foe of the common (crop-sowing) man.

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-were-medieval-knights-always-fighting-snails-1728888/

  117. Putler did it again. Nordstream-2 completed.

    https://www.rt.com/russia/534553-nordstream2-us-defeat-ukraine-victory/

    “The Americans say they believe in our case, but they are still letting us down. So either they are lying, or they are cynics and we are just not that important to them, or they are too weak to overcome Germany and Russia, or all of the above.” Volodymyr Zelensky

    So, now we have a German-Russian evil axis.

  118. Turkey’s position was also strenghtened, via Turkish Stream.

  119. Now I remember: Metaculus gives 22.6%. Though, when I saw it I was wondering if maybe people could intentionally be trying to lowball it for a secret purpose, like to keep the peace, or to monkey wrench any attempt to deal with it.

    I have a hard time understanding what is going on with the draft and the Haredim.

  120. You get poor nutrition from agriculture but more kids. Farmers can make good workers but might not stay in charge.

    Nutrition wasn’t the relevant factor though. The farmers could’ve eaten steaks everyday with their grains and it wouldn’t have made a difference.

    Pre-industrial farmers have to stay fixed on their small plots and homesteads and have to work constantly everyday to maintain themselves and their families. The moment they leave their plots or stop working, their lifestyles and communities collapse. Mobile pastoralists can opportunistically raid farmers and strategically retreat with their mobile food sources. Furthermore, often the pastoralists would just defeat the government and take over, not fight every single farmer.

  121. Although if you have met Indian people in real life, you notice the eyes (same also with Iranians, Armenians, etc) is different to European people, and Haley has a kind of stereotypical Indian eyes.

    These are known as “butthole eyes”:

    https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/stephaniemcneal/ariana-grande-is-going-after-barstool-sports-butthole-eyes

  122. IIRC Roma are supposed to originate in the Punjab area and look different to the Bengalis who are in Bangladesh. I used to live in an area with a lot of them, then moved somewhere with many Pakistanis and they were clearly different.

    There definitely looks like some Slavic admixture in the Roma women in the photos.

  123. The Big Red Scary says

    The Roman Catholic church has abandoned Latin since the 1960’s, in favor of the local vernacular tongue, no big problems there either.

    In fact, this example is precisely why I have become deeply skeptical of doing away with Slavonic.

  124. Used to think some of these vague and overly broad ethnic categories were a legacy of bureaucratic momentum, and slow response to changes in the rate of inflow of different peoples. But it is hard to square that with how the US Bureau of Immigration used to break Italian into two different categories: North and South.

    Interestingly, in addition to many anarchists being Southern Italians. Southern Italians were also lynched the most, after blacks. Woodrow Wilson railed against them before he was president. As did Henry Cabot Lodge and and many others.

    Was recently thinking someone ought to compile a database of old anarchists, for HBD purposes. For example, where exactly on a map that they were born. Their pictures, and genealogies to track cousin marriage.

  125. Ah white ladies…. pretending to think they’re clever with an inferior version of what everyone else is doing. Because no one else is growing marijuana or cultivating Psilocybin mushrooms in their basements.

    Everytime I tried to grow vegetables outside, half of them are eaten by the snails, etc.

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

    Instead of growing inside just tame outside.

    I’ve used and abused my basement here.

    Believe me using pesticides is a lot easier than trying to get indoor plants to scale properly (those plants that bitch is showing are so small I can’t even take her seriously, but it’s great to see women try new things even with all their limitations).

    Indoors you’ll realize they grow TOO fast and you run out of (soil) space and are trimming more than usual (in a vain attempt to slow root growth).

    Many a times I would pull a plant to find it has basically turned into a single root semi-structure (encasing the entire interior of the pot/growth bag/protein bottles with holes I punched in them, etc.) preventing water from rolling out (there is a term for this but I don’t know it because I don’t believe in gardening, I believe in results).

    REGARDLESS you’re gonna use pesticides indoors. Spider mites creep it. And if you start growing a lot you’re probably going to lace all the soil with pesticides so you don’t infest your house with bugs.

    Don’t even get me started on hydroponics. It’s fucking messier than a god damn abortion. I’d rather buy my drugs if I have to deal with hydroponics. Wet everywhere, condensation all over the place, don’t even DREAM about scaling that up and not doing something to protect your walls/ceiling/FLOORS from moisture/mold. NOT TO MENTION earwigs, silverifsh and disgusting centipedes attracted by the moisture. No one wants those type of scary Jesus-hating bugs inside their homes. Hydroponics and pesticides? Sounds like problems. Soil and pesticides = bug free home.

    I also found it easier to maintain nutrient levels in soil than water, even though everyone will now piss their vagina and tell me it’s the opposite.

    Plants need to be abused and nothing is more abusive than the elements. When you pamper them like humans they become retarded like today’s degenerates.

    Also forget this hippy communist dream of a pedestrian city. Or as the rest of the world call them “refugee camps”.

    I take my car, from my suburb township-like settlement, into the city, to do city things while low-IQ city folk service my needs (the same low-IQ city folk who pay as much in rent as they would if they just mortgaged a house, but you can’t be a gay hipster if you don’t live in the city I guess).

    Archaic public transportation is the last thing stopping great cities from turning into true pinnacles of civility. Once the the massive underground tunnels are converted into multi-story underground parking, cities will become an even greater power onto themselves. Just need to replace all the queers with robots first.

  126. Misclicked, was meant to reply to this:

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/open-thread-164/#comment-4897477
    #148

    Jesus…. time to take a break from the fire water…. misclicks… a sign you have a problem.

  127. A wise man (Benjamin Franklin) once said ” beer is proof God loves us and wants us to be happy”.

  128. Why, do you have a problem with people better understanding the mass? I presume that even within the Churches in Russia that still use old Church Slavonic, the reading of the sermons is in plain everyday conversational Russian?

  129. Words of a mass in any daily vernacular language can on repetition sound rather trite. Those who want to understand them will take the time. For the rest it is about the show and ceremony. The Catholic Church is visibly weakening and has lost any deep sense of mystery. Then they put in charge that weirdo from Buenos Aires with his uber-liberal instincts and we see the results – maybe keeping the traditional Latin mass and inner consistency would had been better.

    With the Orthodox Church the main irritant (for me at least) are the overblown costumes and the unnecessarily long, yet thin, beards. And the fatness. We have no idea what Jesus looked like, but we know for sure that he was not fat…belly over the belt phase of ideology is never good…

  130. Well, here’s Jatts getting out of taxis and Niggerz running..

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

    Here’s Jatts driving trucks and running drugs

    https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/20-people-charged-61m-worth-of-drugs-seized-in-largest-bust-in-toronto-police-history-1.5480301

    Here’s Jatts making rap songs about killing Hindus:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqXBwR6AaHM


    Did swimming in dead bodies give u Kuru?
    Ur not larping as Kuru Panchal are you??

    Anyway on topic is as follows:

    https://twitter.com/demosphachtes/status/1436774366944141326?s=20

  131. Well, I finally tried the Bojan Raspberry beer, twice actually. I split the large bottle up into two portions, and drank the first half after I got through working, and I enjoyed it more than the second time, when I drank it along with dinner. The overall taste profile was overly syrupy, as I thought that it would be, after I read the label where it made it clear that raspberry syrup was used instead of the actual fruit within the process. The syrupy taste overwhelmed, what I presume was actually a good quality beer. As an accompaniment to food, it really lost its luster. No match at all for the fabulous, more balanced and organic taste of the Belgian frambois. I wouldn’t at all hesitate to try their flagship beer, Bojan Toporek. As far as Polish beers go, I’ve always enjoyed sipping a good “Zywiec” beer, well rounded and smooth to the taste. I wouldn’t go out of my way to locate the Bojan Raspberry beer. C- at best, on a hot sweaty day.

  132. I hope that you and comrade The Big Red Scary realize that I’m not trying to convince anybody that they have to find a church that uses the local vernacular as being superior to one that chooses to use Old Church Slavonic or Latin. All variants should be allowed to exist, prosper and coexist with other expressions of faith. Let everybody worship (or not) according to their own conscience.

  133. With the Orthodox Church the main irritant (for me at least) are the overblown costumes and the unnecessarily long, yet thin, beards. And the fatness. We have no idea what Jesus looked like, but we know for sure that he was not fat…belly over the belt phase of ideology is never good…

    When I was a kid, and an atheist, I thought of the whole Orthodox mass, along with the pomp and pageantry as being some kind of repetitive form of ancient Greek drama. Some of the Deacons that we had in my area were actually superlative, and could easily sing professional opera. They sang the liturgy with incredible pathos, verve and panache (great timbre too). 🙂

  134. Samuel Smith also produces some fruit beers, raspberry being one of the types. I tried it a few years back, and from what I remember, it was better than the Bojan Rasperry. It’s hard to find in my area.

    But there’s a brewery here in Arizona that produces some nice beers including a very decent Scottish style ale that I could recommend. It’s brewed at a slightly higher alcohol level, therefore it bears the appropriate name, “kilt lifter”. 🙂

    https://i.pinimg.com/originals/79/ec/2c/79ec2c6c65351e52085ecc707c3f3c78.png

  135. Haley’s family could be a kind of Republican Obamas.

    Have you seen their birth certificates?

  136. Yellowface Anon says

    The US and EU might want to learn from India and hence cut all civilian communication that are not on their home turf, controlled and censored by Big Tech between China and the West.

    This is how you kill your up-and-coming Big Tech competitor outside their native country.

  137. Yellowface Anon says

    It’s all about tradition and the divine mystery that is imbued in a millennium of using the language as a liturgical language. If you suddenly use the current vernacular, you are signaling a clean break from the past, and this is at the root of why the Catholic Church post Vatican II has gone astray.

  138. Yellowface Anon says

    You’re not going to have people staying anywhere near cities, but moving onto small towns, villages, and even owning a homestead, for the same reason why the late Roman Empire deurbanized, with a layer of modern authoritarian control on top of it.

  139. If an alligator, raccoon, or coyote gets hungry enough . . .

  140. Well, I’ll agree with you – the Ukrainian church, whether it has traded it’s allegiance to Istanbul or Greece should not matter. And I don’t know if this church did – but again – it shouldn’t matter. Crimea has seen many new Russian Orthodox churches built in the last 6 years. But politics has always had too much BS involved.
    A couple weeks ago I read where the Crimean ” Boss” PM Aksyonov was praising Prez Zelensky for keeping his utilities and taxes current, on his flat near Livadia Palace. And Prez Z returned the favor with his Crimea Platform seminar – WTF – Aksyonov ? Crimea has changed a lot in the past 7 years. You are the first person that has replied to me, that understands what’s going on – Spacibo.

  141. “I think anthropologists categorize the Indo-Europeans conquerors of most of Eurasia as nomadic-herdsman people rather than as hunter-gatherers.”
    That´s right.

  142. I read rumours that, at Washington’s request, Ukraine agreed to receive ~5000 evacuees from Afghanistan. Is this true?

    Also, the EU is supposedly offering money and other perks to various Central Asian “stans” in exchange for them agreeing to open their borders to fleeing Afghans, perhaps trying to preempt another 2015 in Europe (and rather redirect it toward Russia, as we can expect migrants to bubble upward).

    Sounds like an extremely serious subject so I’m wondering if the topic is being discussed by politicians campaigning for the coming elections in Russia.

  143. jews
    loyal to $non_jews
    Lol
    I thought Russians had already learned that particular lesson.

    Bashibuzuk turning in his… er, bed?

  144. Poo taste.

    Paronomastically, aesthetically and morally.

  145. Yellowface Anon says

    Those Central Asian stans accepting Afghan refugees sounds just right, and it’s actually the best solution to the “refugee crisis”. Those refugees tend to be Sarts (Tajiks & Uzbeks) and Hazaras (Aimaqs included), who will be right at home in the ethno-cultural environment of Central Asia. Central Asia needs to replenish its labor pool that has been draining into Russia, too.

  146. Almost Missouri says

    Archaic public transportation is the last thing stopping great cities from turning into true pinnacles of civility.

    I don’t know to what extent public transport is necessary to make a city great, but to make a city terrible, the fatal pairing is underclass blacks plus public transportation (or any form of cheap transport). Once you grant unearned mobility to your aggressive slum dwellers, they move out in every direction they can, launching destructive razzias on everything within reach, laying waste to anything valuable, civil, or even just shiny.

    In the worst case, the fatal pairing is compounded into a fatal troika by the addition of affirmative action negrolotry, subsidizing the foregoing catastrophe and even allowing the raids to turn into colonization. Needless to say, American liberals have pursued the fatal troika with a vengeance, gutting many formerly lovely American towns.

  147. Like I wrote previously, the Ukrainian language has been subtituted for church Slavonic since 1919, so its been now over 100 years in practice. I was brought up in a Ukrainian language environment church, that now has been morphing more and more into an English language environment. I guess accessibility to the language trumps “tradition and divine mystery”. In the new world, people do lose touch with the language of their ancestors and get assimilated sooner or later into the prevalent English speaking environment. If the members of the church cannot understand the message and ultimately go to other denominations where they can understand the liturgy and reading of the gospels the church loses membership and ends up closing its doors.

  148. Prez Z returned the favor with his Crimea Platform seminar – WTF – Aksyonov ?

    I’m not familiar with the “Crimea Platrform seminar”? Please tell us more. I know that Zelensky has very vivid childhood memories of visiting Crimea and feels that it should be returned to Ukraine.

  149. Grahamsno(G64) says

    Here’s Jatts making rap songs about killing Hindus:

    Yo Khalistani shithead do you want another brutal beatdown by the Indian state wasn’t operation Bluestar & the post Indira Gandhi assasination pogroms not enough for you dumbfucks? Really do you want another trashing? This time the Golden Temple will share the fate of Babri Masjid you primitive, terrorist assholes, did it occur to your stupid heads that 3/4 of Punjab is Muslim, that’s what total demographic defeat looks like, a total defeat and yet you Khalistani assholes keep larping about your ancient military history and btw when did the Khalsa win its last battle, wake the fuck up don’t shit in your plate. Your muh manhood doesn’t stand a chance against the Indian state I dare your community to rebel again fucking ragheads.

    Go ahead Khalistani punk make our day.

    The state will squelch you without noticing.

    Fuck you.

  150. Been thinking over black resettlement schemes. Lots of possibilities, but I like the idea of using historical precedent.

    For example, the Windrush generation followed back through time was the result of the Triangular Trade, and I think it would be good to resuscitate this concept to solve the issue, though we may need to do some spitballing, in order to work out the three directions.

    I believe the buying price of cane sugar slaves was generally around 100 gallons of rum. A bit more for the men, and less for the women. Naturally, we would have to tailor it to their health status and age. Many are severely obese today because of our ability to derive sugar from maize. Since I am generous, I’m in favor of advancing the full 100 gallons of rum (corn made), and then recouping the cost from the descendants of African sellers, through the extraction of natural resources.

    But naturally they would have to pay us a lot more, if they want to be returned to the Caribbean, for topical islands don’t grow on trees.

    Another idea would be to give the blacks in Ireland (who are from Nigeria) to the blacks in England, as servants, and then transport them, though I guess the balance would need to be made up in corn rum. Or maybe not, as there are a lot of Nigerians in England.

  151. The Big Red Scary says

    There’s nothing wrong with using the vernacular per se, and it is certainly appropriate in the diaspora for the later generations to use the local language, or some mix of the traditional and local languages (in Oxford, for example, the Greek and Russian churches coordinate and stagger the use of English, Greek, and Slavonic, so that on any given Sunday, somewhere in Oxford the Divine Liturgy was served in English). However, Greeks and Orthodox Slavs in their own countries have preserved traditional liturgical language, and while I used to think they’d be better off if they allowed at least some parishes to use modern translations, I’m now convinced that it is vitally important and not actually so difficult to continue to preserve the traditional language to maintain connection to the roots of the faith.

    I don’t actually believe Ukrainians are stupider than Bulgarians and Serbs. Even khokhol can into Slavonic.

    In Russia, at least, the main obstacle to understanding language in the services is not that Slavonic is archaic and from a different branch of the Slavic family (both true), but rather that it is sung with heavy polyphony or chanted in a booming tone. What needs reforming is not so much the language, but the music, which was imported by Patriarch Nikon from Ukraine under Roman Catholic influence and further corrupted by Petrine and Romantic worship of the West.

    As for the Roman Catholic Church, just look at it.

  152. Yellowface Anon says

    What exists now is too far from what happened 3 or 4 centuries ago. At the very least most of the African states don’t openly practice slave raiding on each other, or having formal slave markets now.

    While repatriating some descendants of slaves (a la early Liberia & Sierra Leone) makes some sense, it isn’t going to be significant since Africa is rapidly populating by itself and there won’t be much space left. It’s better to promote Black Nationalism in Southern Bantustans (needing population exchanges on the Greco-Turkish or India-Pakistan scale) or mass Black emigration to majority-Black regions in the Caribbeans. What worked badly in Black-majority South Africa, will be far better in Black-minority America.

    If you want to expel Africans from America completely, please expel descendants of Irish and Italian immigrants too, and all the White Trash (despite their intellectual differences).Why don’t you want WASP purism?

  153. Grahamsno(G64) says

    Been thinking over black resettlement schemes.

    No you have been day dreaming too much nobody is going anywhere.

  154. Technically, most soldiers in the Sikh Kingdom were Muslims, and Sikhs were only about 1/7 the pop of the Punjab, though I am sure that has since fallen.

    Thulean_Friend also hated Sikhs, which I find hard to balance with the idea that he really was a Swede. But maybe I just don’t understand Swedes.

  155. Mike_from_Russia says

    “Interruptions in transit may lead to the loss of commercial properties of gas”-Naftogaz
    https://aftershock.news/?q=node/1013165
    The management of the Ukrainian gas transportation system promises to cheat with the composition of gas in the event of a decrease in the level of pumping from Russia to Europe. As already mentioned in the comments to the article, they have been adding exhaust gases from gas pumps for their local consumers for three years.

  156. Grahamsno(G64) says

    I don’t hate Sikhs but I can’t stand this Khalistani ancient warrior larping – this secessionist nonsense, that terrorist asshole was posting songs about murdering people which is unacceptable to me. India is a vast continent of ethnicities who have been given space to do their stuff as long as they don’t try to secede it’s that simple, if you try secession the state will crush you and I support the state when that red line is crossed.

  157. You don’t know what I observe and how, which isn’t especially important or any of your business.

    When was the last time you attended an ROC service in the US (not to be confused with the OCA)?

    https://opuspublicum.com/some-thoughts-on-church-slavonic-in-the-liturgy/

    Excerpt –

    ROCOR remains the largest body outside of a traditional Slavic territory to still use Church Slavonic. Part of the reason is that ROCOR has a naturally conservative liturgical spirit, one which has helped it resist some questionable innovations that have been picked up by the various local Eastern churches over the decades.

    As for Latin use in the RC:

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-pope-latin-factbox/factbox-use-of-latin-in-the-roman-catholic-church-idUSL0738302020070707

  158. Yellowface Anon says

    India is culturally decentralized thru the dominance of local languages, cults and customs in a wider Indian world, while China is culturally centralized where a formal Chinese language (classical or Putonghua) and Confucianism/socialism emanate from a Imperial/Party authority. This is why pre-modern India had a much larger propensity to fracture into smaller states, and even large empires often didn’t unite all of India. This is unlike China, where unification (nominal or not) mainly means encompassing all lands with cultural Chinese inhabitants, while disunification were often seen as transitory aberrations.

    Khalistan LARPing is at least more justified than Taiwanese “svidomy” LARPing or outright memorializing of the former colonial master in HK and Macao. Just my 2 maos as someone from the other civilization sphere in Asia (you can punch me thru the screen if you want)

  159. Here’s another excerpt from the same article that you’ve provided a link to. It only confirms what I wrote:

    Church Slavonic, like all extant liturgical languages, is a dying tongue. The Russian Orthodox Church remains the single largest user of Slavonic,

    though many of its parishes in the diaspora—including those of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia (ROCOR)—have abandoned it in favor of the vernacular. The Orthodox Church in America, with few exceptions, has completely dropped Slavonic and other local churches, such as the Bulgarian and Serbian Orthodox, have moved away from it as well.

    So, in “the old country” back in Russia they still use Church Slavonic, and in the diaspora the US, they use the vernacular, English in the services. Care to add something new to our discussion?

  160. Reading back this and some other exchanges, you’ve quite a way of misrepresenting things.

  161. I respect your opinion and am convinced that it works for you. Actually our situations are very similar. You wish to maintain the Church Slavonic language that you grew up praying in and listening to within the mass, as I do the Ukrainian language that I grew up using similarly. There are great forces at play that would like to strictly use the English language in the diaspora church. My home church in Minnesota uses both, as you mentioned could be a possibility above. I’d just like to say that the Church Slavonic used by St, Cyril and Methodius was there own vernacular language, wasn’t it? It’s not like as if it was some charmed supernatural language taken directly from the court of the Almighty and transported to earth to be used by all believers?…

    The most important thing is as that people still go to church, take part in the sacraments, and leave church with a reinvigorated devotion and love for the Lord and for all of his creation.

  162. Really, just how? No need to go back in time (you can if you want to though), and just concentrate on the topic at hand. I’m genuinely interested in correcting myself , if I’ve indeed been guilty of misrepresenting things, as you state.

  163. raghead

    Sri Krishna Ji lit gave Sudama a Turban when he poor as being bare-headed = naked

    Listen Brahmin, isn’t Delhi surrounded right now?? You had to send Jatt Sikhs v Jatt Sikhs last time..

    Fact is the demographic collapse of India (Hindus is certain). Rest is up to fate & Sword..

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  164. India would’ve lost both 65 & 71 without Sikhs, and there’d be reservation in the Army too.. GC scum.

    India is a feminist tyranny with SC/ST act & 498a let alone arms act.. you’re just an Anglo bumpkin.

    You’re acting like Hindus have much time left.. Liberal brahmins like yourself will be 1st in firing line..

    http://yugaparivartan.com/2016/02/17/demographic-seize-of-al-hind/

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  165. Just preping for post-democratic, post-Hindu India, Delhi has 0.5mil protestors, no larping.
    Gandhi urged Hindus in Bengal to hand their sisters, daughters and wives over to Muslims||

    https://twitter.com/SirPentapotamia/status/1174114107244601345?s=20

    https://twitter.com/yugaparivartan/status/700319835738284034?s=20

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  166. Zelinsky and his Associates have introduced an International movement/platform in order to get as many countries behind the idea of getting Crimea back. Of course, any country with an Autonomous area, would be terrified of the populace using that right to vote themselves – Out ! That area in Spain comes to mind. But the bottom line is that the corrupt governments , and there are so many – are F…n afraid of the populace , doing what Crimea did. Even tho Crimea’s vote was a no brainer – I watched the vote in a couple towns and my village and it was like a going home party – the vote was real. Gilbert Doctorow was even a Crimean vote observer and he is a top notch Russian speaking honest kind of guy.

    So Ukraine has advised the ” World” to bark at the Kremlin/Putin about their human rights violations, rights to Black Sea navigation, sanctions etc. etc. etc. Pure BS. Crimean society hasn’t changed with regards to human rights, no racial crimes are being committed, and the choice of language, religion, business, freedoms have not been altered. And I hope it stays this way.

    There was a huge wave of people moving to Crimea since the vote and some folks 40-50% of the Ukrainian military left and a few civilians did too. Like I said before, I liked Crimea, Ukraine but I’m just along for the ride for now. I will admit , I sure appreciate the new infrastructure being built — Ukraine never spent a dime on the roads I drove on – in Ukraine and in Crimea.

  167. Well, I am trying to be funny. IMO, levity is a necessary technique in hardball negotiations. Though it needs to be elevated to propaganda, for mass dessimination. For example, Cromwell had tens of thousands of Irish transported to the Caribbean before blacks got there. Maybe, some of the islands should belong to them and not blacks? Though I think we would have to rent them out because of the UV…

    But my point is blacks have unrealistic expectations about what they are due. For ex: black nationalists want like a third of the US, and I am sure about 30 million each. But what they are “due” is really only whatever the going rate for separation is. Someday, I may outline my ideas on this in a long thread, but am disinclined at the moment.

    BTW, WASPs are not completely out of my thoughts. Twinkie got quite angry with me when I suggested that they be given back control of the Ivies. I don’t see what the big deal is. IMO, it would benefit Asians, provided the WASPs were based, even if they excluded them or reduced their admittance. Personally, I would suggest Asians be given their own land grant for a college, on land repurposed from blacks.

    PS: I’m open to discussions on Italians. Just kidding. I think they have been winnowed to the point where they are a net benefit, though I do lament the loss of the pure Northern phenotype.

  168. The Big Red Scary says

    I’m a convert to Orthodoxy with no Russian roots, and learned Russian only as an adult from my wife, who was born in Ukraine. My godfather was Ukrainian, and I’ve picked up a bit of Ukrainian on a few trips to my wife’s home village. It would not be so hard to learn if I spent a month or two there. I have no particular attachment to the Slavonic language and support its continued use in Orthodox Slavic countries for purely practical purposes, though I do understand how people develop an attachment to a particular liturgical language. In English, I very strongly prefer the King James Bible. For all non-schismatic Slavs still living in their homelands, that language is Slavonic.

    Kiril and Methodios are believed to have been from Thessalonika, are speculated to have had some Slavic roots (though I don’t believe there is any evidence of this), and received an elite Greek education in Constantinople. They must have translated into some now presumably extinct ‘Moravian’ language, and the translations were further developed by their disciples in Preslav and Okhrid under the patronage of the early Bulgarian Tsars.

  169. “Hate” is a word that has been that has been too stigmatized. When I was in elementary school, I was taught to not use it even on abstractions that had nothing whatever to do with people. (I wonder whether it is different in the East?)

    Personally, I think that negative emotions like hatred and anger and fear can lead to great good if properly utilized. For example, the important thing with anger is not to lose face or blow one’s top but it can be very motivational, if properly warranted and contained, causing a man to take action in a way that nothing else can.

    The ancients of my own people understood this, for example, at one point, when Cuchulainn seems to be losing a fight, his charioteer starts insulting him, spurring him to greater feats. We’ve lost the public use of some of these tools because multiculture is a culture of low self-esteem and kid gloves.

    I feel like “hate” should not be interpreted to mean that one wants to kill people. At the very least, I feel it would be positive to use it against certain professions.

  170. Hard to predict the long term future, IMO.

    Millions of people have already been moved to try to end ethnic conflicts several times in the past. To name a few: India at partition, Europe after WW2, the Japanese after WW2. And technology has radically improved our ability to move people and even to recompensate them or otherwise incentivize it.

    One thing is certain: What is going on now is unsustainable, and the regime seems to be so ideologically committed, it is hard to see how they can pivot.

    I really don’t think that villainizing Euros in Europe for the problems of other people is going to end well. IMO, it will lead to increasing violence against Euros and then it will rebound in a big way, once they get angry enough.

  171. Retired mafia boss, Youtuber Michael Franzese claimed that Donald Trump didn’t have connection to the mafia (beyond that all developers in New York had to pay the mafia, as the latter controlled the union).

    He says he would have known if Trump has any kind of more serious connection with the mafia.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GTv_LZJeJ84

  172. Nothing especially suspect about the Crimean referendum, given the referendums on Gibraltor’s status and the reported 17% or so who didn’t vote on the former. Assume the 17% no votes would’ve voted to stay in Ukraine and there’s a still healthy over 2/3 supporting reunification with Russia.

  173. WASPS also have significantly higher IQ than Asians 🙂

    I think Episcopalians have 112 or something, equal to Jews roughly.

    WASPS could easily control the Ivies – thing is, they don’t want to.

    It’s the old story – the moment your people achieve supremacy, they throw it away like a used rag – and make way for some other people. Metaphysically, this tells us something about the true desirability of “supremacy” – but from a distance, before you have it, it looks irresistible!

    And the process repeats itself.

    Jews are having a moment – but of course it won’t last. There are already signs that they are losing their love affair with ambition – I am certainly a case in point lol 🙂

    Who will come to the top in the US in the future? As a “group”, Asians lack the elevated IQ and, in my opinion, the drive – although they are certainly more ambition at the moment than Whites, for historical reasons.

    Plus, the high IQ segment of the American population is no longer stratified along Old World ethnic lines. They are an insanely variegated bunch – a Jew, a Chinese guy, a WASP, a regular White, a Russian, a Romanian, an Indian, a Phillipino, a Turk, etc, etc..

    In my opinion, America will likely enter a new period of “ethnogenesis” – new “ethnic groups” will arise, organically (they can’t be planned) – historically, this happens all the time. Nature loves renewal and change – breakup and unity, in an eternal cycle.

    We are always stuck in our thinking in the old categories – as if the Old World ethnic categories circa 2000 are settled in stone!

    There are no longer ancient Greeks and Romans. There are no longer ancient Hebrews. Babylonians, Scythians, Medes, Assyrians – as people, vanished. Chinese of today are probably very different than 2,000 years ago. The people’s of SEA, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam, are a melange of people.

    Where did all these peoples go? They are not truly vanished – they flowed into new peoples, making their contribution to a new unity.

    Change-in-unity is the Way of Nature. I understand the desire for people to live in an “ethnic group” – a unity of religion, culture, with generic boundaries. And that will happen again, of course – but not necessarily along Old World categories.

    For myself, I do not especially desire the eradication of Old World ethnic categories – I’m not a progressive, and don’t believe we can – or should try to – “control” human destiny.

    But as an observer of trends, I note that seemingly solid ethnic categories have always dissolved in history, only fir new ones to arise. And I note that it could give rise to exciting new possibilities – current ones, seemingly, exhausted.

    Unfortunately, I won’t be alive to see the new “synthesis” that will arise after the current “breakdown” – perhaps, I will see it’s beginnings.

    And Ages of Breakdown, however necessary for renewal and however much the Way of Nature, always suck to live through for the individual 🙂

    But as it’s been said, you can’t choose the time you were born – only how best to live your life within that time.

  174. I understand, you’re regressing back in time to when the whole earth spoke in the one indivisible Church Slavonic.

    The communists tried to build their own tower of Babble, by positioning the Russian language at the very top. Why not today’s Russian Empire builders? It’s not for Ukraine, though.

    The whole earth didn’t speak in one Church Slavonic. Like it or not, there remains (despite the efforts made against it) a noticeable UOC which doesn’t go along with your slants.

    Actually, the Soviet (not exclusively Russian) Communists collaborated with the svidos in formulating the modern Ukrainian alphabet. Prior to the USSR, Russian was the most commonly utilized language on the territory which said entity comprised. Hence, the reasoning for making it the primary language there, with other languages used in the given republic where it was popular enough.

    You’re the one with the hangup on language use. BTW, the primarily Russian based KHL uses the English alphabet on the player’s names on the back of their jerseys.

    https://www.google.com/search?q=khl&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-1NizhfryAhUGh-AKHXkHCioQ_AUoAnoECAEQBA&biw=1024&bih=643

    D0ne for marketing purposes relative to a certain global reality. So, there’s no great hangup to favor Russian language use in such an overly domineering way.

  175. Thanks, that was quite amusing. And, though I am not a Pinkertonian, surely an interesting datapoint in the evolution of our treatment of cats.

    What was that thing they used to do to cats in the Middle Ages, where they propelled them into the air with a blanket? I forget, but I can remember other things. I think the Spanish used to tie a criminal in a barrel, seal it with a cat inside and dump it at sea.

    And almost into recent memory, people used to drown kittens to control the cat population. I think it was even memorialized in one or two cartoons, where they escape the bag. (BTW, I have always been amused how farm experience made it’s way into old cartoons, for example with turkeys dodging the axe.)

    But this stadium thing is a real inversion of the tossing a cat up thing, before a crowd.

  176. There’s no such thing as an Ukrainian language. There’s no Russian either. There’s an Ukrainian dialectal focal point, but every Slavic “language” from Sorbian to Russian is just a point in a big slop that melts into one another.

    One could reasonably re-standardize all of them into one language that would be more or less understandable to all of them, a North Slavic Mandarin so to speak.

    Sadly, mutual butthurt prevents this – therefore this objective improvement upon the world is unlikely to happen soon.

    South Slavs are the same. So are the Western Romance languages.

  177. Another thing about reading Robert E. Howard:

    Really makes me wish that Egyptians were more interesting. Had 5,000 year old, evil sorcerers trying to resuscitate the Old Kingdom, and 10,000 year old vampresses, lurking in underground temples, guarded by giant anacondas. Had magical jewels that can annihilate armies, with spells. But, they are really boring, get destroyed by Israel, and rattled by Ethiopia and don’t even have any cultural continuity with the Ptolemies, let alone the pyramid-builders.

    Anyway, I don’t mean to be mean, but my point is that Egyptians should consider making some Stygia themepark, wherein they pretend to be the things they aren’t, for the sake of tourists. And, perhaps, Europe could even follow suit, with some themepark of Steppe barbarians, in contravention to all the poz.

  178. One of the things I am discovering on this trip is the importance of lingering – of staying in one region for a prolonged period of time.

    The longer you stay in a single place, the more it’s moods and atmosphere, unique to it, seep into your bones and your soul, as it were.

    Each place is in a sense a Mystery – it has a “spirit of place” that is totally unique to it and that begins to subtly affect your moods and state of mind, your emotional state and thoughts, the more you stay in it. I believe the Greeks called this “genius loci”.

    Sadly, since this is intangible, this idea has fallen out of our modern vocabulary – and an immense loss of dimension and inner richness went with it!

    On my way to Wyoming, I stopped at a random rest stop in Minnesota for a few hours. I woke up in the morning to fog and cold, and a dark forest at the edge. On the surface, it did not “look” different than New York – it was a normal rest stop. But it suggested wolves and snow, and northern mists – it had an indefinable “spirit” that hit me hard in the morning.

    We modern can only relate to landscape in crude and obvious – it is scenic, beautiful, picturesque. This is all good and important – but how limited! We need to restore an inner dimension to how we relate to landscape.

    There are places in the woods and mountains that I suddenly come across and think – this place is “holy”. I have no idea why! But there is some spirit there – and I am willing to bet it was a holy grove or campsite for the Indians.

    I am now lingering in the Canyonlands of Utah – day upon day in the same place. Vast canyons and towers of rock presided over by a mountain range that reaches almost to 14,000 feet.

    The scale of the place is mind boggling – but I don’t want to focus on that. The hot midday silences, the red earth, the gnarled and ancient dwarf pines, the rocks, have a message as powerful as the grand views.

    Just linger – stay for awhile! And let the landscape speak to you.

    And I wonder what role this Mystery of landscape plays in “ethnogenesis”?

    A “nation” is a unique entity that is organic – it cannot be planned or produced by thinking and controlling, words and science. Too much thinking destroys nations – too much abstraction destroys the unique and replaces it with the “universal”.

  179. India has always been very cucked, it is a wonder that worm Gandhi is still revered, not even one-hundredth of the man Jinnah was.

    No politicians will think more than 5 years ahead of course.

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

  180. This was negatively surprising for me – the new looking apartment buildings that are filling the US, are typically made with wood above only one concrete level.

    And I naively when I saw those buildings was thinking “Americans are finally constructing normal buildings”.

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

    The motive the video provides is the legal framework that only allowed a building for individual family buildings, instead of multi level towers – although eventual motivation is seen as the low cost of the wood technology.

  181. I do partly agree with you. Hard for me to see how different European ethnicities can continue in their present form. Most of the Euros on here seem to be mixes of various people, even though they are not Amerimutts.

    Short of FTL travel and each ethnicity being given their own planet, it is hard to see how it could continue. Besides, some categories (ex: French or Italian) seem more artificial than some of the new ones that could be created. Not that I want it to happen, but I think it will happen. Even Japanese and Koreans and perhaps Chinese may be forced to fuse and see themselves as one people one day.

    Though I don’t think that there will be a single, big melding of races, like in the Dominican Republic. I’m not sure that such a thing is even happening in most of Latin America.

    Though, I think any true ethnogenesis would require an assertive cultural identity first, and such things seem to be in short supply for the moment.

  182. Architecture follows philosophy – a culture whose main philosophy is scientific abstraction will produce ugly buildings by intention.

    The ugly buildings of the 20th century were not merely the result of neglecting beauty – not merely a side effects

    They were the result of a philosophy that wanted to show that things like “beauty”, emotion, passion, were part of humanity’s past. “Perfected” beings dispensed with such things.

    Many of the constructions of the 20th century were ugly and soulless in n a shocking way – especially the “brutalism” aesthetic.

    This new architecture that is being built is noteworthy for being merely “meh” – not offensively ugly. This is a noteworthy advance – or at least, a softening of the old attitude, and a step in line with my thesis that the next step for technology is to integrate into a human-centred framework.

    If we want actual charm and beauty – what a 16th century Italian peasant might take for granted – we have far to advance.

    Incidentally, one of things that creates charm and beauty is time, as well as the organic character humans living, working, and trading in a neighborhood give it. An organic order that, to the rational mind, appears like a touch of chaos – magnificent chaos.

    For instance, Bangkok is one of the – formally – ugliest cities on the planet – unless it be Tokyo. Yet Bangkok, along with Tokyo, is one of the most fascinating and compelling cities on the planet.

    Why? Because one, both cities look somewhat dilapidated and old – especially Bangkok. Age is charm. Two, both cities are an organic jumble – an absolute mess from the pov of rational planning.

    Tokyo with it’s narrow and winding alleys with their izakayas and small restaurants, brightly lit signs, and sheer density of stores, bars, restaurants, and signs – a delightful organic chaos, disorganized and overwhelming.

    Incidentally, a great TV show that showcases the charm and magic of Tokyo is Midnight Diner, on Netflix.

    Bangkok with it’s gleaming air conditioned modern malls and towers fronted by an endless array of medieval food carts selling every kind of food under the sun, and markets selling everything. (The true Blade Runner city is Bangkok, not Seoul.)

    And BTW, is it not time to admit that what Haussman did to Paris was an absolute crime? Who prefers the soulless Grands Boulevards to the medieval density of Old Paris? London is the more interesting – because more fantastic – city. Who would not rather live in a city built by elves than a “modern” city?

    So for truly charming and beautiful architecture to be built again in the West and America we must become comfortable with the organic once again – with the wild chaos of life, as opposed to the dull, clean abstraction of the rational mind.

  183. https://twitter.com/YungBhujang/status/1436908486495977473?s=20

    https://twitter.com/senghmishima/status/1437083166745923585?s=20

    https://www.army.mod.uk/news-and-events/news/2021/09/saragarhi-day-2021-commemoration/

    Attitude Towards Muslims

    Smite Turks with immense vigour. A Singh who obeys the Rahit does not bow when he meets a Turk. Never serve Turks, never greet a Turk, never trust Turks.

    Serve only the Khalsa. Avoid Muslim khuttha meat.
    By fighting them face to face the Muslims will be defeated. Remain ever alert against the Turks.
    A Turk should be neither accepted as a master nor treated with deference.

    Keep Muslims away from your cooking-square when preparing for a langar. Muslims are polluted.

    Attitude Towards Hindus

    A Singh protects cows and Brahmans.

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  184. https://twitter.com/moomjamma/status/1108411876118011904?s=20

    Nobody cares about Jinnah or Sullahs, Goras or Christcucks||

    https://youtu.be/BE5woe00wU8

    Tyrants are born everyday, yet they find their end||
    Singhs die everyday, yet are without end||

    The tribe has taken many wounds||
    More bleed before the previous have filled in||

    The mounds (Kurgan) to Martyrs gather crowds everyday|
    Yet, people do not even spit on a sinner’s grave||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  185. Yeah, it’s very hard to predict exactly how this ethnogenesis will occur – and to some extent I think it will occur in Asia too.

    There are some YouTubers I like to watch, of Europeans, mixed races, and other races living in Japan. One such features an English guy, White as snow, a half Japanese/White Australian guy, and a Thai guy who grew up in Britain. So there will likely be a certain amount of foreign genetic infusion into Japan in the next century or so.

    But while the dim beginnings of such processes can just about be discerned, we still have far to go in the Age of Breakdown.

    I think a necessary precondition for ethnogenesis to occur is for science and abstract thinking to lose some of it’s prestige – not to disappear, obviously, simply no longer be an Idol of The Age.

    And with science stagnating, and the mentality of would be science promoters becoming intolerant of genuine free thought and eccentricity, and wanting to enforce a rigid orthodoxy and persecute “heretics” (partially visible on this blog and highly visible in society at large), science will become less able to produce breakthroughs and thus fall in prestige.

    Also, we as a society have chosen bureaucracy – safety – over radical originality. Another grim sign for science – and a sign of exhaustion.

    With a rehabilitation of “organic” thinking – really, just letting the old “chaos” of Life , which has an order all it’s own, back in – ethnogenesis can occur again.

  186. I don’t believe that it’s actually a Ben Franklin quote, though he did say something similar about wine. In the same vein, St. Bridgit of Kildare in her eponymous prayer said:

    “I would wish a great lake of ale for the King of Kings;
    I would wish the family of heaven to be drinking it throughout life and time.
    I would wish the men of Heaven in my own house;
    I would wish vessels of peace to be given to them.
    I would wish joy to be in their drinking;
    I would wish Jesu to be here among them.
    I would wish the three Marys of great name;
    I would wish the people of heaven from every side.”

  187. THORIUM! With coolant of choice. I go for Molten Salt myself as the same technology can be used for storing renewables. Solar thermal, wind>heat.

  188. Russia has just blocked payments to offshore online gambling accounts. Bitcoin is too slow for online gambling, the thrill won’t wait. In pratical terms this means Ethereum will be a substitute for cash.

  189. As almost no early Khavlinsk skeletons are available this would be miraculous.

  190. One thing is certain: What is going on now is unsustainable, and the regime seems to be so ideologically committed, it is hard to see how they can pivot.

    I wonder if Globalist elites may start to have a problem with the development of a kind of scramble for territory, if it starts to look like parts of Europe can be successfully ‘flipped’ and occupied by external populations. It will bring other borders into question and open new precedents and possibilities for the export of populations; possibly starting an era of greater challenges to border and territorial stability.

    I saw Tony Blair giving a speech at the United Services Institute for the 9/11 anniversary and he kept mentioning Islamism as a threat comparable to Revolutionary Communism, said it 3 or 4 times at least, so I was wondering why a dark lord of globalism was saying that (maybe partly the fact that a lot of current far-left are dedicated open borders types). AFAIK a lesser dark lord, Michel Barnier is also trying to run for president in France with a strong anti-immigration policy.

    The heterodox liberal academic Eric Kaufmann, who tends to say some realistic things about demographic change, was also talking about a likely ‘slowing of the flow’ in the next few years in the last interview I saw.

  191. Well, that doesn’t have to do much with the fact that the piece of garbage is made out of plywood now does it?

    I myself, urbanistically, like a middle approach. I like my wide streets and ordered buildings, but not masses of identical ones taking up all the space, like American mcmansions or commieblocks. This is why our approach to mass construction was better – every block was built differently. Sure, it’s the same “style” roughly speaking, but every part is a bit different.

    Of course, make all streets conform to the terrain – this will also add some “curviness” to most streets (unless where you’re building is utterly flat, but even then there are rivers and swamps and such).

    But messy, narrow-streeted “improvized” cities like Bangkok and Tokyo? They’re slow, they’re inefficient, with too much compromise solutions. Like a heart of a fat fuck with too many bypasses. Both the city and the fatty at that point have only 1 purpose – act as kindling.

  192. Well, that doesn’t have to do much with the fact that the piece of garbage is made out of plywood now does it?

    Oh, actually I don’t mind that too much. Asian cities traditionally built in perishable wood. It creates a good and salubrious sense of “impermanence” that we could dearly use.

    I half suspect “property” became such a serious thing because our buildings are so solid and “respectable”, built of stone and brick, and last centuries.

    I look at the housing prices in NYC, and I think how absurd it all is. No one needs these solid palaces of brick and stone, steel and glass – such “serious” and lasting dwelling quarters for a race of creatures who lives but a few years. I don’t even think anyone really enjoys these impersonal palaces.

    How much better to tear all that down and build small buildings from some perishable material – perhaps rebuild every few decades the whole city! It would be a city of mystery and constant renewal, human-scaled and organic, satisfying to the senses and mind.

    Or better yet, a city of tents 🙂 We can live like Bedouin lol!

    Only “monumental” architecture, the King’s palace and the main temples, should be “solid”. Although the oldest Shinto shrine in Japan is built if wood and torn down and rebuilt every few decades.

    But messy, narrow-streeted “improvized” cities like Bangkok and Tokyo? They’re slow, they’re inefficient, with too much compromise solutions. Like a heart of a fat fuck with too many bypasses. Both the city and the fatty at that point have only 1 purpose – act as kindling

    .

    Ok, but have you been to these cities? And not just passing through? They may be inefficient, but they are exhilarating and fun!

    They are wonderfully mysterious – go for a walk, you’ll likely discover some new bar, store, coffee shop, etc, that you never noticed before, that oozes character.

    More than that, they produce a fun, chaotic, “organic” vibe – crowds of people enjoying themselves – that is inherently pleasing to human senses and eyes.

    You want to spend time there, just milling about – watch YouTube videos of Tokyo neighborhoods at night, crowds of peaceful people enjoying themselves just milling about, doing nothing much of anything – just chilling, in the best way, in this human, alive, chaotic neighborhood.

    That’s why in those old Italian cities with similar vibes, like Naples, people could sit in cafes all day soaking in the vibes – Italians coined the wonderful phrase “dolce far niente”. Naples is known as the dirtiest and most inefficient of cities – but the one people fall in love with 🙂

    The sweetness of doing nothing sadly is incomprehensible in a typical American city – a shiny new building with perhaps a Starbucks out front, hanging out all day, watching the tiny trickle of people passing by?

    American cities are designed to make you feel vaguely restless and uncomfortable, with a vague sense of menace from the tall, impersonal buildings and empty streets. You feel you had better be accomplishing something, or something bad will happen. (Not all American cities – some are better than others, or have areas that are).

    But a good city ought to be mysterious and “organic”, chaotic and a bit wild – a piece of “nature”.

    But people may differ, and your desire for greater efficiency is valid if that’s what you value – there can be a range, from.very “romantic” cities to more functional ones. But the current philosophy of architecture isn’t good on any level.

    Of course, make all streets conform to the terrain

    Yes – this is essential! Follow the natural contours.

  193. Biden’s tone (like Hannity’s) is like that of a father scolding his teenage son who has just wrecked the family car. This mean tone of reprimand is magnified by his squinting eyes. Note to Biden handlers: Perhaps a larger Teleprompter could be constructed so as to eliminate the squinting. Of course, this would mean that other administration spokesmen would also have to use that large Teleprompter.
    This is no trivial matter; that mean squinty appearance could be misinterpreted by Russia or China in a crisis and result in the end of the world.

  194. This was on YouTube. A video by “Dan Davis Author.” Just discovered him myself, and haven’t watched most of his stuff, nor read his book. But he seems quite knowledgeable about Euro prehistory. I would recommend him.

    There was one picture to illustrate it. N of one, but certainly visually compelling. Afraid I cannot link to the video as I can’t recall the title and have not preserved the history.

  195. One could reasonably re-standardize all of them into one language

    If you were to standardize all the non-Balkan Slavic languages from Sorbian to Polish to Ukrainian to Russian ” that would be more or less understandable to all of them”, you would end up with something resembling Ukrainian.

  196. Thanks. Durng Nixon’s final days when he looked unstable, Schlesinger quietly put the word out to military leaders that a nuclear launch order should be verified by Schlesinger or Kissinger. I would like to see the one-man-launch rule that governs the White House be modified now, but above-boards.
    A pretext could be that the Afghanistan situation showed that the world of military intelligence has now gotten so fiendishly complicated that no one man can handle it alone. Golly gee, it’s like putting socks on an octopus, there’s nothing wrong with Biden, it’s that the world has changed.

  197. Yellowface Anon says

    Taoist perspective makes for clarity and dispels racial/ethnic illusions. There has never been a pure race but shifting categories applied to ethnicies that have been formed thru long processes of diffusion and concentration of ethnic elements. So there is no value to pursue racial purity for racial purity’s sake, or contesting which way of racial purism leads to superior phenotypes or IQ. But however, from a more Confucian angle, what is most important is cultural identity – it makes as much an European nation as Africans and Asians, generally speaking. The diffusion of culture and miscegenation happened only in the New World and India, where multiple “races” are merged under a common cultural framework.

    So what is needed is simply avoiding brainless measures, like enforced miscegenation (what wokists can propose) – any measures to definitely “purify” a place is something of a last resort anywhere. It’s only valid for America, where race has been treated as one of central political subjects.

  198. Crimean society hasn’t changed with regards to human rights, no racial crimes are being committed, and the choice of language, religion, business, freedoms have not been altered. And I hope it stays this way.

    If what you say is true, how is it that today there are no active Ukrainian churches nor schools in Crimea, where at one time there were? I think that you’re probably a good intentioned person, who is perfectly satisfied living in a Russian cultural milieu, that is certainly prevalent in Crimea today, and just doesn’t know about the persecution of remaining Ukrainians living in Crimea. You certainly wouldn’t be exposed to this type of information watching officially sanctioned Crimean TV, newspapers or radio. The last Crimean Ukrainian language newspaper was closed about a year ago. I’m not sure how your access capabilities are in Crimea (probably not very hampered), so if you google in “persecution of Ukrainian people and its culture in Crimea” you’ll find a lot of information that you’re obviously not aware of. Here are a couple of entries I’d recommend that you read:

    https://khpg.org/en/1504187187

    https://en.hromadske.ua/posts/exclusive-the-true-cost-of-remaining-ukrainian-in-crimea

    https://risu.ua/en/ukraine-to-impose-sanctions-on-persons-who-persecute-citizens-on-religious-grounds-in-crimea-and-donbas_n112241

  199. Architecture follows

    What is affordable for most buildings, is determined by the building technology of the time – outside of some displaycase architecture.

    I’m sure Bezos or Bill Gates today you could fund a project to recreate the construction technology of Stonehenge and Mayan pyramids, and build in this style – it will not be cheap. For most of the world’s architecture is determined by the construction technology of today, with small compromises to peoples’ aesthetic tastes.

    This is why we all have the same basic architecture in every country, whether you are in such politically and culturally divergent places as Islamic Republic of Iran or Japan or Mexico.

    Tokyo with it’s narrow and winding alley

    Yes Tokyo is used a lot like a traditional Japanese city.

    But the architecture of the buildings are mostly the same square blocks you can see since the second half of the 20th century constructed from New York to Peking.

    Japanese cultural divergence (including in the city planning) is shown more in the way they are using these buildings.

    In Japan among modern square office buildings, there can still be an atmosphere of the old traditional Japan.

    Japan also shows that architecture can be overrated, at least in night when you can’t see so much – at night they can recreate an illusion of the traditional Japanese atmosphere, among boring modern square buildings.

    Haussman did to Paris was an absolute crime?

    More of the crime in Paris is the flooding of the city with vast numbers of automobiles and highways to hold them from the 1950s. This is shown a lot by Jacques Tati.

    Who prefers the soulless Grands Boulevards to the medieval density of Old Paris? London is the more interesting –

    I think most of the French would agree that from the tourist, literary and historians’ perspective, the demolishment of old Paris was a tragedy.

    But Haussman’s construction had partly a counter-revolutionary goal, as well as an imperialist one (the psychological impression of impersonal power by the authorities).

    Despite these perhaps unpleasant motivations (counter-revolution, inhuman displays of imperialist power), Paris has a beautiful architecture and city plan, with its cold uniformity, impersonal elegance, monumentalist display of imperial power, and demonstration of modern engineering and organization.

    There has been the great historical loss from the destruction of the old Paris. But there has been now also enough intervening time that the new Paris has now developed historical “charm”.

    I think the historical epoch of Paris that we most relate to nowadays, is more 1950s Paris (with the postwar American influence), than the 19th century Paris – because this former is the one we know from the cinema.

    London is the more interesting – because more fantastic

    London was attacked a lot by bombs in the Second World War. And then later there has much disruption of the historical texture by the introduction of highways and overpasses.

    I agree that it is still a wonderful, historical atmosphere city. Many of the beautiful areas were only constructed in the 19th century though.

    Some of these areas are not older than Haussmann’s Paris For example, this is all imperialist architecture from the final third of the 19th century. It has even terrible acoustics. But it’s surely one of the most beautiful concert halls in the world.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xv_gsGLl404

  200. There was on Youtube an informative video about the wooden houses of American.

    At 5:30 in the video they also claim that houses in Japan are even less well constructed than in America (I don’t believe this is true, as modern Japanese seem to use more stoned construction).

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

    Tokyo? They’re slow, they’re inefficient,

    Japanese make it operate efficiently though, because of their excellent public transport systems.

  201. Actually, a wood based architecture can last a very very long time. There are timber buildings in both Europe and Japan approaching 1000 years old, with several hundred being quite the norm.

    The real idiocy lies in our profligate use of extremely energy dense materials like steel and concrete for buildings only expected to have decades of useful life. We then tear it all down and build another wasteful and ugly edifice.

    Unfortunately, we’re wasting so much time and energy building architectural crap that we can’t be bothered to building anything enduring or beautiful. After all, all the great architecture of the past was built at a time when there was no electricity, hydraulics, or CAD programs. One would think that we would use our recent god-like powers of manufacturing to create stunning beauty, but alas no.

    It seems to me a real mark of our supposed modern advancement that perhaps our most durable legacy will be the massive amounts of trash in the landfills. In contrast, the Roman aquaducts will likely be standing long after New York City has crumbled to dust.

  202. Daniel Chieh says

    Hello “Sam Coulton,” I see you have created a new troll account for your unsourced rambles.

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/russia-fertility-trends/#comment-3591292

  203. “Peeps” and it’s not even Easter yet? What next, smoked kangaroo sticks: there’s “nothing wrong with Biden” indeed!

    https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0279/6359/products/kangaroo-exotic-jerky_483d53f2-ea3f-4298-b04a-dfe71dd09235.jpg?v=1583851920

  204. If what you say is true, how is it that today there are no active Ukrainian churches nor schools in Crimea, where at one time there were?

    Because in Crimea, the population does not speak Ukrainian and has never spoken Ukrainian. Under Ukraine, “Ukrainian churches and schools” were forcibly imposed when the Ukrainian rule ended – they instantly disappeared.

  205. What is affordable for most buildings, is determined by the building technology of the time

    This strange idea is planted by “modern architects” to justify the ugliness of their creations

    The project of the National Library in Kazan. It is a pity that the authorities did not have the courage to implement this eclecticism

    http://svetsky.ru/assets/uploads/2902/dgfs.jpg

    http://nik-rech.narod.ru/album_vzgljad/image/510_20/l_national_liarary_11.jpg

    http://nik-rech.narod.ru/album_vzgljad/image/510_20/l_national_liarary_06.jpg

    http://nik-rech.narod.ru/album_vzgljad/image/510_20/l_national_liarary_04.jpg

    http://nik-rech.narod.ru/album_vzgljad/image/510_20/l_national_liarary_12.jpg

    http://nik-rech.narod.ru/album_vzgljad/image/510_20/l_national_liarary_18.jpg

  206. Well, you are right to some extent about me not seeing everything that goes on here. but during the time that Crimea was Ukrainian controlled, everybody I listened and I asked friends – what language are they speaking { when I didn’t hear it before} it was Tatar, Azerbaijani, a little Ukrainian and when tourist season was in full swing – many others. Now keep in mind that all business was done in Russian, so that was the big deciding factor for which lang. is spoken. Alaska is the only place I know that uses Russian, Eskimo, and English in some government forms etc. in the West. I spent my adulthood there.

    My instinct tells me that Ukrainian businesses in Crimea are being treated the same as Russian businesses are being treated in Ukraine – Russia always uses the tit for tat response. If you think that a Ukrainian person has it hard in Crimea – You should be an American – I get it from both sides since I’m not allowed in Ukraine anymore and what Washington does to Russia and the rest of the world – isn’t good for any American living abroad. I retired in Ukraine when it was a laid back , few rules and live let live atmosphere – that thrill is Gone. Mainly because of the Western Empire’s quest to destroy Russia again , so unfortunately Kiev has been bought off and has become the pit bull for Washington, Tel Aviv, Brussels and the rest of the whores. Crimea has a completely set of new rules – Russian – and some are good and some aren’t , but Crimea has been under attack from Ukraine and the west and this has been proven. The 10 BioLabs in Ukraine have me spooked – a little.

    My friends here that do travel to Ukraine , have Ukie passports and a set of Ukie license plates to put on their cars . Do they still love Ukraine ? Of course , but they are not blind , they know the score, so they work around the negative aspects and have to brush up on their language. lol

  207. I’m going thru the sites you have given me to read – thanks . I see some parts that were true before but have been changed in due time . Their was some push back and legit concerns from Crimean people before and just after the vote. Patriarch Kirill should have addressed all the religious issues, whether he did or not, was probably kept in the ” family”.

    Ukraine stopped all pension checks for those in Crimea and I believe Donbas – that was 6 years ago and billions are owed. Russia picked up the ball and gave the Pensioners the same money they lost and still have that 100 bucks a month from Russia. Much of Crimea is booming but the Ukraine economy for many is still here – too many people still only making 3-400 a month. The influx of a few hundred thousand more people has been good and bad , but we have to remember that 80% of every road, sidestreet, sewer and water has to be rebuilt , along with schools, hospitals, offices, etc. That’s creating jobs but there is never an easy answer when it comes rebuilding an economy and state the size of Vermont. Spacibo

  208. “Russian American Community”

    Re: Below Tweet

    More accurately, put Slava Malamud is part of a Russian speaking former Soviet community, which includes non-Russians with a noticeable disdain for Russia and Russians. In his case, he’s of a Jewish background, with roots in the former Moldavian SSR. On the matter of identity, he flirts a bit, albeit with a clear preference.

    https://www.unz.com/akarlin/slava-malamud-ethnostate-for-me-not-for-thee/

    In the US, there’re Jews and non-Jews with former USSR roots, who oppose the negatively inaccurate anti-Russian slants out there. These individuals are continuously underrepresented in US mass media, body politic and much of the academic establishment.

    The below sports buff hasn’t tweeted anything about Medvedev’s impressive US Open victory. At the Tokyo Olympics, Medvedev pointedly thrashed a Western journo, who presented a propagandistic question, concerning the discriminatory “ROC” designation accorded to all Russian athletes – something which was fortunately absent at the US Open.

    Had Medvedev lost his last match, along with poor sportsmanship, it wouldn’t surprise to see Slava Malamud tweet about such, with a collective caricaturing of Russians.

    https://twitter.com/SlavaMalamud/status/1436875064331354114

  209. The Big Red Scary says

    I don’t remember if I posted this before, concerning my impressions of my visit to Crimea early this year:

    General observations

    Under Russian rule, Crimea is divided into two administrative units, the Republic of Crimea, and the City of Sevastopol. The official languages of the Republic of Crimea are Russian, Ukrainian, and Tatar. Everyone, including the Tatars, speaks Russian with a standard accent, as opposed to people from, say, Kharkоv, who speak with a noticeable southern accent. You see a fair number of mosques as you travel through the countryside (Tatars seem to live mostly inland, not on the seaside), and you meet Tatars selling vegetables and street food.

    Both villages and cities are fairly tidy, and very friendly, by Russian standards (which are not very high). Another Russified American commenter here told me that he visited Crimea 15 years ago and said it was a ‘Sovok shithole’, so it must have improved a lot at some point. Based upon youtube before-and-after videos, it seems most of the improvement is rather recent. In terms of infrastructure, the obvious recent improvements are a new airport in Simferopol, the bridge over the Kerch straight, and road improvements. Being cut off from Ukrainian water and electricity is of course a deterioration, but for now, the problems are being solved and you don’t notice the problem in daily life.

    I saw one police car, no police men on the street, and no soldiers or military vehicles the entire time we were there, which surprised me, since even in a small Moscow region village, you will see a police car roll through once or twice a day. Insofar as their is resentment concerning the change in management, it must be rather tame. Presumably the unhappiest people left. Compare this to Israel, let alone the West Bank or Gaza.

    We were in Feodosiya for Victory Day. Fun and festive. I’m told it was more subdued than usual, because of epidemic restrictions, but you could hardly tell. In principle you are supposed to put on a mask when entering a shop, but people in Crimea are much more relaxed about this than in Moscow region.

    Summaries of opinions that I encountered

    1) Handyman, about 60 years old, reared in Russia, lived for 30 years in south Ukraine, where he reared his own family and became a Ukrainian citizen, now trying to regain his Russian citizenship so that he can legally own the Crimean land, near Sudak, that he bought in 2013. He’s generally happy about the change in management, since he finds the new Ukrainian government unfriendly to Russians, but thinks Crimea is worse off economically, because they no longer get Ukrainian tourists, and Russian tourists prefer to vacation in the Mediterranean, since that is more high status.

    2) Local private car rental man, about 40 years old, grew up in small Crimean seaside city between Feodosiya and Sudak. Curious about why we moved back to Russia from abroad (I’m asked this typically once a day). He said his classmate is moving back from Denmark, because he can’t stand the homosexual propaganda in Danish schools.

    3) Neighbour of handyman, about 60 years old, originally from Donetsk. Thinks homosexuals are just dandy, would prefer to remain in Ukraine, wants to be part of the EU. Thinks I’m mad for moving to Russia.

    4) Lord of guesthouse, about 40, grew up in same small Crimean seaside city, friend of car rental man. Half Russian, half Orthodox-X-minority. Very cheerful, helpful, prosperous. Beautiful houses and garden built on hillside, with his father (the minority) and brother. Change of management has been bad for them financially. The kind of Russians who holiday in Crimea are less willing to pay European prices. Russians from Moscow and St. Petersburg make fine guests. They are ‘European’. He doesn’t like non-European people from the ethnic republics (he mentioned Chuvashia and Mordovia, in particular), who are uncultured, drink too much, listen to loud music. He thinks Ukrainian law and taxes are preferable to Russian. He didn’t bring up homosexuals.

    5) Taxi driver from seaside city back to Simferopol airport, friend of car rental man. The new management is good. Transition was smooth. Paperwork was not too onerous. Taxes are higher, it is true, and the vodka isn’t as tasty, but the khokhols are nuts and want to kill us.

  210. Alexandra Trusova, free program Test Skates 2021. Alexandra performed 5 quadruple jumps. Except Trusova only 2-time Olympic champion Yuzuru Hanyu and 3-time world champion Nathan Chen are capable of this – but this is men’s figure skating

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdsIpSbQJdo&ab_channel=%D0%9F%D0%B5%D1%80%D0%B2%D1%8B%D0%B9%D0%BA%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0%D0%BB

    Trusova seems to be the only figure skater in the history of women’s skating who technically skates at the level of men’s champions

    https://static.1tv.ru/uploads/video/material/splash/2021/09/12/681714/big/681714_big_131eccaee6.jpg

  211. There were (unless they were driven out) enough of some small percentage of people in Crimea to support a small number of Ukrainian schools and churches. If there are zero now, this reflects a political decision rather than lack of a market.

  212. There were (unless they were driven out) enough of some small percentage of people in Crimea to support a small number of Ukrainian schools and churches.

    The Ukrainian press complains about the oppression of the Ukrainian language in Crimea

    https://korrespondent.net/ukraine/3951600-v-krymu-ostalas-tolko-odna-ukraynskaia-shkola
    In 2017-2018, not a single higher and secondary educational institution of the Crimea registered the Ukrainian language as a subject in the methodological programs. … the monitoring study compared the indicators for the 2014-2015 and 2017-2018 academic years. So, four years earlier, there were 22 schools with the Ukrainian language of instruction on the peninsula. They had 894 students.”

    This whole topic(about the “oppression” of the Ukrainian language in the Crimea, despite the fact that the Ukrainian language has never been used in the Crimea) this is an exclusively export product, for consumption in Western countries.

    Of course, any sects and organizations subordinate to Kiev in the Crimea will have the status of “non grata”. But this has nothing to do with the language

  213. Oh, but such things can also be produced in a planned manner – if architects and urbanists simply went out to see where they plan what to build – a little alley here, a little alcove there, a spot for a small cafe there…

    This requires them to not think in exclusively money terms, though.

    Plus, a city like Naples is still rather planned, at leas the oldest part – might be by an older standard, but it still follows an orthogonal street grid. But they were wise enough to add little extras.

    That’s a skill that we seem to reject nowadays.

    The trick is to allow just a small amount of chaos.

    If I designed a city? Think wide boulevards, but they’re not the main thing – they’re glorified service roads. But if you were to walk though a passage or alley in or between the gargantuan buildings on the boulevard, you’re suddenly in a whole different dimension – a quaint, “intriguing” place.

    It might be easiest to accomplish by simply laying out a basic street plan (including pedestrian paths, alleys, etc), then simply allowing people to build whatever the hell they want (to an extent) in between

    Which is really how all these cities came to be, except they were built on medieval road width standards – which no longer cut it – but they can be converted to walk/bike paths

  214. I’d say something more like Belarusian, or Rusyn

  215. Yes, and that is my biggest pet peeve of modernity.

    We have technology which would make any Roman cum buckets, and we waste it by making everything deliberately as bland as possible.

    I blame the nordo-japonic lobby within the Grand Autistocratic elite.

  216. Those are closest to the Ukrainian language.

  217. Yellowface Anon says
  218. Yellowface Anon says
  219. Yet it’s not really just a top down trend. I don’t know how many times I hear people talk about a building project saying, “It only needs to last 20 years till I’m gone!”, as an excuse for shoddy construction (aka, the norm) in something like a pole barn.

    Contrast this with the massive 3′ thick walls of a Pennsylvania barn from the mid 1800’s. That farmer was building so that his great grand-children wouldn’t have to, while the average modern figures the next guy can take his life works to the landfill.

    There is a lot of cultural baggage (or anti-cultural baggage as the case may be) to unpack there, but I think it is directly tied to our modern system of consumption. In our minds we are no longer part of a continuum, but only an atomized individual who consumes, not builds.

    I think it’s safe to say that our current “normal” mindset would be considered a sociopathic aberration in any other culture or time.

  220. Supposedly, some of the Ainu-derived pop in Japan have formed something called the Ainu Party with the aim of promoting multiculturalism in Japan.

    Not sure how much to read into it, what with the language barrier, and foreign globalists watering at the mouth to transform Japan. And the Ainu being basically non-existant. But they do seem to have some platform about allowing multicult schools.

    Anyway, it does make me think of Canada that land of hyper-multiculturalism, where Amerinds have been elevated to crazy heights, being called First Nations (though really tribes), and being given their own province, though an Artic Wasteland.

    Sometimes, I suspect that the Sami are similarly elevated, even though they were just some migratory group that moved into the area.

  221. Mike_from_Russia says

    UK can be ‘Saudi Arabia of wind power’ – PM (in 24 September 2020)
    https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54285497

    Chronicles of the European energy apocalypse: the price of electricity in the UK is 1,750 pounds [~$2,400] per MWh
    https://aftershock.news/?q=node/1013510

  222. the Ukrainian language has never been used in the Crimea

    Nonsense. Ukrainians also settled in Crimea and some small number of them speak Ukrainian.

    In the 2012 parliamentary election a little over 1% of the Crimean population (representing 20,000 people) voted for the Ukrainian nationalist Svoboda Party and another 20% (total – representing about 200,000 people) voted for the Fatherland and Udar parties. So there is a market for some small number of Ukrainian schools and churches, it wouldn’t be zero.

    Of course, if most people un Crimea don’t want any Ukrainian schools in their territory, this is their right. As it is the right of the people of Ukraine not to have any Russian language secondary schools in their country if the majority doesn’t want it.

    Of course, any sects and organizations subordinate to Kiev in the Crimea will have the status of “non grata”

    Sure. Don’t you find it absurd that Ukraine still tolerates sects and organizations in its territory that are subordinate to Moscow?

  223. This whole topic(about the “oppression” of the Ukrainian language in the Crimea, despite the fact that the Ukrainian language has never been used in the Crimea) this is an exclusively export product, for consumption in Western countries.

    In 1989 Ukrainians represented the second largest ethnicity to be found within Crimea, at 625,919. Russians dominated the landscape at 1,629,542. In Russia, there’s supposed somewhere around 6 million Ukrainians (I suspect that the figure is actually much larger), and in Russia there are currently no Ukrainian language schools nor churches. I’ve brought this up here before and have been very cynically told that this is because there are no Ukrainians interested in maintaining such institutions, yet in neighboring Kazakhstan there are dozens of Ukrainian schools, churches, cultural groups etc.etc.

    I’m not about to say that every single Ukrainian in Russia has a dying desire to have a Ukrainian language school or church to go to. But none, whereas in Kazakhstan the opposite is on display?

    When you boil this all down, what you are left with is the impression that Ukrainians and Russians cannot live together amicably, unless Ukrainians submit to the most virulent forms of Russification. There’s no need for Ukraine to look back nostalgically to again become in a closer alliance with Russia, unless its interested in performing a largescale ethnocide on itself, and become Russian not Ukrainian. The writing is clearly written on the wall for all to see.

  224. Nonsense. Ukrainians also settled in Crimea and some small number of them speak Ukrainian.

    In homeopathic doses, such people (who speak Ukrainian at home) of course were and are in the Crimea. But for the sake of a homeopathic number of Ukrainian-speaking schoolchildren, to maintain a separate education system in the Ukrainian language? Schools where classes will consist of 1-2 children? This idea is too wasteful for reasons that have nothing to do with politics

    So there is a market for some small number of Ukrainian schools and churches, it wouldn’t be zero.

    I have quoted above the complaints of the Ukrainian press. “They had 894 (Ukrainian-speaking) students”. And these students are scattered all over the peninsula, and do not live in one place. In addition, the Ukrainian language in the Crimea under the rule of Ukraine gave some prospects for education and career. Now it does not give anything, so a sharp decrease in the request for the Ukrainian language among Ukrainian-speaking residents of the Crimea was inevitable

    Don’t you find it absurd that Ukraine still tolerates sects and organizations in its territory that are subordinate to Moscow?

    They don’t tolerate them. Well, or, if you want, they tolerate it, in the sense in which Alexander III tolerated the Polish language and Polish identity in Poland

  225. Yellowface Anon says

    Those are just LARPers who overwhelmingly descend from Japanese immigrants with as much Ainu blood as say, the average White “Native American” LARPer.

    Good thing Hokkaido is still Hokkaido, and not some Ezo Autonomous Do (Province). (What does Russia do with their Far East indigenous minority Republics?)

    (Samis are just as Uralic as Finns, BTW, and you can’t say it is really multicult crap)

  226. That was a really good observation. The way you showed the overall ” likes, dislikes and nonchalant s’ in Crimea today is spot on. I must agree since I definitely saw and heard similiar viewpoints. I’ll try to add –

    Crimea lost 90% of all imports from Ukraine , and those products were in tune with the local economy. The price was right ! This made a huge impact on todays prices/economy, since everything now comes from the mainland , where the economy is in tune with the prices. I have no idea how many people were displaced by this move but businesses here had to find Russian suppliers and use the ferry before that beautiful bridge was finished.

    As far as tourists were concerned , I remember the British tour ships and Viking River tours coming to Yalta , when I lived there, and I enjoyed listening to those British, German, Dutch and on occasion, an American accent on the promenade. The Ukraine tourists were in the similar economic situation as Crimeans, maybe a little better off, since we had the trains and busses running night and day from Kiev on down. Today we are almost land locked from heading North, South , West etc. or to East Europe, and no flights from Simferopol to other that Russian destinations – are pretty depressing. This ruined my retirement bucket list plan – But I just went and saw some of Russia instead and made it to SE Asia once.

    Enjoyed your post – Spacibo

  227. Daniel Chieh says

    At least both Native Americans and Ainu are less fake than aboriginals in Australia.

  228. In 1989 Ukrainians represented the second largest ethnicity to be found within Crimea,

    But these Ukrainians (with rare exceptions) did not speak Ukrainian, but had Russian as their native language. Actually, even the ancestors of these Crimean Ukrainians in most cases did not speak Ukrainian (they spoke dialects intermediate between Russian and Ukrainian).

  229. What does Russia do with their Far East indigenous minority Republics?

    As far as I know there are no such republics

  230. Yellowface Anon says

    One of the pleasant surprises from the Great Reset will be the West discovering the organic fun of living in a slum, if you end up being excluded from the digital economy (tho you might not be much better off being included too). But you have slums and all those “African” problems around the place.

  231. But these Ukrainians (with rare exceptions) did not speak Ukrainian, but had Russian as their native language.

    How do you know this to be true? Even if it is, and it probably is for a certain percentage, then it supports my overall point, and shows that Russification in Ukraine has been going on for a long time.

    Who needs it (Russification)? Certainly not Ukrainians today, especially the younger ones that represent Ukraine’s future.

  232. Mike_from_Russia says

    Until recently, we had a bunch of dialects in Russia. The southern dialects of the Russian language smoothly passed into the Ukrainian dialect without a pronounced border.

  233. Sure, you had a similar phenomena going on in the countryside of Ukraine, when stay at home Babushkas “enriched” their native Ukrainian with many loan words from Russian after watching or listening to Russian language infested airways via radio or TV – one of several methods used to propagate the ear grating “dialect” of Surzhyk.

  234. Yellowface Anon says

    Basically right. But have you ever read anything by Michael Hudson or Fred Reed? (You’ll say they are Chinese sycophants and you’ll be 1/4 right.) They can at least deflate the housing bubble and restructure their economy with their plans to get into high-end technological manufacturing and military build-up, maybe delaying their plans by 5-10 years for the fallout. (But Jack Ma can do something with his Alibaba and Alipay to stir up trouble in the meantime.)

    It’s never going to be 90’s Russia if your neocon-with-a-Trumpist-camo pal doesn’t tell your Bidenist overlords to strike China. China can survive decently if not comfortably if they accelerate autarkic plans and set up friendly trading networks. But what does the US have after the USD (“Everything”) Bubble bursts? And right now, because of those asinine Dems, you’ll have 10s of millions of renters being evicted and Blackrock foreclosing on any real estate of real value.

    (I actually pay by not being more serious at my career and I don’t earn RMB anyway.)

  235. But these Ukrainians (with rare exceptions) did not speak Ukrainian, but had Russian as their native language.

    How do you know this to be true? Even if it is, and it probably is for a certain percentage, then it supports my overall point, and shows that Russification in Ukraine has been going on for a long time.

    Crimea has never been Ukraine, so to put it mildly, it is strange to complain about the” Russification ” of Ukrainians living in Crimea

  236. Did you see that observation from Sailer that aboriginal genes for appearance may be somewhat recessive? It’s an interesting thought at least that hadn’t occurred to me before, but you can find examples of kids with supposedly a single pure Aboriginal grandparent that really look indistinguishable from other white kids.

    I grew up with an “Amerindian” girl (formally a member of a tribe) who had 3 entirely white grandparents and I doubt the fourth was 100% Amerindian. But you could still easily tell at a glance that she was a bit “ethnic”, had some nonwhite ancestry. I wonder now if that ancestry had been Australian Aboriginal, would it have been impossible to detect?

    The true Amerindians seem to mostly exist in the big reservations out West. She had links to a reservation in NY state. At one point I looked it up, and some of these NY state “reservations” are more like small suburban neighborhoods — I think there’s one or two on Long Island with fewer than 100 families, so clearly they’re going to be pretty integrated into mainstream society.

  237. In homeopathic doses, such people (who speak Ukrainian at home) of course were and are in the Crimea. But for the sake of a homeopathic number of Ukrainian-speaking schoolchildren, to maintain a separate education system in the Ukrainian language? Schools where classes will consist of 1-2 children?

    They had Ukrainian schools with at least a dozen students in a class.

    I have quoted above the complaints of the Ukrainian press. “They had 894 (Ukrainian-speaking) students”

    Your source was either mistaken or misquoted. Either way it was wildly inaccurate. The total number of classes (not students) taught
    in Ukrainian was 875:

    https://khpg.org/en/1526170617

    Approximately 6.5% of Crimean children were studying in Ukrainian. In seven schools the entire program was in Ukrainian. This is more than 894 students.

    And these students are scattered all over the peninsula, and do not live in one place

    You really believe they were evenly distributed across the peninsula?

    In addition, the Ukrainian language in the Crimea under the rule of Ukraine gave some prospects for education and career. Now it does not give anything, so a sharp decrease in the request for the Ukrainian language among Ukrainian-speaking residents of the Crimea was inevitable

    Would this drive demand down from 6.5% to zero? Not very realistic.

    Don’t you find it absurd that Ukraine still tolerates sects and organizations in its territory that are subordinate to Moscow?

    They don’t tolerate them. Well, or, if you want, they tolerate it, in the sense in which Alexander III tolerated the Polish language and Polish identity in Poland

    The UOC MP is still allowed to control some famous churches and monasteries, even in central Ukraine far from Russian ethnic settlement. How many Kiev-controlled churches are there in Russian inhabited territories? It highlights how much more tolerant Kiev is than Moscow.

  238. Mike_from_Russia says

    When I visited relatives in the Belgorod region in the 1970s, I was very surprised that I did not understand their dialect well. I had a northern pronunciation. And the dialect in the neighboring Kharkiv region was, like in Belgorod , as I understand it . Here we can also refer to the opinion of philologist Petrov that there is no obvious boundary between the dialects of the Russian and Ukrainian languages as such. (His lectures can be viewed on Dzhangirov’s YouTube channel).

  239. MMT has budget surplus/deficit dynamics and its effect on GDP growth basically correct.

    Money has stock and velocity component to it, and velocity is by far the most important. Surpluses withdraw this high velocity money out of circulation via taxes, deficits add high velocity money via government workers and contractors spending in real economy driving demand up.

    MMT calls for higher rates though, to generate higher “saver income”, which is something I disagree with. Nobody cares about savers, they are not economically important anymore – there is no shortage of savings, nobody wants savings. The interest rate on your savings account has been saying this since 2008. If anybody at all wanted savings, interest rate would be higher than 0.0001% APY lol.

    Best real world example of MMT policy in action would be Reagan/Volker administration. They exploded budget and trade deficits through the roof and hiked rates to please savers. It was bad for American industry though, and all production went overseas.

    Industry needs low interest rates and cheap credit to operate. And industry is vastly more important than savers.

    So I agree with MMT on budget policy and disagree on rates. Rates need to be low.

  240. I can’t agree with you that the beauty of our buildings are limited by our technology! We are more powerful than ever.

    It is a priority – making facades beautiful would require hiring artists, which would cost more – at least initially. After a short time, a “tradition” would emerge. A society would have to have priorities other than money to do this.

    Also, the architectural movements of the 20th century were quite candid that they wanted a new “style” consistent with the Age of Science – abstract and unembellished and inhuman.

    Finally, beauty emerges naturally from natural materials – perhaps it’s time to admit that stone, brick, and wood produce beauty whereas steel and glass do not – however striking and “modern” they look.

    Medieval Italian towns often have rather nondescript rows of stone houses, yet they are more humanly satisfying than steel and glass.

    Beauty also emerges from “organic” patterns – extremely straight lines, which modern architects strive for, do not occur in nature, which prefers the “irregular”, the round, the twisting and the winding.

    Finally, cities that are satisfying to the human mind and senses do not have an inhuman scale – they are cozy, intimate, human scale.

    As for japanese use of ugly modern architecture to create attractive, intimate, and cozy, spaces – this is very true, and shows that if only one does not make a concerted effort to “sterilize” an environment – to eliminate “organic patterns” – beauty will naturally emerge.

    Part of what makes Tokyo human and attractive is the sheer density of shops, restaurants, pubs, coffee parlors, and the density of bright neon signage, that festoons like a bright carnival an otherwise drab building. This is “organic pattern”.

    The first thing you notice coming from an Asian city to a Western city – especially an American city – is that there appears to have been an attempt to “sterilize” the environment – to impose “order” and uniformity. It is a tightly “controlled” environment, rather empty. One suffocates.

    That is because American zoning laws have been precisely designed to create a sterile environment, to “seperate” areas where people live and sell and buy – these are laws designed to drive out “organic pattern” and create a tightly controlled, sterile environment.

    In fact, all we would have to do to significantly increase the human charm of American cities is – relax control! Nature will do the rest.

    Yes, Haussman created his boulevards so that canons would have a clear line of fire – efficiency trumping beauty, always the problem.

    Paris was celebrated in it’s day because it was one of the first examples of a “modern” city – straight rational lines, broad streets, well lit without shadows, and far, far removed from the Medieval. To be fair, Paris was also a great decadent city – and all great cities should be decadent – which counterbalanced its dull modernity.

    Most people who come to Paris expecting “Old Europe” are disappointed – it resembles NYC in some respects. Is it still impressive and beautiful? Sort of. But now that we are seeing through the illusions of modernity, less so.

    I don’t think Paris is an “ideal” city anymore.

  241. Yellowface Anon says

    MMT calls for higher rates though, to generate higher “saver income”, which is something I disagree with. Nobody cares about savers, they are not economically important anymore – there is no shortage of savings, nobody wants savings. The interest rate on your savings account has been saying this since 2008. If anybody at all wanted savings, interest rate would be higher than 0.0001% APY lol.

    A load of bullsh*t from an Austrian perspective. Without savings (or capital), you go back to Stone Age. The extremely low rates have to do with terminal and systemic meddling of rates, the outcome after 50 years of fiat.

    Best real world example of MMT policy in action would be Reagan/Volker administration. They exploded budget and trade deficits through the roof and hiked rates to please savers. It was bad for American industry though, and all production went overseas.

    Industry needs low interest rates and cheap credit to operate. And industry is vastly more important than savers.

    So I agree with MMT on budget policy and disagree on rates. Rates need to be low.

    You see how MMT on high rates destructive for real industry. And the way it is going, you will never get your “perfect” scenario of MMT on low rates. The Fed is hiking rates!

    Neither Austrian Gold Standard + 100% reserve banking, nor pure digital MMT, will matter if you are talking about paradigmic changes we’re going to face. You’ll need a Marxian horizon for that, and Marxian analysis is insufficient.

  242. That is an excellent point!

    Wood can last centuries. We still have half-timbered 15th century cottages built of wood with us – and we’d have more if we hadn’t torn them down. Whereas buildings built in the 20th century often are crumbling.

    The flimsiness of traditional Japanese houses, I believe, was more than just a matter of building in wood. It was deliberate.

    More things are deliberate than we realize – it is a great fashion in the modern world to ascribe everything to the environment – to eliminate human agency. Environment is important, but not determinative.

    Dmitry pretty much is in the phase of his intellectual development where he explains everything by environment and eliminates human agency – but I have great hopes for him developing further 🙂

    One would think that we would use our recent god-like powers of manufacturing to create stunning beauty, but alas no.

    Yes! The astonishing thing is that we have the most God-like powers of any society on history, and create the most banal and ugly things in existence – across the board.

    But perhaps – the mentality one must cultivate to generate all this power is incompatible with beauty – requires one to forget about things like beauty and emotion and focus only on the abstract? Perhaps an ugly mentality will create only ugliness? Spiritual corruption will manifest in physical corruption?

    Power may come at a cost – is anything free in this world? And are we still happy paying this price?

    But I believe we will be entering a new phase – stepping back from this philosophy and integrating technology into a human framework.

  243. Your source was either mistaken or misquoted. Either way it was wildly inaccurate. The total number of classes (not students) taught
    in Ukrainian was 875:

    https://khpg.org/en/1526170617

    Funny joke
    https://iz.ru/news/570180
    “So, in Sevastopol, two out of three schools with Ukrainian classes will teach only in Russian next year.
    — We held parent-teacher conferences, where we invited parents to decide in which language they need to study. Almost all, except for 1-2 people, said that they would like their children to be taught in Russian. Since there are almost no people who want to study in Ukrainian, we will abolish Ukrainian classes from next year — ” said Irina Tikhonenko, director of school No. 8.

    As she specified, the Ukrainian language and literature will be taught optional, but it is not yet clear how many hours will be allocated for this. There is a similar picture in Kerch at school No. 9 and in Sevastopol school No. 37.

    — We are currently teaching in Russian, Ukrainian and Crimean Tatar. On Friday, April 25, there was a school-wide meeting, at which most parents asked to transfer their children to Russian classes. Therefore, starting next year, we will abandon Ukrainian classes, but we will keep the Ukrainian language as an elective, ” said Diana Risovannaya, director of school No. 37. According to her, the Crimean Tatar classes will continue to work as usual, since they have retained the necessary number of students. In the Sevastopol 5th gymnasium, they are inclined to limit themselves to individual lessons of the Ukrainian language, instead of teaching all subjects in it — but the decision has not yet been made.

    School No. 13 in Yevpatoria reported that it is too early to talk about further training programs, since they have not yet drawn up curricula, but they also complained that the number of people who want to send children to Ukrainian classes has sharply decreased. In Kerch school No. 23, they did not tell whether they were ready to preserve the Ukrainian language. Simferopol gymnasium No. 10 and school No. 29 have already faced a sharp outflow of those who want to give their children an education in Ukrainian — but there is no certainty here yet.

    — Now we are recruiting the first classes — there are very few people who want to study in Ukrainian, literally 1-2 people. Apparently, there will be no more Ukrainian classes next year — ” the 10th gymnasium told.”

    There are several hundred people who want to learn Ukrainian on the entire peninsula – what is the point of maintaining special schools for them?

  244. The UOC MP is still allowed to control some famous churches and monasteries, even in central Ukraine far from Russian ethnic settlement.

    And Alexander III “tolerated” the Catholic Church in Poland. And the Bolsheviks “tolerated” the Orthodox Church in Russia – they even allowed to control some famous churches and monasteries

  245. Here are the real problems of Ukraine:

    https://youtu.be/YhKzPxcJgLc

    General of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Sergey Krivonos during the round table “Crimea and Donbass: ways of return” stated that Kiev’s struggle for the minds and hearts of Ukrainians in these territories ended in collapse.
    “Let’s remember how many people who first left the “occupied territories”, then returned back. Why did this happen? Because the people who visited Ukraine did not find a workplace, did not find an opportunity to exist on our territory and returned there”

  246. Yes, I’m not completely opposed to planning. I sometimes express myself in overly one-sided terms because I’m opposing some other extreme, but in fact I think a little bit of everything is appropriate.

    Even the most “organic” medieval village or town had a fair amount of planning!

    The trick is to allow just a small amount of chaos.

    Yes, well said! Except, I would probably want more chaos than you 🙂

    And I don’t see anything wrong with that – there can be a range of preferences, and that’s legitimate.

    If I designed a city? Think wide boulevards, but they’re not the main thing – they’re glorified service roads. But if you were to walk though a passage or alley in or between the gargantuan buildings on the boulevard, you’re suddenly in a whole different dimension – a quaint, “intriguing” place.

    It might be easiest to accomplish by simply laying out a basic street plan (including pedestrian paths, alleys, etc), then simply allowing people to build whatever the hell they want (to an extent) in between

    This sounds great – exactly the thing! I see nothing to oppose on this.

    Perhaps wed quibble over precise details, but as an overall structure this is precisely the idea.

    You want a balance between planning and order and chaos, freedom, independence, and “organic pattern”.

    Modern cities – especially American – have erred too far on the direction if sterile control.

    Which is really how all these cities came to be,

    I think we need to start “learning from the past”, even if just in a limited fashion.

    Our modern pride tells us we can figure everything out from scratch, using our abstract minds.

    But I think we’re learning that many of the best human experiences come from allowing a place for events that are outside the control of our planning and thinking.

    Planning and thinking are necessary and great – but just as important is allowing a place for “larger than us” forces.

  247. strange idea is planted by “modern architects

    Not it’s not a strange idea of architects. Everyone who buys a building knows what they can afford, and what would cost them extra.

    Today even windows, doors, etc, are many produced in factories in China, because the shapes are so regular in every country. If you want to buy something unusual you can, but it requires a decision to pay for it (and its customized parts).

    As for “architects” – most buildings does not involve architects. They need an engineer to calculate the design, measurements, according to the building code and physics.

    The result of the modern, rapid construction method is not aesthetically attractive. However, it requires low labour intensity, and cheap, space efficient, rapid construction.

    They follow almost an algorithm (I believe the construction organizer even use a flowchart) in modern construction.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wfKA3OY7IWs

    project of the National Library in Kazan

    And in Tehran they have some “artistic” creation from an architect.

    https://unusualtraveler.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/05/IMG_7886-01-2.jpg

    But what Tehran is actually looking like is square buildings. (Architects was not involved, just the modern construction method).

    https://www.mei.edu/sites/default/files/Tehran%2520Cityscape.jpg

    Same in Tokyo.

    https://i.imgur.com/xMl7Gs7.jpg

    Same Santiago Chile.

    https://cdn.britannica.com/32/138732-050-441F3C4A/Santiago-Chile.jpg

    Even Helsinki, etc.

    https://scwcontent.affino.com/AcuCustom/Sitename/DAM/021/flats_in_Helsinki_aerial_Adobe.jpg

    It looks unattractive, but the priority of a building, for most people that buy them, are the use of the building, not its visuality

    Today it was still possible to reconstruct traditional architecture (don’t post Yoshkar-Ola, which are extremely low quality imitation) – if you want to invest billions of dollars, and begin multi-decade projects that included consultations of historians and training of craftsmen.

    Dresden New Market and cathedral has been completed this century, but they have expended billions on the projects.
    https://i.imgur.com/UK0PsmY.jpg

    In 1990s it was
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Em6CWVCJVR8

    After an amazing construction process they have built
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-n4Oo5myIhc

  248. Been trying to promote my fringe theory that coppicing was one of the essential components that gave Europe a scientific advantage. That is, the excess energy production allowed for a greater chemistry, a greater industry, a greater scientific output. (Not to mention how trees naturally concentrate important minerals, which can be pulled out of ashes.) If not entirely on a global level, at least significantly greater than many regions.

    Interestingly, tree ring analysis of charcoal used in the Great Orme mine, the largest Bronze Age copper mine, about 3500 years old, from which some estimate some 500,000 bronze axes were made, seem to suggest that coppiced alder was used extensively.

    Probably, coppicing was similarly important during the Iron Age. Based on the number of swords found, some believe that the West was already ahead during the early Iron Age.

    Anyway, it is interesting to consider that we may be a product of our forests, almost as much as our fields. With cultivation happening in both areas.

  249. In Dresden the effort has been so serious, it seems like it could be difficult to perceive what is reconstructed, rather than the authentic historical city.

    They cut all stones by hand using traditional construction methods.

    They are not modern buildings with traditional facades, as many historical reconstructions have been in other countries.

    21st century Germany can build such a city, when they invest enough resources into architecture, training of craftsmen and stone workers, and research.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l4FBsWbpbxk&t=651s

  250. Indeed they do. Very small gene pool + their phenotype is hyperspecialized to Australia.

    Most ridiculously, they are genetically closer to the Chinese and Japanese than the Japanese and Chinese are to Native Americans (!!!)

    Truly demonstrates how quick appearances can change over time

  251. Not it’s not a strange idea of architects.

    A strange idea of architects is that the exterior of the building (without alternative) must correspond to the technology of its construction. St. Isaac’s Cathedral is aesthetically no different from St. Peter’s Cathedral, but with a completely different technology.creating a dome. Based on the ideas that are preached by all sorts of architectural fags like Varlamov-St. Isaac’s Cathedral is kitsch and fake

  252. Yes, but I specifically stated not in primarily Russian-inhabited areas but in central and even western Ukraine where Russians are a small minority.

    But thank you for confirming that Russia is even more restrictive of Kiev-controlled churches than the Bolsheviks were of Orthodoxy and than Alexander III was of Polish Catholics.

  253. A load of bullsh*t from an Austrian perspective. Without savings (or capital), you go back to Stone Age. The extremely low rates have to do with terminal and systemic meddling of rates, the outcome after 50 years of fiat.

    I sympathize but we don’t live in Austrian world, and haven’t for a long time. We don’t have Gold Standard and won’t be going back to it any time soon. We live in a fiat currency world, and all fiat by definition is created out of nothing with a few kestrokes on the computer.

    The only relevant debate is who shall have the power to create money out of nothing. Under neoliberalism, its commercial banking oligarchy. Under MMT etc its the state/central bank combination. Usually the two can work together and indeed until 2008 the combination of neoliberal efficiency and state support to smooth things out looked like the winning formula. But neoliberalism exhausted itself in 2008. It is all state now.

    Obviously, in a fiat currency world you don’t need savings – you just create whatever money you need on the spot. Credit matters, savings don’t. Capital doesn’t matter either when economy operates on “just in time” production principles. You simply conjure $1 billion via a low interest loan, enter an order, factory gets built in a highly automated fashion, and you get your factory. The act of ordering a factory is the most important step. No order, no factory.

    You see how MMT on high rates destructive for real industry. And the way it is going, you will never get your “perfect” scenario of MMT on low rates. The Fed is hiking rates!

    Fed likes to talk about hiking rates, but that’s not happening. There is a reason why 10 year is sitting pretty at 1.3% even though we are supposed to be having raging 5-6% inflation, and we kinda do – lowest real yields ever. Fed couldn’t taper in 2018-2019 without crashing stock market and economy, they definitely won’t be able to do it now. Even if they try, they will have to reverse policy.

    Neither Austrian Gold Standard + 100% reserve banking, nor pure digital MMT, will matter if you are talking about paradigmic changes we’re going to face. You’ll need a Marxian horizon for that, and Marxian analysis is insufficient.

    Well, we will get a dictatorship of the proletariat LOL, except proletariat will be robots, and Politburo will be lording over the robots. Monetary policy will have limited impact on this, it will get done regardless of interest rates, i think.

  254. Oh yeah, even using the word “kitsch” (as well as “schund”) should be one of the few automatic death penalty crimes (for the purposes of purging the intelligentsia of imbeciles, subhumans, and other incredibly annoying people who in a normal society would be forced to clean septic tanks orally). Nobody but wispy bearded soyadeen use those unironically, all communists or cryptocommunists.

  255. There is Russian saying “за что боролись, на то и напоролись” (loose translation: what they fought for has befallen them).

  256. Assuming this is accurate, in normal circumstances if the number of interested parents declined, then some schools would close in order to consolidate the remaining ones into viable schools. It is simply not realistic that demand in a population that in 2012 had voted about 20% for pro-Ukrainian political parties (~ 200,000 people) and had supported 6.5% enrolment in Ukrainian classes would shrink to virtually zero.

  257. I wonder if the anti-nuclear movement was funded by Russia or if it was purely native stupidity.

  258. Christian Hungary and Christian Poland will be the biggest losers if NordStream 2 obtains permission to start up.

    No geography is taught in the US schools, and it shows. FYI, Hungary signed a 15-year contract with Gazprom. It gets and will get its natural gas via Turkish Stream (built after under intense pressure from Brussels gay and fake Christian Bulgaria shot itself in the foot by killing South Stream project). Poland will lose transit fees, just like Ukraine, thanks to suborn stupidity of its elites.

  259. In limited areas. America constructed some of the most ideal housing, that balance the contribution of beauty to public space, high population density (before the introduction of the car), with a large interior private space for the family.

    Liv Taylor’s house in New York City is an example on YouTube. This 19th century New York housing, is almost like a traditional English house.

    In the 19th century, this kind of ideal housing could still be mass produced for the bourgeoisie in countries like England and Scotland, and some cities in America.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Z76MiQv0zg

    Today? Personally, I would like to buy her house in New York, but how many years of income would that cost for an non-executive office worker?

    all we would have to do to significantly increase the human charm of American cities is – relax control!

    We can see where the zoning regulation has resulted in e.g. five-over-one housing.

    But overall too much spacing of American suburbs and lack of contribution to public space, is more result of the rise of automobile. That is, it was a combination of insufficient regulation in the area of transport.

    Relaxing control will not be any panacea in these areas of civic life.

    If you relax control, America could convert into an even more of an anti-social car jungle.

    Relaxing regulatory control in the Russian Federation has contributed to these anthills, constructed in empty fields, without developers giving to the residents adequate infrastructure.

    Relaxing civil planning control, in Cairo – within the 20th century, resulted not in some romantic medieval Arabian fantasy, but more problems of the 20th century –

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nl8JKDIyGU4

  260. I have noticed that the Wikipedia descriptions of Russian and Korean sounds are complete garbage

    A whole lot more on Wikipedia is garbage. It serves its masters well.

  261. Alexey Fanilov is such a Ukrainian sounding name:

    https://www.rt.com/russia/534685-ukraine-scrap-cyrillic-alphabet/

    Whatever the case, numerous folks with Ukrainian sounding names who’re the opposite.

    Saw a televised Ukrainian football (soccer) match where both teams had the player names on the top back of their jerseys in Ukrainian Cyrillic. As I noted earlier, the primarily Russian based KHL uses Latin in such an instance. Suspect the same is true with Russia’s top basketball and soccer leagues.

    In Serbia, there’s plenty of Latin alphabet use.

  262. Today? Personally, I would like to buy her house in New York, but how many years of income would that cost for an non-executive office worker?

    Prime real estate locale in terms of costs versus getting more luxury for less in the surrounding suburbs. Most Manhattan residents don’t have such a place. This includes folks who’re quite well off. She must still be doing well on her own and/or is getting outside support.

  263. Jinnah did India an EXTREMELY massive favor by insisting on India’s partition since that significantly reduced the scope and scale of India’s Muslim “demographic threat”. Demographically, India without Pakistan and Bangladesh will probably be in a similar situation in 2100 relative to India in 1881 with Pakistan and Bangladesh. Hindus simply can’t compete with Muslim breeding, after all! Hence the need to partition South Asia in 1947 (though it could have probably been done with A LOT less bloodshed).

  264. Off-topic, but I have several questions for you, AP:

    1. What are your thoughts on the 1947 partition of India, at least if it could have been done with much less bloodshed?

    2. What effects do you think that a White victory in the Russian Civil War would have had on the 1947 partition of India? (Directly they’re not related, but a White win in the RCW could have interesting effects on WWII, etc.)

    3. Just how much South Asian immigration, including the illegal kind, do you think that a non-Communist Russia would have gotten over the last 100 years?

    4. Similar to question #3, but for East Asians, Southeast Asians, Middle Easterners, North Africans, and Sub-Saharan Africans rather than for South Asians.

  265. Somewhat off-topic question for you: Had Russia conquered all of Novorossiya in 2014 (by sending in the Russian Army to do this) and outright annexed all of Novorossiya right afterwards (Crimea-style), just how many Russians do you think would have subsequently moved to Novorossiya? I mean in the subsequent several decades.

  266. It is simply not realistic that demand in a population that in 2012 had voted about 20% for pro-Ukrainian political parties (~ 200,000 people) and had supported 6.5% enrolment in Ukrainian classes would shrink to virtually zero.

    And what is surprising here? In Ukraine, the Ukrainian language opened the way to study at universities, official positions, etc.
    In Russia, learning the Ukrainian language is absolutely useless, and reduces the prospects of children for a normal future. So even people with pro-Ukrainian views will send children to learn Russian.

  267. Sure, but the good American neighborhoods are products of a pre-modern mentality. New England towns and villages are still some of the loveliest in the world, and integrate with the surrounding forests quite nicely.

    It is significant that today, at the height of our power, the average person cannot afford this basic level of charm and beauty – what our ancestors took for granted. It has become a “luxury” good.

    And despite your claim that we moderns – with our God like power – are merely constrained by our limited ability to produce drab and ugly buildings, whereas a medieval peasant had no such limitations, 20th century architect movements were quite explicit that they wanted to develop a new “style” fitting for the modern age of abstraction.

    But if your thesis is correct, and modernity is constrained to produce drab mess, ugliness, and banality, while pre-modern society had no such constraint – well, this is perhaps the strongest condemnation of modernity I can think. Your indictment of modernity is actually more severe than mine 🙂

    Today? Personally, I would like to buy her house in New York, but how many years of income would that cost for an non-executive office worker?

    Exactly. What a medieval peasant took for granted, the average person can no longer afford today.

    And also, would you like to buy a house in NYCs modern steel and glass high rises? Or the old historic neighborhoods?

    But of course, NYC has one of the best – and oldest – urban landscapes in America. We need to think of the country as a whole.

    Practically every old town in the French countryside is charming. Modern American towns in the country are uniformly soulless. Is this not some level of an indictment of a civilization?

    But overall too much spacing of American suburbs and lack of contribution to public space, is more result of the rise of automobile. That is, it was a combination of insufficient regulation in the area of transport.

    Relaxing control will not be any panacea in these areas of civic life.

    Automobiles are certainly an enormous part of the problem – but making cities for automobiles is part and parcel of the New Philosophy of modern architecture that arose in the 20th century. I am in favor of banning automobiles from cities altogether.

    Didn’t Le Corbusier want to destroy what’s left of Old Paris to make room for highways?

    That was the new philosophy of modernity.

    That being said, it is simply a fact that American zoning laws are much stricter than Tokyo or Bangkok, and are designed to create an atmosphere of sterility and control, and to keep “living” and sleeping seperate. And this is highly visible in the lack of “life” in American cities.

    Tokyo and Bangkok have automobiles, probably more than NYC – yet their relaxed zoning laws, permit the “organic pattern” I mentioned before to prevail and create many charming neighborhoods full of atmosphere.

    Anyways, I am talking about relaxing controls in order to create a space for Life to arise – for organic pattern to assert itself, for chaos. This would obviously requires limiting artificial human technologies like car.

    Let’s use the analogy of American Wilderness Protection Laws – wilderness is officially designated as an area left in it’s pre-man state, where man does not intrude. In this sense, it is the absolute ultimate in “relaxed controls” – man does nothing to control wilderness areas. (In practice, not strictly true. But that’s the principle).

    On the other hand, wilderness areas are the most strictly controlled – human tampering is forbidden. You can’t even ride bicycles in a wilderness area!

    So clearly, to create space for Nature, we have to limit Man – and his artificial constructions. This applies as much in cities.

    So if we want to create a space on a city of relaxed control, where Nature can assert itself as organic pattern, we must limit artificial human interference.

    Properly understood, limiting cars is not control – it is in fact eliminating human control, elongating artificial human interference, limiting technology, and creating a space for Nature.

  268. I’m sorry but India is sort of off my radar so
    I can’t competently answer questions about it.

    I suspect that a Russia free of Bolsheviks would attract many immigrants from China, which would be much poorer, have a large growing population, and is right next door. I doubt that Russia would be getting many immigrants from elsewhere though. It’s too far, not rich enough, and too cold. Why would North Africa skip France (close to them, they already know the language) in order to move out into Russia?

  269. A major watershed year in antinuclear sentiment seems to have been 1953. That was when “The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms” came out, featuring a monster unleashed by an atomic test. Next year, Godzilla (directly influenced by Beast from 20,000 Fathoms.) 1957 was the Incredible Shrinking Man. 1959, On the Beach. 1964 was Dr. Strangelove. 1970 was Colossus: the Forbin Project. 1983, The Day After AND WarGames AND Testament. 1984, Threads AND Terminator. 1985, Spies like Us. And I have left quite a lot out.

    But, you can see how the early antinuclear movies are about tests. Then an awareness of delivery mechanisms and of possible nuclear war seems percolate through. Finally, as the transitor revolution happens, there is a fear of computers taking over and using bombs.

    People who didn’t go to the theaters, watched old antinuclear movies on TV or saw antinuclear movies made directly for TV. Over 100 million watched the Day After, when it premiered.

    Each antinuclear story or movie directly inspired another, so the cultural footprint of antinuclear sentiment continued to grow. As older people died off, more age cohorts passed through this antinuclear indoctrination.

    Hollywood may have also popularized many other negative trends like divorce.

  270. People in Ukrainian schools would still be fluent in Russian, because Ukrainian schools would have Russian classes also. There are after all Tatar, Korean, etc schools in Moscow, Tatar ones in Crimea – but no Ukrainian. It’s a political rather market decision, which is fine because it’s not native Ukrainian land and the it’s what the majority wants. Sad that some Russians whine when Ukraine pursues similar policies.

  271. So I guess the issue is not relaxing controls per se – or only in the largest most overarching sense.

    Inventing technology is an act of human control, so limiting technology is control eliminating control.

    Ultimately, we want to overall reduce technology to enjoy our true birthright as natural creatures, but at this stage, this means we must limit technology.

    So – limiting technology to create a space for Nature to assert itself. This the way forward in cities, in our food supply, in life – in everything! This is the next task.

    American cities did the exact opposite – they limited Nature, in order to make space for human technology. So in this sense, Americans must “relax control”.

    And I believe, that after the incredible explosion if technology, wild and uncontrolled, the natural and inevitable next step is it’s limitation, and integration, into human life.

    It is beginning, already, in our time.

  272. Suppose some of the movies about asteroids hitting Earth might be seen as weakly pro-nuclear. Meteor 1979 and Armageddon 1998.

  273. So I would figure that a Russia without Bolsheviks would not only have about 250 million or so Russians but would also have tens of millions of Chinese people. They would be as common as Latinos in America. Moscow and Russian cities would have great dim sum places. Total population of just Russia (not including Ukraine) might be 300-350 million, including the Chinese.

  274. The Day After seems to have been inspired by China Syndrome.

    Interestingly, it fed into nuclear disarmament. Reagan credited it with changing his mind. It was also shown on Soviet TV in 1987, no doubt to gain support for disarmament over there.

  275. What is affordable for most buildings, is determined by the building technology of the time

    It’s worse than that. The technology most builders use is the one municipal inspectors and engineers of a given area are familiar with. It’s always possible to use cheaper and better technologies but, even you have the luck of finding a structural engineer who will sign the plans, you cannot run the risk of not passing all the inspections because this technology is not known in the area.

    I am in the building business part-time and this is a real problem. You just build what is built in the area and this leads to monotonous, sub-optimal structures. But they all meet code, which is what matters. As the video you posted says, the five-over-one design was not as much a designer choice as a city code issue that later spread to other areas.

    On top of that you have zoning regulations that also act in the way of creating uniform spaces and make everything constrained and expensive. But here I disagree with AaronB. These regulations aim at creating nice and tidy areas of similar structures that I do find more pleasing than a chaotic melange of different styles.

  276. Architecture follows philosophy – a culture whose main philosophy is scientific abstraction will produce ugly buildings by intention.

    I don’t think this works that way. You don’t usually meet architechts and designers who don’t want to create original and aesthetically nice buildings. What happens is that building (especially residential and commercial) is a very highly regulated activity in developed countries so what you get is what inspectors and regulators will allow you to build. And there are literally thousands of code requirements that are meant to provide safety and comfort with no regard for beauty.

    In this environment the urban landscape you end up with is of course determined by the codes and regulations that authorities in a given area are enforcing. This is the main reason why buildings tend to have similar appearances from region to region.

  277. And there are literally thousands of code requirements that are meant to provide safety and comfort with no regard for beauty.

    This is a good point! But this means “society as a whole” does not have a philosophy that creates “regard for beauty”. Whereas Renaissance Italy, for instance, or Athens, seemed very intent on creating beauty – it’s very clear they were not merely concerned with safety and comfort, whereas we appear to prioritize those things and neglect beauty.

    I do think architects want to create interesting and distinctive buildings, but based on what I’ve read about 20th century architecture movements, they wanted to develop an aesthetic that better reflected the Age of Science and Abstraction, so interesting and distinctive buildings to them may mean something different.

    So there are several converging points here which contribute – one, society as a whole becomes preoccupied with safety and comfort – utilitarian considerations – and loses interest in beauty and other “superfluous” and “intangible” considerations. It’s hard to see this not being the result of a society with an industrial mindset, or a scientific mindset preoccupied with what can be “measured”.

    Two, architects themselves want to build according to a new aesthetic that reflects the Machine rather than the Organic.

    Finally, a good part of “beauty” – human charm – emerges from not regulating too much and permitting and allowing “natural” processes to express themselves in cities. A certain amount of permitted chaos.

    But as a society, we are very preoccupied with “control”.

    But I think you’ve made a good point that big part of the process here is the codes and regulations, the zoning laws, etc, that are channeling construction in a certain direction.

    It certainly isn’t simply a matter of “changing our philosophy” – our bureaucracy and government must be overhauled.

  278. So I agree with MMT on budget policy

    No, I don’t think you do. MMT uses fiscal policy for redistribution and inflation purposes, not for GDP growth. In their candid view, that is what monetary policy is for.

    By the way, if you think that budget surpluses stifle economic growth, how do you explain Chile becoming the Latin American country with the highest per-capita GDP amid structural budget surpluses? And how do you explain Switzerland or Singapore? Or how fiscally responsible countries in Northern Europe are more prosperous that deficit lovers in Southern Europe? Lots of explanations required for your proposition!

  279. They would be as common as Latinos in America.

    Eh, sounds doubtful to me. Texas and California are a lot more hospitable and had a much easier time absorbing excess population than Siberia, and even though there are Mexicans everywhere in the US, the booming economies of the Southwest provided a critical first stop for them. And if Chinese couldn’t settle in Siberia, then European Russia isn’t much closer than North America.

    And even under unbridled Russian growth, Russia would still be fairly poor for most of the period between WW1 and the 1965 Immigration Act enabling Chinese mass migration to the US. Not to mention Manchukuo would probably still exist as a magnet for part of this period, perhaps even a much longer period than in our reality.

  280. Speaking to your point, my business is timber framed structures. I have a specialty engineer who knows and is comfortable with traditional joinery, wood pegs, etc. and can review and sign off on my designs. Most engineers will look with blank incomprehension at what I do and order scads of steel thrown at the timbers, despite the traditional approach being the empirically time tested one.

    I looked at a 1820’s barn a couple years ago that the customer was quite torn about because some engineer told him that all the stone foundation needed to replaced by concrete. The foundation walls were all dead straight and in beautiful shape. A bit of pointing would see them going another 200 years. The engineer couldn’t “quantify” those stone walls though so he preferred to see them replaced, at great cost, with something far inferior.

    I told the customer to find a different engineer who specialized in traditional restoration which made him very relieved.

    Engineers can certainly exercise a certain tyranny in the building process which helps drive things to a lowest common denominator.

  281. Eh, sounds doubtful to me. Texas and California are a lot more hospitable and had a much easier time absorbing excess population than Siberia, and even though there are Mexicans everywhere in the US, the booming economies of the Southwest provided a critical first stop for them. And if Chinese couldn’t settle in Siberia, then European Russia isn’t much closer than North America.

    China was a lot poorer than Russia, had some brutal warfare that would have encouraged refugee settlement, and was right next door. Russia was on the verge of an oil and gas boom so it’s economy would have taken off.

    Russia wouldn’t be rich enough to attract Africans and Middle Easterner but would be rich enough to attract nearby Chinese. Prior to the Revolution, Chinese migration was not insignificant (Vladivostok was about 20% Chinese before the Revolution). It likely would have been in the tens of millions eventually.

  282. I see they are making Matrix 4.

    Wonder how much it is motivated purely to deconstruct some of these pill terms used by the Dissident Right. Then again, the trilogy was pretty pozzed and terms derived from drugs don’t lend themselves to traditionalism.

    Another thought on movies: would be interesting to try to quantify the antinuclear message vs. the anti nationalist message. If anti nuclear messaging had such a pronounced impact, then isn’t it obvious that anti nationalist messaging did too?

  283. Traditionally I would say that architecture is where environment meets culture. So, all the variables of weather (what your architecture must withstand) meet resources (is your area rich in timber, stone, etc ?) which are filtered through culture. So traditional architecture doesn’t seem explicitly centered on philosophy, since it accrues very slowly and generally organically, though perhaps examples like tea-house aesthetic in Japan are a case of very intentional philosophical direction.

    The modern age seems to unique in it’s embrace of architectural theory as motive force. Theory is typically a source of abstraction, and this is one of my critiques of the modern styles; they are in fact no style at all. They represent something that is every place yet fits nowhere and concedes nothing to either place or people. It is a form which seems to impose it’s own needs and systems onto the landscape and it’s inhabitants instead of the other way around.

    Going back to your other comment to Dmitry, I agree that a melange of styles is jarring and nonsensical. I suppose that is why traditional architecture presents improvisation on a common theme. Nowadays of course, if one wants an Italian Villa in Northern Canada no expense will spared to impose such an absurdity!

  284. sudden death says

    Sign of emerging “Little Dushanbe” – installed infotable in Russian, Tajik and Uzbek languages in Moscow metro station:

    https://ic.pics.livejournal.com/el_murid/16552936/1762560/1762560_original.jpg

  285. No, I don’t think you do. MMT uses fiscal policy for redistribution and inflation purposes, not for GDP growth. In their candid view, that is what monetary policy is for.

    When you use fiscal policy for redistribution and inflation, your nominal GDP will grow by definition.

    MMT has no problem, and is actually supportive of, stuff like tax cuts, so you can be a Reagan Republican (massive national debt increases under Reagan – he tripled the debt and economy grew) and support MMT.

    Chile becoming the Latin American country with the highest per-capita GDP amid structural budget surpluses?

    Copper exports by state run corporation? I mean, why do Saudi swim in money?

    And how do you explain Switzerland or Singapore?

    Nazi gold and bank secrecy laws? Large port and effective dictatorship?

    Or how fiscally responsible countries in Northern Europe are more prosperous that deficit lovers in Southern Europe? Lots of explanations required for your proposition!

    As a rule of thumb, any “country” that can fit in a Los Angeles suburb is not a real country. They also benefit from European Central Bank money printing to support demand. ECB is roughly in the same boat as the Fed.

    So unless those meme places such as Denmark decide to pay off $7 trillion Euro ECB balance sheet, their budget surplus is a joke. I too can have budget surplus if somebody gifted me free $7 trillion.

  286. My only quibble would be that everyone – and every culture – has a philosophy, whether they realize it or not.

    In short, they are guided by certain principles – even if they are implicit, and have not been consciously worked out.

    For instance, the principle you elucidated has been termed “naturalism”. To avoid abstraction, is itself a principle to be guided by.

    Similarly, many modern people are not aware that they are guided by a specific philosophy of life and would swear what they are doing is merely “inevitable”.

    That is why, it ultimately becomes important to understand what are the implicit principles one is guided by. Otherwise you will find yourself trapped in a philosophy without being aware of it – and thus unaware of possibly superior alternatives (like many moderns).

    Even if your principle is “to not have a philosophy” – in Zen, there is a famous book called “The Gateless Gate”.

    In the same vein – your philosophy might be called “The Philosophy-less Philosophy” 🙂

    Which I am in fact in complete sympathy 🙂

  287. Does not seem likely.

    Nobody perceives Mexico as a strategic threat. (Though, perhaps they should have.) China is a very different story, all of its neighbors have perceived it as a threat, and Chinese communities as a threat. See the Amur pogroms, for Russia.

    I might add that the same pathway is not available. Mexicans came as seasonal agricultural laborers. Central Valley, CA might be the most fertile valley in the world, producing 1/3 the US total. Russian Far East has no analogue.

  288. Definitely feel that the internet has let fan culture get out of control.

  289. Then again, the trilogy was pretty pozzed and terms derived from drugs don’t lend themselves to traditionalism.

    You’re not in tune with the new traditionalism evolving all of the time. In addition to “marijuana dispenaries” popping up all over the urban landscape, and huge billboards advertising the new improved products, psychiatrists are now paving the way for their patients to alleviate all sorts of mental disorders, by suing psychedelic drugs like LSD and psilocybin. Oh l know, I know, all of these psychededlics will be administered within controlled environments by doctors and medical professionals trained for conducting these kind of therapies.

    https://emojipedia-us.s3.dualstack.us-west-1.amazonaws.com/thumbs/120/apple/285/crossed-fingers_1f91e.png

    https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20210906-what-if-everyone-took-psychedelics

    Any bets that once these drugs get outside the padded interior cells of therapy centers, and back into the public domain, you’ll start hearing about individuals walking off of building tops, because they think that they can fly. Didn’t the cult group directed by Charles Manson also undergo LSD therapy?

  290. Not just the internet, literacy in general has been problematic from the beginning.

    I mean, in the Middle Ages peasants used to frolic with bears, but did they post about it on Tik Tok? No, they were illiterate and couldn’t type their names in user accounts.

    It all went downhill after Gutenberg.

  291. Yellowface Anon says

    Despite buying (or outright stealing) IP from Taiwan, South Korea, and the U.S. they are still struggling on this front.

    You can’t say R&D personnels or professionals are now inferiorly trained than in Taiwan and South Korea, but you can blame bureaucratic management and steming of private initiative.

    Perhaps self consumption via military technology expenditure is the answer. Your suggestion is more plausible than those given by the “experts”. The risk is Military Industrial Complex [MIC] capture, which is the U.S. experience.

    Agreed.

    Losing the “reserve currency premium” will be incredibly helpful to American manufacturing. It effectively subsidies imports and penalizes exports. USD devaluation is both inevitable and helpful to ordinary Americans. It will accelerate disengagement with the CCP thus eliminating a huge drag on U.S. economic activity.

    The collapse of non value adding entities like Goldman Sachs will free up top minds for contributions to the real world economy, which is also potentially a substantial boost. Some will make the necessary attitude adjustment. Rocket Scientists will go back to building Rockets instead of fancy market econometric models.

    Instead of freeing up human capital (what is left of them nowadays) or technology, you will have a 1990s Russia or modern Lebanon, first. And after that, only if the entire oligarchic system is decapitated.

    The SJW/DNC is all that Blackrock has. While one dislikes Blackrock’s choice of investments they cannot do anything dramatically provocative without helping the New Workers Party (MAGA/GOP). Given their need to keep the DNC viable, they will have to exit their Real Estate investments in a manner that does not burden U.S. workers.

    Buying while the economy is broken (Illicit Biden Coup Regime) and selling when the economy is working (MAGA House, Senate, and President) will likely turn Blackrock a tidy and legitimate profit. Selling to property to U.S. workers with higher real pay and higher employment is objectively a winning strategy. No exploitation required.

    Are you sure they are planning with a 2nd Trump (or MAGA populist) administration in mind? And why are you so certain workers will come out stronger financially?

  292. When you use fiscal policy for redistribution and inflation, your nominal GDP will grow by definition.

    ??

    Copper exports by state run corporation?

    No, we can be certain that that is not the reason because Chile had been exporting large amounts of copper all throughout the 20th century but it only began overtaking its neighbors in GDP growth in the 80s, after it started applying a strict policy of fiscal and monetary discipline. Incidentally, the importance of copper exports as a percentage of GDP went down at the same time.

    Also, its much richer neighbor Argentina began a concurrent downfall that would eventually cause it to slide behind Chile in per-capita GDP, in spite of stubbornly adhering to your recipe of big budget deficits and monetary expansionism.

    It’s almost as if fiscal/monetary discipline was indeed good for growth because economic activity is much easier in low inflation, stable currency environments, isn’t it?

    Nazi gold

    Attributing the extraordinary Swiss prosperity to “Nazi gold” is quite funny.

    In general, your attempts at explaining away the examples that I put don’t look very serious.

    A theory that explains everything, like a certain outcome and also its opposite, doesn’t really explain anything. If you really want to understand how things work, as opposed to displaying faith in a belief system, you need to take any evidence that contradicts your beliefs much more seriously, as Feynman famously recommended.

  293. Yellowface Anon says

    Attributing economic development to a single cause and prescription misses the full picture. You need an entire package – resources, institutions, human capital, and most importatly culture. This is why only looking at pure monetary theory (commodity or fiat) and pure fiscal theory (surpluses, balanced budgets or deficits) without seeing the underlying conditions, is like building foundations up in the air (Chinese idiom).

    At least we can assess and learn from each other’s theories and worldview. (I’m replying to both mal and you)

  294. India could have the demographics of 650ad if Hindus re-discovered testicles||

    https://twitter.com/iJasOberoi/status/1437096377494822912?s=20

    https://i.redd.it/5ua2cdelr6h71.jpg

    https://www.sikhnet.com/news/islamic-india-biggest-holocaust-world-history

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  295. Morton's toes says

    I am skeptical that anybody ever walked off a building top under the influence of LSD because they thought they could fly.

    Have you ever consumed a full 500 microgram dose of LSD?

    The thing about that particular drug is the side effects are minimal. Mushrooms give you diarrhea and peyote makes you puke and ayahuasca gives you diarrhea AND makes you puke. The only problem with acid is it takes you 24 hours to process and another 24 hours to recover and an upwardly mobile bourgeoisie simply cannot find the time for that in their schedule. Doing a lot of acid trips does not wreck your health but it does tend to confine you to being a loser.

    (A lot of acid trips would be 3X a month. I have known a bunch of acid heads and I haven’t ever known anybody that did it more than 3X a month.)

  296. Attributing economic development to a single cause and prescription misses the full picture. You need an entire package – resources, institutions, human capital, and most importatly culture.

    Yes, I agree, although I would personally put those factors in a different order.

    Such a complex system, affected by so many factors, is very difficult to understand fully and doesn’t lend itself to simple recipes. That’s why I have few certainties in economics in spite of having a good formal education on the subject. No economic theory incorporates all those factors anyway.

    BTW, Hong-Kong is another excellent example of a country refusing to accept Mal’s and MMT’s predictions.

  297. ??

    Nominal GDP will skyrocket during inflationary period. Venezuelan nominal GDP increased dramatically measured in Bolivars and Zimbabwe nominal GDP increased dramatically in Zimbabwe dollars or whatever during their hyperinflationary events. Real GDP is a different story but we are not Venezuela or Zimbabwe so nominal GDP is the main focus here.

    No, we can be certain that that is not the reason because Chile had been exporting large amounts of copper all throughout the 20th century but it only began overtaking its neighbors in GDP growth in the 80s, after it started applying a strict policy of fiscal and monetary discipline. Incidentally, the importance of copper exports as a percentage of GDP went down at the same time.

    Chile is a poster child of neoliberalism. The term was invented for that country. Copper backdrops this but you are right, its not the whole story.

    Let’s compare Chile and Argentina because everybody likes to hate on Argentina.

    GDP per capita.
    Chile: $15k
    Argentina: $10k

    Government debt to GDP 2020
    Chile: 33%
    Argentina: 102%

    Private sector debt to GDP ratio 2020:

    Chile: 164%
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/QCLPAM770A
    Argentina: 25%
    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/QARPAM770A

    Do you see now why Chile has $5k higher GDP/capita?

    Neoliberalism is always a simple scheme of commercial banks printing money rather than the state. It is also true that neoliberalism can be more efficient vs the state. With that said, if you think anybody is lending Chileans a massive $164% of their GDP without keeping an eye on their copper, you are not living in the real world.

    Neoliberalism will bury you in debt even worse than the state will, but it will buy you a nicer car or some other trinket.

    Attributing the extraordinary Swiss prosperity to “Nazi gold” is quite funny.

    Banking regulation and tax dodge money are very important in Switzerland. But its not scalable. You can’t run US by the laws of Cayman Islands.

    A theory that explains everything, like a certain outcome and also its opposite, doesn’t really explain anything.

    Well, you can’t really talk about European countries without talking about European Central Bank. Just like you can’t talk about US economy without talking about Federal Reserve.

  298. People in Ukrainian schools would still be fluent in Russian, because Ukrainian schools would have Russian classes also

    To enter the university, you need to write an essay (in Russian). Fluent Russian is not enough for this (writing in Russian without violating the existing rules is a special area of scholasticism, I could not master it for 11 years of studying at school)

    Those who voted for Ukrainian nationalists in Crimea are not Ukrainians, but Tatars who had a tactical alliance with Ukrainian nationalists

    There are after all Tatar, Korean, etc schools in Moscow, Tatar ones in Crimea

    There are several orders of magnitude more Tatar-speaking Tatars in Crimea than there are Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians.

    For Russian (and generally ex-Soviet) Koreans, the native language is Russian.

  299. You need an entire package – resources, institutions, human capital, and most importatly culture.

    You need all of that stuff for national power and other important things. But not nominal GDP. Nominal GDP is simply the sum total of monetized human activity, it doesn’t have to be useful or meaningful.

    Which is why its more of a meme number these days. BUT: nominal GDP drives investment decisions and investment is very real and very critical. Which is why nominal GDP is important and must never be allowed to drop.

    Why bother building a factory if there are no customers buying stuff? Higher nominal GDP means there are still customers out there and building factories is worth it. It doesn’t matter if this is achieved via inflation or real growth.

  300. The intentionally offensive choice by Russian Elites to land NordStream 2 in Germany will materially worsen Polish-Russian relations.

    ????? WTF!?

  301. You could be right, I couldn’t locate any documented cases of anybody actually jumping off of a roof or out of a window that met their death using LSD, or any other hallucinogens. There were, however, a lot of reports of such occurrences in the press, and it wasn’t hard for me to believe these stories, because people definitely were having “bad trips”. In my youth, for a couple of years I enjoyed smoking pot. I did try a hallucinogenic drug once with friends driving out to a beautiful state park, in between smoking some weed. I have no idea what I took or the dosage, but I don’t think that it was a huge amount. It turned out to be a “good trip”. The only thing that I can remember was sitting on the banks of a river and being totally entranced by the trees on the other side. The long mature branches of these trees appeared to be physically moving like long human arms, beckoning me to come over to the other side, in a circular fashion. Luckily, I didn’t take up their invitation. 🙂

  302. At my age, a couple of bottles of “Kilt Lifter” is about all that I can handle, and can be likened to a “trip” of sorts. 🙂 Besides, I feel really best when my earthly temple is filled with the Holy Spirit. As a Christian that is walking with the Lord too, you probably know what I’m describing…

  303. BTW, Hong-Kong is another excellent example of a country refusing to accept Mal’s and MMT’s predictions

    Sure it is.

    Hong Kong: Private sector debt to GDP – 330%. Real estate bubble much?

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/QHKPAM770A

    I mean, you realize that past some point, probably 100% private debt to GDP ratio, state can achieve much better results much more efficiently, right?

    Neoliberalism does have efficiency advantages at lower debt to GDP ratios, but once you are talking 400-500% debt to GDP ratios, neoliberalism is dead. Flipping same asset a million times a second is pointless. State is far more efficient at resource allocation at this stage.

  304. LOL as much as i like Polish people individually, Polish and Russian politics never worked as harmoniusly throughout the centuries. Germans and Russians though, when we are not trying to genocide each other, the trade and political relationships are very powerful. Germans and Russians are like that ying and yang thing.

  305. People in Ukrainian schools would still be fluent in Russian, because Ukrainian schools would have Russian classes also

    To enter the university, you need to write an essay (in Russian). Fluent Russian is not enough for this (writing in Russian without violating the existing rules is a special area of scholasticism, I could not master it for 11 years of studying at school)

    Are you suggesting that all those kids going to Tatar schools are incapable of university admission?

    Those who voted for Ukrainian nationalists in Crimea are not Ukrainians, but Tatars who had a tactical alliance with Ukrainian nationalists

    Voter turnout for Crimean Tatars was low in 2012, just a little more than 30%:

    https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14683857.2019.1617944?journalCode=fbss20

    Crimean Tatars were only 12% of Crimea’s population (Ukrainians were 24%), but the Ukrainian parties got 22% of the vote.

    Most of the votes for the Ukrainian nationalist parties in Crimea came from Ukrainians.

    There are several orders of magnitude more Tatar-speaking Tatars in Crimea than there are Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainians.

    You are mistaken again, sorry.

    6.5% of Crimea’s students were studying in Ukrainian, versus 3% in Crimean Tatar.

    The Crimean Tatars got linguistically Russified during their exile, when they were scattered and their their language was banned.

    In 2009 Crimean Tatar was categorised as ‘severely endangered’ in the UNESCO Atlas of the World’s Languages in Danger. :

    https://blogs.bl.uk/european/2018/03/amid-a-thousand-and-one-stars-the-crimean-tatar-language.html

    Crimean Tatar third most spoken language in Crimea, after Russian and Ukrainian:

    https://www.researchgate.net/publication/329386670_Crimean_Tatar_Language_Past_Present_and_Future

  306. Grahamsno(G64) says

    300 Billion in Debt is shockingly enormous even by Chinese standards (Everything is bigger in China).
    That CEO will be lucky to escape getting his organs harvested.

  307. Yellowface Anon says

    HKD is pegged to USD which is mostly responsible for the local housing bubble. If the FED does MMT HKD and Saudi Riyal’s value will be dragged down if their central banks maintain the peg.

  308. Yellowface Anon says

    Real GDP is a different story but we are not Venezuela or Zimbabwe so nominal GDP is the main focus here.

    lolwut

  309. Yellowface Anon says

    Meant to add to the last reply. Nominal GDP means NOTHING, and it can even be of negative value if it is used to hide the rot. Case in point: nominal GDP can surge with the “reopening” and FED money printing. But already millions of antivaxx, anti-PCR testing workers are pulling out of the formal economy. Which is why real economists don’t look at numbers, but the underlying political economy.

    Going back to what you say in this post, the souls of medieval Catholic cardinals and Islamic ulemas will be exhilarated seeing the usurious modern financial system, based on infinite compound interest, collapse on itself. If you set up an usurious system, you need regular debt write-offs or jubilees to counteract debt build-up, otherwise it will be definite ruin whether the state or moneylenders/banks do it. And even between debt systems, 100% reserve is less distortive than fractional reserve.

    If you don’t reform fiat, people will quit by adopting crypto or barter systems of their own accord because of the collapse in public trust.

  310. US is not the same as Venezuela or Zimbabwe, so US has different priorities. There won’t be a similar run on currency – IRS and US Navy will make certain of that.

  311. Nominal GDP means NOTHING, and it can even be of negative value if it is used to hide the rot.

    Nominal GDP means absolutely everything because if you don’t have that it means you are dead. Only the dead in the cemetery have no economic activity at all. Even Venezuelans are better off.

    Nominal GDP is like temperature – if your body is at room temperature, all your other problems are irrelevant.

    If you set up an usurious system, you need regular debt write-offs or jubilees to counteract debt build-up, otherwise it will be definite ruin whether the state or moneylenders/banks do it.

    You do realize that we run some of the lowest real negative interest rates in world history, with more negative rates to come?

    What you say is already happening lol. When interest rate on a loan is 0% or negative, there’s no usury anymore. Banks literally pay you to borrow. We are living the jubilee as we speak. Commercial banks are finished, dead, even if they don’t know it yet. New era is upon us, and it will be spearheaded by the government and central banks.

    People can adopt whatever crypto they like, they are irrelevant. But if you think that IRS, Jeff Bezos of Amazon, and Walmart family will refuse US dollars, you are deluding yourself.

    People are irrelevant. Your entire life, your civilization, is created for you by major corporations and they are not going to give up the US dollar because US dollar has aircraft carriers and Bitcoin doesn’t. Dollar is power.

    How many Army divisions does crypto have?

    That doesn’t mean dollar won’t evolve or course, central bank digital currency will be the way of of future once we eliminate commercial banking.

    But central bank digital tokens will still be backed by military power, and corporations will follow that power in order to control it. People will fall in line. That is our future.

    And barter in 80% service economy? LOL! What, lawyers will go on strike and refuse to sue? Singers won’t sing in bars? Oh the horror!

    LOL there won’t be any barter. Or a revolution. Most people are irrelevant to modern production processes. They will get their basic incomes and they will be happy. There is no alternative.

  312. Are you suggesting that all those kids going to Tatar schools are incapable of university admission?

    Children who study in schools with the Tatar language will have disadvantage in comparison with children from Russian schools.

    Most of the votes for the Ukrainian nationalist parties in Crimea came from Ukrainians.

    There is a Gellap poll about the attitude of the Crimean population to the Crimean secession. Crimean Ukrainians and Russians almost equally supported the secession, and only the Tatars split about 50% by 50%. That is, the only group in Crimea that could support Ukrainian nationalists are the Tatars.

    6.5% of Crimea’s students were studying in Ukrainian, versus 3% in Crimean Tatar.

    because under Ukraine, the Ukrainian language gave access to a career and education. + children of the Ukrainian military and officials sent to Crimea

    The Crimean Tatars got linguistically Russified….

    Naturally. But this does not change the fact that in Crimea both Russians and Ukrainians always spoke Russian. In this respect, an even more striking example is Donbass. Before the bombing by the Kiev authorities, the majority of the population considered themselves Ukrainians, but these Ukrainians spoke Russian, and did not want to learn Ukrainian.

  313. Putin intentionally decided to sell out Christianity and grovel before the German SJW Caliphate’s pro-Jihadi leader Mutti Merkel.

    Ahhh that’s how it is. Well, now I know who the viceroy of Satan on earth is. But who then are the Poles – whose ties with Germany are much closer than those of Russia?

    Putin did very badly by selling gas directly to Sauron (SJW Caliphate’s pro-Jihadi ) in Berlin. He had to sell gas through the intermediary of the Nazguls (SJW Caliphate’s pro-Jihadi ) in Warsaw. Or maybe Putin should have negotiated directly with Morgoth (SJW Caliphate’s pro-Jihadi ) in Washington?

    https://img.ifunny.co/images/a8a0ced38440cf17c8b927bce497ccc0ac778f9adb671b922dced049de577ff7_1.jpg

  314. Good post – I can add a few things about the Tatar since I know a few and my wife works for their 28 million dollar medical sanitarium in Saki. The Tatar were tight with Kiev because they got a whole lot of their land back that was confiscated when they were booted out. This was an ongoing deal with Ukraine and a few of the Tatar leaders, were in that political circle in Simferopol. Prior to the vote Simferopol politics was pretty down and dirty – very corrupt. These leaders, who knew that they were on their way out, publicly, told all Tatar – not to vote. Some of these ” leaders” were exiled for 5 years and they continued to advocate for dissent against the new Crimean government – from Ukraine. These guys took claim to the destruction of our electric grid coming from Ukraine a few years back. I’d say most Tatar folks want nothing to do with these so called leaders. The Tatar have solid businesses, homes and family and have not lost their lands, but like all of us, they have had to go through new documentation on all private property. The new Russian rules was a pain in the ass , but had to be done. Most westerners could not tell a difference of a Tatar from a Ukie, Russian, Azerbaijani, Turk, Armenian etc. while walking down the street. And the common people here don’t care about this. In fact it gets more complicated in all the talk about these folks, or those folks – or those other folks, than in real life – lol. Thanks

  315. I generally subscribe to the idea that, while the world needs many things, it does not need more people to start using recreational drugs.

    That said, I feel that America’s system of prescription drugs is some sort of cartel, and I do wonder at least a little, if the War on Drugs may helped create the psychological foundation necessary to create and maintain this cartel.

  316. Yellowface Anon says

    Nominal GDP means absolutely everything because if you don’t have that it means you are dead. Only the dead in the cemetery have no economic activity at all. Even Venezuelans are better off.

    Nominal GDP is like temperature – if your body is at room temperature, all your other problems are irrelevant.

    Nominal GDP is something only because it claims to represent the state of economy. Without the underlying economy, it is nothing.

    What you say is already happening lol. When interest rate on a loan is 0% or negative, there’s no usury anymore. Banks literally pay you to borrow. We are living the jubilee as we speak.

    Only because the debt economy is so thoroly broken and the calculation of interest rates – differences in time preference – is impossible?

    LOL there won’t be any barter. Or a revolution. They will get their basic incomes and they will be happy. There is no alternative.

    The new system need not to be bad, and it’s actually a mixed bag in terms of material wealth creation. It only needs to be discredited in the eyes of a majority of people living inside and outside of the system. Then struggles will happen, enough to derail its implementation.

    What’s the alternative you say?

    I am really hopeful for the glorious posthumanist era. But instead of gay automated genetic cyborg utopia, that will be a stillborn system, the system disintegrating or eating its own elites. Then Nature will reclaim what humanity has seized from her in excess during all these Industrial Revolutions…

  317. After pulps, I think Westerns are the next strongest manifestation of T.

    I say “Westerns” because they spanned such a long time, that some have a very traditional philosophy about what it means to be a man. Whereas, ’80s action movies might have bigger muscles, and higher kill counts, I think they are more form over function.

  318. I think anti-Islam rhetoric has always been about four things:

    1.) Trying to find a moral foundation for maintaining a presence in the ME.
    2.) Trying to channel anti-immigrant sentiment into an acceptable blank-slatist cultural template, where it can be safely disarmed. (Can’t object to nominally Christian Africans, can you? Or Hindus or Buddhists? Or secular Arabs?)
    3.) Trying to find moral fuel for an ideology of secularization.
    4.) Islamic terrorism provides the moral basis for totalitarian surveillance.

    As political rhetoric it goes back too far to be interpreted as change of heart about immigration.

    On a related note, I wonder if there has ever been a head of state with such a powerful aura of slimeyness and evil as Tony Blair.

  319. Most westerners could not tell a difference of a Tatar from a Ukie, Russian, Azerbaijani, Turk, Armenian etc. while walking down the street.

    At the individual level, Tatars are difficult to distinguish from Russians, as there are many Tatars of “Slavic” appearance, and many Russians with “Tatar” appearance. Here in the photo – a girl from the Crimean Tatars, her companion is Russian

    https://sun9-76.userapi.com/c841322/v841322326/3cf34/21etCbMHk1o.jpg

  320. Was it Corded Ware, where the sexes were buried facing different compass directions?

    Anyway, I think it would be good to bring back some of these old sex-segregated customs. Perhaps, Minoan dress, at least, for good-looking women.

    I feel it is necessary in order to end the tranny insanity.

  321. I’m torn on this one. On the one hand, the general trajectory of the Wakowski output has been downhill, and I have a hard time believing this won’t be filled with Woke messaging, maybe some in-your-face transsexual stuff.

    But, you know, I actually re-watched the Matrix sequels a few years back, and my impression of them was much improved. Because at least they were different. Earnest, somewhat thoughtful, not entirely predictable. Hollywood filmmaking has gone far enough downhill that those qualities are enough to stand far from the pack, even if the execution is sloppy. The same could probably be said of Cloud Atlas.

    As a side note, I have a thesis that buttkicking action girls play a big role in the transsexual phenomenon, particularly the “male lesbian” MtF types. It’s probably no coincidence that the original Matrix featured one very prominently, from the first scene, and while she wasn’t the first, in my memory The Matrix did really kick off the trend.

    “Male lesbians” would have a lot less interest in being female if their mental image of a woman was based primarily on real women. But clearly it’s based on Hollywood/anime women. Their image of a woman is someone who gets to be hot and aloof and make all the men act like idiots, while at the same time be just as likely as any man to be an expert in computer hacking and mechanical engineering, and the fact they’re half the size of the men they’re fighting, with the slender frame of a supermodel, is apparently an advantage in unarmed combat. If you can have all that, what’s the point of being a man?

  322. Yellowface Anon says

    It goes back to the crusader states.

  323. Yellowface Anon says

    Appreciate beauty!

  324. Anyway, I think it would be good to bring back some of these old sex-segregated customs. Perhaps, Minoan dress, at least, for good-looking women.

    In the fundamental work “Crete and the Aegean World in the Bronze Age and Early Iron Age (III-early I millennium BC.)” Published in 2002 http://www.sno.pro1.ru/lib/andreev_ot_evrazii_k_evrope/index.htm, there is a criticism of the Minoan civilization – in Minoan Crete, women occupied an unbecoming high position in society . This of course had bad consequences as women are creatures inert and incapable of progress.

    Eh, its sad that feminists don’t read such books, otherwise it would be fun

  325. “War on Drugs”??

    Not since the Feds realized that there are hefty and timely taxes to be collected from this new and expanding industry.

  326. Crimean Ukrainians and Russians almost equally supported the secession, and only the Tatars split about 50% by 50%. That is, the only group in Crimea that could support Ukrainian nationalists are the Tatars.

    Unless you think that Yanukovich faked the 2012 election in favor of Ukrainian nationalists – in those elections 22% of Crimeans voted for Ukrainian nationalist parties. Crimean Tatars were only 12% of the population, plus they had low voter turnout. So most of the votes for Ukrainian nationalist parties came from ethnic Ukrainians. Ethnic Ukrainians were about 24% of Crimea’s population. So probably a little more than half of them voted for Ukrainian nationalist parties. Perhaps because of their clear minority status, the ethnic Ukrainians of Crimea were more inclined to vote for Ukrainian nationalist parties than were the ones in Donbas.

    + children of the Ukrainian military and officials sent to Crimea

    Most military and officials were locals (thus they deserted) so this number was small.

    Crimea both Russians and Ukrainians always spoke Russian

    This is an exaggeration. Most Ukrainians did speak Russian. Since Ukrainians were 24% of the population but only 6.5% of Crimeans studied in Ukrainian, about 1/4 of Ukrainian kids were studying in Ukrainian.

  327. Boomthorkell says

    I feel like the Chinese are pretty warlike.

    We give the Japanese a lot of crap for the Sengoku-Era, but the Chinese basically experienced it every single time a Dynasty collapsed and new ones struggled for power.

  328. Boomthorkell says

    My work accepted my religious exemption.

    Huzzah.

    You wouldn’t believe the amount of Orthodox Figures of Emulation I cited.

  329. Yellowface Anon says

    Men without women cannot progress, women without men cannot progress. LGBTQ+ have neither, so they are always parasites on both sexes.

  330. Great observation – this blog website of Anatoly’s is like one in a hundred– great Information – thanks M !

  331. Unless you think that Yanukovich faked the 2012 election in favor of Ukrainian nationalists – in those elections 22% of Crimeans voted for Ukrainian nationalist parties. Crimean Tatars were only 12%

    https://cdn-prod.opendemocracy.net/media/images/Screen_Shot_2015-03-03_at_17.51.37_GsugX2Z.width-800.png

    https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/odr/crimean-conundrum/

    it is easy to guess^ 12% (actually 15% if you count all Tatars – not only Crimean ones) can easily give 20% and 30% in elections if they have a high turnout

  332. Ghost workers will have the advantage of avoiding the digitalization of the currency, which is what the Great Reset and the pandemic mismanagement are aiming for.

    Uncovering the Corona Narrative
    Presentation given by Ernst Wolff. August 2021

    https://thefatemperor.com/wp-content/uploads/2021/09/Uncovering_the_Corona_Narrative_by_Ernst_Wolff.pdf

    Methinks TPTB have jumped the shark, and will be highly surprised when the revolt against ridiculous Covid measures segue into a populist revolt.

  333. Yellowface Anon says

    If Muslims stopped their aggression against Infidels and their religious devotion to invasion — there would be many more options.

    And then you will say the command to struggle against infidels is written in their Qur’an, and the only legitimate route to permanently, is to offer them the same deal they’ve offered to People of the Book – conversion back to Christianity, heavy tax if they become vow to give up violence, or death if they remain radical!

    Our minds are all being closed again, and that is in fact the historical norm – Muslims were relatively tolerant of People of the Book until their minds were closed. Christians were intolerant of pagans and Saracens, then secularized and became ultra-tolerant, and then are rediscovering faith and becoming intolerant of everyone outside of Christianity, again. This is why blank-slate tolerance is an aberration, and the best we can achieve is interaction based on mutually cordial terms after achieving a existence-affirming level of purifying consolidation. Only then can aggression from all sides be dropped.

    The concept of Drop Location (a.k.a. birthright) Citizenship needs to be abolished. The current misinterpretation of the 14th Amendment is not compatible ease & safety of non-citizen travel that exists in the 21st century. A correct interpretation would force the (genetically verifiable) identification of at least one citizen parent, ending the Drop Location loophole. A replacing Constitutional Amendment is not required to fix the 14th, but that would be the optimum solution to avoid future back sliding.

    The legal concept of jus soli was applicable as the New World was emptied of . But now, since the Americas are no longer as empty, what you’re talking about (jus sanguinis) makes better sense as far as those applicable have connections to organic ethnicities formed in the era of jus soli

    Given France’s complete failure trying to secularize Muslims, I am not sure what you are getting at.

    It’s because Islamism can compete with secularism!

    If you are suggesting Elites are importing anti-Christian Muslims to break traditional values in America, you are approaching the truth. But, is is not about “secularism”. It is about “Replacement”. Imposing the SJW Islamic faith by force. The importation of rape-ugees into Germany, and by extension the rest of the EU, is all about The Great Replacement (a.k.a. The Quiet Jihad).

    You are mixing cogent observations with anti-Islamic stereotypes common in Christian circles. Muslims generally have very traditional values your Abrahamic types will envy, only that the interpretations are different, which is all the parts you want to attack. Woke values and Islam can never be further apart, and Islamism suffers as much from wokeness as political Christianity. The Great Replacement has more to do with ethnic diffusion to exploit Peripheral (Third World) labor and to disempower labor from the Core (First world) countries. Cultural considerations are secondary, but significant.

    Those who want totalitarian surveillance always invent a reason. The current lies about “domestic terrorism” are much more compelling to the pro-Islam sheeple. Anyone who is a sucker will buy into that as a reason for omnipresent surveillance.

    20/20 hindsight, the FISA court has been a catastrophic error. It was not supposed to be a tool of totalitarian surveillance. However in practice, it was illicitly morphed into a domestic surveillance body “outside the law”.

    Agreed. So painting Muslims as terrorists, while all those are effect of pure politics (e.g. Arab-Israel enmity, US backing of Wahhabism and Wahhabi terrorists), is pure scapegoating. You’ll have a better time denouncing Saudi Arabia, which is at the core of all that’s violence in Islam nowadays, than going against the whole of Islam. And in fact, Christians should have learnt how political Islam can organize itself as a viable rival to secularism, and adopt some softer inducements to their fecundity.

  334. I am not sure how you can describe the current “anti rape-ugee” government in Warsaw as “pro-jihadi”.

    Warsaw (along with other countries of Eastern Europe), on the orders of the United States, sold weapons to al-Qaeda militants in Syria (paid for this by Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States). Of course, the United States did this in the interests of Israel. So we see a pro-jihadi and pro-jew (oh what an irony) government in Warsaw

  335. Yellowface Anon says

    I’ll say people going outside the “formal” economy is unwittingly a part of the plan to disempower what is left of the Main Street that needs formal institutions to survive. The WEF anticipates people outside and independent of the system in their future utopic stories of people living in their system.

    They will mute populist revolts by sheer inaction, and showing how resistance is futile, so the outcasts will settle down and mind their own business, outside the new institutions, and even build their own alternatives. Andrew Torba kinda gets it now.

    In the end, neither a vaccine gatekeeper society nor the antivaxx alternatives whose existence is entirely predicated on opposition and resistance, are sustainable in the long term. Nor a digitalized 4IR economy and its analog agorist opposition. Both of them will crumble into a chaotic mess full of strife and narrow-mindedness when their usefulness reaches an end, and it will be amazingly fast. Only by then can something more beautiful, developing from organic tendencies of both sides and removing the excesses of materialism and rationalism, a true synthesis. But if you want to do something for survival, do it.

  336. Except turnout for Tatars was very low in the 2012 election – a little over a third (see the article I linked to). Furthermore Tatars were not 100% on the side of Ukrainian nationalists. So the 22% vote for Ukrainian nationalist parties in 2012 in Crimea mostly came from ethnic Ukrainians.

  337. Only by then can something more beautiful, developing from organic tendencies of both sides and removing the excesses of materialism and rationalism, a true synthesis.

    Thanks.

    I have been thinking lately the solution will not come from “planning” – we ain’t thinking our way out of this.

    Rather, schemes of control will reach the end of their tether – they will peak – are peaking – in futility. Rationalism will peak in futility. Exhaustion and surrender will set in – then, organic processes will emerge, and restore us to a more healthy and beautiful way of life.

    We need “outside help”, as it were, but first, we must be receptive to it – and this requires silence and humility, “non-doing” – simply being still. .

    This concept is not connected to any specific religion, either.

  338. Except turnout for Tatars was very low in the 2012 election – a little over a third (see the article I linked to). Furthermore Tatars were not 100% on the side of Ukrainian nationalists. So the 22% vote for Ukrainian nationalist parties in 2012 in Crimea mostly came from ethnic Ukrainians.

    Well, in that case, in 2012-2014, Ukrainian nationalists lost all popularity among the Ukrainians of Crimea.

    https://cdn-prod.opendemocracy.net/media/images/Screen_Shot_2015-03-03_at_17.51.37_GsugX2Z.width-800.png

  339. Or the poll was of questionable accuracy. Or Yanukovich faked the election in favor of Ukrainian nationalists. Which of these is most likely?

  340. Was reading some old Murray Leinster stories.

    Apparently, his idea was to send blacks to carboniferous planets that were too hot for the other races. And that any non black visiting such a planet would require a special cooling suit, or would die from the heat.

    But he began writing decades before the Golden Age, so he might have not known much about terraforming.

  341. Quite a tangent, but I was recently thinking of Kung Fu movies. For example, HK cinema.

    On the one hand, I think it shows less T because the way that the action is stylized, resulting in more butt-kicking babes.

    But I also noticed that there seems to be a lot of Jackie Chan movies, where it is almost like he has a “harem.” I use the word in a very loose sense, akin to anime. That is, that there are often multiple young women characters. Not necessarily all love interests for Chan, but there for their looks. And it got me wondering: why do these “harems” seem more common in Japan and China?

    Is it the negative influence of feminism in the West? Or is it some kind of ghost effect of polygamy in the East? No idea…

  342. That Tatar girl scores fairly high on the hot/crazy index. I get the feeling she would knife the photographer if he came any closer. “Don’t you know I’m loco?”

    The Russian guy looks more like … a Tolkien half-elf? “Greetings friend, have some tea and a meal and let us discuss the news of the Necromancer.”

    Interesting couple.

  343. I love to read based history, but it is so rare to come by in newer books.

    I still cherish some takedown of Sacagawea that I read in a book from the ’30s.

  344. A case of poor judgement

    in a note obtained by Bloomberg, Boni attacked his former partner, writing that Zhu’s “behavior also undermined the board’s confidence in Justin’s ability to lead the company going forward…” While he praised Zhu as a “world-class innovator and creative thinker” whose “vision, creativity and passion will remain a core part of our culture”, Boni said Zhu’s cavalier abuse of drugs on the job was too much for the board to overlook.

    As I recall, former Zappo’s CEO Tony Hsieh also turned to drugs, then subsequently died in a house fire. Perhaps Asians in particular should stay away from psychedelics? Or is it just CEOs?

    LSD has been growing in popularity among the startup set ever since the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs told his biographer that “taking LSD was a profound experience, one of the most important things in my life.”

    From what I’ve heard, LSD is basically profound in a can, at least when things go well. Doesn’t necessarily mean the insights actually are profound. “Whooooaah, like look at my hand, man!”

    https://www.zerohedge.com/markets/ceo-2-billion-startup-fired-microdosing-lsd-work

  345. Likewise with Serbs and Bulgarians. Some of them looking Slav, with others looking more Turkic.

  346. Nominal GDP will skyrocket during inflationary period.

    You don’t understand. MMT uses fiscal policy to control inflation, not to promote it.

    Do you see now why Chile has $5k higher GDP/capita?

    Yes, I did see it when I crossed the border to Argentina while I lived in Chile. It was in plain sight but it’s not what you think. Chile was never meant to be an experiment in Austrian economics. The “Chicago Boys” who designed the Chilean model were, as their name implies, monetarists of the Chicago School of economics who had no problems whatsoever with fractional reserve banking.

    The financial sector in Chile is certainly much more developed than in Argentina and Chileans make extensive use of credit, although their figures are quite average compared to developed countries: https://stats.bis.org/statx/srs/table/f2.1

    Argentinians, on the other hand, don’t trust their banks (with good reason) and buy dollars, durable goods like cars or properties to protect their savings as much as they can. No wonder there is little credit available in the Argentinean economy.

    I understand that you are very enamored of your pet theories but why is it so difficult to accept that sometimes the conventional wisdom is right about simple things? Somebody, for a change in Latin America, managed to apply some reasonable economic policies and the result was quite favorable. But of course it couldn’t last forever so don’t worry, right now Chileans are very busy dismantling their successful model.

    Well, you can’t really talk about European countries without talking about European Central Bank.

    It looks like you lost the plot here. I was just saying that if you claim deficit=>growth and I show you several examples of surplus=>growth and deficit=>decline, your theory quite obviously has some holes in it that you can’t simply hand wave at.

    I mean, you realize that past some point, probably 100% private debt to GDP ratio, state can achieve much better results much more efficiently, right?

    No, not at all. One of the few certainties we can reasonably have in economics is that private actors are more efficient than the government. The reason is not difficult to understand either: skin in the game. Private actors (lenders in this case) are risking their money but politicians are not really risking anything. Their incomes are secure and what they’re actually risking is your and my money.

    Capital doesn’t matter either when economy operates on “just in time” production principles. You simply conjure $1 billion via a low interest loan, enter an order, factory gets built in a highly automated fashion, and you get your factory.

    Interesting idea. Perhaps those capital-starved countries in the 3rd World are just wasting their time and all they could do to get lots of factories, housing and infrastructure is print some money.

    On the other hand, it could be true that money is just an exchange mechanism and does not really have magical properties. Who knows…

  347. I’m not sure that I would call secularization a complete failure in France. Integration, certainly. But many Muslims there are not strong believers, and I feel that they see it more as an ethnic identity (waiting on an ethnogenesis) than anything else. Of course, there are still many adherents, blocking streets with their prayers, but not as a high percentage.

    And at a minimum, the real risks are at the level of bio culture. Meaning that blood is an integral part of it. The threat isn’t from mass conversion of Europeans. But when Blair talks about it, he means it in a purely cultural sense, which is obviously false.

    I don’t think that Israel would get rolled, if we pulled out of Iraq or stopped dealing with Saudis. I’d say that they seem to be handling things pretty well, from the perspective of their goals. Given the wealth and power of the world Jewish community, I’m not even really sure that they need subsidies. Though, doubtlessly many would disagree with me here, as not all Jews support Israel.

    I might add that some believe that oil is on its way out as an energy source. I’m not necessarily a believer in this, at least in the near term, but if it happens it will significantly weaken most of the possible opponents of Israel.

  348. Honestly, I’m an agnostic on whether the Japanese are naturally more warlike. Doesn’t make sense to use recent history as a judge because of different levels of development. And the past is a bit muddled by the Chinese being invaded by Northern barbarians. Probably would have happened, even if they are equal to the Japs in their propensities because of the difficulty of controlling grazing land. Not to mention, China was in a sort struggle just to stay together.

    Split it up though, divorce it from a central state, and it seems like you get a lot of Chinese warriors. For ex: pirates, or the conquest of Taiwan from the Dutch.

    Some say that ANE (Ancient North Eurasians) had a special propensity for war, still represented in Euros, Amerinds, and Chechens.

  349. The current Prime Minister (and acting President) of Haiti is suspected of being involved in the killing of the former President of Haiti earlier this year.

    https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-58564831.amp

  350. Technically true. But I am using “always” in a short-sighted sense: the past 20 years or more.

    There is still that element of civilizational struggle. In a way, this is part of a longer contest, but it is hard to categorize people like Blair in such a way as to give it a continuation with Deus vult. If men like Blair represent Old Christendom, then he is akin to the tumor on a Tasmanian devil representing the devil.

    Appreciate beauty!

    Some say we should ban make-up, so women will be selected for better skin. But I am not sure it works well in the Islamic world.

  351. The reformation led to eugenics, chattel slavery and colonialism. You mean defang Muslims,

    I’m not sure that I would call secularization a complete failure in France. Integration, certainly. But many Muslims there are not strong believers, and I feel that they see it more as an ethnic identity (waiting on an ethnogenesis) than anything else.

    Continued immigration will change that, let France/White get below 70% like America post 2010||
    You’ll see anti-racism & Islamophobia dominate headlines||

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  352. Only because the debt economy is so thoroly broken and the calculation of interest rates – differences in time preference – is impossible?

    I wouldn’t say its broken, just reflects current reality of just in time economy. There is no future anymore in any meaningful sense. You either place an order right now, or you don’t. Factory either executes your order or idles and closes down. There’s no “stock” or savings to speak of, everything is made to order. So there is no need for savings, or capital, or interest rates anymore.

    I am really hopeful for the glorious posthumanist era. But instead of gay automated genetic cyborg utopia, that will be a stillborn system, the system disintegrating or eating its own elites. Then Nature will reclaim what humanity has seized from her in excess during all these Industrial Revolutions…

    Maybe. But unlikely any time soon.

  353. You don’t understand. MMT uses fiscal policy to control inflation, not to promote it.

    Ironically, that’s one of the few areas where I’m sceptical of MMT. At least in the US. I’m not an expert on tax policy in Europe. But in US, tax take is always 18% GDP. Doesn’t matter what rate is. So MMT won’t be able to take money out of the economy with taxes because tax take is always the same. I guess they could crash the economy and that would be deflationary, that would work, but they don’t quite put it in those terms.

    Chile was never meant to be an experiment in Austrian economics

    I never said Austrian, i said Neoliberal.

    The financial sector in Chile is certainly much more developed than in Argentina and Chileans make extensive use of credit, although their figures are quite average compared to developed countries: https://stats.bis.org/statx/srs/table/f2.1

    Chile is not a developed country. What a polite way of saying “Chileans are drowning in debt up to their eyeballs”.

    Argentinians, on the other hand, don’t trust their banks (with good reason) and buy dollars, durable goods like cars or properties to protect their savings as much as they can. No wonder there is little credit available in the Argentinean economy.

    What a polite way of saying “Argentinians are not in debt up to their eyeballs which is why they are poor”. I’m now going to flip your game back to you and say ” Argentinian state has debt that is quite average compared to developed countries, it is certainly less than USA”.

    Argentina needs banking reform similar to what Nabiullina did in Russia, and cartelize the sector. And then Argentinians need to go shopping mindlessly on credit, just like Chileans did.

    I understand that you are very enamored of your pet theories but why is it so difficult to accept that sometimes the conventional wisdom is right about simple things?

    Nah, my pet theories predict macroeconomic outcomes far better than conventional wisdom, Mr. Texbook. 🙂 and the funny thing is, i don’t think you are wrong – you just apply sound logic and the wrong place at the wrong time and get off track. But in general, your thinking is proper.

    Somebody, for a change in Latin America, managed to apply some reasonable economic policies and the result was quite favorable.

    I agree. They probably cartelized their financial system, used copper as currency backstop, and then printed a large amount of private sector debt via commercial banking system. Pure neoliberalism, and successful application at that. But this approach is limited. Neoliberalism is not sustainable.

    It looks like you lost the plot here. I was just saying that if you claim deficit=>growth and I show you several examples of surplus=>growth and deficit=>decline, your theory quite obviously has some holes in it that you can’t simply hand wave at.

    My apologies if i didn’t explain it clearly. It is quite possible for small places to have surpluses as long as overall larger system runs a deficit to support demand. However, if larger system stops running deficits, those smaller places will be forced into deficit. This is universal. If US stops printing, it will go into depression. This will cause commodity price drop (oil at -$40/barrel was fun last year) and normally surplus countries (Saudi for example) will go into deficit.

    No, not at all. One of the few certainties we can reasonably have in economics is that private actors are more efficient than the government.

    Not always. When your private sector debt to GDP is like 300%, the only thing your private actors are doing is flipping same fake derivative financial asset back and forth to each other. They are useless and worthless. Government can do a lot more and a lot better with the funds.

    Interesting idea. Perhaps those capital-starved countries in the 3rd World are just wasting their time and all they could do to get lots of factories, housing and infrastructure is print some money.

    Chileans did. And it worked for them. Argentinians did not, and they are poorer for it. So yes, mathematically, printing some money is absolutely a requirement to having some money. You are getting it. 🙂

  354. Morton's toes says

    I prefer Pendell’s books to Erowid:

    https://www.amazon.com/Pharmako-Poeia-Revised-Updated-Herbcraft/dp/1556438052

    1. Even if the information was only as good they look so beautiful sitting on your bookshelf that they are good value. These books are gorgeous.
    2. He is a fine writer. I haven’t read them but once or twice since I got them and can remember snips from them almost verbatim.

    3. My intoxicant of choice is cannabis. Here is what Pendell has to say about cannabis. (He is quoting an anonymous old and wise hippie):

    A little bit makes you wise. A lot will convert you to a donkey.

    1. My intoxicant of second choice is alcohol. He has a list of illustrious writers who were alcoholics. It is a very long list.

    2. His report on DMT: negative. In an early clinical trial with volunteers (who were not bashful about taking recreational drugs): ~40% did not like; ~40% thought it horrible; ~8% meh; ~1% were enthusiastic about doing it again.

    That imbecile Joe Rogan thinks everybody should do DMT.

    1. The vibe I get from Erowid is largely that the clientele there are dogmatic materialists and these chemicals are material. Pendell is more of a pagan who considers them sacred.
  355. Morton's toes says

    You have a soft landing in your scenario. How do you account for the mafias with their drugs (and other goods) and their cash transactions and their death squads? They overlap those obsolete commercial banks and they may not go down without taking a bunch of less guilty people with them. And bunch might mount up to a really large number.

  356. Sigh…

    OK, so let’s take an isolated island with a couple dozen families. They have been living there for a long enough time to develop a certain specialization of activities and they use red pebbles only found on a small beach as a means of payment for the goods and services that each of them produces.

    Do you realize that what you are saying is that if they only managed to collect many more red pebbles they would be able to materially produce many more goods and services?

    Please don’t evade the question by saying the we live in a more complicated environment. Explain to us all what exactly is missing on that island for a Modern Pebble Theory to work as you claim it does here.

  357. E

  358. Yellowface Anon says

    Saudi has spent more than a decade retreating from the mistake that was Wahhabism.

    They are still sending out Wahhabi clerics.

    The vast majority of Islamic violence is now driven by Iran, sociopath Khamenei and his zealot Mullah’s. The other significant culprit for current day Muslim violence is Erdogan.

    Both of their support for violence is as Islamic as American goals being Judeo-Christian. Only that the 2 ME states mostly think in geopolitical terms (Turkey helping Syrian and Libyan terrorists to reclaim Ottoman territories, Iran extending into Iraq, Syria & Lebanon) and Islam being mostly an afterthought in their diplomacy. Their domestic politics is another matter but they are simply being assertive about their own culture. In the end you will say their mere existence is aggressive to Christianity.

    Compare this to Jewish supremacy in Israel.

    Woke values and Islamic values are in actual behaviour, virtually identical. The only difference is public expression. In the Islamic SJW tradition, Wokeness must happen behind closed doors.

    A very Puritan view of bringing private matters in line with public morals. That said Islam is as much of a victim of pozzing as Christianity.

  359. The fake term Islamophobia was created in attempt to maximize intake of a population of those who are incapable of assimilation (or even coexistence).

    No nation is obligated to accept migrants. It is pretty easy to object to those groups if the numbers are too high. At this point the U.S. needs a hiatus to:
    — Assimilate those who can be American.
    — Return those who cannot.

    The West will have to go on the long, hard path to creating a “Tatar/Hui” style identity for Muslims. It is a very bad idea for the Right to be pushing secularism, and there is no palate for remigration (we’d need considerably more violence than occurred in the Second Intifada)

    Westerners don’t live in a vacuum, and will have to pay diplomatic costs even after defeating the business/ethnic lobbies in domestic politics.

    If you are suggesting Elites are importing anti-Christian Muslims to break traditional values in America, you are approaching the truth

    This is the goal, its about getting younger whites to turn against the values of their elders.

  360. I am not sure how you can describe the current “anti rape-ugee” government in Warsaw as “pro-jihadi”.

    PiS is in government, not KON.

    PiS has agreed to take Afghan refugees.

  361. http://www.occidentaldissent.com/2021/09/14/washington-post-gen-mark-milley-made-secret-calls-to-his-chinese-counterpart-because-he-thought-trump-was-crazy/

    https://twitter.com/AmerMilNews/status/1437825222930059271?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1437825222930059271%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.occidentaldissent.com%2F2021%2F09%2F14%2Fwashington-post-gen-mark-milley-made-secret-calls-to-his-chinese-counterpart-because-he-thought-trump-was-crazy%2F

    “Twice in the final months of the Trump administration, the country’s top military officer was so fearful that the president’s actions might spark a war with China that he moved urgently to avert armed conflict.

    Based.

    ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕਾਖਾਲਸਾਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂਜੀਕੀਫਤਿਹ

  362. Or the poll was of questionable accuracy.

    There were two surveys by GFK and Gellup (and a number of other surveys by Russian pollsters) that gave similar results. So falsification is unrealistic here.

    In addition, there is a logical outflow in your reasoning – with the complete uselessness of the senselessness of teaching in the Ukrainian language in Russia, people of even the most radical pro-Ukrainian views will give their children to a Russian class or go somewhere to Lviv

  363. Grahamsno(G64) says
  364. The election in which 22% of Crimea’s population and about half (likely slight majority) of ethnic Ukrainians voted for Ukrainian nationalist parties had a larger sample size (over a million voters) than did the Gallup poll, which had a sample size of about 750 people – 28% of whom were pensioners.

    I’m sure demand for Ukrainians schools would drop for the reasons you listed, but drop to virtually zero is unrealistic.

  365. Milley should have a summary trial for this crime and face the firing squad the next day. (He will choose to wear a blindfold.) That would be based.

  366. What would be the point? The man is a senile tool, who will not remember the substance or details of any meeting anyways.

  367. Morton's toes says

    Substances like that are like electric cars. I’m going to just occupy myself with the old tried-and-true lifestyle while all you explorers work out the bugs. Did you know that the hazard duty pay for working in Nigeria is 80% of your annual salary at a lot of companies if it’s a bad year for Nigeria?

    (Also you have to take seven or eight vaccines.)

  368. Yellowface Anon says

    How likely will Evergrande’s impending failure in China trigger a global-wide currency reset into a international CBDC system? Presumably, by China demonetizing anything outside of the Digital Yuan as a part of the financial rescue package, and then every other country “copying” the leading example. (Bear in mind what already exist of contactless payment in China, e.g. AliPay and WeChat Pay, are still denominated in a fiat currency with bank money and paper-coin money counterparts.)

    Anyone familiar with the Chinese and global economic system (A123 excluded) to judge the likelihood?

  369. I never loved Jackie Chan, but I seem to recall female characters barely existing in Bruce Lee’s films. I think there’s usually a love interest, but she barely gets any screen time. But those are early 1970s films and Jackie Chan output mostly came later, which makes me think that this change came later, probably driven by feminism.

    One important factor in the existence of butt-kicking babes though is that women seem to like it. And what’s more, women spend more time watching TV shows and movies than men, who have sports and video games as alternatives. I wonder if this divergence could be even more stark in NE Asia, for various reasons. E.g., are video games more popular there? Or there’s the fact that in Japan, salarymen are apparently never home, so at least among married people I’d expect women watch far more TV.

  370. The election in which 22% of Crimea’s population and about half (likely slight majority) of ethnic Ukrainians

    With a turnout of 49%. That is, these 22% are 10% of Crimean voters. Half of those who voted were Tatars and other non-Ukrainians. But most importantly – what is the point of these Ukrainian “patriots” to teach children at school in Ukrainian, while living in Russia?

  371. If it comes down to a fight between a Mexican cartel and Walmart Corporation, my money is on Walmart Corporation.

    It boils down to ability to organize logistics and supply chains, and don’t get me wrong, cartels are no slouches, but they can not match WalMart .

    Now, can hypothetical WalMart Dollar replace US Dollar as currency of choice? Yes, maybe. And maybe that’s the possibility Facebook was considering with their Libra currency attempt. But i don’t see it as likely.

    WalMarts and Facebooks and Amazons will still need the service of US Military and that service transacts in US dollars. Things would have to get unimaginably bad before US military transitioned to WalMart dollars or Libras or whatever.

    Then WalMart Corporate Treasury would replace Federal Reserve as central bank. Possible, yes. But it would literally be Mad Max world, it would be crazy out there for this to happen. So i think very unlikely.

  372. Do you realize that what you are saying is that if they only managed to collect many more red pebbles they would be able to materially produce many more goods and services?

    Yes, you are absolutely right. If you are only allowed to manufacture fishing rods when you have red pebbles, then more red pebbles would allow for more fishing rod production which would get them more fish and improve their material condition.

    Here are your option chains.

    1. Have more red pebbles -> make more rods -> enjoy more fish.
    2. Don’t have red pebbles -> make more rods -> get shot in the head.

    Obviously, option chain 1 improves your material condition and, option chain 2 doesn’t.

    So yes, having more red pebbles would absolutely improve your ability to produce more goods and services. Not only that, pebble inflation is a requirement for growth, and has been baked into their economy from the start.

    And of course “Muh Non Aggression Principle!!”. Well, that’s an aspirational goal, but this assumption has never been true in all of history.

    And this is why libertarians don’t do well in politics. Libertarian logic is excellent, but assumptions are garbage. This is also why Communists do better in politics. Communists have terrible logic, but their assumptions are correct. Communists simply say “make rods, or get shot in the head”. And people get this.

    People will put up with terrible logic (because most people are bad at logic), but they will not put up with bad assumptions – its like the Uncanny Valley of reasoning. If it doesn’t jive with people’s observed reality, they are not going to bite. Getting shot in the head for not having pebbles is the observed reality for most people, and has been throughout history. Non Aggression Principle is not. So Communist reality is closer to the real world for most people, despite bad logic and all.

    So, Mr. Libertarian Textbook, you may be very clever and logical, but your assumptions keep you off track. 🙂

  373. With a turnout of 49%. That is, these 22% are 10% of Crimean voters. Half of those who voted were Tatars and other non-Ukrainians

    Turnout was uneven in Crimea; only slightly more than a third of Tatars voted and the Tatar regions had the lowest turnout.

    what is the point of these Ukrainian “patriots” to teach children at school in Ukrainian, while living in Russia?

    The same point why some Russians want to send their kids to Russian schools in Ukraine, why Tatars want to send their kids to Tatar schools, why Ukrainians in Moscow want to send their kids to Ukrainian schools (but are denied).

  374. The same point why some Russians want to send their kids to Russian schools in Ukraine,

    Russian is spoken (as native language) by a large part of Ukraine, and the Russian language can be useful outside of Ukraine. But the Ukrainian language in Crimea is spoken only by some unique people in their family, and the Ukrainian language is useless everywhere except Ukraine (and very few people want to emigrate to Ukraine)

    why Ukrainians in Moscow want to send their kids to Ukrainian schools (but are denied)

    https://c.radikal.ru/c36/2109/b4/4342b84eff4e.png

    “Ukrainian school named after Pavel Popovich. It is located near the Arbatskaya metro station in the center of Moscow. Unfortunately, there is always a shortage in it – few people want to learn the Ukrainian language.”

  375. Well, I don’t want to distort it too much. I think “harems” are a small trend, even within Jackie Chan movies. And I may even be exaggerating it a little bit, having more an eye for ladies than male characters. And when it does happen, mostly, to me they come across as damsels, though there are certainly a few butt-kicking girls in Chan movies.

    I do think though , when it does happen, that there isn’t an easy parallel with Hollywood movies. Mostly they seem to go for one female character. Maybe, it is a side effect of the Chinese liking more characters?

    I was originally lukewarm to Jackie Chan myself, when he became popular in the US. His most famous film from that era, “Rumble in the Bronx” is kind of pozzed, IMO. And I even wondered if part of his fame was from typical progressive xenophilia. Though he has grown on me considerably, since then.

    What I appreciate about him is his workmanlike attitude. Not every stunt is spectacular, but I feel like most of his films have a kind of ambition in them, even if it mostly manifests on the level of simple choreography, like kicking a broom or hitting someone with a ladder. I just feel like this sort of thing, I’d compare it a little to Fred Astaire, is missing from most Hollywood action movies, where almost no thought goes into choreography.

  376. Another issue: Gas prices are skyrocketing in Europe and Eurocrats are nervous about the necessity of speeding NS2. Anyway, Gasprom will wait and let them decide.

    https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/record-gas-prices-could-hasten-nord-stream-2-launch-analysts-say-2021-09-14/

  377. The fact that there are multiple people makes it much harder for the SJW’s to deploy the “Epstein Solution“, which is their preferred solution for those who know too much.

    What SJWs are you talking about? Prison guards?

  378. “Ukrainian school named after Pavel Popovich. It is located near the Arbatskaya metro station in the center of Moscow. Unfortunately, there is always a shortage in it – few people want to learn the Ukrainian language.”

    Evidence of its existence other than a claim in a blog post? I went to some meeting at the Ukrainian center on Arbat a few years ago and the people were complaining that the authorities were preventing them from opening a school there. They organized their own school on weekends. There are daily Ukrainian schools in Chicago and Detroit, which have fewer western Ukrainians than does Moscow.

  379. Not all North Africans can actually speak French, FWIW. Many Maghrebis can, but, say, Egyptians can’t.

    Also, Russia wouldn’t be very poor in this TL. It would very likely have a GDP PPP per capita of $40,000-50,000, comparable to France, the UK, and/or Canada. (Human capital-wise, $40K sounds more reasonable, but, like Canada, Russia has a lot of natural resources, so it could have reached $50K instead.)

    As for China, wouldn’t first the threat of the “yellow peril” have to die down in Russia? In the US, there was a huge fear of the “yellow peril” even though the US received relatively few Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century. And this fear wasn’t unique to the US–Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, et cetera also experienced it and shut their doors to Chinese immigrants, either mostly or completely.

    In regards to the US, most of its Hispanics arrived after 1965, when the US was significantly more tolerant and accepting in regards to racial questions and racial issues. A more bigoted US would have been considerably less likely to be willing to accept huge numbers of Hispanic immigrants, especially ones with significant amounts of non-white ancestry.

    Also, in regards to China, please keep in mind that, without Communism, China might become a developed country by the 1990s or by 2000 just like South Korea successfully managed to do. And also if there’s no World War II, then liberal attitudes in white countries on racial and ethnic questions might take longer to develop.

  380. If Chinese will move to Russia by the tens of millions, most of this migration is likely to occur in the years and decades after 1950, IMHO.

    Also, theoretically speaking, it’s still not too late for Russia to try attracting Chinese immigrants right now with sufficient incentives. Though given that China’s and Russia’s quality of life are probably not too different right now, Russia in real life will likely attract the more adventure-minded Chinese if it would have actually tried to attract large numbers of Chinese. (China is a huge country. Over a billion people. So even if only a small percentage of Chinese people actually want to emigrate, it could still be in the tens of millions of people, which is a lot!)

  381. A PPP GDP per capita of $40-50K a year isn’t enough to attract Africans, Middle Easterners, Latin Americans, South Asians, and Southeast Asians? Canada and the UK manage to be sufficiently attractive for some of these groups, after all!

    And it’s worth keeping in mind that the Chinese in Russia would need to be scattered throughout the entire country if they will ever number in the tens of millions since if they will be concentrated in the Russian Far East, then Chinese separatism could eventually develop over there. Mexico doesn’t have the necessary economic might to pressure the US in regards to territorial revisions, but China could in regards to even a 500 million-strong Russia–eventually. Plus, China’s quality of life is likely to eventually be comparable to Russia’s whereas this is NOT true for Mexico’s and the US’s quality of life.

  382. Also, Russia wouldn’t be very poor in this TL. It would very likely have a GDP PPP per capita of $40,000-50,000, comparable to France, the UK, and/or Canada

    Russia would probably be more comparable to Italy, due to human capital and culture (corruption might hold it back a bit).

    This would not be high enough to attract people who could instead go to America, France, UK, Germany. But it would be fine for Chinese next door.

    As for China, wouldn’t first the threat of the “yellow peril” have to die down in Russia? In the US, there was a huge fear of the “yellow peril” even though the US received relatively few Chinese immigrants in the late 19th century

    Maybe, but it would be harder for Russia to keep them out. IIRC Russia made a policy that Chinese immigrants were okay as long as they converted to Orthodoxy. Russians would assimilate and mix with the Chinese.

    Also, in regards to China, please keep in mind that, without Communism, China might become a developed country by the 1990s or by 2000 just like South Korea successfully managed to do

    I’d guess most Chinese would come to Russia in the first half of the 20th century (maybe to the 1960s), during China’s civil war and before China became prosperous.

  383. I don’t know what you’re trying to tell me, honestly. You are introducing a new weird assumption in my model of people getting shot and you go on a detour about Communists and Libertarians that doesn’t add anything to my understanding of your monetary ideas. I was hoping that you would introduce some more relevant assumptions, such as a central authority on the island distributing the red pebbles or something like that.

    This exchange, however, shows a very real fact: people get mystified with the subject of money. And it also affects many professional economists, so it’s not a personal criticism towards you. There’s very little theory of money taught at economic faculties, after all.

    It is not surprising thus that you are showing less common sense than what I would expect from the primitive islanders of my example. The amount of goods produced on that island would be determined by the needs, wishes and industriousness of its inhabitants, constrained by their technology and availability of materials and tools. The amount of red pebbles (or shells, or whatever other method of exchange people generally accepted on that island) would be irrelevant for the total amount of goods produced. No islander in this primitive society would consider the idea that extracting more red pebbles from the beach would lead to producing more goods with the same amount of people and the same amount of materials available. They would all instinctively understand that this is not physically possible.

    In fact, if the amount of pebbles grew too high, there would be some inflation of sorts and transactions would become cumbersome so total production could actually become lower. Economic history shows that people would start using substitutes for reb pebbles in their transactions out of necessity. And this shows another important lesson: money needs to be relatively scarce and somewhat fungible in order to properly accomplish the goal it was invented for. It was only in much later stages of social development, when people had forgotten what money had been invented for, when the idea of increasing production by increasing the money supply, usually to finance wars, came to the minds of ancient rulers. It’s been said that MMT may be a theory and may be monetary but modern it is certainly not.

    This all has little or nothing to do with libertarianism, by the way. Libertarianism is a political movement that I am not allergic to but find lacking in many areas.

  384. Yes regulation laws have a greater influence than I would have guessed.

    For example, YouTube explained for the prevalence of “cul de sacs” in America, as a combination of regulation, economic cost reduction, and automobile introduction.

    By the way, YouTube seems to have improved its content quality in last couple years.

    However, more likely because I didn’t refresh my YouTube cookies. That is, YouTube is just guessing what videos I would approve more accurately. As we were discussing before about increasing customization levels in the internet.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9vDcfH03gs

  385. In 2019, she had sold this (beautiful, but modest) house in her YouTube video, for $17,5 million. She bought it for only $2.53 million in 2001.

    She returned a 600% increase in 18 years – it is a very safe, non-risky investment, with returns as if from a high-risk investment.

    It’s indeed too expensive for the typical middle class, non-executive office workers (its value is equivalent to 175 years of typical office workers’ $100,000 per year salary), even at the 2001 entry cost.

    Liv Tyler Sold Her Longtime West Village Townhouse for $17.45 Million

    The actress has lived in the New York neighborhood since 2001, when she spent $2.53 million on a four-story brownstone at 255 West 11th Street, and she’s often spotted walking around the area.

    Alas, Tyler has now sold the brownstone for $17.45 million in an off-market deal, as first spotted by the New York Post. Tyler didn’t publicly list the home for sale, though she did recently show off the house in a glossy Architectural Digest spread in August.

    Prime real estate locale in terms of costs versus getting more luxury for less in the surrounding suburbs

    There is some beautiful 19th century architecture in those gentrifying African-American areas like Bedford–Stuyvesant (which was in 1980s-1990s famous for Biggie Smalls and Spike Lee films).

    To own houses in those gentrifying African American areas of New York, is probably a very fast rising investment.

    I guess the entry cost for that property is already becoming unaffordable, and in 20 years the properties there will all be 5 times more expensive.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MINWbe2vZc0

  386. ^ Edit to my post above

    She returned a 600% increase in 18 years

    Oops that is 7 times.

    AaronB

    products of a pre-modern mentality

    America is all product of a modern mentality. Modern history begins in 1500, in the normal definition.

    Brownstone architecture is mostly 19th century.

    modernity is constrained to produce drab mess, ugliness, and banality, while pre-modern society had no such constraint

    In London, you can see that a lot of most well designed architecture, including houses that balance public and private sphere, is from the 19th century, when the culture was not so very different from 2021. So modern times can produce attractive city planning until recently.

    The change of architecture is clearly not related to the modern culture (our aesthetics and many other cultural aspects are still almost very similar, which is reflected in the higher property prices for such architecture), but rather the technological and economic changes.

    Modern American towns in the country are uniformly soulless. Is this not some level of an indictment of a civilization?

    But the same in Iran, Japan, Chile, Russia, Mexico, China, etc.

    It’s indictment of the visual result, of this low-labour intensity building methodology or technique. The same style is predominant in very different cultures, because it’s a result of the contemporary construction technology or methodology, rather than of our aesthetic tastes.

    Le Corbusier want to destroy what’s left of Old Paris

    They don’t read Le Corbusier, when they build in Iran or China.

    Blaming the Le Corbusier for modern square office building, is like blaming Marinetti for speeding automobiles.

    American zoning laws are much stricter than Tokyo or Bangkok, and are designed to create an atmosphere of sterility and control, and to keep “living” and sleeping

    This mixed use is at least fashionable now.

    But it requires higher population density of the city. And the population density is partly dependent on the transport method that is use.

    In the Soviet Union, there was urban planning for higher population density, because it was planned based on certain transport infrastructure.

    Relative lack of adoption of automobiles, was one of the greatest achievements of the USSR, partly because it has also contributed to more population-dense, mixed use, city fabric.

    wilderness areas are the most strictly controlled – human tampering is forbidden. You can’t even ride bicycles in a wilderness area!

    America’s relation to bicycles is another negative aspect of the country, and can seem yet another indication of the primitive worship of the automobile in the 20th century American consciousness (Although the relation to the bicycle is not much better in Russia).

    medieval peasant took for granted, the average person can no longer afford today.

    Medieval peasants didn’t own beautiful architecture. They would be lucky to own much of the food they insecurely could produce.

  387. This thread started with pretty chicks and now you show that hideous mad witch? Shame on you!

  388. I was hoping that you would introduce some more relevant assumptions, such as a central authority on the island distributing the red pebbles or something like that.

    That’s what “getting shot in the head” is referring to. Monopoly on violence. I have demonstrated how increase in pebble supply will indeed result in increase in material conditions.

    This exchange, however, shows a very real fact: people get mystified with the subject of money.

    There’s nothing mysterious about money – fundamentally, its just a tool of social organization, or social engineering, if you will. Nothing more, nothing less. We live in a vast universe that doesn’t care about US dollar, or Euro, or Yen, only humans do.

    The amount of goods produced on that island would be determined by the needs, wishes and industriousness of its inhabitants, constrained by their technology and availability of materials and tools

    If you think that government regulation, including taxation and credit, has no impact on the production of goods, you may not be as smart as i thought.

    They would all instinctively understand that this is not physically possible.

    If pebble was the mechanism of exchange, and they got shot for not using it, they would understand quickly why pebble was important.

    This is exactly how good standard came about in prehistoric times. Do you think starving cavemen cared about gold? No lol. They were trying to survive. But warlords and priests liked shiny things, and they could murder the starving peasants and take what they wanted. This is why gold, useless metal in those times, became so valuable. You could give it to a warlord or a priest and they would murder your rivals because they liked shiny things.

    Economic history shows that people would start using substitutes for reb pebbles in their transactions out of necessity

    Not if they risked getting shot in the head. States can lose monopoly on violence, but this typically happens after they lose a war (in Venezuela’s case, its sanctions/trade war), and as soon as state regains its power, those substitutes once again become subordinate to the state. Germans lost gold due to reparations and lost war, hyperinflated and rolled out renten mark. Hitler tried something and went to prison lol. It wasn’t the end of the world.

    Japanese printed more than just about anybody, but they don’t need to be told that state is the main power, so Yen is doing nice indeed. And good luck switching away from USD lol. So no, nobody is switching to anything, at least domestically. Americans will continue to use dollars just like Japanese will continue to use Yen.

    And this shows another important lesson: money needs to be relatively scarce and somewhat fungible in order to properly accomplish the goal it was invented for.

    I got good news for you: money is still relatively scarce and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Aren’t you the one pushing “unlimited wants” thing? You should know better.

    Money, as a tool of social engineering, is used to confer status, and status is relative, so desire for status is indeed infinite. So is money demand. We can do this with Beany Babies, but US dollar is easier to make, so we convince people it has status power. People get it to look good. Easy peasy. There will always be demand for money as long as money = status.

    But no need to make ordinary people suffer needlessly because of this. Hence basic income and credit.

    when people had forgotten what money had been invented for, when the idea of increasing production by increasing the money supply, usually to finance wars, came to the minds of ancient rulers.

    Do you seriously believe money predates war? LOL, even ants and chimps have wars, and they have no use for money. War predates humanity itself. The whole point of money was to attract attention of a warlord and sway him. And warlord comes from war.

  389. Great video. Fiat currency is a lot easier to create than leaves (leaves are actually amazingly complex biochemical factories) which is why we always use fiat.

    Like i said, we could use Beany Babies but US dollar is easier.

    If our money had to be as complex and amazing as leaves, we would be in real trouble.

    Luckily, people just like digits on a computer screen, much simpler technology (and yes, computer is much simpler than a leaf).

    Fiat is easy, shiny, and people like it. Which is why it’s here to stay.

  390. Evidence of its existence other than a claim in a blog post?

    http://ukrcentr.ru/ukra%D1%97nska-nedilna-shkola-imeni-pavla-popovicha/

  391. There is some beautiful 19th century architecture in those gentrifying African-American areas like Bedford–Stuyvesant (which was in 1980s-1990s famous for Biggie Smalls and Spike Lee films).

    To own houses in those gentrifying African American areas of New York, is probably a very fast rising investment.

    I guess the entry cost for that property is already becoming unaffordable, and in 20 years the properties there will all be 5 times more expensive.

    Reminded of a conversation about 20 or so years ago that I overheard between two brothers concerning their original residence in Harlem. They jokingly said that you don’t see as many Blacks there because of the upped $. Going back some years, there’s an NBC Law & Order episode noting that change in that area.

    It’s indeed too expensive for the typical middle class, non-executive office workers (its value is equivalent to 175 years of typical office workers’ $100,000 per year salary), even at the 2001 entry cost.

    On Long Island, real estate prices have noticeably risen because Manhattan is considered to have taken a hit in terms of increased crime and high living costs. New condos and apartments are being built throughout LI.

    A trend has developed on LI, where a good number of the over 60 crowd are going to Florida as city folks take their place. This is something that had been evident, but seems to have increased.

  392. Okay. It is a Sunday school, not a 5 day a week school. There is not a single Ukrainian school in Moscow, which has officially about 150,000 Ukrainians. Chicago has 45,000 Ukrainians, of whom perhaps 15,000 are Ukrainian fluent, yet has a 5 day a week Ukrainian school (it ends in the 8th grade). The Kazakh capital has one Ukrainian high school:

    https://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A3%D0%BA%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%B8%D0%BD%D1%86%D1%8B_%D0%B2_%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%B7%D0%B0%D1%85%D1%81%D1%82%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B5

    There is not a single Ukrainian school in Russia, which has officially about 2 million Ukrainians – more than Canada (1.3 million of full and partial ancestry).

  393. To people interested in how real world works, here’s something to chew on:

    US private debt to GDP ratio.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/private-debt-to-gdp

    This explains why neoliberalism was thought as winning formula. This debt was the major reason for GDP growth until 2008.

    But neoliberalism died.

    https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/government-debt-to-gdp

    The state took over. The state is the only one that can get low interest rates. The future belongs to those who can get low interest rates. The future belongs to the state. Its inevitable.

  394. Prof. Y.G.A. Verkhoshansky says

    Are you blind, or responding to the wrong post? That post appears to be very well sourced to me.

  395. And to people who think Chile and the US are not enough, here is England of Margaret Thatcher.

    https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/QGBPAM770A

    As you can see, its always the same story. I can do this for Japan too, and other countries.

    Bottom line – credit matters. Credit markets matter. Its the only thing that matters. Credit to private sector is neoliberalism, credit to the state is socialism. Neoliberalism has been dead since 2008. We are following the only path possible.

  396. Somehow, Canada manages to keep at least 103 Ukrainian language school afloat, from pre-school > elementary school > high school and of course Saturday schools too. The list doesn’t even include colleges or universities that provide Ukrainian language/culture courses that provide for advanced degrees in Ukrainian studies. The enclosed site breaks down all of the schools by province and curriculum, and is quite interesting. You say that not a single Ukrainian language school exists in all of Russia?

    https://shkola.ucc.ca/school-listings/school-listing-by-province/

  397. Italy doesn’t have a lot of natural resources like Russia has, no? And Russia would also probably have a relatively sizable Ashkenazi Jewish smart fraction in this TL due to no Holocaust.

    As for converting to Orthodoxy, would Chinese actually be willing to do this by the tens of millions? Granted, I know that something like 25-35% of South Korea’s total population converted to Christianity over the last couple of centuries or so, but still, …

  398. The Russian territories north of Mongolia can be secured by having Russia permanently strip Mongolia from China–unless of course Chinese will still settle there en masse afterwards. But Mongolia has few large cities and the Russian cities further north are MUCH more attractive, so …

  399. Makes one wonder just how Novorossiyans would compare to the Crimean Tatars in regards to their views on Russian annexation had Russia outright annexed all of Novorossiya back in 2014.

  400. Yellowface Anon says

    That’s great. Fewer and fewer people will buy from Walmart/Amazon and anywhere accepting only their scrips. Because using their scrip means accepting their legitimacy as a financial mediator, while people are heading the other way with cryptos, local currencies and bartering.

    It isn’t about which currencies are better at being used to buy and sell, but whether the currencies command trust, which implies institutional trust.

  401. Yellowface Anon says

    Look at Inner Mongolia.

  402. Yellowface Anon says

    I have demonstrated how increase in pebble supply will indeed result in increase in material conditions.

    You just shift some of the same limited resources from uses that is feasible under a stable pebble-mining regime to ones that are short-term in outlook.

    If pebble was the mechanism of exchange, and they got shot for not using it, they would understand quickly why pebble was important.

    This is exactly how good standard came about in prehistoric times. Do you think starving cavemen cared about gold? No lol. They were trying to survive. But warlords and priests liked shiny things, and they could murder the starving peasants and take what they wanted. This is why gold, useless metal in those times, became so valuable. You could give it to a warlord or a priest and they would murder your rivals because they liked shiny things.

    Do they get shot by reverting of the old ways of bartering, albeit more discreetly? (grey economy) And even if that’s the case, it’s rule by intimidation.

    The way increasingly centralized city-states concentrated the monopoly on issuing media of exchange was true. But that doesn’t mean we can aspire to a form of money that is more affected by market conditions than political will.

    States can lose monopoly on violence, but this typically happens after they lose a war (in Venezuela’s case, its sanctions/trade war), and as soon as state regains its power, those substitutes once again become subordinate to the state.

    True, whether the state is local or national or global. Libertarians and anarchists want to abolish all those entirely. Which is why decentralizing money is one of their strategies.

    Americans will continue to use dollars just like Japanese will continue to use Yen.

    Good luck convincing anyone in Florida those FedCoin CBDCs are good ole’ fiat dollar. Not even A123 is impressed. (You might have better luck in Japan only because of more Confucian, conformist ethics)

    I got good news for you: money is still relatively scarce and will continue to be for the foreseeable future.

    It is always scarce, no matter whether the Franklin fetches $100 or $100 million. It isn’t the numerals, but real transactions that give money value and hence the level of scarcity. It is even scarcer in a hyperinflationary scenario where even the existing bucks quickly becomes worthless and useless.

    Money, as a tool of social engineering, is used to confer status, and status is relative, so desire for status is indeed infinite. So is money demand.

    It’s true in modern society, and only in modern society is this exaggerated. If the entire world goes Taoist or Mad-Max, BAM! Status signaling comes by forms other than money.

    But no need to make ordinary people suffer needlessly because of this. Hence basic income and credit.

    Go outside of the post-industrial economy and see. Buddha says people will suffer more or less under every society.

    Do you seriously believe money predates war? LOL, even ants and chimps have wars, and they have no use for money. War predates humanity itself. The whole point of money was to attract attention of a warlord and sway him. And warlord comes from war.

    What he means is particularly human ways of waging war, i.e. by statecraft.

    Bottom line – credit matters. Credit markets matter. Its the only thing that matters. Credit to private sector is neoliberalism, credit to the state is socialism. Neoliberalism has been dead since 2008. We are following the only path possible.

    Remember those Catholic theologians and Islamic ulemas condemning usury? But they don’t want a modernized economy.

    What use is a modern economy when it is at the root of all vices, and it totally destroys spirituality? The failure of all economic theories (except marginally Austrian economics) is because of their materialism. It is the failure of those systems to provide value judgement on an economic action. Instead, those are assumed to exist in itself, explained as axioms, that needs are needs and wants are wants and labor is labor and production is production and exchange is exchange. No room for revising what underpins all those axioms. Is that action moral, or beneficial to spiritual welfare?

    Austrian economics can only come that close because von Mises set out immediately from action itself and builds his theories around its place in the society. But what does individual actions mean, is assumed to be self-evident to the actor, and in this place a classical liberal assumption is taken over. In this place, maybe the humanist Marx thought thru what labor means in a spiritual sense, too.

    Any economic theory without a moral or spiritual foundation eventually leads to impoverishment. The original meaning of “economy” is how a Classical Greek household was and ought to be organized. It is also the basic subject of analysis in Confucian thought. In their bulk term coining exercise, the Japanese got the ultimate purpose of any economy, and translated “economy” as “経済”, which is short for 經世濟民 = “to administer the state to relieve the suffering of the people”. In other words, societal management and popular benefaction, under an overarching moral framework.

    But Taoists and Buddhists will dissent – why not be frugal and become closer to the natural state/extinguishment of passions? Why not analyze economic actions from their ultimate source, which is asking for the ideals driving them?

  403. Yellowface Anon says

    Our main pro-establishment party, the DAB, is lobbying for “state protection of the underage from sexuality and violence in video games”. We all know where this leads to. That goal is quite noble, and the usual addicts here are howling and running for their lives. But it needs not be done by laws.

    As usual, I have better suggestions for governments working on the problem.

    Broke: Individual countries passing laws banning games or limiting gaming time.

    Woke: WHO declaring a pandemic of gaming addiction, and inducing governments to impose COVID-tier stringencies on gaming. A “Global War on Gaming” ensues and server flight becomes impossible.

    Bespoke: Using hyperinflation and currency resets to bankrupt game studios, publishers and whales. Likewise for consumer tech sectors. Mandating woke content in games to alienate gamers. WWIII and/or internet shutdowns. Populists expropriating gaming-adjacent sectors for being their ideological enemies. Puritan and/or Amish society-building.

    The grapes has gone sour!

  404. Lolled at two, but ‘I resign’?

    As he stated, only a paraphrase, but the exact quote would be easy to find ‘We have the best election fraud setup in history.’

    He could resign, admitting the truth, on condition of forcing a new election.

    Otherwise, you get the disaster of your vile VP becoming the P. Want that? I sure would not, even as non-U.S.A. person, the idea is both disgusting and frightening.

    I was reading an article about Merkel on Am. Con. mag. on the train today.

    Amazed that the author had no idea that Merkel was the leading youth functionary of the SED, Socialist Unity Party, rulers of the former East Germany.

    She appeared on podia with the top leaders, many other photos of the young her being an SED youth activist.

    Manchurian candidate for sure, except it didn’t require any brainwashing.

    The writer of the piece also was apparently ignorant of her very strange hand signs.

    I cannot be bothered to make a comment there under their system of now.

    Also, it is so little known, Mr. Unz should ask someone who has already written in detail on Merkel’s SED background if the article can be reprinted here, or ask someone with talent in such things and cynicism re. Merkel to write an article for the site.

    I would do it, but too much else right now.

    Have seen two very good articles in English, with several damning photos, easiest I think would be to ask about re-publishing one here.

  405. Yellowface Anon says

    Merkel’s socialist upbringing is well known by now. But the question is, is that Actually Existing Socialism then, the same as Corporate-Woke “Socialism” we are confronting now?

  406. No government weekly schools. Moscow has a private Sunday school organized by the Ukrainian community.

    To be clear again, Russia certainly isn’t obligated to fund such schools. It’s their country, they can do what they want. I’m pointing out the hypocrisy of complaints about Ukraine shutting down government Russian schools.

  407. Okay. It is a Sunday school

    In which there is a constant lack of students, which was emphasized above

    5 day a week school? На

    http://www.odnako.org/blogs/v-moskve-hoteli-otkrit-ukrainoyazichniy-klass-no-ne-sobrali-detey/
    For two years in Moscow, they tried to open classes and schools for children with instruction in the Ukrainian language. They have repeatedly appealed to the Ukrainian diaspora:” Give children who would be taught in the Ukrainian language. “But the authorities failed to recruit even one Ukrainian-language class.”
    This information was confirmed by the director of the Ukrainian branch of the Institute of CIS Countries Vladimir Kornilov. “The authorities tried … to create a state Ukrainian school in Moscow at the expense of the Moscow budget. And, you know, three or four people were recruited and then taken away, because the classes were inferior,” said Kornilov.

    There is not a single Ukrainian school in Moscow, which has officially about 150,000 Ukrainians.

    Most of them speak Russian as their native language. A rough analogy – a million Irish live in New York. How many Gaelic schools (teaching in Gaelic) are there in New York?

  408. So your sources are a random person on a blog and a man working for the same government that prevents any Ukrainian schools in his country?

    Also your source: “Об этом заявил народный депутат от Партии регионов, глава организации “Русскоязычная Украина” Вадим Колесниченко”

    A pro-Russian activist from the Party of Regions.
    Ha.

    Maybe we should quote Banderists about the situation of Russians in Lviv?

    “There is not a single Ukrainian school in Moscow, which has officially about 150,000 Ukrainians.”

    Most of them speak Russian as their native language. A rough analogy – a million Irish live in New York. How many Gaelic schools (teaching in Gaelic) are there in New York

    And most of the 45,000 Ukrainians in Chicago speak English, yet they support a daily Ukrainian school.

    Also, of course, Gaelic is much less common than Ukrainian.

  409. And most of the 45,000 Ukrainians in Chicago speak English, yet they support a daily Ukrainian school.

    So these are completely different Ukrainians than in Moscow or St. Petersburg. And Ukrainian / Russian or Ukrainian / English are completely different cases. the analogue of the Ukrainian school in Moscow will be a school in the Scottish Lowlanders dialect in Chicago.

    A pro-Russian activis…

    Show that he is wrong. Give examples of rallies / demonstrations in Moscow demanding schools in Ukrainian, petitions of Moscow residents demanding to create such a school, etc. So far, there is a reality given to us – Ukrainians in Moscow do not need Ukrainian schools (and most of them do not know Ukrainian)

  410. I wonder how things are going on in that Ukrainian library that got closed down in Moscow a few years back? Canada is much more progressive when it comes to multicultural affairs than Russia. It doesn’t appear that Canadian society is any worse off for its ability to embrace and support its Ukrainian community:

    https://www.ctvnews.ca/polopoly_fs/1.1945169.1407119027!/httpImage/image.jpg_gen/derivatives/landscape_1020/image.jpg
    Annual Ukrainian festival in Dauphen Canada. Where are all of the supporters of Skoropadsky’s Union with Russia? 🙂

  411. Ukrainians in Moscow fear reprisals for standing up for any signs of promoting Ukrainian language preferences. Have you already forgotten AP’s bringing this up in his comment #438? Then there’s the nasty little affair of Muscovite authorities closing down the only Ukrainian library in all of Russia. I believe the authorities found one Banderite type comic book on shelf #37 covered with dust from inactive use.

    For some reason, the authorities in Kazakhstan feel more threatened by the presence of Russian cultural symbols there than Ukrainian ones:

    In an effort to differentiate the Ukrainian and Russian communities in Kazakhstan, the Kazakh government has actively supported Ukrainian cultural aspirations.[3] It has funded a Ukrainian newspaper. Ukrainian organizations operate freely in Kazakhstan, and currently there are 20 Ukrainian cultural centers that sponsor Sunday schools, choirs, and folk dancing groups. Kazakhstan’s capital, Nur-Sultan, has a Ukrainian high school and Sunday school.[4] The shared sufferings of the Kazakh and Ukrainian peoples at the hands of the Soviets are emphasized by Kazakh-Ukrainian activists.[3]

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

    It looks that there indeed a different type of Ukrainian that lives in Russia than in Canada or Kazakhstan. I wonder why?

  412. In an effort to differentiate the Ukrainian and Russian communities in Kazakhstan, the Kazakh government has actively supported Ukrainian cultural aspirations.[3] It has funded a Ukrainian newspaper. Ukrainian organizations operate freely in Kazakhstan, and currently there are 20 Ukrainian cultural centers that sponsor Sunday schools, choirs, and folk dancing groups. Kazakhstan’s capital, Nur-Sultan, has a Ukrainian high school and Sunday school.[4] The shared sufferings of the Kazakh and Ukrainian peoples at the hands of the Soviets are emphasized by Kazakh-Ukrainian activists.[3]

    A svido sentiment that conveniently (from that slant) overlooks the lack of freedom in Ukraine and Kazakhstan.

    Somewhat related:

    https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2021/09/14/do-ukraine-and-the-united-states-have-a-similar-value-system/

    Ukrainians in Moscow fear reprisals for standing up for any signs of promoting Ukrainian language preferences. Have you already forgotten AP’s bringing this up in his comment #438? Then there’s the nasty little affair of Muscovite authorities closing down the only Ukrainian library in all of Russia. I believe the authorities found one Banderite type comic book on shelf #37 covered with dust from inactive use.

    AP brought up a conversation he said happened among some Ukrainians at a Moscow based Ukrainian venue. The accuracy of which is perhaps another story. Sensing the same could be so with the aforementioned library.

    Ekho Moskvy has hosted pro-Bandera sentiment. Have heard about folks wearing Ukrainian themed shirts in Russia who don’t get hassled unlike this chap:

    https://www.google.com/search?q=odessa+man+russia+shirt+arrested&source=hp&ei=3lZDYb3AD6Oq5NoPtuGJoAc&iflsig=ALs-wAMAAAAAYUNk7q74jHqUPeXdTuNOCjvhzO-Jym1j&oq=odessa+man+russia+shirt+arrested&gs_lcp=Cgdnd3Mtd2l6EAw6EQguEIAEELEDEMcBEKMCEJMCOgUIABCABDoICAAQgAQQsQM6CAguEIAEELEDOg4ILhCABBCxAxDHARCjAjoLCC4QgAQQxwEQ0QM6DgguEIAEELEDEIMBEJMCOgsILhCABBDHARCvAToLCC4QgAQQsQMQgwE6BQgAELEDOggIABCxAxCDAToFCC4QgAQ6DgguEIAEELEDEMcBEK8BOgsIABCABBCxAxCDAToLCC4QgAQQsQMQkwI6BwguEIAEEAo6DgguEIAEELEDEMcBENEDOggILhCABBCTAjoGCAAQFhAeOggIIRAWEB0QHjoFCCEQoAE6BwghEAoQoAFQ-ghY4Epg9FdoAHAAeACAAW6IAcQRkgEEMzEuMZgBAKABAQ&sclient=gws-wiz&ved=0ahUKEwi9p4Oi3IPzAhUjFVkFHbZwAnQQ4dUDCAw

  413. To be clear again, Russia certainly isn’t obligated to fund such schools. It’s their country, they can do what they want. I’m pointing out the hypocrisy of complaints about Ukraine shutting down government Russian schools.

    Great example of a false equivalency

  414. Not as many svidos obviously. A matter of demand. From decades ago, I know of at at least one US public school system that dropped Russian while maintaining Spanish and French. In that instance, it was a matter of demand for something relative to practicality/budget.

  415. Your claim that Ukrainians in Moscow don’t need or want a Ukrainian school is based on this silly article:

    http://www.odnako.org/blogs/v-moskve-hoteli-otkrit-ukrainoyazichniy-klass-no-ne-sobrali-detey/

    It quotes a Party of Regions pro-Russian activist and “corroborates” his claim by quoting Vladimir Kornilov. Who is Kornilov?

    https://dosye.info/%D0%9A%D0%BE%D1%80%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BB%D0%BE%D0%B2,_%D0%92%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80_%D0%92%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%B4%D0%B8%D0%BC%D0%B8%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%B2%D0%B8%D1%87

    Pro-Russian activist from Donetsk who wants a union of Russia and Ukraine. Banned in Ukraine apparently.

    Is most information that you read about Ukraine and naively believe a circle jerk of Russian nationalist or pro-Soviet activists referencing one another, like the article you posted?

    Show that he is wrong. Give examples of rallies / demonstrations in Moscow demanding schools in Ukrainian, petitions of Moscow residents demanding to create such a school, etc

    So you demand that Ukrainians rally in Moscow? If they don’t then there is ni demand for a school?

    When I lived in Moscow I went to a meeting at the cultural center in Moscow where a group of people were complaining that the government was refusing all attempts by the community to have their school. Tatars, Bashkirs, even Koreans were allowed to have their schools but Ukrainians were denied by bureaucratic manoeuvres. And no not all of the 150,000 Ukrainians there are Russian speakers, Moscow had attracted Ukrainian settlers from everywhere. AFAIK there aren’t any Ukrainian Orthodox or Ukrainian Greek Catholic Churches in Moscow either. Are you going to claim all 150,000 Ukrainians* in Moscow have roots in Donetsk or Kharkiv?

    Ukrainians in Moscow do not need Ukrainian schools

    Agree. Nor do Russians in Ukraine, Latvia or Estonia need Russian schools. Just don’t hypocritically complain about Russians living in other peoples’ countries not getting what they don’t need.

    • Officials census figure that doesn’t include 100,000s gastarbeiters
  416. I only visited the Ukrainian Center in Moscow when I lived there and had free time; I haven’t had time to stop by during 1 or 2 week long visits since then so I don’t know what the latest struggles are. I heard about the library getting shut down. Melanf will argue that Ukrainians in Moscow don’t need or want a library because they all only read in Russian 🙂

  417. You just shift some of the same limited resources from uses that is feasible under a stable pebble-mining regime to ones that are short-term in outlook.

    Societies and economies always operate below potential. If you restrict production to only pebble based activity, it is obvious that production would increase with the amount of pebbles increasing.

    If your theoretical fishing rod production was 100 rods, but you were restricted by law to only make 25 rods because you only had 25 pebbles, then doubling your pebbles would allow you to make 50 rods. Again, rather obvious scenario.

    Do they get shot by reverting of the old ways of bartering, albeit more discreetly? (grey economy) And even if that’s the case, it’s rule by intimidation.

    How do you barter haircuts for cancer surgery? 80% of the economy is services. And LOL, yes, it is rule by intimidation, that’s kinda how it works. Try not paying taxes some time, see how it will work out.

    In the example island economy, they can barter, but they need to give pebbles to local lord as tribute, so they need pebbles ultimately. If they don’t, they get shot in the head.

    True, whether the state is local or national or global. Libertarians and anarchists want to abolish all those entirely. Which is why decentralizing money is one of their strategies.

    Good luck with that. But I think you will simply end up with warlords in the end. And then its back to pebbles and getting shot.

    Good luck convincing anyone in Florida those FedCoin CBDCs are good ole’ fiat dollar. Not even A123 is impressed. (You might have better luck in Japan only because of more Confucian, conformist ethics)

    People don’t have a problem with Federal Reserve notes now, right? I think they will get used to FedCoin too.

    It’s true in modern society, and only in modern society is this exaggerated. If the entire world goes Taoist or Mad-Max, BAM! Status signaling comes by forms other than money.

    Agree but then we will have bigger problems than monetary policy.

    What he means is particularly human ways of waging war, i.e. by statecraft.

    Statecraft is just nicely dressed warlord. Or an Ant Queen.

    Any economic theory without a moral or spiritual foundation eventually leads to impoverishment.

    Agree. Economy is just a tool to achieve goals. But those goals will need to come from elsewhere.

  418. I have demonstrated how increase in pebble supply will indeed result in increase in material conditions.

    This is exactly how good standard came about in prehistoric times.

    Do you seriously believe money predates war? LOL

    This is why I wouldn’t debate chemistry or space rocket technology with you. I hope I wouldn’t lose the plot like this but you would also get frustrated when you realized that I’m not following you and you’re not getting anything from me.

    You have involuntarily brought up another interesting question though: in the long term MMT could only succeed if indeed the government used physical violence to enforce the use of the official currency in private (horizontal) transactions. Contrary to what you say, governments never go to those extremes though. You may still be forced to pay your taxes in a devalued currency but, once it loses its value for day-to-day transactions, governments cannot do anything practical to avoid people switching to more useful means of exchange.

    https://lenpenzo.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/wheelbarrow-wallet.png

  419. If your theoretical fishing rod production was 100 rods, but you were restricted by law to only make 25 rods because you only had 25 pebbles, then doubling your pebbles would allow you to make 50 rods. Again, rather obvious scenario.

    Arrgh

  420. I am reminded of what Alan Watts once said about the Great Depression –

    So, you remember the great depression. I expect a number of you around are old enough to remember the great depression when one day everybody was doing business and things were going along pretty well and the next day there were bread lines.

    It was like someone came to work and they said to him “sorry chum but you can’t build today, no building can go on, we don’t have enough inches.” He’d say, “what do you mean we don’t have enough inches, we’ve got wood haven’t we? We’ve got metal, we’ve even got tape measures.” He’d say, “yeah, but you don’t understand the business world, we just haven’t got enough inches. We’ve used too much of ‘em.”

    And that’s exactly what happened when we had the depression. Because money is something of the same order of reality as inches, grams, meters, pounds or lines of latitude and longitude. It is an abstraction. It is a method of book keeping to obviate the cumbersome procedures of barter. But our culture, our civilization is entirely hung up on the notion that money has an independent reality of its own.”

    It’s in an essay about confusing abstractions with concrete reality – link here. https://www.google.com/amp/s/sebasbuchner.com/2013/05/03/sorry-guys-we-havent-got-enough-inches/amp/

  421. In London, you can see that a lot of most well designed architecture, including houses that balance public and private sphere, is from the 19th century, when the culture was not so very different from 2021. So modern times can produce attractive city planning until recently

    While the modern period had begun in the 1500s perhaps, it did not reach full flower and maturity until the early 20th century.

    For that 500 year period, there were two “cultures” at work in Europe – modernity, based on abstraction, number, and science, and the pre-modern mentality based on aesthetics, spirituality, the sensuous, feeling- what cannot be measured.

    These two European cultures often influenced each other, and often bitterly fought each other.

    In the early 20th, modernity finally and decisively won and routed it’s old foe and nemesis and completely drove him from the field. That is why in all fields – writing, art, architecture – we no longer have beauty.

    This has been a decisive break and the beginning of a new era – I was actually thinking the other day what to call that era that began in the early 20th. Perhaps the era of Control. James Burnham, in the 30s, I believe, wrote a book called the Managerial Revolution, about rule by managers, that described the new social reality.

    Interestingly, the total victory of modernity also spelled the beginning of its demise, because scientific discovery depended on the critical mind examining the fruits of “inspiration”, which are irrational and depend on imagination.

    With the rout of such messy things that cannot be measured, true scientific discovery was rendered impossible, and mere management and control was substituted – which is where we are today.

    They don’t read Le Corbusier, when they build in Iran or China.

    Blaming the Le Corbusier for modern square office building, is like blaming Marinetti for speeding automobiles

    All are symptoms of the same underlying culture, which does not value sentiment, the sensuous, the aesthetic, and which sees proud scientific modernity best expressed in straight lines without ornament or imaginative decoration.

    In the 19th century, they had a “neo-Gothic” aesthetic – I’m sure you know this. It wasn’t an accidental by-product of their building methods. It was a quite self-conscious and deliberate architectural aesthetic that defined all the buildings the period left us – those magnificent Victorian train stations and concert halls, with their superfluous flourishes, down to the lovely wood Victorian cottages in the Ditnas Park neighborhood of Brooklyn (where I lived for some years as a child), with their turrets, gables, and general Gothic irregularity.

    Everything medieval was coming back into fashion, as people were apprehensive about the new world of abstraction and measurement being created. It was a last revolt, as it were.

    The Gothic style was considered the opposite of the modern – irregular, complex, decorative, imaginative, suggesting the imagination and the sensuous – it was opposed to the Classical, which had been in fashion in the 18th century, and was supposed to represent the “rational”, but was now seen as dull and boring.

    And is it any wonder than the architecture of the 18th century mimiced Rome?

    The idea that the values of a culture do not express themselves in it’s architecture sounds very strange to me. How odd – the 18th century had a Classical aesthetic, and built Roman style buildings. The 19th, a neo-Gothic, and built in faux-mefieval style. The 20th, the Age of Abstraction creates buildings with full straight lines – but wait, this cannot be the product of societies underlying philosophy 🙂

    This mixed use is at least fashionable now.

    But it requires higher population density of the city. And the population density is partly dependent on the transport method that is use

    Yes, America is moving towards an era of more vibrant and fascinating urban landscapes. I see it all around me. There is definitely a different attitude at work – in food, also, America is moving away from the utilitarian towards an interest in food as pleasure and culture. It’s revolutionary.

    America may yet have a culture worth living in 🙂

    Medieval peasants didn’t own beautiful architecture. They would be lucky to own much of the food they insecurely could produce.

    20 years ago, I have been to medieval villages in the mountains of India, unreachable by car and without any modern changes whatsoever, not even electricity – I have seen how pre-modern peasants live.

    Much dirtier than most moderns would be accustomed to, with animals everywhere, but the houses ranged from charming to wood carved artistic masterpieces.

    But really, charming pre-modern houses are too abundant to not notice the difference between them and the ugliness of modernity.

  422. Morton's toes says

    Every time I have seen that information in the western press they couple it with her father was a Christian minister so she was some kind of infiltrator into the Commie system.

    I always thought the Commies killed that style of person.

  423. Hey Aaron, not sure where you are now. There’s a new storm coming to the Rockies on Sunday/Monday so expect cold weather and snow at high altitudes. Enjoy!

  424. You may still be forced to pay your taxes in a devalued currency but, once it loses its value for day-to-day transactions, governments cannot do anything practical to avoid people switching to more useful means of exchange.

    Large corporations will not give up USD for some “Uncle Bills’ Coupon”. So if you want to shop Amazon or WalMart, and vast numbers of people do, you will need government approved and regulated currency.

    Theoretically, Walmart dollar is indeed a possibility as i mentioned before. But that would be rather drastic.

    “Arrgh”

    I’m assuming you wanted to make 50 rods of course.

  425. Thanks!

    I injured my knee so taking it easy for a few days in Moab – hope to be hale and hearty again by next week!

    We had some intense windy gusts here today in Moab so maybe it’s from that storm.

    Will report back here after my next adventure 🙂

    Enjoy the snow/storm! (If you like that kind of thing – I enjoy a good snowstorm occasionally if I’m not exposed :))

  426. If I go the liquor store and buy beer with cash, it cannot be reported to a government healthcare service. Anyone who thinks the government run CBDC’s would be anonymous is staggeringly naive.

    I get what you are saying, and i agree. It’s a problem. Personally, i don’t care what people spend money on. From monetary planning perspective, i would only care about aggregates. If people wanted to buy hookers and cocaine, its fine because then hookers and cocaine dealers will buy breakfast cereal. So its all good.

    But others may not see it the same. That said, credit card purchases are tracked, and credit cards are quite popular. So i think its just a matter of time and building trust.

  427. Me and Mikel are coming from two different perspectives.

    He thinks of money as a medium of exchange between free independent agents operating under conditions of scarcity.

    If you frame it this way, he is absolutely right. If his assumptions are correct, then his logic is sound too.

    However, I think of money as a tool of social engineering mostly used for status gain and power between highly unequal agents operating under conditions of abundance. We live in infinite universe with unlimited energy so on.

    I think my assumptions are closer to reality. We live in an abundant world, but our actions are limited, by ourselves and others around us. Including warlords demanding red pebbles to gain status, else they shoot you in the head.

    So in the real world, you have laws, and taxes, and yes, credit allocation, that is based purely on power and not rational economic interests. I think this is closer to reality compared to Austrian economic theory.

  428. Everybody likes to communicate in Russian, except the one strange Ukrainian guy? 🙂

    https://www.irancartoon.com/static/media/uploads/shojai2/victor_bogorad_-_russia_(2).jpg

  429. Your claim that Ukrainians in Moscow don’t need or want a Ukrainian school is based on this silly article:
    http://www.odnako.org/blogs/v-moskve-hoteli-otkrit-ukrainoyazichniy-klass-no-ne-sobrali-detey/
    It quotes a Party of Regions pro-Russian activist

    Here is the official response of the Moscow authorities, which they have repeated many times:

    there are no Ukrainian schools (five-day) in Moscow. There are Armenian ones. There are Georgian ones. There are Tatar ones. But Ukrainian ones do not exist. And the head of the Moscow Department of Education Olga Larionova even explains why. Because all schools with an ethnic component in Moscow are opened on the initiative of the diasporas. Armenians want to teach their children about Armenian culture. Georgians want it. Tatars want. And the Ukrainians don’t want to. And to all the proposals of the Department of Education, the Ukrainian diaspora replied: “We do not need a Ukrainian school.”

    It is very easy to check the words of the Moscow authorities – show us any rallies in Moscow (with the participation of thousands of people) in support of Ukrainian education, petitions signed by tens of thousands of Moscow residents, etc. etc. If such rallies / petitions / … exist, then the Moscow authorities are lying.
    If such rallies / petitions / … do not exist, then the Moscow authorities are telling the truth.

    Nor do Russians in Ukraine, Latvia or Estonia need Russian schools.

    The result of such ideas was the loss of Donbass for Ukraine (where relatively recently the majority of the population considered themselves Ukrainians). But you can, of course, continue to “play a fool” (I don’t know how to say it correctly in English) referring to the absence of Ukrainian schools in Moscow

  430. I find it taxing beyond reasonable belief that wherever Ukrainians congregate around the world in any sizable amount, they show a desire and the ability to create some form of Ukrainian language schooling, so that their children are able to maintain some modicum of knowledge of their mother tongue, all except for Russia? I strongly suspect that Ukrainians in Russia are just afraid to exhibit any signs of their native language or culture in a sea of hostility and intolerance within Putin’s Russia:

    It [the political regime in the country] determines the government’s attitude toward the national minorities residing in the country and may (or may not) prompt the government to foster enforcement of their rights. Europe, the US, and even Cuba have Ukrainian-language educational establishments where, incidentally, not only ethnic Ukrainians but also local children study… Did Russia have Ukrainian-language schools and kindergartens before? “It did have some. By mid-1930s such schools used to function in Moscow, Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), Kursk, Belgorod, Rostov, Voronezh oblasts, the Kuban, the Far East, and Siberia. In 1932–33 they were closed. In Ukraine Russians are exercising their constitutional right to send their children to Russian-language schools. Instead there is barely any favorable political climate of this kind for Ukrainians in Russia. They cannot invent anything better than to say that people ‘don’t want’. Don’t want or do not dare?”

    https://day.kyiv.ua/en/article/close/russian-ukraine-vs-ukrainian-russia

  431. I find it taxing beyond reasonable belief that wherever Ukrainians congregate around the world in any sizable amount, they show a desire and the ability to create some form of Ukrainian language schooling, so that their children are able to maintain some modicum of knowledge of their mother tongue, all except for Russia?

    Plenty of Russian speaking folks from the territory of the former Ukrainian SSR who prefer Russian and don’t appear to be so keen to learn Ukrainian.

  432. From a venue which if anything is more sympathetic to the svido view over the pro-Russian opposite:

    https://meduza.io/en/feature/2021/09/15/the-information-war-for-truth

    Excerpt

    Political analyst Denis Yudin chalks this up to two main factors: 1) the main audience of Medvedchuk’s channels aren’t inclined to protest in the first place and 2) there was no attempt on the part of OPZZh to organize protest rallies. Anton Savichev, the editor-in-chief of the Ukrainian outlet Vesti.ua, is of the same opinion. “It’s about the audience. These are people who don’t accept protests as a form of political activity,” he explains to Meduza. “In our country, the streets are controlled by nationalists, so any protests in defense of an alternative agenda are fraught with problems.”

    Excerpt

    National Security Council sanctions aren’t the only way the Ukrainian authorities are going after outlets they consider to be instruments of “media aggression.” The television network Nash, which is also regarded as pro-Russian, regularly gets slapped with lawsuits from Ukraine’s National Council of Television and Radio Broadcasting, the body that monitors compliance with media legislation.

    Nash belongs to the family of Yevgeniy Murayev, a former lawmaker from the pro-Russian Party of Regions. According to experts, viewers of Kozak and Medvedchuk’s channels flocked to Nash after 112 Ukraine, NewsOne, and ZIK were taken off the air earlier this year.

    This article reveals its biases by not noting that the negative accusations in it against Ukrainian media which isn’t anti-Russian can be easily applied to the svido leaning venues.

  433. Indeed, so you believe the Moscow authorities. Do you also believe that the Ukrainians do not want a single Church of their own in Moscow?

    It is very easy to check the words of the Moscow authorities – show us any rallies in Moscow (with the participation of thousands of people) in support of Ukrainian education, petitions signed by tens of thousands of Moscow residents

    Because mass protests indicate a desire for a school? Let me remind you that it takes about 2,000 people to produce enough kids for a school (that is, towns with 2,000 people will have a school). You are seriously claiming that not even 2% of Moscow’s Ukrainians want a school for their kids. This would make Ukrainians in Moscow absolutely unique, compared to Ukrainians in Kazakhstan, Canada, USA, etc. It also contradicts claims by Ukrainian community in Moscow itself which states that its petitions and appeals have been ignored.

    “Nor do Russians in Ukraine, Latvia or Estonia need Russian schools.”

    The result of such ideas was the loss of Donbass for Ukraine (where relatively recently the majority of the population considered themselves Ukrainians

    The loss of Donbas was due to temporary non-existence of Ukrainian military combined with active Russian intervention. Latvia and Estonia, and the rest of Ukraine (including Kiev, Kharkiv, etc), were not lost due to not giving Russians what they don’t need.

  434. So, in many parts of the world, in countries that have far fewer Ukrainians than in Russia (4.5 million by official estimates), Ukrainians build schools, churches and cultural institutions, but in Russia, they chose not to? Do you realize how silly that sounds? Do you even believe what you’re writing? I think that its you who are the “dishonest” one, and not I, as you baselessly and maliciously tried to paint me in the last Open Thread.

  435. ?

    I strongly suspect that Ukrainians in Russia are just afraid to exhibit any signs of their native language

    Funny joke. In Russia there is a whole political party Jabloko which officially refuses to recognize Crimea as Russia
    https://lenta.ru/news/2021/08/17/zbloko_krym/
    Ukrainians study in Russian-language schools also in Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Baltic states …

    Out of curiosity, I read the Ukrainian officialdom. And what did I read there?

    Thanks to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2019, the state supported 164 projects of Saturday and Sunday Ukrainian foreign schools.
    However, Alla Polevaya said that today, unfortunately, (outside of Ukraine) there is not a single Ukrainian school in the full sense of the word, so that they teach not just in the Ukrainian language, but from the first to the last grade
    .”

    https://education.24tv.ua/ru/rodnoj-jazyk-za-rubezhom-skolko-ukrainskih-shkol-novosti-ukrainy_n1427454

    And what do you say about this?

  436. I think this is a fair point.

    Ukrainians who live in Moscow (or Russia) will not generally be strongly self-conscious Ukrainians with a burning desire to pass down their identity to their children.

  437. Indeed. One can use melanf’s silly reasoning about the Russians in, say, Lviv. There are about 70,000 ethnic Russians in Lviv (less than half the number of Ukrainians in Moscow). The last Russian school was shut down there many years ago.

    Melanf would point out that there is no need or desire by any of those Russians to have a Russian school due to the statement of some Lviv official, and due to the fact that there were no mass protests of 10,000s demanding Russian schools in Lviv. And perhaps he would even quote from an article referencing a Svoboda party official, whose claims would be echoed by a Right Sector activist, about the wishes and needs of ethnic Russians in Lviv.

    I wonder if he actually takes himself seriously?

  438. Well, let’s give Alla Polevaya some credit. She did preface her findings by stating that they were “unfortunate”. 🙂

    She’s probably mostly correct in her conclusions. Most of the half dozen or so Ukrainian full-time schools in both Canada and the US don’t conduct all of their classes exclusively in Ukrainian. I recall reading somewhere that the mix is something like 50/50. The reason that non-Ukrainian students attend these schools is because they’re all around excellent schools. But yes, most of these schools are only conducted on Saturdays. I couldn’t tell you what’s going on today, but the school that I attended on Saturdays as a kid were conducted 100% in Ukrainian. Some of the classes that I attended were: Ukrainian language, Ukrainian History, Geography, Religion, Choir, and even Art classes. It wasn’t until I was in college, that I decided to round out my Ukrainian education by taking some Russian language and culture courses. 🙂

  439. Good analogy. As you point out, it’s ultimately in the province of the country involved, that educational issues are resolved. It’ unfortunate, but in Ukraine and Russia the language issues are being resolved in a mean spirited “tit for tat” manner.

  440. Most will not, of course. But some will. The claim by melanf is that the percentage is so small that there are too few for even a single school. That’s just not realistic. It would only take 2% of Moscow’s 150,000 Ukrainians (3,000 people) to have a school, if the authorities agreed to one. As I’ve posted several times, they are under no obligation to do so, just as authorities in Kiev are under no obligation to support and allow Russian language schools. I just dislike the hypocrisy.

  441. So, in many parts of the world, in countries that have far fewer Ukrainians than in Russia (4.5 million by official estimates), Ukrainians build schools, churches and cultural institutions, but in Russia, they chose not to? Do you realize how silly that sounds? Do you even believe what you’re writing? I think that its you who are the “dishonest” one, and not I, as you baselessly and maliciously tried to paint me in the last Open Thread.

    Pure projection on your part. I don’t come close to being as malicious as you – last thread included.

    As AP noted, Russia isn’t void of Ukrainian cultural centers. The primary specific issue has been on language instruction. Regardless of culture club preference, numerous folks only go so far, which includes not being so gung ho on picking up another language. The extreme opposite are the language savants.

    It has been observed by numerous folks that Russian language use in Ukraine is quite noticeable even among anti-Russian leaning folks. This is even more true of the pro-Russian variant with roots to the former Ukrainian SSR.

    The arch svido with Galicia-Volhyn roots isn’t likely to live in Russia. You not so long ago made reference to Brighton Beach. Initially folks who arrived there in substantial number from the USSR came from Odessa. Yet, Ukrainian isn’t a noticeably spoken language in BB.

  442. Most will not, of course. But some will. The claim by melanf is that the percentage is so small that there are too few for even a single school. That’s just not realistic. It would only take 2% of Moscow’s 150,000 Ukrainians (3,000 people) to have a school, if the authorities agreed to one. As I’ve posted several times, they are under no obligation to do so, just as authorities in Kiev are under no obligation to support and allow Russian language schools. I just dislike the hypocrisy.

    Once again noting the false equivalency. Russian language use in Ukraine is much greater in Ukraine than Ukrainian language use in Russia.

    Kind of related are the bilingual English-Spanish signs evident in much of the US and why some foreign languages are more available in US public schools than others.

  443. As far as the Canadian government funding foreign language schools at the grade school level, how many such Russian schools exist?

    Regarding complaints about government funding, I’ve heard my share concerning pro-Russian venues not getting the same level of support as Ukrainian ones in the US.

  444. Once again noting the false equivalency.

    No.

    Russian language use in Ukraine is much greater in Ukraine than Ukrainian language use in Russia.

    True but irrelevant. The principle of whether people have some kind of a right to have their kids go to school in their heritage language (provided there is a minimum number of students to make a school feasible) is the same whether they are 1% or 40% of the population. Indeed, an argument can be made that a higher percentage may call for more aggressive assimilation than a smaller percentage. It that’s a different matter.

  445. “Thanks to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 2019, the state supported 164 projects of Saturday and Sunday Ukrainian foreign schools.
    However, Alla Polevaya said that today, unfortunately, (outside of Ukraine) there is not a single Ukrainian school in the full sense of the word, so that they teach not just in the Ukrainian language, but from the first to the last grade.”

    If she means schools exclusively in the Ukrainian language than of course this is correct. The 5 Monday through Friday Ukrainian schools in Canada, USA, Brazil, Kazakhstan (IIRC) have Ukrainian language courses daily but are about half in Ukrainian.

  446. Once again, it’s most definitely a false equivalency on account of one language being far more popular than the other. Something not as popular simply just won’t get the support. I gave examples.

    I’ve been on the receiving end. Want to get pool hours increased. Not easy to do if the venues in question aren’t getting overwhelmed with that request on account of it not having a great support base.

  447. Let me remind you that it takes about 2,000 people to produce enough kids for a school

    Well, great – can you show me the petition of 2000 residents of Moscow about the organization of a Ukrainian school? If not , then what is the conversation about? The version that “Ukrainians are afraid” is, to put it mildly, ridiculous

  448. “Kazakhstan’s capital, Nur-Sultan, has a Ukrainian high school”
    It looks that there indeed a different type of Ukrainian that lives in Russia than in Canada or Kazakhstan. I wonder why?

    To be honest, I am not very interested in this, but the few official information that is available about the “Ukrainian” school in Astana is exclusively in Russian. Email address of this school [email protected] (have you considered the domain?), in the video, graduates of this school sing in Russian https://ok.ru/video/1582849133282. Official information (in Russian) “school with the study of the Ukrainian language” http://www.balazan.kz/comon/place/detail.php?e=3260 that is, this is not a school where they teach in Ukrainian, but a school where Ukrainian is studied as a foreign language. In Chicago, Ukrainian schools are also arranged this way, or are there real Ukrainian schools there?

  449. No surprise.

  450. Out of interest, I gave a request to Yandex

    “Українська ШКОЛА-гімназія №47 в Астані” (Ukrainian gymnasium No. 47 in Astana – request in Ukrainian language)

    All the information found about the school turned out to be exclusively in Russian. In Google, absolutely the same thing.

    https://c.radikal.ru/c19/2109/0b/e0b01ef8ff06.png

    https://a.radikal.ru/a33/2109/d1/2e6daf7588dd.png

    AP and Mr. Hack, can you explain this?

  451. Well, great – can you show me the petition of 2000 residents of Moscow about the organization of a Ukrainian school

    Do I have access to government archives that have such a petition? The local Ukrainian organisation representing thousands of Ukrainians in Moscow asked for a school and was denied it. Just as requests for Ukrainian Greek Catholic and Orthodox churches are denied in Russia.

    You have petitions of Russians in Lviv wanting a Russian school for their kids?

    The version that “Ukrainians are afraid” is, to put it mildly, ridiculous

    I didn’t claim they are terrified; I don’t think are.

  452. I think that I’ve already answered all of these questions in my reply #509.

    As far as why the students in the video are singing in Russian instead of Ukrainian, perhaps Russification has continued there unabated. After all, don’t a lot of Kazakhies, especially in the larger cities also continue to communicate in Russian? Wikipedia, provides additional information on this topic:

    Although the Ukrainian language continues to be significant in rural areas with compact Ukrainian settlement, and is actively supported by the Kazakh government,[3] the use of the Russian language has come to dominate within Kazakhstan’s Ukrainian community. Due to assimilation with Russian culture, the proportion of the Ukrainian population in Kazakhstan who declare the Ukrainian language to be their mother tongue has declined from 78.7% in 1926 to only 36.6% today.[2] Most Ukrainians in Kazakhstan, when faced with pressure from the majority Kazakhs, have tended to unite with fellow Russian Slavs.[1] There is thus somewhat of a cultural divide within Kazakhstan’s Ukrainian community between those who maintain a Ukrainian political and cultural identity (largely descendants of mid 20th century immigrants) and those who have become culturally and linguistically Russified (the descendants of those who migrated to Kazakhstan earlier).[3]

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

    The same entry also indicates that there are 9 Ukrainian Catholic churches in Kazakhstan. I wouldn’t think that Church Slavonic has been incorporated into their liturgies, in place of Ukrainian.

  453. I didn’t claim they are terrified; I don’t think are.

    So what is it in your opinion? Why is it that Ukrainians are willing and able to create educational, church and cultural centers in most other countries where they find themselves, and not in Russia, where there are so many of them?

  454. Seems to be that the Kazakh government only uses Russian and Kazakh languages in its websites. Why do you think this is meaningful?

  455. According to the Ukrainian community leaders I heard speak in Moscow, the local government blocks all their efforts. That is why there is a Ukrainian school and numerous Ukrainian churches in Kazakhstan but none in Moscow.

  456. I don’t understand why then, you find that an element of fear might not be involved in controlling Ukrainian attempts at asserting language and cultural rights? A late night phone call, an unfriendly visit out of the question?…

    Those that ran and worked at the Ukrainian library in Moscow, certainly experienced harassment and visits at various levels.

  457. Email address of this school [email protected] (have you considered the domain?), in the video, graduates of this school sing in Russian https://ok.ru/video/1582849133282.

    And here, students at the school speak very good Ukrainian:

    https://www.facebook.com/UCIC.Astana/videos/864828643697950/

    And here, they have Ukrainian dances:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSnlVAEE8XQ

    But they also have Russian stuff:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Fu6QN7PuIY

    ::::::::::::::::

    But you see, Moscow does not allow even such a school, in both languages.

  458. I don’t understand why then, you find that an element of fear might not be involved in controlling Ukrainian attempts at asserting language and cultural rights? A late night phone call, an unfriendly visit out of the question?…

    I doubt it. People openly criticize the seizure of Crimea, why would they be persecuted for petitioning to have a Ukrainian school? The government will just quietly deny the request on some pretext. Just as it found an excuse to shut down the Ukrainian library. And denied requests by the Greek Catholics and Ukrainian Catholics to build their churches. The Russian government is far less tolerant of Ukrainian culture than the Ukrainian government is of Russian culture, but this intolerance is not expressed through terror.

    During the Maidan events, the Ukrainian cultural center was vandalized but there isn’t some kind of daily harassment of Ukrainians there. I only spoke to my kids in Ukrainian there and never experienced unfriendliness. On the contrary – upon overhearing us, occasionally strangers would tell me that they moved to Moscow from Ukraine.

  459. I appreciate your opinion, however, would like to point out that the actions of a tourist walking down a street is quite different than somebody who actually might be considered to be a “Ukrainian activist” working for or promoting some sort of Ukrainian cultural aspirations in Moscow. I recall reading that some of those working at the Ukrainian library did indeed experience problems outside of work hours for their participation and support of this sole Ukrainian library in all of Russia. Let’s hope that those on both sides of the continuum can find some workable solutions to these sorts of problems.

  460. So much for the earlier suggestion that the Kazakh government is favoring Ukrainian over Russian out of a shared anti-Russian sentiment with the svidos.

    It’s very easy to distort on such matter. These guys are going to believe whatever they want to regardless of the actual reality.

    Circa 1990s, I recall anti-Serb propagandists claiming that Albanian language schools were shutdown in Kosovo. Shortly thereafter, a BBC segment noted separate Serb government affiliated Serb and Albanian language schools which included the teachers from both periodically communicating for the purpose of having uniform standards.

    Upon further review, I found out that Albanian alternate schools were set up by Albanian nationalists, who claimed that Kosovo’s history wasn’t being properly taught in the Serb government funded schools. I also sensed that some Albanians were pressured to join such schools.

  461. Do I have access to government archive…

    If there was a petition signed by several thousand residents of Moscow to create a Ukrainian school, and this petition was rejected by the authorities, then this fact would be used by Ukrainian propaganda. Well, since there is no mention of this event in the Ukrainian propaganda, it means that there was no such petition

  462. And here, students at the school speak very good Ukrainian

    For the delegation that came to the school (the delegation from the Ukraine most likely)

    But if we look at the information about this school, then the language in which children are taught is Russian.
    https://d.radikal.ru/d23/2109/54/72e13b5cc76b.png

    https://schoolotzyv.ru/schools/15-kazahstan/254-astana/118750-shkola-gimnaziya-47

    Russian language teaching is discussed in the reviews of parents (link above) about this school (which are all in Russian), but the Ukrainian language is not mentioned at all. Videos that are made not for Ukrainian delegations, but for themselves – all in Russian
    https://youtu.be/hrYcj9mnV4E
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0Yeo-aBOtyA&t=11s&ab_channel=TheMolchanovfamily%2F%D1%81%D0%B5%D0%BC%D1%8C%D1%8F%D0%9C%D0%BE%D0%BB%D1%87%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%BE%D0%B2%D1%8B%D1%85.
    etc, etc

    That is, in the” Ukrainian ” school in Astana, the language (of local Ukrainians?) Russian, and Ukrainian is taught there as a foreign language (for the sake of subsidies from Kiev, most likely). Well, is the question of Ukrainian education in Moscow closed?

  463. From their own site it appears that both languages are taught. I wonder when the national language of Kazakhstan is taught? How do you know that the school is subsidized from Kyiv?

  464. From their own site it appears that both languages are taught

    “Язык обучения русский” that is, they teach in Russian (which is the native language of Ukrainians in Kazakhstan). Ukrainian goes additionally as a foreign language (most likely for the sake of subsidies from Kiev or Ottawa), but judging by the deaf silence of Yandex and Google on this topic, this training is a fiction.

    Well, what is the difference with Moscow? The Ukrainian school in Moscow has at least a website in Ukrainian
    http://ukrcentr.ru/RU/category/novini/ukra%D1%97nska-nedilna-shkola-imeni-pavla-popovicha/

    There is also a school 479 in St. Petersburg where they teach Ukrainian (as a foreign language)

  465. “And here, students at the school speak very good Ukrainian”

    For the delegation that came to the school (the delegation from the Ukraine most likely)

    So? Were they taught the Ukrainian language in this school or were they not?

    But if we look at the information about this school, then the language in which children are taught is Russian.

    It’s information from a Russian-language website about various schools.

    Russian language teaching is discussed in the reviews of parents (link above) about this school (which are all in Russian)

    6 reviews, on a Russian language website. One of them says the quality of Russian language instruction at this school is “trash.”

    Videos that are made not for Ukrainian delegations, but for themselves – all in Russian

    I found two videos in Russian, one in Ukrainian (why is it worse if it is some official video?), one of Ukrainian folk dancing. So clearly they are taught both the Russian and Ukrainian languages, along with some Ukrainian folklore and Ukrainian history. So you were wrong when you claimed that this was not a Ukrainian school.

    Again, not a single school like this is allowed in Moscow, with its 150,000 Ukrainians. There are only 11,000 Ukrainians in Astana, and they have this school. This is because Ukrainian culture is suppressed in Moscow, but not in Kazakhstan.

    Well, is the question of Ukrainian education in Moscow closed

    Because you were wrong about the Ukrainian school in Kazakhstan? What does that have to do with Moscow? Is there a school in Moscow that teaches the Russian and Ukrainian languages along with Ukrainian folklore and history? Yes or no?

  466. Were they taught the Ukrainian language in this school or were they not?

    Well, in this style, the Ukrainian language is studied in schools in Moscow and St. Petersburg (and in St. Petersburg in the state budget school 479). Then what are your peretensions?

    I found two videos in Russian, one in Ukrainian

    We are looking for a video about a “Ukrainian” school in Kazakhstan in a search engine (in Ukrainian ” гімназія № 47 Астана”
    ), and we find a video in Russian. There are a lot of such videos (examples below), but there are none in Ukrainian (the meeting of the official delegation is a different case).

    https://youtu.be/l1KvARGdYXs

    https://youtu.be/vnTTNHSXlyM

    https://youtu.be/vnTTNHSXlyM

    Can you explain why in the” Ukrainian ” school (in Kazakhstan) children congratulate their parents in Russian? Maybe because in this school, only a grant from Kiev is “Ukrainian”?

  467. I still think that both Ukrainian and Russian languages are used in school #47. As AP has already pointed out in comment #528, the level of Ukrainian language proficiency is quite good, most definitely beyond any sort of “kitchen talk” ability:

    https://www.facebook.com/UCIC.Astana/videos/864828643697950/?t=9

    It wouldn’t surprise me though if the administrators of the school talked mostly in Russian amongst themselves, based on the information provided by the Wikipedia entry I posted in my comment #523.

  468. I still think that both Ukrainian and Russian languages are used in school #47. As AP has already pointed out in comment #528, the level of Ukrainian language proficiency is quite good, most definitely beyond any sort of “kitchen talk” ability:

    https://www.facebook.com/UCIC.Astana/videos/864828643697950/

    It wouldn’t surprise me though if the administrators of the school talkedmostly in Russian amongst themselves, based on the information provided by the Wikipedia entry I posted in my comment #528.

    Also, the content of the students speaking in Ukrainian is very patriotic, and is something that I would find appropriate even for students in Lviv.

    Your moving the funding/sponsorship from Kyiv to Ottawa is hilarious too,with absolutely no proof. 🙂

  469. It appears to be some kind of continuum, you are correct, they are not at all the same thing. I was something of a fan of certain types of ‘actually existing socialism’, the more nationalistic versions in extreme youth.

    However, it would be a good thing if Mr. Unz would reprint an article on Merkel’s damning SED, DDR past before she steps down.

  470. Her father was indeed a kind of Lutheran pastor, but crossed from the FDR to the DDR so that he could participate in the DDR’s version of the Bolshevik’s ‘Living Church’.

    Not a church at all.

  471. “Were they taught the Ukrainian language in this school or were they not?”

    Well, in this style, the Ukrainian language is studied in schools in Moscow

    Which ones in Moscow?

    and St. Petersburg (and in St. Petersburg in the state budget school 479). Then what are your peretensions?

    Thank you for drawing our attention to Saint Petersburg.

    It is not a Ukrainian school, but a school of Slavic culture. They had an occasional Ukrainian class, an occasional Polish and Bulgarian class. In recent years they have cancelled the Ukrainian class.

    About this school:

    https://spb-spravka.com/shkoly/kirovskiy-rayon/shkola-no-479

    Школа была основана в 1961 году. С 1995 года именуется школой славянских культур. Режим учебной недели – пятидневный. Иностранный язык – английский. Учащимся начальной школы предлагается возможность бесплатно посещать бассейн.

    There are over 70,000 Ukrainians in Saint Petersburg and not a single Ukrainian school there.
    There are only 11,000 Ukrainians in Astana and there is a Ukrainian school there.

    BTW, according to Ukrainians, the Ukrainian community of Saint Petersburg tried to organize a Ukrainian school in that city. It didn’t end well:

    “… even before the war in Donbass, a group of parents in St. Petersburg tried to initiate the opening of a Ukrainian school.” However, this did not happen, because “FSB officers came to them, held” educational “talks and hinted at possible problems.”

    So perhaps Mr. Hack wasn’t completely wrong.

    Russians of course have the right to deny the 70,000 Ukrainians in Saint Petersburg the right to even one Ukrainian school. Just as Ukrainians have the right to deny the 70,000 Russians in Lviv from having even one Russian school.

    I ask again. There are 1.5 million ethnic Ukrainian residents of Russia. There are large numbers in certain cities (70,000 in Saint Petersburg, 150,000 in Moscow).

    Is there a single school where they have Ukrainian classes through all grades, do they also teach Ukrainian history and folklore?

    Any evidence from those schools in Russia such as this, from the Ukrainian school in Kazakhstan?

    https://www.facebook.com/UCIC.Astana/videos/864828643697950/

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BSnlVAEE8XQ

    Moreover, you keep ignoring the fact that Russia also prevents a single Greek Catholic Church or a single Ukrainian Orthodox Church on Russian territory. There are 9 Ukrainian Greek Catholic Churches even in Kazakhstan. Of course it is acceptable for Russia not to want churches beholden to Kiev or Rome on its territory. Just as it is normal for Ukrainians not to allow churches beholden to Moscow on their territory. But Ukraine is much more tolerant than Moscow, and does allow it.

    A funny consequence of this is that when Ukraine closes all the Russian schools, Russia can’t reciprocate because it doesn’t allow Ukrainian schools to operate in Russia in the first place.

    Can you explain why in the” Ukrainian ” school (in Kazakhstan) children congratulate their parents in Russian?

    Can you explain why you think this is in any way relevant as to whether the school is a Ukrainian school or not? Did you know that most of the kids going to Ukrainian schools in Kiev speak Russian with their parents? Perhaps by your logic, therefore, all those schools are Russian schools and Ukraine is still full of Russian schools after all, so Russian nationalists have nothing to complain about?

  472. Did you know that most of the kids going to Ukrainian schools in Kiev speak Russian with their parents?

    So why not have them educated in Russian?

    Your piece is a mix of odd facts (or half-truths)and disingenuity.

  473. Did you know that most of the kids going to Ukrainian schools in Kiev speak Russian with their parents?

    So why not have them educated in Russian?

    Because the majority of the Russian speakers there prefer for the schools to be in the Ukrainian language.

    Your piece is a mix of odd facts (or half-truths)and disingenuity.

    What, specifically?

  474. I am not expert, I have read history (very much), as for friends, only Poles, Russians,  and people from former Yugo states. To go back to USSR, some pleasant people from Baltic states, and ethnic Russian from Kazakhstan.

    Only Ukrainians who strongly identified as such I have met were whores in Tokyo, I had no interest in buying, but they were sure extremely bitchy after understanding that.

  475. Triteleia Laxa says

    You’re both right, right?

    Just like I’m right that my friend isn’t actually afraid of flying, even though she is also right that she is. It depends on what level the discussion takes place. Her “fear of flying” is very superficial, yet she often lives in that layer and so she freaks out on planes, but if you take her out of that layer, she is absolutely fine.

    I find this whole problem very frustrating with individuals, so I really don’t think I would want to address it on a societal or global level. Nor, obviously, would I be capable of succeeding in that approach.

  476. Well, thanks for letting us know that you apparently use the services of prostitutes.

  477. Yes. Your logic can be perfectly correct but if your assumptions that feed that logic are incorrect, then your output will be erroneous.

    When your friend fears flying she is employing a perfectly good logic – indeed, should a plane experience a catastrophic malfunction, she will have a very unpleasant experience and will likely die in minutes. This logical sequence is obviously sound, and it is foolish to argue otherwise.

    However, it is based on an assumption that a catastrophic failure will occur despite many safety and redundancy features installed on a modern plane. This assumption is weak. Though obviously not entirely untrue – planes do crash from time to time.

    So while your friends logic is strong, her assumptions are weak. Yes, catastrophic failure will kill you, and at the same time, no, it won’t happen because catastrophic failure is extremely unlikely, though not impossible.

    So challenge your friends assumptions, not her logic 🙂

    Same with me and Mikel. I agree with with his logic, but i disagree with his assumptions. If his assumptions were closer to reality, him and me would converge on the same understanding of reality. (Nothing beats Austrian economics when sources of power are external to the system such as microfinance and such).

    That said, i believe my assumptions are close to reality in general, and so we have “irreconcilable differences” 🙂

  478. Very stupid reply and assumption from you.

  479. Well, you admit to meeting and speaking with prostitutes. Well, everyone chooses the circles they find themselves in.

  480. You can be approached by prostitutes as a tourist, e.g. in a city’s red light districts. I too was approached by them in Krakow (Holy Poland). Not in the red light district at that but in the central square, where there seems to be burgeoning industry in servicing tourists so.

  481. Okay. I’ve never been approached by prostitutes to the point where we had conversations, but come to think of it I usually travel with female company rather than as a single guy.

    My impression was that they expected something from him, why else become “extremely bitchy” when he declined their services? Like he preferred different ones or a lower price or something. But I could have been wrong about that. At any rate, a trivial point. He claimed I was disingenuous and refused to provide an example, instead sharing his experience with prostitutes.

  482. I can see that my words were the invitation to a minor trolka.

    All are just in Japan and when overseas.

    Others I cited were people I met here or there, generally pleasant company, none any kind of whore.

    The twice I met strongly identified Ukrainians, once at a ‘net cafe, once at a rock show, they were hideous. They were both certainly whores.

    I suppose exceptions must exist.