I will be in Saint-Petersburg next week (Nov 18-25), where I will give a talk on dysgenics at an event organized by the Chernaya Sotnia publishing house, but otherwise engaging in touristy pursuits.
(Funny how both my two trips to SPB since 2017 are to be at the invitation of nationalists who want to hear about HBD topics).
After that, I will spend another two days in Tver, though hopefully also making a day trip to Torzhok, so that’s quite a few travel reports coming up in the near future: https://akarlin.com/travel/
I did not like Gandhara.
There is a lot of material in this OT, since I haven’t done a links roundup since Oct 25.
@ak
More notable posts since the last Open Thread in case you missed any of them.
- Top 25 Cool Demographics Facts
- Egor Kholmogorov: Russia and the Great War. Victory a Hundred Years Past.
- “Beyond Meat” Is A Big Broccoli Psyops
Featured
- Audacious Epigone: The Regime Always Wins
- Most Americans believe that the US has never interfered in a single foreign election.
- This does however show that US is quite good at integration. How deracinated do you have to be to be a Latino and believe that the US *never* interfered in *any* foreign election?
- Paul Robinson: Russian Conservatism Talk
- NYT: A Ukrainian Billionaire Fought Russia. Now He’s Ready to Embrace It.
- It’s zrada time.
- Looks like Kolomoysky really, really wants compensation for PrivatBank.
- Max Seddon (handshakeworthy hack): “Amazing how impeaching the US president comes down to dueling Soviet Jewish immigrants: the Vindmans of Brighton Beach versus Fruman and Parnas of Miami Beach.“
- James Thompson: Artificial Intelligence: Solve Intelligence, Then Solve Everything
- Emil Kirkegaard: Replies to Birney, Raff, Rutherford & Scally
- Futurism: Something Very Strange Seems to Be Synchronizing Distant Galaxies
- Alessandro Fedrizzi and Massimiliano Proietti: Quantum physics: Our study suggests objective reality doesn’t exist
- Congrats to Steve Sailer on winning Moldbugman’s boomer tournament!
Russia
- Vesti: Interview with Maria Butina
- PEW: European Public Opinion Three Decades After the Fall of Communism
- *sinotriumph* Zhang Xin: “Russian students are the largest group of international students too in my school, along with a sizable group from former Soviet space (2 are from FEFU this year) I hear more Russian than English or Chinese among international students.“
- Rus Av Insider: A first image of Slon, the proposed new Russian super heavy freighter
- Steve Sailer: Putin to Have Genetically Selected Army
- Carl Zha: “Marking 102th anniversary of the October Revolution: Chinese soldiers of the Red Army. 200,000 Chinese laborers went to Russia during WW1. 10,000 of them build Murmansk Railway in Arctic Circle. 40,000-50,000 joined the Red Army in Russian Revolution.”
- There’s generally a sort of very karmic justice to which countries ended up going commie.
- William Dunkerley: Covert Operative In Ukraine Controversy Revealed To Be Associated Press
- Henry Foy: “how Bashar al-Assad’s cousins have shifted cash to Russia as the Syrian war has raged, buying up luxury apartments in some of Moscow’s most exclusive skyscrapers”
- I have long advocated that Russia needs to become a global safe haven for billionaire crooks on the UK model. It already has all the prerequisites – world class megapolis in Moscow, elite ski resorts, gambling in Sochi, beaches there and in Crimea.
- AK: “For the Russian survivors of the Titanic, returning to the USSR proved more dangerous than embarking on the doomed ship in the first place.“
- Catherine the Great endorsed Tropical Hyperborea.
- DEATH OF VLADIMIR BUKOVSKY. In my opinion, Soviet dissidents showed their true colors after 1991. Some, like Solzhenitsyn, hated the USSR because they loved Russia. For others, such as Bukovsky, it was Russia that they hated all along. It was instructive that almost no Western media outlets mentioned his confession of possessing child pornography before a British court (incidentally, I wrote about it at the time, which led Eliezer Yudkowsky to ban me from his accounts).
World
- Balaji Srinivasan: “Neither side wants to admit, but the US and China are converging in some weird ways – internet censorship – nationalism + socialism – state takeover of tech companies – social credit / cancel culture – human flesh search / twitter mobs“
- PEW: People around the globe are divided in their opinions of China
- Japan Times: “Nearly half of South Koreans would back North in war with Japan, while 40% ‘have no idea’“
- *western authoritarianism* Britain First investigated by counterterror police after leader arrested while returning from Russia
- This is like if Russia was to arrest and confiscate the electronic assets of the pro-Western activists who visit the “Free Russia Forum” held annually in Latvia.
- *comment* AK: Are Romanian wages inflated?
- WSWS: Seventy percent of US Millennials say they are likely to vote socialist
- Syria’s Assad Says Jeffrey Epstein Did Not Kill Himself
- Phil Freeman on UK “Russian donations” scandal: “They aren’t donating to the Tories on Putin’s orders. They’re donating because the Tories will protect their wealth… Oligarchs from across the world donate to the Tory party for the same reason as their British peers: to defend their wealth and privilege and to buy access to the government of a key node in international money laundering networks. It has nothing to do with “Russian influence”.“
- Norway arrested Greg Johnson when he tried to get to the Scandza Forum; yet another UR contributor becomes a political prisoner.
- BOLIVIA EVENTS: Evo Morales did redistribution – share of wealth held by poorest decile doubled – but maintained macroeconomic sanity, unlike Venezuela. But that itself was a consequence of not purging neoliberal technocrats. Lesson – socialism unworkable without purges?
- Latest Call of Duty video game rewrites history to blame the Russians for US war crimes. A common story.
- NBF: Next-generation Ford Carrier Deployment Delayed Until 2024
- NBF: Germany Solar and Wind is Triple the Cost of France’s Nuclear and Will Last Half as Long
Coffee Salon
- López-Cortegano, Eugenio, and Armando Caballero. 2019. “Inferring the Nature of Missing Heritability in Human Traits Using Data from the GWAS Catalog.” Genetics 212 (3): 891–904.
- Emil Kirkegaard: “Summary of progress in GWASs. Progress gets increasing difficult because of the log normal distribution of effect sizes. So we need massive sample sizes, probably entire populations, to build models that capture close to the full heritability.“
- Pop Mech: New Research Suggests the Universe May Be a Giant Loop
- Peter Turchin: Historians and Historical Databases
- Emil Kirkegaard: Data mining Erowid to study drugs
- Richard Jones: Rock climbing and the economics of innovation
- Scott Alexander: New Atheism: The Godlessness That Failed
- *dysgenics* Abdellaoui, Abdel, David Hugh-Jones, Loic Yengo, Kathryn E. Kemper, Michel G. Nivard, Laura Veul, Yan Holtz, et al. 2019. “Genetic Correlates of Social Stratification in Great Britain.” Nature Human Behaviour, October.
- “If that goes on for multiple generations, then for the sort of social inequalities already there, you run the risk of increasing those inequalities on a biological level.“
- Steve Sailer: Cousin Marriage: It’s Bad
- Linh Dinh: Belonging, Not Belonging, Who Cares?
- Ideas & Data: Ben Shapiro, Conservative Inc, and the “Groyper” War of 2019
- Noah Carl: Tolerance of Inter-Ethnic Relationships in Europe
- Quanta: Quantum Darwinism, an Idea to Explain Objective Reality, Passes First Tests
- Quillette’s plans for 2020
- Quora: What is the cruelest insect in the animal kingdom?
- Alexander Turok: WWII as the peak of the age of heroic warfare
- Emil Kirkegaard: Physiognomy: a field ready for scientific revival
- A New Radical Centrism has a short new Twitter investigation on RationalWiki: “… RW has been taken over by “teenagers” (literally) who “don’t have a clue about science” and who “only use RW as a soapbox”… Among the worst of those now in prominence at Rational Wiki is someone he describes as “a 16 year old self-described zionist feminist and pansexual.”“
Culture War
- *existential horror* Mencius Moldbugman: “It’s Monday. You don’t want to come into work but you must, so at least you just want to complete your work as quickly as possible and get out. That isn’t going to happen. You are not in the office to work. You are there to participate in social rituals and humiliate yourself.“
- Reuters: Italy to make climate change study compulsory in schools
- “How would you lower carbon emissions?” – final exam.
“Keep out African “refugees” like Salvini once did, they’ll emit ten times less carbon at home than in Europe.” – some based Giuseppe.
/ Angry NPC face
- “How would you lower carbon emissions?” – final exam.
- *unexpected wh40k* Mexican authorities find over 40 skulls at altar in den of suspected drug traffickers
Powerful Takes
- Forward: Afghanistan’s Last Jews Were Freed From Prison Because They Were So Annoying
- SMH: US expat ‘biggest neoliberal’ in Chile opens fire on protesters
- Late entry candidate for Moldbugman’s boomer tournament?
- Martyanov on my Russophobic shilling
This is the current Open Thread, where anything goes – within reason.
If you are new to my work, start here.
Ah, a nice big open thread. That’s my reading material sorted until 3am.
1: Will there be an audio/video/text recording of the St.P talk?
2: In regards the Ford class carriers, it’s looking increasingly like the USN will have to shelve or curtail its big projects. The ‘next generation’ Zumwalt Class DDGs were so costly, delayed, and unreliable that 29 of the planned 32 were cancelled. It would not surprise me if the Ford Class carrier programme is reduced from 10 to 5 or something along those lines. The same goes for the Columbia Class SSBNs which will supposedly begin construction in 2021. Compared to Chinese naval production, this is an extremely worrying trend for the US if they want to retain any semblance of dominance in the Pacific past 2030. It will be interesting to see how Russian projects fare by comparison, I’m encouraged by the Borei and Project 22220 icebreakers.
3: zrada zrada zrada
Very likely, yes.
I think the Zumwalt has some parallels with HMS Warrior.
Regarding the application of physiognomy to criminality (more on the level of gut instinct than science), here is my short record:
1.) Observed Aaron Hernandez doing PR work for the New England Patriots. Saw his face and his tats, and thought he was an especial punk, even among NFL players. Didn’t realize he was a closet homo though. I wouldn’t have necessarily said murderer but wasn’t too surprised.
2.) Many years ago, watched a short part of a TV program on the Good Friday Peace Agreement. In the clip, they were interviewing Michael Stone, who was infamous for throwing a grenade at an IRA funeral in Belfast. They stated how they were going to release him as part of the peace deal, and moved particularly by his facial morphology and manner of speaking, more even than his past history, I thought it was a really bad idea.
Of course, Stone was arrested some 6 years later for trying to attack Stormont. He made such an impression on me that I remembered his face, when they showed it on the news.
Stone and his ilk represent the apotheosis of a very dysgenic section of Northern Irish protestant society that has been suffering the same ills as the post-apocalyptic deindustrialised wastelands of North/Midlands Britain but combined with the hopelessness of being part of a fake national identity experiencing death by demographics and their own politics mistakes.
Northern Ireland is a welfare state par excellence in terms of its ability to destroy the souls and motivation of large sections of society. Take a walk around some of Belfast’s less prosperous areas and you see Michael Stones in every chippy and betting parlour – beefcake gorillas with deep-set eyes devoid of life, slowly morphing into the character from the Norf meme. They’ll be stuffing their flabby jaws with whatever prolefeed is cheapest while witlessly disparaging their politically opposed neighbours with whom they actually have a great amount in common (unfortunately).
They’re kept on a leash by the bread and circuses of 21st century Anglo society, but even endless repeats of Love Island and Sportsball can’t stop them from unleashing their natural urge to riot once or twice a year.
Belfast, great city.
How much land is taken up by those German wind and solar farms?
Are any people here, fans of astronomy, which can recommend interesting books?
I’ve been a little interested since I was a child (even read old texts of Galileo), but not studied it, did not study physics when I was in the university.
When I’m looking at books in the shops are either too popularist, or they sell very expensive textbooks for students who have already studied astrophysics (this is the kind of text they sell in the shops https://assets.cambridge.org/97811070/10741/excerpt/9781107010741_excerpt.pdf ) .
La Wik article on Bukovsky included only Bukovsky’s denials. I added a link to that Guardian article quoting the prosecutor, who says that Bukovsky told detectives he himself had been downloading the images for 15 years. We’ll see how long the edit lasts before Lyudmila Alexeyeva gets to it.
How deracinated do you have to be to be a Latino and believe that the US never interfered in any foreign election?
No need to be “deracinated”, being stone ignorant and completely disinterested is enough.
https://medium.com/@OneYoungWorld_/32-million-american-adults-cant-read-why-literacy-is-the-key-to-growth-818996739523
Remember this statistic, when you read any polls or any analysis “what American people think about X” where X is something that does not directly impact daily life.
Have you tried Oxford’s Very Short Introductions? These have real content but can still be read lying in bed without resorting to pencil and paper calculations.
More data: about half of eligible American voters do not register, do not vote, the greatest circus in the world leaves them cold.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voter_turnout_in_the_United_States_presidential_elections
They do not care about their own elections, and do you expect them to care about someone else’s?
Like Cameron before him, Boris is a representative of the City of London, who insist on being free to leverage and create bubbles like the current property one (and immigration is essential to keep it inflated). The attempt by the EU to stop the City leveraging was a major reason for the minority elite support for Brexit,
British police officers gave sworn statements that Vladimir Bukovsky told them he had deliberately dowbloaded child ponograph. It was politically inconvenient to discredit Bukovsky at the very moment when Putin Polonium shenanigans began a diplomatic break with the UK, but the law enforcement system took its course. The rules based order in Britain is the reason why Russian oligarchs put their money there. Billionaire crooks from all over the world know that the prime minister cannot have someone killed or appropriate all their money. Britain’s loosely regulated City of London is world champ by encouraging flows of dirty money.
Eliezer Yudkowsky can’t see the sense in Nick Bostrom’s suggestion of an Artificial General Intelligence being used only as an ‘oracle’ to answer carefully defined questions in a limited reply (to prevent it manipulating humans), but he thinks Putin can spread fascism globally unless everyone else stops making comments Yudkowsky does not like. Decision theory: anyone who does not act as we like must be treated as an enemy.
Also
After searching online a lot now, I found an introductory textbook which looks interesting – I think I will order this one (I don’t know if you or anyone here has read it?). I can’t find a preview, but it is probably the adequate level for people who have not studied physics in the university?
https://www.cambridge.org/academic/subjects/physics/astronomy-general/astronomy-evolving-universe-9th-edition?format=PB&isbn=9780521800907
Scott Alexander is right that atheism is dead.
He is wrong why.
New Atheism was never about “progress” “science” or “rational thought”.
New Atheism was about revenge.
Revenge of the nerds against their Christian fathers who were beating them, Christian priests who were molesting them, Christian mothers who were burning their Dungeons & Dragons and Harry Potter books.
And revenge is one of the strongest forces that can motivate men. Ask Count Monte Christo.
So what happened to atheism?
Simple: the nerds won. The Christians lost. The revenge was succesful.
The last gasp of Christians was in the mid 00’s when they spent their last remains of influence to support Dubya’s war and push creationism to schools.
Now, after 15 years:
American Christians support the most unchristian, most brazenly sinful and depraved man you can imagine.
Gay marriage is legal everywhere, everybody who wants to be somebody is LGBTQ now.
Dungeons & Dragons are fully mainstream, Harry Potter is seen as one of the greatest works of literature.
The idea that any of presidential candidates will invoke Jesus, Bible and “Christian moral values” is laughable.
The Pope worships pagan goddess, does not believe in resurrection of Jesus anymore, and billions of Catholics worldwide do not give a shit.
Christianity is dead as political force. Atheism is dead because it decisively won. Atheism is dead because it is no longer needed.
(my comment is about US and Western world – in Islamic and Hindu worlds, where the fight is going on. Visit some atheist sites and discussions, and you will see most active atheists are ex-Muslims and ex-Hindus)
Of course, one of the difficulties in attempting to construct a death count of the Troubles is the fact that many of the partisans were criminals engaged in nonsectarian gang activities. While the many acts of terror are lamentable, I think the peace process itself was somewhat disgusting.
Among other matters, this blank-slatism of releasing terrorists who were probably natural-born criminals. Ireland giving up its constitutional claim to the whole of Ulster – an abandonment of blood and soil, which is an essential nationalist principle, without even considering reunification directly.
In general, the subversion of the desire of two closely related peoples to get along, into a sub-rosa multiculturalism. As well as the way that the hard-bought lessons have been ignored, and the politicians involved are now shown to be feckless traitors to their own people.
I haven’t been to Ireland in a great many years, and I think it would break my heart to see it now.
By an act of kritarchy, the German government have unbanned Wolfenstein-3D.
They probably realized that most video games featuring Nazis are good propaganda for the regime, and they can still ban any exception, in the unlikely event one ever arises. It is amazing how long it took them to realize this.
Maybe, it is this era of woke video games that convinced them?
That would imply that Tsarist Russia had it coming, a strange position to take for a Russian wannabe imperialist.
India’s not doing so well.
https://twitter.com/JustinSandefur/status/1195187762355408897
On top of this, India saw a net decline in jobs during the same period.
https://twitter.com/thewire_in/status/1194186715327385600
Superpower 2020 jokes write themselves at this point.
I expect further Indian migration to accelerate substantially in the coming decade.
There’s also a question for political ‘scientists’ here. Modi has done exceptionally well despite a very poor economy. Requires fundamental re-examination of “it’s the economy, stupid” models. That may work in largely secular, individualistic contexts where people vote largely on material basis. But is such a model feasible going forward, given that nationalism is rising everywhere?
It would be better at first just to dismiss outright idiots (such as army press Secretary Konashenkov)
The lesson is that governments in the western hemisphere that try to pursue independence from America get screwed.
Hahaha, so true, if there were a world survey about the most annoying people in the world then the jews would no doubt be number one.
Well, without reunification, NI at least hasn’t been lured into hell by Jews and gay Indians. Not yet at least.
Here’s one for The World section:
Another chapter opens in Pizzagate?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7693471/Prince-Andrew-speaks-publicly-time-relationship-Jeffrey-Epstein.html
It is called revanchism, not imperialism. Get your terminology right.
Actually I have argued exactly that: http://www.unz.com/akarlin/sixth-proof/
Why is rap music so popular in Russia/Slavic countries? It seems to be the main form of popular music in those countries nowadays and there are many white rappers in those countries.
I don’t think it’s as popular in the UK, most rappers in the UK are black. In fact I struggle to think of any white rappers in Britain. I don’t think native British people are really that into rap music/black culture actually. White popular music in the UK tends to be either generic pop music or electronic music like dubstep, drum and bass, etc or folk-pop type music.
Mr. Karlin frequently lauds the reduction in mortality rates from external causes in Russia. However, Russia is a world leader in a category of deaths called deaths from unidentified causes. 25% of all deaths from external courses in Russia have an unidentified nature; in developed countries this figure is well below 5%.
This tells us that the real murder and suicide rates are higher.
For instance, the suicide rate estimate provided by the WHO, which assigns unidentified causes proportionally, is more reliable and this number (around 25) firmly puts Russia in top five countries in the world by suicide rates.
In short: russian office for statistics cheats, Russia is still way behind developed world in mortality indicators.
Read more here: http://www.demoscope.ru/weekly/2012/0535/analit010.php
Russia as a secular civilizing force in Syria.
https://twitter.com/LostWeapons/status/1194639464338837505 (NSFW – Russians (presumably Wagner sociopathic scum) in cahoots with Syrians beheading/chopping an arm of a corpse).
https://twitter.com/Dalatrm/status/987809044223201280 (NSFW – Russians smashing man’s legs and arms with a hammer)
Videos are not recent. Victims might as well be ISIS villains. Still, this is a part of a historic pattern of Russian cruelty when their hand are completely untied.
This is why I get physically angry when I read complete idiots like Stephen Cohen decrying NATO explansion to EE post 1991 (probably the only unequivocally morally sound decision that org made post Soviet collapse).
Rebuilding Russian Empire? Nothing than waste of time.
Russians are called Mongols anyway, claim the name and restore the Mongol Empire, the greatest empire that ever existed 😉
Think big, dream big, go big or go broke!
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/9b/Great_Mongol_Empire_map.svg/1200px-Great_Mongol_Empire_map.svg.png
Yeah a 2012 article with this conclusion:
“Сомнение вызывает и учет самоубийств: “сформировавшееся в период реформ качество российской статистики не дает исследователям возможность сделать вывод, является ли низкая значимость суицидов и малая связь ее с наблюдаемыми уровнями смертности реальным фактом, специфической чертой российской смертности в период реформ, или же артефактом, следствием плохого качества статистики, выразившейся в аномально высокой смертности от повреждений с неопределенными намерениями, куда по определению входят и убийства и самоубийства”.Цитируемые исследования в основном относятся к периоду 1990-х и началу 2000-х годов,”
So your post is a brazen manipulation
Sean:
The good Hitchens, Peter, would dispute you on “rules based order” reigning in modern-day Britain unless you subscribe to the belief that rules are in constant flux to conform to the current zeitgeist!
Violence
Ey weren’t you supposed to come down to Serbia at some point?
I dated an Irish girl. She was very traditional, about as much as any modern woman can be. She said she could only “sigh” at her homeland’s state.
Didn’t the British government just force them to accept legalized sodomite “marriage”?
This means even more Indians heading to former white lands.
Korean solidarity against the Japanese isn’t surprising. Toyotomi Hideyoshi’s infamously brutal invasions at the end of the 16th century are well remembered, as is the Japanese occupation 1910-1945.
While treatment of Korean laborers during WWII wasn’t as bad as German mistreatment of Slavs, the Japanese management of Korea was considerably more intensive. The Japanese had 1 bureaucrat per 420 Koreans, destroyed much of Korea’s archives and cultural heritage, and forced assimilated in an effort to obliterate their national consciousness. The use of Korean women as sex slaves during the war is infamous enough that disputes over their memory in modern Japan and Korea make it into western news.
Korea spent much of her history as a tributary of China and an enemy of Japan. Seems like she will revert to type as the Cold War political legacy fades away.
I failed, for various reasons – I’ll still be doing it, though probably round March/April now.
A Hungarian opposition MEP travels to Washington DC as a member of some EP delegation, and plans to inform them of the many problems in Hungary (“lack of rule of law” etc.) so that the Americans would do something against Orbán. She will also propose that NATO should also get involved.
These people would literally enjoy Hungary getting bombed to remove Orbán.
https://index.hu/kulfold/2019/11/12/cseh_katalin_magyar_jogallamisag_kerdesei_amerikai_kongresszus/
https://www.rferl.org/a/serbia-to-receive-russian-anti-aircraft-missiles-despite-u-s-sanctions-risk/30257307.html
There’s been something of a turnaround wrt the anti-air defense systems purchase.
Granted this is referring to the Pantsir rather than the S-400, which our government is apparently too stupid to buy.
Christianity will become more plausible if it rejects two Jewish claims
from the Book of Genesis:
(1) that God created the world
(2) that God created human bodies
No intelligent person can subscribe to Claim 1, due to the evil and suffering
we see around us, or Claim 2, certainly not since Darwin. Physics is moving
toward the view that the Universe is artificial, more like a video game or
an amusement park. In other words, a v. lifelike simulation that we are watching
while being perfectly safe at a higher level of reality. This view is nothing new –
I recall decades ago it was popular to say that the Universe was a botched
third-grade science project constructed by a C student in some advanced
civilization.
I subscribe to panentheism (from pan en theos = all in God) which emphasizes
the immanent view of divinity. The development of the immanent view,
i.e., paganism, was rudely interrupted by the rapid growth of the Jesus
movement which later became Christianity. Paganism needs to be cleaned
up of superstition – today’s paganism contains too much sex magick, love
potions, and all manner of nonsense for my taste. Let’s not forget that
the ancient Greeks were smarter than the ancient Hebrews (who never did
any science), and return to our own European traditions. All religions, like
all scientific models and theories, are approximations anyway. Just as in
science we are moving toward better and better approximations, in religion we
should do the same. I’d like to recommend the latest approximation to Christianity,
call it Christianity 2.0: A Course in Miracles (1976) – 1350 pages, and A Course
of Love (1999) – 750 pages. I’m not aware of anything better in terms of
a balanced synthesis of Christianity and paganism (and radical rejection of
the Old Testament), i.e., synthesis of transcendent and immanent divinity.
An added plus – much of A Course in Miracles employs beautiful Shakespearean
iambic pentameter. It’s a joy to read and learn from.
I did not see this at the time and enjoyed reading it today.
Is there a word you prefer for people who have a high IQ and regularly behave like morons? I like sperglord but it is not in the dictionary and few people know or want to know what it means and I could use a better word!
Good lord, are you 12? How can somebody so infantile actually drum up the motivation to post here instead of commenting cat videos on Youtube?
You sound like a gay nerd, you’re not #Pagang
‘Evil and suffering,’ among many other reasons. I wasn’t about
to write a whole essay disputing classical apologetics. Cosmology
and neo-Darwinism make traditional Christianity implausible.
My goal was to briefly summarize what many consider to be
a more plausible approximation to standard Christianity.
Nevertheless, the argument from evil and suffering is very potent
for many people. For example, they will say, “Where was God when
this or that genocide was taking place?” And Christianity 2.0 will
respond, “Don’t blame God. He didn’t create our Universe. Our
Universe was not created, it was made.” For details I refer you
to the two treatises I mentioned before. You want me to summarize
a 1350-page treatise in two paragraphs? You’ve got to do some
work yourself and consult my references.
In any case, smart chimps like us have no access to absolute truth.
The best we have is slowly improving approximations. I’m sure
we’ll know a little bit more in 500 years.
The cutting edge of anarcho-neocon Twitter agrees with you 😉
https://twitter.com/WASBAPPIN/status/1195445662340407296
https://twitter.com/AasaRaiko/status/1195455638232535040
https://twitter.com/contrapopulist/status/1195604236530270208
Traditional Christian replies were:
1/They deserved it for their sins
2/Suffering and martyrdom are the greatest earthly rewards for true Christian
3/God’s ways are unknowable
Traditionally, these arguments were sufficient, especially when accompanied with the strongest argument of all.
https://franklycurious.com/wp/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/Auto-da-fe-Myasoyedov.jpg
All follow @WASBAPPIN and add him/her/zir/xir to your “batshit crazy Twitter” bookmark folders. This is the wave of the future.
Here Bappin presents the 2024+ Democratic Party platform. With catchy slogans.
https://twitter.com/WASBAPPIN/status/1196161667001810944
https://twitter.com/WASBAPPIN/status/1196162038113767424
https://twitter.com/WASBAPPIN/status/1196162625760923648
Re: Paganism
Most theologians will agree that the highest expression of paganism was instantiated
in the person of Plotinus (204-270 AD), a Roman philosopher who belonged to
the School of Neoplatonism. This was paganism at its best but it basically
stopped developing in the third century. Hence we lost 1800 years. Therefore, it’s
time to start developing pagan theology again. In my estimation Ken
Wilber, a transpersonal thinker, who has tried to synthesize the best of
Eastern thought with the best of Western thought, has made progress
in this direction. No wonder he is America’s most translated philosopher.
I added this comment to clarify what I mean by paganism in view of the
fact that some commenters have no idea what pagan immanentism is.
FWIW – a person identifying as Jeffrey Epstein has just signalled on 4chan that he is still alive
What makes this curious, is that this is precisely what a real Jeffrey Epstein alive in Israel would do, as it is completely deniable, and the perhaps leading place to send such a signal to say hello
https://i.ibb.co/gtQxrgP/epstein-signals-he-is-alive-4chan.jpg
On 4chan your post will by default show a flag from the country where you are posting, but the poster can hide this by manually choosing a ‘meme flag’ … ‘Epstein’ chooses the rainbow LGBT (LGBT+P ‘paedo’?) flag here … hiding the Israeli one?
To the first affectionate reply, ‘Epstein’ responds with the ‘heart’ notation <3 (a heart if rotated to the left) … thread is here:
http://boards.4chan.org/pol/thread/233477121
Epstein was known to be computer savvy and aware of key alternative information sources and disclosure locations, such as 4chan
4chan is also where the person who claimed to be an employee at Epstein's final prison, the morning of Epstein's alleged 'death', credibly posted about Epstein being driven out of the prison in a van by people in military-type garb
https://i.ibb.co/5RsWRnK/jeffrey-epstein-driven-out-of-jail-alive-10-aug.jpg
Epstein was known to be computer savvy and aware of key alternative information sources and disclosure locations, such as 4chan
Not really.
https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2003/03/jeffrey-epstein-200303
Plotinus – who got his ideas from Syrian Jews, btw 🙂 – did indeed leave a very rich legacy. These ideas were extensively developed by the Christian mystics and the Kabballah.
These ideas are also quite similar to Eastern ideas found in Zen and Advaita, and only differ in certain emphases and matters of technique.
Finally, you cannot “develop” these ideas. If you understand them, the whole point is that there is nothing to develop. Nowhere to go.
“Development” is an illusion for people who believe in time and material things – both illusions.
Finally finally, yes, these ideas are the corrective for our modern insanity and should be reintroduced in a form adapted to our times – not “developed”. Physics is making certain hesitant approaches in this directions, but the masses lag.
Mysticism was the basis for the original scientific revolution, because it encouraged empiricism and discouraged theory. Science has now returned to scholasticism, and theoretical systems are preferred to fact, which is ignored because it is too rich and nuanced into fit into scholastic systems.
A return of mysticism would be accompanied by a return to empiricism, and our current scientific logjam would be shattered. This would mean the “overcoming” of what we currently mean by science, and create something unrecognizable as science. Much of our current “knowledge” would be overturned – just as the scholastic “knowledge” of the Middle Ages, was. Later, this new thing will be classified, and turn into scholasticism once again.
Quite aside from creating a New Science based on a return to empiricism, the new mysticism would shatter the rigid molds and forms our modern life has hardened into, and make us vital, natural, and spontaneous again. Energy would rush forth into the human world again.
People like Daniel Chieh and German Reader won’t be so depressed and miserable anymore.
Two words: clever sillies. It is an academic term, I think coined by Bruce Charlton.
There are definitely some advantages to being economically depressed.
In an ideal world, RoI would not be pozzed, and would have instead said something like, “You cannot allow blacks and Indians into Northern Ireland because it is OUR land.” Of course, if the pozz invasion has been delayed that is all it is, unfortunately – a delayed invasion.
One of the sad things is I don’t think a lot of Irish-Americans even realize what is being done to Ireland because it is happening so quickly. I wouldn’t at all say that the majority of Irish are for it – they voted to ban birthright citizenship, when Nigerians were using it to invade. But, as in so many other cases in the West, the general treachery of their political class knows no bounds.
Well, I think the bigger problem is that many Irish-Americans are liberals, for which I blame the Kennedy’s.
It matters who stands behind a country’s banks. Where you can steal money it is as easy as pie for someone to steal it from you. Maybe the government. You want it safe as the Bank Of England.
The rules in the City of London are the ones that enable Britain to serve international crooks and tax dodgers well. It is easy to obscure who owns property in England. It is partly because no minion can be sure that the top person will be around long long to protect them in the foreseeable future, but the fact remains that PMs like Cameron, May or Boris could not order someone’s death, or even the seizure of a person’s assets. That is a major reason why Britain (and its offshore dependencies) are where the vast majority of dirty money goes through and ends up invested.
Material things are a great evil, please part with it by going here and removing the evil from yourself.
Fortunately, you can easily recognize the really smart people – they are not fooled by satanic lie of materialism and know that elves, dwarves, fairies and angel Moroni are real.
http://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2016/06/are-elves-and-dwarves-really-real.html
Yes, that’s how arguments are actually “won”.
Actually changing someone’s mind about something that’s very important to how they see themselves through the use of logic and evidence is quite rare.
Quite a lot was just the practical response to new technology.
Think about Galileo.
It was mainly just because he had constructed a telescope with greater magnification than anyone else had (his telescopes had up to 30x magnification), and his revolutionary insights were an almost inevitable response to a fact that he could see the shape of the planets for the first time.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bCIEYUeXll8
AK, have you thought of visiting Derbent? It looks pretty cool.
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/1070
Sure, but he didn’t have a “theory” which interfered with observation.
For instance, what strikes me about IQ theory is how so many facts don’t fit the theory. But in scholastic style, this is ignored and the facts that fit the theory are emphasized.
So our science is scholastic and impoverished, and people like Daniel Chieh are depressed.
Disgusting as it is, it’s hardly unprecedented in history for disgruntled old elites to ask foreign powers to overthrow their national government in their favour.
But I imagine that Orban’s social-nationalist policy (or posturing at it, anyway) must be ultimately still be overwhelmingly popular amongst Hungarians outside of Budapest (otherwise he’d change tack), as Orban was basically no different from any grey centre-right politician before the chaos that followed the Őszöd speech. I mean, he’s fundamentally an opportunist with few firm principles himself, so he’s calculated on staying true to the policies that no one else is offering, otherwise he’d just be a dirtier, stupider version of his opponents.
Do I have that right?
John Burns, Gettysburg Partisan:
My subset of NYC Irish Americans (family, relatives, neighbors, schoolmates) were and are violently anti-liberal. At the time those eligible never voted for JFK. In the interim, their anti-liberal proclivities even further hardened!
Orban seems that way to me, too. He was pretty generic until he found a brand that more people would buy. Same with Boris Johnson and Trump.
Bad news… more of them in Canada stinking up the streets and ethnically displacing whites.
God dammit if at least 25% of whites could grow the balls to demand closed borders that would be nice… the majority of whites are either neutral or happy about their coming minority, 2nd class citizen status.
You should take the time to visit Republika Srpska if you get the chance. It would certainly be a very interesting visit from a nationalism and war tourism perspective (also a red pill on Islam as well).
Regarding the Irish Question – they simply repeated the pattern of secularism and degeneracy which inevitably results in the demographic destruction of your lands by stronger-willed forces.
Going secular means you lose your purpose in life. Any right wing, conservative ideas ultimately ring hollow to a secular population – yeah the art and stuff is nice, but I’m dying in 50 years anyways so who really cares? Best to just put my head down. They lose the vigor and fight for life.
Now, that Nigerian chap has plenty of spirit left. And his spirit easily overpowers the weak seculars. He has a thirst for a better life and dammit he’s going North to find it. What are you gonna do about it? You’re an atheist society with no energy.
If the Irish were still strong Christians, they too would have the same energy as the Nigerian – thus the two sides are at a stalemate – preventing movement.
Barely any Bosniaks (or Albanians) were any more than the most nominal, assimilated Muslims you could find anywhere, until opportunist scum started popping out of the woodwork after 1989.
There are places to find your ‘red pill’ on Islam, but Yugoslavia isn’t one of them. International Jihadis did pour in, but they were relatively late to the party. I actually think Germany bears a lot of responsibility for instigating the Yugoslav wars, but you won’t hear much of that here.
I strongly disagree with the part about “Albanians” being secular Muslims, although I am not personally knowledgeable enough to comment about whether this was true (I suspect not) for “Bosniaks” before 1989.
Disagree about them being “late to the party”.
True, although I would place the highest responsibility on the USA. The “opportunistic scum”, as you call it, had to get their backing directly from somewhere:
https://archive.org/details/TheUSLawThatPushedTheBreakUpOfYugoslaviaPublicLaw101513Nov51990MultilateralEconomicAssistance
I should hasten to add that both Tudjman and Milosevic were among such scum, both were pure power politicians who courted the support of old Chetniks and Ustasa, knowing full well the hell they risked stirring up.
Have to disagree. Tudjman and Milosevic were significantly different characters.
Tudjman was an authentic Croatian nationalist that genuinely believed in his cause and got an opportunity to achieve his goals, regardless of the unscrupulous and ruthless means he used.
Milosevic was an atheist Montenegrin Sovok who clumsily tried (and quickly failed) to do the almost 100% impossible task of preserving Yugoslavia in the face of the world’s most powerful forces of the time, along with their local proxies, aggressively applying serious pressure to break Yugoslavia. Milosevic was much more of a “power politician” compared to Tudjman. Milosevic made many concessions (some even unnecessary) in order to simply stay in power and preserve his own position regardless of the plight of his countrymen and co-ethnics. He demonstrated many times that he was more than willing to ditch, abandon and even betray them to be mauled by their enemies than to faithfully stand with them just for a bit of security in his own position.
Using that word in the context of the sentence and present day time betrays your bias as someone that supports Yugoslavism and still thinks of most of the Balkans as Yugoslavia.
Honestly, Yugoslavia isn’t going to come back. It’s similar to the USSR. Both of those entities were unnaturally, violently and artificially imposed upon their populations’ to begin with. Almost no one in either entity seriously thought of themselves as a “Yugoslav” or a “Soviet” person. Serbs and Russians had the highest percentage of these people in their ethnic groups, which is a part of the reason why they fared so horribly. You can’t have a Yugoslavia or Soviet Union without any Yugoslavs or Soviets. The bad thing isn’t that these two entities collapsed or were dissolved, but only in the way that they were broken apart.
About Evo, what we are listening here (I’m in Argentina) is that the problem was not so much the neoliberal technocrats (he had the civilian government bureaucracy firmly in control) but that he did not purge the Army and the Police. Venezuela by contrast thoroughly purged the army of anti-government elements, and besides since Chavez was originally a military man there were never many of them anyway. The Bolivian military never trusted Evo, but Evo believed their promises that the era of them intervening in politics was over. Alas, once the last election showed that Evo’s support had gone below 50%, the military decided to move in, using the flimsy election fraud charges as an excuse. The ridiculous bottled blonde currently in charge as “president” is widely believed here to be just a puppet for the military.
I’ve been talking about quickly rising Indian migration to Europe outside of its traditional bastion of the UK for a while now. Eurostat’s latest first residence permits numbers (which includes all categories, students, work, refugee, family etc, so it is the single best indicator for non-EU migration). You’d probably have to click on the image to see the details.
https://i.imgur.com/5hxSD21.jpg
In all the Nordics countries Indians are now either #1 nationality (Denmark, Norway) or at least in the top 3 (Sweden, Finland). They are number 1 in places like Netherlands or Switzerland. I expect them to hit top 3 in Germany within a few years max.
Even some EE ones like Latvia, Poland or Hungary are seeing Indians in the top 5. As India’s economy faces ruin, given that most of its growth was driven by its top 10% and never had a broad-based growth model like China with its mass-manufacturing, the country is now hitting the walls. And as a result, many more Indians will jump ship. They will become the most populous nation in 2024 and eventually peaking at 1.65-1.7 billion.
Brush up your bellydancing, folks. And get ready to have insane amounts of Indian culinary offerings. I can already see a huge change in Stockholm over the past few years. Indian foodjoints are now nearly as popular as Chinese or Thai and new ones are popping up monthly, if not weekly.
Well I’ll admit, I only really know the Serbian and Albanian accounts of the Yugoslav Wars well, I don’t really know much about Tudjman’s history domestically.
You don’t think the country could have worked even once the Albanians, Macedonians and Slovenes seceded or left? The Croat-Serb beef (along with the other meme South-Slav identities) feels like the most meaningless ethnic rivalry out there.
Goddamn. I’d rather have Turks, at least their language and accent isn’t ear-rape.
Max Blumenthal’s Grayzone has become the de facto authority on all these US coups. Their article on Bolivia spells out quite clearly that your analysis is correct. Most of Bolivia’s army and police personell spent a lot of time in the US being ‘trained’ (read: groomed), and that is ultimately what did Morales in.
As for the reasons of the coup, the recent sale to the Chinese for Lithium was probably a key factor but the US had been trying to overthrow him before. It was probably the straw that broke the camels back. The article from the Grayzone also sheds light on how supposedly “impartial” organisations like OAS basically work hand-in-glove with US imperial demands.
Assange’s persecution was also refused by Reporters Without Borders as a case of an imprisoned journalist. All these index-ranking organisations are completely bought in by US government imperatives. The same is true of the World Bank’s ease of doing business index, which is also manipulated. People who take those indexes seriously are complete idiots.
Disagree. Germany’s experience with turks leaves much to be desired. They might be better than arabs, but that is faint praise. More importantly, Indians seem to do well in the diaspora even when they are not the elite.
Take Singapore. The vast majority of Indians in Singapore are the offspring of indentured servants who were imported by the British to do menial work. This was not the elite of their country. Yet, today Indians earn more than Chinese in Singapore.
As for language, I will concede that turkish sounds quite pleasant compared to arabic or hebrew which sounds like incessant spitting. Though still not quite as beautiful as Persian, which is one of the most beautiful languages in the world IMO. Hindi sounds okay in comparison. Still, remember that India has many more languages than just Hindi (Telugu, Tamil, Marathi, Bengali, Kannada etc etc). Hindi is the most popular language but is still only spoken by 40% of the population as mother tongue.
No, these are the traditional atheist replies. As with anything atheist, they’re mind-numbingly moronic and infantile.
Try again.
First, let’s get the chronology correct. Croatia and Slovenia both declared secession on the same day in 1991. When they again declared secession 3 months after the Brioni agreement moratorium on their secession, Slovenia de-facto successfully separated after it’s short war with Yugoslavia. In reality, the “Ten day War” was really a bunch of Slovene terrorists (formally Slovene Territorial Guard members) attacking the lawful JNA barracks and then massacring Serb conscripts (even shooting them in the back) that already surrendered, most infamously at Holmec. Then came the humiliating JNA reinforcement effort that literally had troops sent with no ammunition be embarrassingly placed upon the Austro-Slovene border, where both the Austrian Army and Slovene terrorists shot at them from both the front and the rear …
Anyway, in your theoretical scenario without “Albanians”, “Macedonians” and Slovenes (assuming of course SR Croatia and Bosnia leave as well), Yugoslavia wouldn’t have really been Yugoslavia at all, it would just be de-facto Serbia. That’s what happened by late 1992 with Milosevic declaring FR Yugoslavia in reality. Yugoslavia was dead the moment Slovenia managed to successfully de-facto secede.
Do Macva and other Croat war crimes against Serbs in the Austro-Hungarian Army during WW1, Jasenovac, all the other WW2 Ustashe camps, crimes and massacres (also those from 1991-1995), Borovo Selo, Vukovar, Pakrac, Sisak, Gospic, Dalmatian Pogroms, Sijekovac, Miljevac Plateau, Operations Maslenica, Medack Pocket, Flash, Storm and etc. feel meaningless to you?
It’s really Yugoslav-Communism that is a meme identity. Similar to Sovokism. Even Monkeydonianism is a less toxic meme than those things …
Who knows about the IQ of Indians in Singapore? If this IQ is high, then it is a fatal blow to hypotheses about the hereditary nature of IQ (at least for Indian castes)
Plotinos was Greek. He only lived in Roman Empire.
Plotinos was simply an extension of Plato. In fact, he just saw himself as a Platonist. His thought had nothing to do with Jews or Christians; although, both groups integrated some of his insights into their belief systems.
Among other things, this Hungary focused piece brings up the subject of Bulgaria and how a given government (in this example post-Communist) doesn’t always reflect the overall sentiment of the people.
https://www.chroniclesmagazine.org/hungary-steady-as-she-goes/
Excerpt –
November 17 CNN GPS Zakaria-Jankowicz BS on Ukraine
Re: https://www.cnn.com/shows/fareed-zakaria-gps – https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/11/17/gps-1117-jankowicz.cnn – https://www.cnn.com/videos/tv/2019/11/15/exp-gps-1117-web-extra-jankowicz-on-what-to-call-ukraine–its-capital.cnn
Top heavy on Ukraine, the referenced 11/17 show was top heavy on BS and evasive of real matters like the:
– recent efforts to get the Russian and Ukrainian governments to negotiate.
– a NYT article quoting a major a major Ukrainian oligarch (and prime backer of the current Ukrainian president), who said that Ukraine should look to Russia and de-emphasize the West.
The segment with Nina Jankowicz misrepresents all Ukrainians preferring “Kyiv” over “Kiev”. It has been well established that a good number of Euromaidan leaning Ukrainians prefer using Russian over Ukrainian. Never mind those with a pro-Russian slant in the former Ukrainian SSR, who generally prefer Russian.
In the same segment, there’s tap dancing over a claim that the Ukrainian government hacked the DNC, while repeating the unsubstantiated mantra about Russian meddling in the 2016 US presidential election. On that last matter, See:
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2019/07/05/crowdstrikeout_muellers_own_report_undercuts_its_core_russia-meddling_claims.html
No effort to delve into the credible claim of DNC-Kiev regime collusion during the 2016 US presidential election. Jankowicz disingenuously states that claim has been debunked. That’s flat out false. See:
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/ukraine-sabotage-trump-backfire-233446
https://medium.com/@stranahan/the-difference-between-wikileaks-and-cnn-is-clear-on-ukraine-dnc-election-collusion-bc5208776d38
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2019/09/25/john_solomon_democrats_attempted_to_collude_with_ukraine_in_2016.html
When discussing Crowdstrike, the Jankowicz-Zakaria discussion omits its ties to the anti-Russian leaning and pro-Kiev regime Atlantic Council and that Crowdstrike’s claim of Russian government involvement in the 2016 US presidential election is short of being definitive.
As I previously noted about Jankowicz as a stated disinformation expert:
Re: https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/five-myths/five-myths-about-ukraine/2019/09/26/9c32e3be-dfcd-11e9-b199-f638bf2c340f_story.html &
https://www.rt.com/op-ed/469854-ukraine-disinformation-war-wapo/
The gall of some people to speak of “disinformation”. (Somewhat on par with Samantha Power being given carte blanche on CNN, to accuse the Trump administration of “endemic corruption”.)
Related:
https://www.academia.edu/37358188/Michael_Averko_Consistency_and_Reality_Lacking_on_Crimea
https://www.eurasiareview.com/07092018-consistency-and-reality-lacking-on-crimea-analysis/
сейчас я турист в Москве. Can one of you local Russians please tell me where there is a comprehensive laptop retailer? I’m after a Russian-market Lenovo Thinkpad, only Lenovos I’ve seen have been the cheap ones. There must be a Russian equivalent to Best Buy which has loads of options. Спасибо вам.
This was true 30 years ago but since then the demographic composition of the Indian community has changed rapidly. Indians are by far the most highly selected immigrant group that is allowed to enter Singapore and the proportion that have shallow roots in Singapore has grown dramatically.
As a result of these policies, the Indian population grew faster than other groups. The proportion of Indian citizens and permanent residents rose from 6.4% in 1980 to 9.0% in 2007. This was mainly due to rapid growth in the number of Indian nationals who acquired Singapore permanent residency. The changes in the size of the Indian community were also matched by changes in its socio-economic profile. Skilled immigrants have helped to raise the average income and educational levels of the community, helping to elevate the general stature of Indians in Singapore. At the same time, there is some ambivalence, and occasionally tension, between Indian immigrants on the one hand, and locally born Indians.
Households income from work by ethnic group per head (SGD)
Ethnic group Average household income
Total 3,076 4,943 7,214
Chinese 3,213 5,219 7,326
Malays 2,246 3,148 4,575
Indians 2,859 4,556 7,664
The Indians do earn 5% more than the Chinese.
I think the rioting in Hong Kong is actually making China look weak and indecisive. The Hong Kong police are clearly overwhelmed and out of their depth and the national government in Beijing seem unsure how to respond and whether to act or not, likely concerned about Western opinion on their response.
I highly doubt such rioting would have been allowed to carry on in America as long as it has in HK and I think the death count would almost certainly be a lot higher if rioters in the US used the same level of violence they have in Hong Kong.
On the topic of Balkan Affairs, I almost forgot to wish my fellow Serbs a happy Vukovar liberation day!
On this day 18th November, 18 years ago in 1991, Vukovar was successfully retaken from the Croat terrorist scum 🙂
Play Balkan games, win Balkan prizes.
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/croatia-population/
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/serbia-population/
https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/bosnia-and-herzegovina-population/
BTW, on the topic of Titanic Affairs, I almost forgot to wish my fellow passengers a happy Furniture Rearrangement Day. Celebrate till you can!
This line of argument is entirely reasonable. It appears silly only when people make assumptions about the nature of this universe.
Not fatal, though certainly not supportive, either.
There are many possible explanations: Only high(er)-IQ, good work-ethic servants where chosen. Only those were allowed to marry. Only those had enough money to raise large families. Perhaps more Indians would be high IQ if given adequate nutrition (iodine, etc). And so on.
Further, it’s also possible that the IQ of these Indians isn’t particularly high, but they have other traits that allow them to make good money in a Singapore society. IQ is not the only heritable trait that is important.
I don’t claim that any of these are true. Only that this there are lots of explanations consistent with the hereditary theory. And that absolute “proof” in any direction is hard, because the real world is very complicated.
Eventually, but I want to visit about ten other places just in Russia first.
Your point is over-exaggerated. Honestly, as long as there are a few thousand young people (assumed healthy men and women, of course) left of any given ethnic, racial, national or religious group, there is always hope that they can turn around the demographic situation of their collective. Of course, population is power and the sooner the better, it’s just that “demographic collapse” fears are slightly over-exaggerated by many.
Anyway, your demographic links about the Balkans actually over-exaggerate the real populations of Croatia, Serbia and BiH by anywhere from a few hundred thousand to almost a million people (shave that much off to get more accurate figures). After all, the same website states that Ukraine has a population of 43.89 million people which, as Karlin previously explained, is obviously a massive over-exaggeration of Ukraine’s actual population.
As for TFR’s or birth rates:
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/EITAjc6XUAAGljx.jpg:large
The data on your links is again incorrect. Serbia has a higher TFR compared to Croatia and BiH. Serbia’s TFR has been slowly but gradually growing since 2010 (Vucic’s rule good for Serbia’s TFR?) while Croatia’s has been erratic and BiH’s has been gradually declining.
I’m not sure why the obvious answer of nepotistic tolerance for corruption resulting in higher wealth hasn’t been posted by anyone. Indians can be intelligent enough, but their presence in any quantity is well known for a certain attitudes toward nepotism and wealth accumulation which well, pretty much, let them earn more.
For example, its not uncommon for Indians with influence to place their wives into sinecures into companies where they have influence, so that more wealth goes into a man’s specific family. Chinese corruption would flow the opposite direction, for example, to lavish gift and flaunt a secretary-mistress; taking money away from his family. Perhaps it has something to do with caste endogamy as a strategy as opposed to conspicious consumption as a way to demonstrate status.
IQ itself is a rough measure of working memory, executive function, visiospatial visualization, etc – alone obviously isn’t the universal answer to every single detail about a population any more than VO2 capacity will explain every single detail about athleticism.
Beijing gives some – but rather minimal thought to Western opinion about what they consider as their internal affairs. This is practical, since they are much more wary of and sensitive to internal politics and disruptions from their own population. So their actions with HK are very much consistent with that.
Letting HK burn down is part of that. It serves the goal of making the pro-democracy protesters look embarrassing and further helps make the practical case that democracy is not a good system and it plays into a very specific Chinese fear of chaos. The actual impact on the Chinese economy is minimal, but its pretty huge political win for them with a lot of their population. Even the HK public opinion is slowly turning against the rioters.
The destruction of the city also permits them to later rebuild it anew in their own image, essentially eradicating the culture of the city as a serious force in total, all with “unsoiled hands.”
Its likely an American response is different, but American timeframes of planning are also very different.
“Out there” idea.
If open borders and the Third World inundation of Europe driven by climate change are inevitable, perhaps it could instead borrow from the Indian experience and institute a rigid caste system? With immigrants becoming a shudra or unclean caste.
Ruin would still be likely, but would be postponed for a few centuries. And our immediate descendants would bask in their social supremacy.
Frankly, I wouldn’t recommend buying a laptop in Russia if you’re visiting for a short while.
Prices are generally more expensive than in the US (20% VAT), and you’ll need to shop online to get the best deals anyway. I imagine warranties will also be a bitch from abroad. That said, if you really need a laptop now from a physical big box retailer, I suppose you can check out El Dorado or pleer.
But even in 1990 Indians earned almost 90% of what Chinese did. Skilled migration, if your hypothesis is correct, didn’t seem to make a decisive difference, rather just improving the margins.
I think a stronger factor at play here is that Indians are a classic ‘mercantile minority’ group, namely that they outearn what their average IQ would predict in the diaspora. Armenians and Greeks would be other groups in this category. There may be other factors in genetics outside of pure smarts (risk-taking, higher ethnocentrism etc) which could affect how races compete against each other.
Kevin MacDonald is quick to point out that Jewish overrepresentation in the US elite institutions, even if you correct for IQ distribution at the far-right of the tail, is unexplainable by intelligence alone. There’s one jew for every seven whites at >135 IQ in the general American population. True, the disparity shrinks once you get to >150 and above, but most newspaper editors etc are not that smart. His answer is that jews got to such economic success because of nepotism, ethnocentrism, more aggressive emotional social norm etc. This is likely an even bigger factor today because Jewish achievement has collapsed, as Ron Unz has catalogued. MacDonald’s argument was predicated on 115 average Ashkenazi IQ.
Similar factors could be at play that pushes up Indian earnings in Singapore and in the diaspora in general. I think IQ is important but is probably overemphasised in these debates.
Excellent.
You’ve reminded me of one of my favorite Roki songs.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d6MsaG81ke4
Some design, huh? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3vhoP2YPbyI
You have a very good taste in music 🙂
My opinion is that “Heroes from Semberija” is decent, but Roki has much better songs out there.
I have to say that I’m not really sure which of his songs is my favorite, but I think that this one is inspirational enough:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wbOMT2k89Eo
There is also “free will” argument, but this is more intellectual.
These three I cited are the most common arguments used by Christians to explain the fact that world created by all loving intelligent designer is full of suffering.
They were used traditionally and still are – Mr. Karlin’s official line on Holocaust on this very blog is it was just and proper God’s punishment for killing the Russian Tsar.
This is very bad argument. Omnipotent designer can make his creation as small or big as he wishes, omnipotence means no bandwith, computing or storage constraints.
Anyway, read my post #14. Atheist-Christian debates belong to the halcyon time of Dubya’s presidency, about 2005. The current year is 2019, 2020 coming soon, everything than could be said about atheism and christianity had been already said.
https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Atheist
https://encyclopediadramatica.rs/Christian
Yes they are coming…
https://twitter.com/WASBAPPIN/status/1196174964145053696
This is logical consequence of HBDIQism. See the Brave New World.
Why? India kept the caste system for 3000 years, and is not ruined. Unlike Europe and China, there were no peasant revolts and revolutions – maybe the more unequal society is, the more stable it is?
The numbers on this site are official statistics, you are right that reality on the ground is much worse. It is common that villages where hundreds of people are on paper supposed to live, are empty save for few elderly, cats and dogs.
The people who are registered there (and are regularly voting) left for Gaymuslim Eurohell long ago, the right to emigrate to the decadent west was the only thing the Balkan people “won”.
Lol, and with what customs, can we foreigners celebrate this great and important holiday? I would buy a bottle of Serbian champagne if there was any in the supermarket in where I live (sadly I have not seen).
http://xdn.tf.rs/2016/03/11/Slobodan-i-Mirjana-Markovic-3.jpg
Poor Jihadis, they be democratic bois dindu nuffin ;_;
Hilarious that an American takes offense at poor treatment of Arabs
https://www.mintpressnews.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/AP060613064058.jpg
India is probably not a state of existence to strive for.
Britain was the only country in the EU blocking liberalising of visas with India, soon we will be gone. I agree, India will rapidly accelerate immigration to the EU.
I’m fairly liberal regarding “substances” but reading this might make me reevaluate my views.
That glue should not be legal.
Atheist INTELLECTUAL another anon BTFOs anonymous coward CHRISTARD with FACTS (Calls Out Apatoly Karlip)
Some EU countries are also in negotiations with Pakistan and Bangladesh for migrant workers
It is. It might seem disappointing but given the strangeness of how we actually realize the universe works – for example, how low levels of matter behave in highly irregular ways and then behave in classical ways in aggregate, it does seem that we’re going to have to accept some mystery in our observation to function.
This is a bit of a refutation of the Grecian notion of the macroscopic universe, but that that has been ongoing for awhile(the human body did not correspond to the celestial skies).
The Book of Job is basically this theme – the best book in the OT.
Moderns have a hard time time admitting they cannot know something, though.
I think the idea that some things, in principle, are unknowable to human beings is probably what separates moderns from.pre-moderns. Moderns cannot accept it.
No, they’re the most common atheist arguments. Like all atheists notions, they’re retarded and divorced from reality.
I have no idea what a brainlet like you means by ‘intellectual’, but it’s the official position of the Church, and no Christian could ever answer in any other way. Try not to argue with strawmen; you’re an idiot, but you’re not that dumb.
Since God is omnipresent, obviously physical space constraints are literally meaningless to him.
Also, since God is also omniscient, the only meaningful metric that God might care about is information complexity, the singularity of which is what we call ‘free will’, and concentrated in human beings. (Specifically in our brains.)
The landscape of the universe is much more involved when viewed as an information complexity landscape; for example, we’re already this close to modeling innumerable sub-universes in video games (it’s a pretty simple task given how easy planetary motion and other basic physics is to model), add some ‘machine learning’ and we might eventually get sub-universes inside those sub-universes, et al.
What’s a million light years (give or take a billion) of literally empty meaningless space compared to that?
No, they’re the most common atheist arguments. Like all atheists notions, they’re retarded and divorced from reality.
No, atheist argument is that there is no God. This is all.
I have no idea what a brainlet like you means by ‘intellectual’, but it’s the official position of the Church, and no Christian could ever answer in any other way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theodicy
Because that’s what could be easily measured, and already has a large impact.
One more for the Serbs/Chinese out there ❤❤❤
https://youtu.be/NYlQL8vmHyM
That sounds absolutely awful, and probably a key reason for many to oppose immigration from alien cultures in the first place. You could argue that Western Civilisation already went down that route (de-facto if not de jure) in South America, and look at the rancorous social divisions there.
Any that you like. Considering the event happened in 1991, it’s quite a modern thing, so there aren’t really any established customs (yet).
I don’t think there is such a thing as “Serbian champagne”. Not that I’ve ever heard of it, anyway.
https://i.imgur.com/g8P4XKG.jpg
Looks like the 2010-2020 period will essentially be a lost decade for Russia’s households. It would be interesting to see growth for the 2010-2013 period. My guess is that household income growth was likely quite strong in the 2010-13 period but has essentially been offset by the cumulative decline in the post-2014 period.
In the end, Russia had a brief period of recovery lasting a little more than a full decade before it fell to its usual position of stagnation and backwardness.
Champagne is one of those protected regional products so according to the EU regulations nothing produced outside of the Champagne region of France can be called Champagne even if it’s the same wine. There used to be champagnes from all over Europe but the mighty EU banned them all and they’re now mostly sold as “sparkling wine”.
If there are any Serbians producing similar wine, it’s under another name since they can’t sell anything as champagne in the EU market.
https://www.ekapija.com/en/news/341037/people-in-sumadija-make-champagne-podrum-aleksandrovic-wine-cellar-represented-first-serbian
The first series of 13,000 bottles of sparkling wine “Trijumf” was presented yesterday (August 25, 2010) in Vinca, at the foot of Oplenac, and the production of that drink started with the picking of Chardonnay grapes in 2008.
Sounds good. I enjoy reading about your travels in Russia.
If enemies like you are worrying about Russia’s “stagnation and backwardness”, then we must be doing something very right.
Is that why you’re so desperately keen to argue on points of theology you can’t ever hope to understand? Really? Also, riddle me this: somehow you’re never arguing against Hindu or Buddhist theological talking points. Strange that!
And yet here you are, arguing the atheist argument using an atheist platform and quoting atheist texts. You’re really not the sharpest knife in the toolbox, are you?
P.S. Your second quote directly contradicts your first. Could you fail more even if you tried?
Fatt Horney on Joker.
https://terrorhousemag.com/joker/
May I suggest that it is probably not an evil act masterplanned by crazy smart selfish rulers in Beijing?
The protesters/rioters semi-started it. They surprised and shocked. They have all the time and support from HKers to choose wiser acts. They choose the most ugly.
India is probably not a state of existence to strive for.
Wouldn’t the desirability of this be influenced by one’s caste?
In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king.
A great many bitter lessons were learnt over those years by both the Russian nation and leadership. The foremost of these were it’s over reliance on its so called “Western Partners” especially those in the EU. Russia’s changed its economic priorities after the conflict with the West over Ukraine and the introduction of Western sanctions.
In geostrategic terms, the absolute dependence of Russia on trade and other economic ties to Europe became unacceptable immediately after Russia was able to overcome the consequences of the internal shocks which followed the geopolitically catastrophic collapse of the USSR. A priori, there is nothing wrong with developing relations with traditional partners in the West. But after they acquired a critical scale, these relations began to constrain Russia’s foreign policy freedom. Moreover, by the second half of the 2000s, the underdevelopment of relations between Russia and the countries of Asia had become an obvious constraint on its own development and relevance in the modern world.
Russia’s pivot East began in the late 2000s, when Moscow fully realized the rising economic importance of Asia. However, at that time the Kremlin still entertained the hope of having the best of both worlds: maintaining beneficial partnerships with both the West and the East, and possibly even acting as a trans-continental connector between the Atlantic and Pacific wings of Eurasia. Those hopes were destroyed by the Ukraine crisis of 2014 and other developments that brought Russia’s relations with the West relations to their lowest point since the early 1980s.
I expect those household income growth numbers to improve significantly over the next decade with Russia’s new Look East economic policy.
That requires a physical and military dominance by the upper caste, at least initially. Observing most Western Europeans, they barely rise up to the shudra level. Historically it was the invading males (called ‘migrants’ today) who created a stratified society with themselves at the top, IQ be damned.
The official leader of Euro-males today is a skinny Frenchman “married” to a 25-year older woman, no kids, and mannerisms of a carnival promoter. His back-up is some Belgian guy. They won’t be starting a caste. They will bask for a while only to be forgotten and dismissed as history’s ultimate jokes.
“Think hard about the reasons for believing and not believing, what your religion teaches you and demands so inexorably that you believe. I am convinced that if you follow closely the natural light of your spirit, you will see … that all the religions in the world are only human inventions and that everything your religion teaches you and forces you to believe as supernatural and divine is at heart only error, lie, illusion and trickery.” ~ Jean Meslier
Reverse Athene. Spartacus (the slave) and cowboys (as idealised in movies sans brokeback) on top. Engineers below. Some early sci-fi had this kind of setting of a future society. I think Mad Max got this too.
Thinking about it, even today it’s people like Trump or Clinton and Epstein on top. Engineers below.
Trump is not on top. Every single one of his major campaign promises have been shattered. He has essentially been broken into a defeated caricature of a man whose sole purpose is now to implement the mainstream GOP agenda and to delude his MIGAtard fanbase that he’s really on their side by posting some infrequently racist tweets. Epstein was an intermediary to the true power center whose usefulness had run out and was summarily dispensed of.
https://encrypted-tbn0.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn%3AANd9GcRMPLxIU59EfaYGem7VwU4UPrm6z-lKJ4waCPQTzVB0EX5QR9Kh
We’ll see. Right now Russia basically has two major trading advantages: guns and gas. The former is rapidly becoming less and less useful for China as it passes and surpasses Russia in its MIC capability in area after area. When it comes to fossil fuels, it will be a comparative advantage for quite some time. Even when EVs start to seriously eat into worldwide oil demand, there are so many other uses for oil (petrochemicals etc) that I don’t think it will hurt Russia. But that is clearly not enough given Russia’s huge population.
More fundamentally, a big problem for Russia is that it has very weak productivity. I don’t buy the ‘resource curse’ argument. Canada and Australia are both full of commodoties and natural resources. That has not prevented either of them from getting rich, despite being hugely reliant on them in their export shares (especially Australia, where commodoties form over 80% of their exports). Russian’s failures can’t be excused on that.
I’m starting to think of East Europeans the way some Northeast Asians think of Southeast Asians. Or as some Asian-American comedian put it: fancy Asians vs jungle Asians. We probably need a European equivalent.
Yeah isolated Anglo colonies are totally comparable to East European killing fields
For sure, Arab European, Sub-Saharan African European, Paki European, etc.
XD
Interesting thread, polling done on the basis that the political duopoly was done away with. What would the US look like with a European-style parliamentary system?
https://twitter.com/PatrickRuffini/status/1196495706531471364
Germany was a killing field in WWII too. Did that slow them down? I am wary of bloodshed hypotheses, just as I am wary of geographical determinism.
Furthermore, the Soviet Union did actually industrialise quite rapidly from the early 1920s up until the early 1970s. We often forget that. How do societies cope when their social and political models do no longer work? One way is gradual transformation through intelligent reform which requires a high level of societal discipline, cohesion and capable elites. Another is total collapse and ruin. The US could as well have broken into many pieces after the Civil War. The South’s agrarian slavery economy was shattered and lesser men could have turned to endless vendetta politics the way we have seen in the Balkans given the bad blood that abounded. Yet the US managed to pull through the climb of the century to the apogee of prosperity. Could it be because it was largely composed of people from Northern and Western European stock?
It is easy to make excuses based on one-off historical events, but when you look at century after century that some countries seem perennially unable to catch up time and again, at some point you have to start becoming a bit less generous in your analysis.
Split parties would probably cause the influence of blacks to be partially sidelined. I don’t know if that would be good strategy or not – it might be better to have their continuing influence alienate non-blacks. But I cannot really imagine any other effect – maybe the people buying pols would get a bargain rate.
The idea that increasing the number of parties in America would make for more competition and more functional politics, I think is somewhat undercut by the actual reality of European politics, in which for instance, there are often no primaries – and it is insiders and career hacks making the decisions. And strange bedfellows ally and compromise to stay in power.
Of course, Western Europe is in a demographic crisis, so we can’t really blame that on bipartisanship.
The driving force behind Australia’s economic success was and is its own Look East economic policy instituted by Prime Minister Paul Keating in the late 80s and early 90s. Australia was a Banana Republic aka economic basket case prior to that. She then turned her back on Britain and Europe in an economic sense, or was it the other way around. I see no reason why Russia can’t do the same. Concerning natural resources Russia is like Australia only more so and her substantially larger population, far from being a liability provides her with greater human capital.
Three actually, Russia has become a major grain exporter. Russian agriculture should not be overlooked.
One reason that a national identity or a national spirit is needed is that so the smart fraction would stay (or come back) and build up the country. It is a problem for CCP’s China. It was not a problem for the old China. China, however, has a big population so the problem is never insurmountable. Besides, things are improving nowadays. I suspect Putin’s Russia still got this kind of a problem although we have a good example in AK returning. You never got a perfect country, so there’re always a huge array of reasons to just leave. The top dogs of today, the US, are even trying to do away with national identities altogether.
Those are all fair and intelligent points. In theory, the US presidential system should make it easier for an outsider to make a big impact. In essence, that was what the 2016 election was all about.
In practice, a US president has relatively little power when the judiciary is against him as well as most of the Congress, on top of the media. Trump’s first six months were the only time he was even remotely radical and he got stymied at every turn. The guy either gave up or gave in and since then he has been completely neutered as a political force.
European coalition politics makes it easier for a more radical politics to emerge in theory. The best example would be the Netherlands, which has only a 2% vote threshold for new political parties. That’s how FvD got rolling. Over time, however, due to the pressures to “fit in” and from the endless attacks of the media, these radical parties tend to soften and become defanged. SD is a great example of that, but there are many others (DF in Denmark is another. True Finns’ in Finland was almost a record in how fast they cucked).
As for no primaries in EU politics, well from my viewpoint most of them are stacked by donors in the US. You’re already choosing from a largely pre-selected plate in the primaries. Trump had a shot because he was so wealthy, so he could bypass the donors (which is the informal vetting system) but it also made him vulnerable. If you have a lot to lose, you are also more easily going to succumb to pressure once in power.
In the end, I do not think one system is better than the other. On a purely ideological level, I do prefer the US system, but in practice it looks like a wash. Neither system protects the interests of the native population well and both are basically charades when the real power brokers can’t be voted out.
Is it? From my reading of the situation, the CCP has swung decisively in favor of glorifying the past. Whereas under Mao, the past was often castigated and attacked as superstition. Classical Chinese culture was demeaned and ridiculed. Xi Jinping strikes me as a cultural conservative if anything, and I don’t think he is a radical break from his immediate predecessors, more like accelerating an ongoing trend. Mao had class warfare as one of his central tenets. These days, the CCP emphasises “the century of humiliation” much more. Which is basically a long way of saying: nationalism.
Their ‘marxism’ is really a mixed economy which wouldn’t look out of place in 1950s European social democracy. Their political system would look out of place, but we have to be careful not to fall into the trap of conflating a mixed-economy capitalist system with liberalism. Their ‘marxism’, as I see it, is more about conferring themselves with moral legitimacy for political control rather than any ideological committment to actual economic marxism/class struggle the way Mao understood it.
It’d be impossible for the CCP to have masterplanned that – wasn’t even the same administration. They’re playing the hand that they’re dealt. To the extent that they incurred it upon themselves, it was due to not being more interventionist in dealing income inequality and housing crisis in earlier years, but it also did not seem like there was much that they could have done without being accused of violating the two-state principle.
CCP is pretty much just another Chinese dynasty, even including the paternalistic aspects – I guess you can call it “socialism” instead of “great kindness of mercy.”
There’s a simple Chinese ditty that makes fun of that: it recites all of the classic dynasties and ends with the “Mao Zedong dynasty.” I’ll have to find and link it here.
Mao seems to have had a pretty weak seed.
Maybe, a lot of these dictators’ offspring are really a refutation of the idea of monarchy. Of course, one wonders if Mao was even capable of maintaining his own power, without constant revolution.
With ten children from four wives, I guess he’s doing okay as world leaders go. His most promising son died in the Korean War IIRC.
Isn’t a king of a dung heap still kinda smelly?
A good comparison actually, I think I’ll write a wall of text about it later
To clarify – I mean in the sense of the quality of his acknowledged descendants, ie. “New World” Mao, and their ability to hold real power. Not in the sense of his virility or the number of his children, which may not be accurately tallied, as far as I am concerned.
Of course, one may argue that Communism is not a real dynastic mechanism, NK aside, and Mao may have not have even desired familiar power, as a genetic legacy.
Yet monarchy, even though it has the mechanism for dynasty, also suffers from genes being shuffled and that shuffling facing the natural will to power of other people.
https://twitter.com/moldbugman/status/1101830863547854848
I suspect Putin’s Russia still got this kind of a problem although we have a good example in AK returning.
LOL. British and Russian passports, American green card, big stash of bitcoins. One year in London, another in California, another in Moscow. Our host Mr.Karlin is the ultimate global citizen. The world is his oyster.
Want to be a winner? Be globalist like Anatoly Karlin.
Want to be a loser? Be patriot like the cheap cannon meat dying in Syria and Ukraine.
I was just answering someone’s question, and you jumped into this discussion like rabid dog.
I am not arguing against Christianity. I have no need to argue against Christianity – why should I? It is as dead as dodo bird, gone to the dogs long ago.
Protestant “Christians” worship money, guns, Israel and orange con man, Catholic “Christians” worship Pope and Pachamama the Earth Goddess, Orthodox “Christians” worship Putin, Stalin and nuclear weapons.
No one gives a shit about this chap called Jesus and his gay crap like love, forgiveness, mercy and compassion anymore, if anyone ever had.
Its not his fault that he felt like mining bitcoin. Its the fault of video games that made him do it.
Its not his fault that he felt like mining bitcoin. Its the fault of video games that made him do it.
Maybe I was little harsh, because I am failed bitcoin oligarch driven by envy 🙁
I heard about bitcoin early – early when it was still possible to mine from ordinary desktop PC.
I was curious, actually downloaded the mining software, let it run for about a week on my crap computer and earned grand sum of 0,01 bitcoin.
Then I got bored and turned it off. Then I forgot about the whole thing. Then I reformatted the computer several times. Then I threw it away.
Then I learned than Bitcoin is still there, and it is going to be big.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OlNXKOChi8w
I’ve heard that Mao Xinyu used to like to watch Chinese soap operas.
My favorite Roki song, by far, is Moja Zemlja, because he perfectly captures the essence of a love for the land itself. It reminds me of how much I love my own home country.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sz3o9e9FVtw
Remind me, how often were Canada and Australia the subject of genocidal invasions, civil wars, and governmental collapse?
Besides, you’re comparing apples and oranges, Canada and Australia have always been de facto vassal states of the major Anglo power of the day, Britain in the past and the USA now, whereas Russia has been an independent power since the 15th century. Canada and Australia are separated by water from all potential threats whereas Russia has had multiple major powers around it for its entire existence.
Uh, yes?
Perhaps this analogy, can make sense, if Cambodia or Indonesia had attained the world’s most powerful army by 1943-4, had become 1 of the world’s only two superpowers by 1945, had mastered the hydrogen bomb by 1955, had launched the world’s first satellite to space by 1957, the first lunar impact by 1959, the first man to space by 1961, the first woman by 1963, the first planetary probe by 1961, the world’s first space station by 1971, the first landing on Venus by 1982.
Or becoming a world centre in most areas of science by 1950-1960, a leading developer in computers and electronics by the 1960, domination of international chess from 1948, domination of world sport/Olympic medals by 1956 (ranking 1st in medals in 6 of 8 Summer Olympic Games, and 8 out of 9 Winter Olympic Games), attainment of universal literacy in 1960-1970 – all the time having the best classical music performers, the best in ballet, one of the best in poetry, cinema and literature, and even good rock music by 1980-1990.
Yes, if there is such a Cambodia or Indonesia, then this analogy can make sense.
Well, Germany and Japan, are both extremely talented at designing and making high quality products, and engineering in general.
Germany lost a lot of things in the 20th century. For example, the time when Germany was “the land of poets and thinkers”, has certainly been lost forever.
However, they somehow did not lose their economically useful ability for making good things, and this has resulted in a successful export economy.
–
I was just investigating a couple of days ago, at buying a portable telescope. And predictably – at least according to everyone in Russian astronomy internet forums -, the best (and most expensive) manufacturers of telescopes in the world are apparently either German and Japanese ones.
Btw in general what kinds of things can we buy to support Serbia’s economy?
I’m not such a expert about wine. If there’s some kind of spirits which is not too disgusting – I’ll order a bottle.
Oh, come on! Normal Russians understood that that was affirmative-action, and Tereshkova was never well-liked. The US will soon be “black to the moon.” Will that be some triumph, to hold over civilized countries? JFK actually wanted to push a black astronaut, but he was told the only candidate didn’t measure up.
I think you are underselling the Venera program a little:
1966: Venera 3, first to impact another planet.
1967: Venera 4, first to measure another planet’s atmosphere, though it beat Mariner 5 by only a day
1970: Venera 7, first landing on Venus (semi-crash)
1975: Venera 9, first picture taken at the surface
So much for superior genetics.
Lol, well let’s say it like this – if Indonesia could “affirmative action” the first woman to space by 1963 (and all this represents), then his analogy could make sense.
And if Indonesia or Cambodia, could push whatever is their national minority to space as he had wanted, then they would require to build the equivalent space program (and all this represents) as the USA. In which situation, South-East Asia would have been quite an important centre of human achievement indeed.
Uh, you don’t have to make yourself vulnerable.
Hitler evidently did not desire this. Stalin, ditto. Top tyrants of 20th century were products of their time too.
Protests in Iran, any news?
Complete bullshit.
Keating’s “banana republic” comment was just one of the over the top expressions he was inclined towards. (The “recession we had to have” was another one, and which mightily upset other members of the Labor caucus). The basic point of it was simply a warning against a too heavy reliance on resources exports; he certainly didn’t claim Australia was a banana republic, much less a “basket case” (a term which dates back to WWI, and referred to a soldier who’d had his limbs blown away and had to be carried in a basket).
Having more parties is not the issue. (America already has more than two parties.) It’s the electoral system. First-past-the-post electoral systems tend to naturally incline towards the creation of two-party systems. Running in primaries as an ‘outsider’ still means you’re up against entrenched party interests.
Europe’s proportional representation electoral systems not only make smaller parties electorally viable, they result in smaller parties enjoying disproportionate political influence. Since there’s often no majority party, it’s difficult to push through with policy measures, but pro-whites aren’t at the stage of worrying about that yet.
My favorite system is Australia’s instant-runoff, which still inclines towards two-party dominance but ensures that a vote cast for minor parties is not “wasted.” All the votes are tallied and if no candidate has a majority, the candidate with the smallest number of votes is eliminated and has those votes redistributed to the other candidates according to ranked preferences voters have marked on the ballot. If after the first redistribution there is still no majority candidate, the process is repeated as often as necessary until one candidate has a majority. So you can vote for a minor pro-white party, but since (for now) it’s unlikely to win, your preferences for the next-best party will still be counted. Just as in proportional representation, smaller parties can exert political influence since the major parties have to take into account their views if they want to win the minor parties’ ballot preferences. (Probably the main reason Australian conservatives occasionally make ‘tough’ sounding statements about immigration which, just like everywhere else, they promptly forget.)
Wow, shocking decline. It’s almost like the country had international sanctions slapped on it or something.
The speaker of the Estonian Parliament Henn Põlluaas said that Russia obliged to give
to the Estonian part of the Pskov region. These lands are Russian since the time of Rurik, the Russian population on these lands is more than 95%, but these lands should be immediately transferred to Estonia, as Estonia (having no rights) land-grabbed these lands in 1920. Who may be wondering why Russia does not like the Baltic States? These States are particularly loathsome aggressors.
No, I won’t. Try again.
From 1870 to 1930, Sweden narrowed the per capita between itself and Britain from about 40% to about 70%, and eastern Europe’s on pace to do much the same with respect to the west.
It may well be that eastern Europeans are inherently less economically competent, but as things stand you have no rational reason to claim that from here on out their growth prospects are going to completely dry up.
All things are relative. If modern day Russia and it’s economic performance can be described as Gabon with snow or a petrol station masquerading as country. I see no reason why a Western country such as Australia’s economic performance in the 1970s and 1980s can’t be described as Banana Republic like.
Which is ironic considering that is the very thing that has driven Australia’s economic prosperity over the last 30 years along with agriculture, tourism, education and property, Australia’s own Look East economic program.
One very insightful exercise is to compare Sweden and Canada to Australia over the last 30 to 40 years and their relative economic and living standards.
Wasn’t Mao riddled with sexually-transmitted diseases?
Serbian fruit brandy is far above any grain alcohol celebrated worldwide.
Quince, plum, pear, apricot, walnut etc.
There are several different type of Serb fruit brandy (plum, apricot, peach etc.) that are quite well known, called “Rakija”. Make sure it’s from Serbia though, since certain others plagiarize and produce Rakija as well, even having the audacity to call it “Rakia”.
In general, there are certain sweets (Serb sweets made from West Euro produce licenses – Jaffa cakes, Nutella equivalent – Eurocream, etc.) mineral water drinks (Књаѕ Милош mineral water) and a few other consumer products you can buy.
Still, you should truthfully be wary of buying Serbian consumer goods since Croatian companies and investors/private individuals control at least 51% of Serbia’s consumer economy (for all their talk of Serb “dominance and parasitism”, it is Croats that are the real parasites). Their influence is somewhat similar to the one the Japanese had in China’s economy in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.
Serbia’s economy has been a disaster since 1991 because of several years of sanctions, Serb refugees from 3 wars, 1999 bombing, and 10+ years of DOS misrule. It has only just now, around 2018/2019, recovered to its 1991 level (in terms of GDP, at least) and begun to grow. With that context in mind, there’s not really much you can actually do to help it …
This is why I would instead recommend donating to Serb charities (non-scam ones, of course), especially for poor Serbians on Kosovo (where they are at present most endangered).
I personally recommend the charity below (they’re responsible; show expenditure records, communicate with donors, etc.) since I’ve personally donated hundreds of dollars to it so far (they’re based because they aim to help poor Serb families with many kids and ideally hope to finance families with many children in the future, Serbs, of course).
https://www.srbizasrbe.org/donacije/ (Flags in top right for language options)
I would personally recommend the Kosovo and Metohija (Пројекат За Косово и Метохију) donation option (again, Serbs most immediately endangered there).
Of course, if anyone else is interested, they are also more than welcome to donate (surely a better expenditure than donating to Bangladeshi eyesight or whatever other 3rd World things?). Any and all gibs (minimum 10 euros) are always welcome 🙂
That depressing realisation the only thing you can recommend to a foreigner is – local brandy style.
The subhumans here tried to scam the Russians with Polish apples, Danish pork, Argentine and Brazilian beef, all repackaged and sold as “Serbian produced”, in addition to sub-standard meat produce etc. They were immediately found out due, blacklisted.
Really, all Yugocommunists and their descendants should be proscribed, hunted down, their property confiscated. The second phase should be the public extermination of 2000-2012 nomenklatura and their relatives. But it is a dream we will never fulfill, just like the dream of Russians not declining the 1806-1812 Serb desire for Serbia to become a province of Russian Empire.
Once, one could be proud of the US – they didn’t send a woman into space until 20 years later – probably because the Soviets had beaten them to it. Then Sally Ride – she was a lesbo – but nobody mentioned it at the time. But, not now, when they say stuff like first lesbo in space; first spacewalk done by two women.
Here is something funny: do you know who sent the first black into space? It was actually the USSR, or rather they sent a quadroon Cuban into space, named Arnaldo Tamayo Méndez. I guess that means they scored twice – black and Latino.
But I can understand sending people from other countries into space for diplomatic purposes.
Hard to know whether to trust Dr. Li or not, like when he says that Mao had young men massage his crotch every night, but he was not a homosexual – that seems a little suspicious.
Still, I think there are enough sources to establish that Mao slept around, so he probably did have STDs. Though they say that during the Cultural Revolution, they nearly eliminated the spread of STDs. I guess by targeting prostitutes, etc.
Agree <3
Ireland? Scotland? Southern Confederacy? USA?
The speaker of the Estonian Parliament Henn Põlluaas said that Russia obliged to give
to the Estonian part of the Pskov region.
Why so modest?
According to Mr. Karlin, the Russian revolution was Jewish-Baltic conquest of Russia.
Therefore, all Russia is rightful Jewish and Baltic land, and shall be divided between Baltic states and Israel.
There’s probably more examples of poor successors in monarchy than there are of good ones, though I suppose the majority was competent rather than astounding one way or another. I think the commentator Isabella used to snark that monarchy always fails because the monarchs reproduce with brainless bunnies to make half-brainless lagomorphic offspring(not quite in such an amusing and pithy way, because only I can be so), but as a population of aristocracy rather than individuals, it does seem to select for a certain kind competence and effectiveness.
Xi himself is a member of the Red Generation and he is at least, not a total idiot.
The ancient Aryan invaders who conquered India had the world’s most advanced technology of the time, and, according to HBDIQ science, had to have the highest IQ. You can not conquer whole continents with fists alone.
If it was the case, it happened in the harems of Eastern monarchs – but even there, to survive the harem intriques and rise on the top needed IQ and serious political skills.
The European kings of old reproduced exclusively with other closely related royals and the results were predictable – no bunny cuteness and no brains either.
I don’t know if that’s necessarily a strong case at all: the Mongols caused incredible damage through the world to much more advanced civilizations(consider Baghdad). Particular competences can be of overwhelming importance on the battlefield; not fists, sure, but horsemanship and archery seemed to certainly manage that.
Both of those at the time required essentially a lifetime of training, and having both together is pretty insane. A culture that dedicated most of its men to that would not have much time for anything else.
Hapsburg jaw totally cute.
The harem systems of Chinese emperors did not seem to particularly produce incompetent offspring, though it was also paired with the imperial exam system and an expectation that the future emperor had demonstrated his capability via more minor appointments.
It worked okay, but it did seem that the office of the emperor was unbelievably frustrating, enough that even relatively competent men such as the Wanli Emperor withdrew from governance(and to the detriment of the country) so as not to have to endure more endless arguments with the bureaucracy. There’s seems to be a “burnout” factor that happens, regardless of the “greatness” of the individual.
https://twitter.com/annafifield/status/1196952444640661504
Back when BTC first came out, a friend of mine suggested it to me and mined 10 BTC manually by hand over a few weeks “because this is cyberpunk.” Must be nice to have a random car or two for a moment of whim in kewl new tech.
She was mean to the poor robot who was trying to get verification of duties done via selfie.
I guess there’s a tangent to this that those who are most qualified for a position often are not those who are most desirous of it, nor it is a guarantee that they have the mental fortitude to withstand its challenges for an entire lifetime.
China outpaces US 3-to-1 in blockchain patent applications
Yes, the usual disclaimers of patent quantity != quality apply, but this is still quite notable. The top Chinese applicant was Alibaba, hardly known as technological slackers.
Sweden is one of the least cash-based societies on earth. There has been a mazssive shift in China away from cash towards paying with your phone. Xi Jiping’s late October speech where he threw down the gauntlet of major investments into the technology cannot hurt matters either.
https://twitter.com/cnLedger/status/1188646781694791680
Still small, but growing rapidly. A major issue for these technologies to resolve is the energy use if pushed to massive scale.
There is some kind of accountant you can visit in London, who is importing Rakija… I guess it is pretty expensive.
https://www.britic.co.uk/2017/12/11/rakija-like-the-finest-french-cognac-%C5%A1umadijski-%C4%8Daj-available-in-the-uk/
But normal shop are not selling this.
Maybe we everyone here should visit Serbia for vacations?… My parents were in Bulgaria a few weeks ago and they buy vast amounts of Bulgarian lokum, chocolate, sausages, jam, soap, skin creams, mugs, magnets for the fridge, (and probably a lot of other stuff – they sent me a box of random Bulgarian kitsch tourist stuff) etc – basically they will buy every overcharged tourist product of any country they visit.
I don’t know why they were in Bulgaria last month and are not interested in Serbia though lol. Actually, Serbia would be probably more interesting to visit, and you would have some more interesting stories to boast about to people when you return – because it seems a lot less common (while vacation in Bulgaria is already very mainstream).
From what I can read, Serbian brandy is very high quality (I guess expensive – not that I could know the difference in brandy quality), but sadly it doesn’t seem to be much exported anywhere.
It’s like the opposite situation of Poland. E.g. Chemical tasting bottle of Poland’s brands of kirschwasser is sold all over in random small shops (in Western Europe).
Can you imagine if Serbia would have a referendum to vote to become part of Russia?
If Serbia could re-appropriate its coast with the Mediterranean, then all the rich businessmen would support this, and park their yachts there. But in its present borders, probably at least they might buy a Serbian town to convert into a spa.
A lot of people might immigrate to Serbia from Russia, for its warmer climate and Mediterranean lifestyle.
On the other hand, probably a better example to follow from a perspective of Serbia’s self-interest, is to follow Cyprus. Cyprus attracts so much investment and immigration, because it is not under Russian law.
Australia is the ultimate in universality: compulsory voting.
Although I’m not sure “affirmative action” is the correct words to describe the selection of the first people to be launched to space. Really it’s not like going to Harvard.
Afterall, they were basically a combination of test pilot and laboratory mouse, even if their popular presentation was of brave explorers conquering new lands. It’s more like volunteering to drink some new chemicals or volunteering to walk inside a nuclear reactor.
For example, JFK wanted an African American to go to space. But if you asked JFK if he volunteer to go himself – well we can predict the answer (he was presumably enjoying his luxurious life and would not like the prospect of being killed in a rocket accident or turned into jelly in a vacuum).
Anatoly,
I have always wondered how reversible dysgenic trends are. In the US, fertility among the fairly low IQ Black population has collapsed to below fertility in recent years, though immigration causes their numbers to steadily rise. So even lower IQ people can get their fertility rate down tremendously if things like increased prosperity and more access to birth control take place.
I always wondered if you could alter the tax code to meaningfully change fertility between the racial
groups, and how such a mechanism would meaningfully work.
For instance, you could lower the tax on White people with kids to very low, near zero margins. Or, if you were trying to prevent unfavorable demographic change, you could do things like lowering the tax on Black people without kids to deincentivise having children in the first place. Of course, how would it work fiscally is a different thing altogether, but with high IQ socities reaching fertility replacement birthrates, it will be imperative for Western, multiracial countries to find ways to get more High IQ people in their society.
If you look at Utah, it is very possible for wealthy whites to have a large amount of kids, and while we cant create more land, i feel a mass reduction in taxes would create some heavy incentives.
My guess is that Indians, when you adjust for nutrition, have a much higher IQ than is believed. After all, we talk endlessly that Jews really do try to rig the game in their favor, but on the other hand they are the scientifically most successful group in the United States and the World. They are ethnocentric, but they at least live up to the expectations that in some manner.
In the early missions, I think it was pretty much all automatic. They were kind of like the decapitated human heads sent up earlier on weather balloons, to test for the effects of radiation, except with more potential for publicity.
Later, like Gemini or the moon landings, I think it took a certain amount of skill, for piloting or otherwise. Like on one lunar mission, they had to turn some sort of knob prior to takeoff and rendezvous, and the knob broke off – and I think a lot of people would have screamed and lost their minds. Most women – probably. It took the cool head of a pilot to handle.
With the space shuttle, the number of seats went up to 7 or so, so a lot more slots opened up, and I think it opened it up more to diversity. I guess it took a certain amount of intelligence to follow the instructions of the endless experiments that they needed to do, but the AA hires were also smart enough to know why they were hired – and they fit into their roles nicely, talking up diversity, etc. I don’t blame them entirely – I guess that is what you got to do, if you are a black person who wants to go into space.
And genetically, healthy reaction is probably screaming (or even more healthy, not to volunteer).
But a proportion of a population are naturally cold in those situations. Perhaps already today, it would be possible to select the coldest people from just brain scans of them.*
Probably (guessing from gender popularity of extreme sports), there will be much more men in this selection pool than women. Although clearly there is a proportion of women who are also just as calm and cold when facing death.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mciwwbeog_o
But some women surely have that cold personality.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zft6qzWL1PA
I don’t know much about this topic. But searching about biographies. Today, now that going to space is established as more safe – it looks they are usually a mix of military pilots who have completed academic qualifications in science, or people who completed PhDs in scientific fields.
It looks like America’s space program is risking people from the academically top 1% of African-Americans. In a more responsible and rational policy, they should not be allowed to dangerously go to space.
It’s probably more sensible such people were only encouraged to do the physically safest activities, and encouraged to donate sperm/eggs to help infertile African American families.
https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/african_american_astronauts_fs.pdf
I detect some pessimism about the rates of economic growth in Europe
(e.g., Thulean Friend). Here are some recent numbers (2018):
Poland 5.1%
Hungary 4.9%
Czechia 3.0%
Russia 2.3%
Germany 1.4%
France. 1.7%
U.K. 1.4%
Sweden 2.4%
The countries of Central Europe (Visegrad 4) are roaring ahead,
as they have for decades. Western Europe, in contrast, is close
to stagnation.
I recommend the book “Poland – Europe’s Growth Champion” by Marcin Piatkowski
which looks at Poland’s economic history.
Definitely. I’m pretty sure most of the world has visa-free access to Serbia anyway.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/a/a8/Visa_policy_of_Serbia.png
I would recommend visiting Belgrade, Novi Sad and Nis, as a minimum. North Serbia/Vojvodina (Serbian Banat excepted) is also much nicer and more developed compared to South Serbia.
Re: Paganism
When I use the word ‘paganism’ I don’t refer to Conan the Barbarian or dancing
naked at midnight around a fire (although there is nothing wrong with dancing
naked at midnight!) or building a temple to Apollo. Paganism to me means
worship of immanent divinity. This follows naturally from panentheism
(All in God) which is implicit in the New Testament (“We live, move, and
have our being in God”). Hence God is not someone up there or out there,
outside the world of space and time – that’s the transcendent concept of God,
and it has been overemphasized in Christianity. God is right here in this
table or that body or that animal or that sculpture because God is everywhere
because He completely penetrates our Universe.
One of the 365 lessons in A Course in Miracles says, “God is in everything
I see,” and asks you to practice changing your perception by looking around
yourself, and saying, “God is in this wall or that book or that tree.” For
most people this requires years of daily training but eventually will be met
with success. You will see or sense divine radiance surrounding people
and objects that will send you into ecstasy. But this requires setting
childish things like video games or television aside, and undergoing
a rigorous course of mind training. It takes effort because we are
fallen beings (with ego-infested minds) living in a fallen Universe
(i.e., not the Universe that God created). Atheism will become impossible
once we perceive the Divine Radiance on a daily basis. We indeed
live in a miraculous world whose beauty is beyond anything we could
previously imagine.
With all due respect, both those statements are absurd. The ‘Gabon with snow’ comments were typically made in the late 90s/early 2000s when the dominant picture of Russia was one of utter decay. That was not representative of Russia, just as parity with the rich world clearly isn’t, given that Russia seems perpetually unable to catch up. Stagnation is more in line with their historical experience and we see that today, too. Hence my comparison with ‘fancy Asians vs jungle Asians’ in a European context. Nobody would claim Thailand is on par with Nigeria, just as they would balk at any serious comparison with Japan or South Korea. There’s a middle-layer here that middling countries like Russia or Thailand occupy. Still decent countries by any stretch. Just incapable of becoming economically elite/exceptional.
Australia in the 1970s and 80s was a rich country already and Keating’s comments were obviously intended as inflammatory on purpose in order to remind people that prosperity is not guaranteed, even if it had already been de facto obtained. I’m reminded of Lew Kuan Yew’s comments about Australia risking to be the ‘white trash of Asia’ as comments made in similar veins. Don’t take prosperity for granted.
Difference is that Australia not only achieved it back then, but has kept at it. Russia has never tasted it once.
Poland has a per capita GDP lower than Greece, Portugal or Uruguay. They are still middle-income (though in the upper end) in any reasonable classification. They are ranked as “high income” because the World Bank has absurdly generous definitions. They look better in PPP, but my view of PPP can basically be summed up as Poor People’s Parity. Somewhat mean, perhaps, but it contains a kernel of truth. PPP is relevant if you want to look at the poor or the bottom 40% when consumption happens almost exclusively domestically without many foreign goods or services in the picture.
If you are aspirational middle class, nominal is what counts. More importantly, nominal per capita income measures how competitive economies are at world markets. At world markets, everyone pays the same prices. Which countries can afford to sell theirs at much higher prices? Those with much better productivity. In that sense, Poland and the V4 in general have a long way to go. Even the richest V4 country, Czechia, is far behind in nominal wages (best proxy for international competitiveness).
https://ec.europa.eu/eurostat/statistics-explained/images/a/a0/Estimated_hourly_labour_costs%2C_2018_%28EUR%29.png
Finally, a lot of these countries’ growth has been fuelled by EU funding, which is going to get cut across-the-board in the coming decade even if they avoid “rule of law” suspensions. Can these countries grow without crutches? It remains to be seen.
In fact, looking at both Sweden and Australia in constant nominal USD per capita, it is quite remarkable how closely the two countries have travelled together up the ladder of prosperity.
https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.PCAP.KD?locations=AU-SE
Even when the gaps were at their widest (in the 1980s), Australia was still pretty close and still ended the decade substantially above where they had started it.
This may make Keating’s inflammatory comment and Lew Kuan Yew’s warning seem bizarre in hindsight, but they could also be seen as a necessary pre-condition for growth: humility in the task that lay before you and never overestimating your hand when times are good.
The Russian equivalent here was during the boom years of 1999-2013. How much did Russian elites diversify towards other sources of growth or hedge the economy against the risk of a collapse in oil prices? Did they look at the financial system and its vulnerabilities vis-a-vis external funding, particularly for corporations? All the evidence suggests that they were carried away in the boom years and never did their homework when times were good the way Australia did. The results are thereafter.
And I did not mention Alexi Leonov, who died recently. He did the first spacewalk. When he went outside the capsule, his suit over-expanded in the vacuum of space, and he could not fit back into the hatch, so he had to let air out.
Back in 2014, SpaceShipTwo suffered a catastrophic in-flight breakup during a test flight. Reason was one of the pilots panicked and pulled some lever. Now I think they removed the lever.
This one sounds a little suspicious. Still, I bet he is a smart guy, though maybe not a full-on genius. IMO, beating the bushes for every smart black women, whether or not they blow-up, really is harmful to the long-term interests of blacks.
As to these other women, who can slide off apartment buildings or jump off high bridges, TBH, I find that kind of cool in women scary. It reminds me of the difference between a Tomcat and a regular cat, or a rooster and a hen. It is like what you expect in James Bond, who was supposed to kill without blinking. I bet you Lorena Bobbitt was like that.
If we are honest, I think it is worse than stagnation – it is in a state of decay.
Is this anemic growth even real? Or is it some artifact of the mass immigration of third worlders, who appear to be mostly parasitical in nature?
Better the per capitas were shrinking, but the population of real Europeans expanding. Surely, that would be a healthier sign.
Netanyahu got indicted for bribery, corruption and fraud. Essentially the Israeli deep state has been trying to get rid of him for the better part of the decade. There are clear parallells here to the Trump harassment. I am no friend of either of them, but it is hard not to agree with Netanyahu when he brands it a de facto coup.
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog-november-21-2019/
He was pretty smart not to give in to Gantz in the recently concluded negotiations in the aftermath of the recently concluded 2nd elections. Why? As PM, he has extra protections when faced with these investigations which even senior govt ministers don’t.
He probably suspected that if he had agreed to the terms of Gantz’s proposal (a rotating premiership between the two, but Gantz would start), then he’d get indicted anyway, given that Gantz, as a senior member of the security apparatus, is a clear favourite of these people. Gantz had essentially set a trap up for him and if he “failed” to walk into that trap, Gantz could blame him for being powergreedy. Win-win. I think this indictment was coming regardless. Now Netanyahu has to fight for his political life. It shows.
https://static.timesofisrael.com/www/uploads/2019/11/000_1MF4SF-1024×640.jpg
This is true to some respect. However, I wonder if you transplanted America’s institution on the Russians would things improve. Southern Italians do bad in America, but quite good in the United States
Gah I mean Italy not America
Zastava arms
With Zastava cars for target practice
https://twitter.com/CestMoiz/status/1196242057666453504?s=20
Sat Sri Akal
Is it true that Muhammad’s birthday is a national holiday across India, or is it only parts of India?
In America, I find it pretty annoying that the only national holiday named after an actual American is Martin Luther King Day. He’s a guy that had his FBI file sealed, and is known for plagiarism and worse.
In that video, there is something a bit sinister about zero emotion and bored expression of a girl who is randomly basejumping from bridges by herself (she is going around China jumping off mountains, towers and bridges, for YouTube views). People with no fear of death or consequences, can be a sign of psychopathy, for example.
E.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w4mkGFOy80c
All of them I believe had successfully completed post-graduate degrees in science or medicine fields. Some had successfully completed PhDs in science areas.
And yet sadly two have been killed by their recruitment in America’s space program. So NASA is recruiting people from academically top 1% of African American people, and then risking them in very dangerous situations. (It would be better for African Americans if they were just recruited instead of by NASA, but rather to help donate sperm/eggs to infertile African American families).
https://i.imgur.com/BBUp4B4.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/gA9LvXU.jpg
Nations and civilizations rise and fall, and is something dynamic. So it does not make sense just to choose the current time point, as you might perhaps be comparing one nation’s peak with another nation’s bottom. What time point will you select for a fair comparison? You need to compare high points with high points, and low points with low points.
In the situation of the Russian world?
If we look at e.g. 1960-1970. In those years, the Russian world was dominating very many areas of human achievement, and even the internal situation had a strongly upward trajectory. That’s besides, controlling by far the largest land in the world (with Southern borders on Iran, Afghanistan, Turkey, and Eastern borders to Poland and Romania), also controlling indirectly partially many foreign countries all the way to Berlin – developing the world’s 2nd or 1st military power, and even quite an amount of soft power to influence parts of countries which were outside indirect control (for example, even countries like France and Italy).
In that time point, the appearance was of overachieving people. On the other hand, if you look at the current time point, then the impression is of stagnation and underachieving people (really it is after several decades of decline in relative power).
Similarly, if we choose Sweden in 1850, then everyone will be talking about stagnation, poverty and underachievement. On the other hand, Sweden 1960 – the discussion was concluding the opposite. It was considered utopia by international observers.
To go a little offtopic, there is an interesting video report I found of BBC about Sweden in 1963. It’s considered utopia, without irony in this naive journalist’s discussion.
https://www.facebook.com/BBCArchive/videos/572279669961124/
I was born and raised in the rolling foothills of the Appalachian Mountains in Pennsylvania.
https://pahistoricpreservation.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Landscape.jpg
It’s funny you mention the Southern Confederacy, though. My ancestors, from PA and Maryland, fought on both sides of the American Civil War. I am not far from the “South.”
Lol, to be honest – I also will like to visit the wistful architecture of New Belgrade – like walking among ancient, abandoned shipwrecks.
https://i.imgur.com/RnUDi3T.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/68/4e/74/684e74108b2cc33d46ddbc7ff0f0fc08.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/9K9oDgn.jpg
https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/5767/9a07/e58e/ce31/e300/01cf/slideshow/PiotrBednarski_11.jpg?1466407416
https://images.adsttc.com/media/images/5767/9a5a/e58e/ce63/6800/00c3/slideshow/PiotrBednarski_14.jpg?1466407480
Just walk on such streets with a certain kind of music: .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X-pJmArulSk
It’s a good point, but it doesn’t tell the whole picture. Even middle class people will still benefit from much cheaper local food and services. So while buying foreign cars and iphones are equal, and dependent on nominal, much of life is still reflected by PPP.
An interesting comparison. However Eastern Europe has not yet fully recovered from Communism so the current situation vis a vis the rest of Europe does not necessarily represent something natural and permanent. Before Communism, Hungary and the Czechs were certainly within Western European norms. Even Ukrainian Galicia, tied with Croatia as poorest part of Austria, was richer than Portugal.
Interesting discussion of the future of US role in the world post-Cold-War. From 1990. Watching this, we realize how so much went wrong.
Also, McLaughlin speaks of TWIN GEEKS at 11:10.
https://youtu.be/C8_W16d3d1M?t=657
Southern Italians are a low percentage of the US population, and many of them are quite mixed now (Americans are notoriously fond of identifying as ‘Irish’ or ‘Italian’ despite often having very mixed-up ancestry). In earlier times, when they were more cohesive, it is quite notable that they were massively overrepresented in organised crime, just as southern Italians are in Italy or as lower intelligence minorities are in Russia. Had this group been isolated and not mixed, I am not sure if they’d have done as well.
More importantly, US institutions are a direct result of the people in the country and US whites are overwhelmingly made up of people from Northern and Western European descent, hence their instiutions reflect that, even if they are decaying compared to what they were in earlier decades.
Liberia famously copied the US constitution right off the bat but that didn’t make the country prosperous. You can’t divorce laws and the political apparatus from the people and expect similar results. In the same vein, I am deeply skeptical if Russia would become more prosperous because you transplanted Anglo-American institutional traditions into alien territory. Countries get the leadership they deserve, as Joseph de Maistre famously quipped.
That view was prevalent up to quite recently. Polly Toynbee, granddaughter of the famous British intellectual Arnold Toynbee, famously declared Sweden as the ‘most successful society the world has ever known‘ in 2005. Such declarations would make even me blush, even if I had made them when she did.
There was also a book published a few years later by another British journalist whose name escapes me now who explored the fascination with Sweden in the UK as a paradise/utopia. Even then, it was clear the picture was slowly changing, which he sought to highlight as the paradox between a decaying utopia and a discussion which did not accurately reflect that fact. Of course neither he nor Polly dared mention the 800 pound gorilla in the room – multiculturalism – so in his case, he talked labouriously and effusively about ‘inequality’ and she simply stopped glorifying Sweden as time went on and quietly dropped the subject.
Had the flood of southern Italians into America continued to the extent that they were not ultimately assimilated then they would have made the USA, or at least large parts of it settled by them, into another Argentina. Not a terrible place, but far more corrupt and poor than the USA is.
https://i.imgur.com/W5QMumc.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/Ypq2Z7U.jpg
LOL
!!! This area can compete for the title of the worst example of architecture in the world.
Firstly, Australia’s economic performance and political stability in those two decades were in no way wholly reliant on the prices of its mineral exports — in contradistinction to what occurs in actual banana republics.
Secondly, ‘banana republic’ implies much more than a heavy reliance on resources or primary industries. It implies chronic political instability, extreme economic inequality, rule by a tiny plutocracy intimately linked to the ‘banana’ industry, uneducated and servile masses, and things like that — none of which featured in the Australia of the period.
I hate commie blocks as much as any man who ever lived, but they always look worse in pictures than when you see them from the street. It’s the same as those pictures of suburbia people sometimes post when they’re try to you horrify you about “masses of humanity” supposedly wasting their lives away in idle conformity with the dictates of consumerism (or something). Of course, when you actually live in a suburb, it doesn’t feel horrifying at all.
And actually, since you posted these pics and somebody brought up the comparison of Sweden and Australia, it seems to me that Sweden crams a lot of its population into apartment buildings arranged in close proximity and the visual effect isn’t much different form these commie block pics. Living in apartments is fairly recent in Australia, and only a very small percentage of people actually do (predominantly asian immigrants is my guess). The Australian way is the detached house, the property perimeter marked with front, side and back fences (attractive ones too, not that chain link crap you see in latino neighborhoods), and a large backyard. Nothing beats that, if you ask me.
The difference between Sweden and Yugoslavia apartment buildings is quality and maintenance.
Ah, I see. So Australia is nothing like Honduras or Guatemala, now or then. Much in the same way that Russia is nothing like Gabon or Thailand now or then. Well except in a very narrow economic sense lacking in any nuance, framed in such way as to make a particular point. E.g. Paul Keating, Blinky Bill, Lee Kuan Yew and Thulean Friend.
But yet you go onto argue……
Your views on Russia and Eastern Europe remind me a great deal of the animation I linked early to. Hyper realistic in one sense wholly untruthful in another.
https://twitter.com/neweconforum/status/1197527347534221313
Correct, but it is so bad and ugly that it is interesting. It is like going to Detroit and observing the ruins of what had once been the “Paris of the Midwest.” Except Detroit is much sadder because in that case actually beautiful things were destroyed whereas in Yugoslavia it was just a case of ugly garbage getting ruined.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/d/d5/Detroit-urbanblight-IMG036.JPG/512px-Detroit-urbanblight-IMG036.JPG
https://i.ytimg.com/vi/tl7v5dYYF0Q/maxresdefault.jpg
https://i.pinimg.com/originals/f1/a5/87/f1a587d8f3392a1a9959fe648bca5802.jpg
http://www.marchandmeffre.com/content/detroit/12.jpg
I was standing in front of the temple Христа Спасител in Moscow and marveling that so much white marble could be assembled in one spot. One thing I am learning about Russian churches is how much marble is used on the very best churches. a white pill of equine proportions to know there is still fine stone work being done. Anyway my thought is that the commies must have in some way felt illegitimate and weak to blow the original church up. Like if you really felt sure of your position, you’d disassemble the church and use the stone to build the metro stations. Like the Reiches chancellery. Instead of blowing it up and damaging a lot of that fine marble.
Blowing it up is more dramatic, and more of an attack. I guess that’s why they didn’t go for disassembly. Anyway it’s an incredible building. Possibly the single most impressive space I’ve ever stood in. Everyone poasting here should visit Moscow if he can.
I wasn’t sure if it was a joke or not, the first time I saw it. Almost makes the Ford Edsel look beautiful.
Still, in the abstract, it is an interesting concept. I guess, flat-body pieces would make it cheaper to assemble. (especially keeping in mind the battery) And maybe easier to fix or service? And modern cars aren’t particularly good-looking, to my mind, anyways.
Though I wonder if their normal customers are really the people who like pick-up trucks – in the US there are political connotations to owning a truck. Changing the back that radically (making the sides of the bed higher near the cab, and less accessable) might scare off regular truck people. But it might be more attractive as a work-site tap for electric power tools, than a normal truck.
I don’t understand the bit about the glass at all. Don’t you want to be able to easily smash the windows, if you get caught in a flash flood or something? 9mm-proof body/angled design – it is vaguely suggestive of a dystopian future of urban warfare.
I knew a guy whose class was watching the Challenger launch live (on TV) in elementary school. The teacher cried. I think the US shuttle was a bad design. It is kind of sad that the Buran was not tested more, but I suppose the Dreamchaser is up and coming for crew – supposed to be able to land at any commercial airport, which is a big difference.
I wonder what the average TFR is for astronauts post first-flight. One reason I think they pick older people (40s) is the risks of radiation.
I can understand wanting to be Gagarin or Aldrin, etc – being one of the first. Or going into space to try to settle another planet. But I think these space tourist people are really crazy. I wonder what will happen when one blows up.
In other space news, Boeing Starliner is set to cost more per seat than the $85 million Russia was charging the US.
Well, I don’t doubt for a second that apartment quality in Sweden is generally far superior to anything found in Yugoslavia, but for someone unaccustomed to seeing masses of closely arranged apartment blocks – like me – the feeling produced on seeing them is still similar. I would take 1980s Australian suburban detached homes – ie where I grew up – over ultramodern, ultramaintained apartment blocks any day.
I was that age, although I didn’t see it live. I remember it because shortly after that we had a sleepover at school as some local amateur astronomy buff was going to bring over his telescope so that our class could stay up late and watch Haley’s Comet make its perihelion. There was so much media buzz about it that actually seeing it proved a letdown, but the school was fall of ‘space talk’ anyway, and in light of the recent Challenger disaster, the joke going was that NASA stood for ‘need another seven astronauts’.
Music was really good, thanks.
Happy to see Placido Domingo get such nice reception on Russian state TV given the #metoo treatment he has suffered in America lately (https://quillette.com/2019/10/18/the-defenestration-of-domingo/):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GSEMo3uw7-U
Marijuana legalization but only for edibles??
This is new position of this forum.
In 1970’s and 1980’s the quality of housing/apartments in terms of access to running water (old/hot), in house toilets and bathrooms was higher than in any other country of the Eastern Block with the exception of DDR and Bohemia part of Czechoslovakia.
I can understand wanting to be Gagarin or Aldrin, etc – being one of the first. Or going into space to try to settle another planet. But I think these space tourist people are really crazy. I wonder what will happen when one blows up.
If they are flying on the new Boeing/SpaceX/Blue capsule the launch about system will save them
In other space news, Boeing Starliner is set to cost more per seat than the $85 million Russia was charging the US
That was always going to happen, its how Boeing works, will be interesting to see what the SpaceX price ends up being
That’s beautiful country. I haven’t been there since W was President. I should visit.
How is the size of the apartments which were constructed in Yugoslavia?
Something I saw about Spain, is that although they build (I guess all across in the years 1950-1990?) vast quantities of externally unattractive apartment buildings. Internally, size of apartments in those buildings can be comparatively large.
Residential construction should at least include a few (if not more) aims:
Adequate provision of public infrastructure/amenities to residences.
Create a meaningful or civilized (and perhaps beautiful) public space, for not only residents, but also visitors to the area.
In American suburban 20th century construction, there is excellent maximization of 1, but almost completely lack of attention to 3. And parts of 2 were bypassed by the invention of the automobile. (But the horror of these drone videos of McMansions, is the absence of any attention to 3).
In medieval cities in countries like Spain and Italy, there was excellent maximization of 3 (while obviously an absence of 1 and 2).
Today, modern apartment construction in countries like Spain and Italy, is achieving 1 and 2, but also there is not much 3 (you can visit the suburbs of cities Madrid – and they provide a high quality of living for residents, but they are also without soul or beauty compared to historic construction).
It’s funny that Engels lived in this kind of housing, rather than anything like the city called Engels.
Here is Engels’ house in London.
https://www.google.ru/maps/@51.5405309,-0.1575553,3a,15y,100.01h,91.74t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sZySdhk0EMswh5r7obx0Xag!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
You can walk around Engels’ area, and see how inventively English suburb houses were constructed in that epoch.
For example, this is the road behind where Engels’ house (there is also a balance of regularity and variety).
https://www.google.ru/maps/@51.5403891,-0.156008,3a,75y,100.06h,98.43t/data=!3m6!1e1!3m4!1sYk8XS0pXN-okG0LQILddig!2e0!7i16384!8i8192
In 1985:
80 sqm – Hungary
73 sqm – Yugoslavia
72 sqm – Czechoslovakia
70 sqm – Poland
65 sqm – Bulgaria
58 sqm – Romania
In the middle of 1960-1975 period 66% in Czechoslovakia and 75% in Poland did not have indoor toilets.
In Budapest number of dwellings with indoor plumbing increase from 33% to 50% between 1950 and 1975.
https://books.google.com/books?id=MLXeoc-FfOYC&pg=PA218&lpg=PA218&dq=indoor+plumbing+in+europe+by+country+poland+yugoslavia&source=bl&ots=n9fyPD1jud&sig=ACfU3U0nqctGiFda1otISd2UR2vyoloL6Q&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwicrOuDo__lAhUNnOAKHcH3DoMQ6AEwCnoECA4QAQ#v=onepage&q=indoor%20plumbing%20in%20europe%20by%20country%20poland%20yugoslavia&f=false
Although, Argentina was receiving more North-Western Italian immigrants (over Argentina’s Spanish population – I’m not sure which part of Spain Argentinians are mainly from).
While USA, was mainly receiving South/Sicilian-Italian immigration.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVwFvTp8eSY
I thought that most Italians coming to Argentina were peasants from the South. Pope Francis’ family are from the Northwestern part of Italy but the Spanish dialect spoken in Buenos Aires is some sort of Spanish-Neapolitan surzhik:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rioplatense_Spanish
Okay, wiki says the earliest Italians immigrants were from the North but the later ones were from the dirt poor South. Apparently many of the northern Italians left Argentina while the southern ones became permanent settlers:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italian_Argentines#Areas_of_origin
Have you been to Argentina? One of my aunts moved to Buenos Aires with her family from central Ukraine around 1992, relatives have visited but I haven’t had the chance to do so. My cousin married a local of Italian descent. I’ve heard it’s like southern Italy, including even lots of pickpockets and purse-snatchers on mopeds. But good food and wine.
The price and the specs are great, but the looks, what the hell is Musk smoking
Apparently the bean counters won out.
It’s the old argument of efficiency vs aesthetics.
This legacy is seen even today.
https://i.imgur.com/eqhCazw.png
And most of these countries have seen massive emigration over the last 15 years! Czechia and Slovenia seem to be the only ones with a half-competent housing policy. Still, considering that the housing was often of sub-par quality (2/3rd of Czechs didn’t even have indoor plumbing in the new housing built from 1950-75), and it really beggars belief how these self-described ‘socialist’ countries’ elites could even live with themselves.
Sweden’s numbers are much worse than they should be. We had a massive building programme in Sweden called Miljonprogrammet. It built one million dwellings over the course of 1965-1975. It largely solved the problem when it was done. The important part here is to correctly define the problem, because it has been endlessly scapegoated, demonised and blamed for virtually all social ills in Sweden. Buildings are easy to blame because they can’t argue back.
It got this bad reputation for political reasons. The tail end of the programme was also the same year that our constitution was changed to facilitate mass immigration. The newcomers all congregated in these areas, which had two effects: A) it made them more dysfunctional, but instead of blaming the people, Swedish authorities preferred to blame housing policy out of cowardice and B) it gradually made the the housing situation in Sweden less affordable over the decades as rapid population growth was unrelenting and rising. Miljonprogrammet was not designed for such an outcome.
The programme, when judged on its initial parameters (it assumed a gently rising population of native Swedes), would have been a big success in solving an acute crisis. It never got that chance as events superceded it.
They don’t even look so bad:
https://i.imgur.com/6LL2BDZ.jpg
This picture was taken quite a long time ago now. There’s been a massive investment drive over the last decade to upgrade already decent neighbourhoods to getting even better in infrastructure, housing stock quality, communication improvements etc.
Husby and Tensta are some of the more notorious so-called “no-go zones” in Stockholm. I’ve been to both of them multiple times, passing through. Believe me, they are leafy and pleasant. Most of the pictures you see on the internet are taken during the winter, and often in narrow side-alleys to make it look much more grim than they are, to undergird the narrative of “oppressed/betrayed migrants”.
I was in Prague a few years ago, and took a few days to visit the commieblock outskirts where the actual people live. What would be a lower middle-class neighbourhood in Prague would be significantly worse than what you get in a place like Husby in terms of upkeep, infrastructure etc. It makes me angry that perfectly decent neighbourhoods are spoiled on ungrateful and useless people when they should be used by poorer swedes or newly moved-in students/youngsters, the two most logical groups that should inhabitate these areas. Instead a lot of the people I know have to skip apartments every 3-6 months, living like gypsies, moving in as live-in residents. I’m foruntate enough to have stable dwelling in a good neighbourhood, but this shouldn’t be a luxury, even though it increasingly seems so. 30-40 years ago, you could move to almost any place in Stockholm and find cheap, affordable housing with minimal waiting times, and with very few social problems around you.
“2/3rd of Czechs didn’t even have indoor plumbing in the new housing built from 1950-75” – I do not read it that way. I am pretty sure that newly built housing had indoor plumbing. Keep in mind that in Poland and less so Czechoslovakia a significant part of population was rural where people had wells and outhouses. I guess that in Poland more than 50% was rural in 1950s.
Yup
https://twitter.com/MrBrando3/status/1196455470795390976
The Australian Swedish connection.
https://youtu.be/vO9vBHZRBQ4
Looks nice. Reminds me of the Serbian Sumadija:
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/35/%D0%9E%D0%B1%D1%80%D0%BE%D0%BD%D1%86%D0%B8_%D0%93%D0%BB%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%9B%D0%BA%D0%B8%D1%85_%D0%BF%D0%BB%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B8%D0%BD%D0%B0.jpg
https://live.staticflickr.com/5202/5320526516_68a4e1eb68_b.jpg
It’s interesting that you mentioned your ancestors. I’ve come to believe that in today’s “modern” world, the hardest thing to actually do, or be, is to simply live in a healthy and natural way as one’s ancestors did. That is, have a family, 3+ kids, and healthy, normal (the meaning of this word has become distorted in the present time period), life in many other ways. Unlike for our ancestors, who nearly always faced greater danger from things such as disease or war, in today’s world, it’s almost the complete opposite. There is much more relative peace and prosperity now, but it is much harder to live normally with a family and children (let alone on a farm or in the countryside) in the present time.
Poland is hosting the 2019 Junior Eurovision contest this weekend (as it
won it last year). The person to pay attention to is Viki Gabor (Wiktoria Gabor).
For a 12-year-old she displays a remarkable control over her voice, and can
sing in both Polish and English without an accent. Growing numbers of
Polish children and teenagers, incl. Viki Gabor, lived at least part of their
lives in the UK, and can now speak Polish and English with no accent, a huge
competitive advantage in today’s world.
I recommend her cover of the song “Roar,” originally a Katy Perry song. At the
Junior Eurovision she will sing the song Superhero, written specifically for
her type of voice. It contains passages in both Polish and English. Some of the
comments on YouTube are interesting. British commenters are saying, “I want
to learn Polish so I can understand what she is singing.” Viki Gabor has the makings
of a great singer but, of course, she is only 12. At this age you never know
what’s going to happen next.
Let’s not forget that (1) during World War II, while millions were dying
on the Continent, Sweden had a grand old time getting obscenely rich on
lucrative contracts with Nazi Germany, (2) Sweden was never forcibly
converted to Communism, (3) For a country that prides itself on being
a moral leader, on a per capita basis Sweden has one of the best developed
war industries in the world. Talk about hypocrisy!
You don’t seem to have the latest figures. In fact, as of 2019, in terms
of GDP (PPP), Poland has moved ahead of both Greece and Portugal,
and is now chasing Italy. By the way, all three economies – Greece,
Portugal, and Italy – are near stagnation. They cannot be compared
to the dynamic economies of Central Europe. And Sweden, with its
tiny population and tiny economy, is no example of anything.
2019 GDP (PPP) per capita
Poland $33,900
Greece $30,252
Portugal $33,665
A dynasty doesn’t need to be genetic. Multiple Roman emperors were adopted sons, you might be surprised how many.
In fact, the biggest f___ups occurred when the power was passed on to a biological son, e.g. from Marcus Aurelius to Commodus.
Argentines drink birra while everyone else drinks cerveza.
While there are differences between BrE and AmE food vocabularies, they don’t reach such basic things. Beer is beer everywhere. (OT: it’s even “bia” in Swahili, at least in Tanzania variety thereof.)
There is always a kind of comedy in considering Meditations.
I guess the ultimate in genetic dynasties would be something like the ancient Egyptians or Inca, but I’ve heard some biologists cast doubt on whether that level of inbreeding across generations is even possible.
Good points.
I’d say it increases their survival odds – less blow-ups. But, historically, most fatalities have occurred on the descent, and, if they orbit, there are dangers in orbit.
When the Columbia disaster happened, I remember Ebay banned auctions on space debris from the disaster. There were still joke auctions that went up, with made-up acronyms. I wish I could remember some of them, but I can only think of one word that was a component: “crispy.” At the time, I thought it was in bad taste, but looking back, from the perspective of hindsight, when they have banned the Confederate flag and even the General Lee car, I think it was pretty funny.
I think, with a truck, they have got to be price-competitive. The prestige that exists with trucks comes from the heritage of established brands. There isn’t any smug environmentalist or fashion prestige to be won. Of course, the problem is that it looks like a B-movie prop and that probably risks eroding the prestige associated with buying one of their cars.
I actually kind of like it, in the abstract. It reminds me of the model-T in some ways. Some people think that there was a conspiracy to ruin Delorean because he was making stainless steel cars.
I live in a high salt in winter area, and I’ve been under a car before, trying to fix it, where you have to be careful to avoid touching anything extraneous or you’ll get rust in your eye. It kind of appeals to me on that level, with the added benefit of missing the mechanical part (fuel pump) that I was fixing.
And trucks are real gas guzzlers. Many get only 10 miles/gallon.
Because trucks have such poor MPG, all Tesla needed to do was make a conventional looking truck with the same specs as the Cybertruck, they would have had a real success on their hands, truck owners don’t care about global warming but they do care about saving money
The 500 mile Cybertruck must have a 200kWh battery like the Roadster 2020, I think Musk is betting on a new solid state battery for the Cybertruck
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zl39bJAAgY4
Can’t believe Musk stole my design that I drew in kindergarten.
Prior to World War II, Czechoslovakia and Hungary were richer than the Mediterranean countries but poorer than those of northwest Europe. This is probably where they will be, and where Poland will be, once the Commie legacy is totally left behind.
Russia and the Balkans, OTOH, were somewhat similar to poor Mediterranean Europe (Portugal and Greece). Once the legacy of Communism is totally left behind, they will probably eventually settle at that level, although Russia will be better than the rest simply due to its oil and gas. Note that when oil prices were really high Russia was equal to Poland, but since the price dropped it has slipped behind. Russia completely without any oil and gas would be better than, but in the neighborhood of, Belarus. Ukraine should eventually be like Belarus, with Galicia somewhat better and closer to V4 (as it was before Communism).
So the difference between western Europe and V4 isn’t going to be like between “fancy Asia” and “jungle Asia” but more like between Japan and South Korea. With lands further east and south (other than Russia, with its oil and gas boost) being poorer but not way down at the relative level of Thailand or Indonesia.
Pussification of the White Boy
https://twitter.com/WokeCapital/status/1197901021483274242
Agree, except that Western Europe is sinking rapidly. France, for example, is
becoming more and more like Africa every year, which hurts me deeply because
I love France. Poland and France used to be close, and not only because they
are both Catholic. For example, in the days before the French Revolution many
members of the French nobility sought refuge in Poland, and not in Germany. In
general, in the 18th century it was fashionable for the French to move to
Poland. That’s how we got Chopin! The Partitions of Poland resulted partly
from the fact that the absolute monarchies in Prussia and Russia were
becoming fearful of the Jacobin tendencies in both Poland and France.
For example, the Polish Constitution of May 3rd, 1791 was relatively
progressive for its era. So in a sense Poland took a hit, instead of France.
This incensed a lot of people in France who dedicated themselves to
helping Poland, and ultimately was one of the contributing factors behind
Napoleon’s invasions of Prussia and Russia.
Then after the November Uprising of 1830, ruthlessly suppressed by Russia,
Poland’s cultural elites, among them Mickiewicz and Chopin, emigrated
to France in what came to be known as the Great Emigration, and French
continued to be the language of the elites in Poland (and in Russia).
Mickiewicz lectured in French in Paris, and Count Jan Potocki wrote
a classic in French known as The Manuscript Found in Saragossa.
Hence it’s painful to see this centuries long legacy being thrown away
by Macron and others with their intemperate statements about Poland,
and about Slavic countries in general.
You have to love both the past & the present to survive well into the future..
There’s still a lot of good and fun in France..
Depressing yourself on iblogs is not the solution
Re: the cold freezer theory, I wonder if the Soviet space program is partly responsible for Eastern Europe being less pozzed.
First, there is the sense of accomplishment that helps build Russian nationalism. Secondly, there is the economic factor. The USSR devoted a lot of resources into it, so people went without consumer goods, like toilet paper, longer than they would have otherwise. And for many, they considered it worth it to use newspapers, but to have the national pride.
When I was young I had a side job as a snow dropper. (This is more important in urban areas than most people think. A couple of years ago a man on my street even got killed by falling snow. Buildings are required to drop the snow in a controlled way.)
The way they recruited was to simply get a big bunch of students, get them on the rooftops and see who panics and who doesn’t. There were some interesting differences in fear response. Me, I normally get dizzy near edges with big drops but once I put on the safety harness all fear disappeared – I don’t trust my ability to not slip so my brain screams “GET AWAY” near an edge but I could trust the rope and my brain stopped screaming as it stopped believing that falling would mean dying. Some others got more scared as they would start running the scenario in their minds and could not trust the rope.
We had a few people fall off (it’s slippery) but the harness always saved them, although if they fell into an inner courtyard or some other place that fire department lift trucks couldn’t easily reach they could end up hanging for a long time. It was nice side income for young people for a really easy job but now it’s of course all done by imported cheap labor.
A lot of window washers die from suspension trauma. Being suspended in a harness really hampers your bloodflow. Doesn’t take too long either, about 10-20 minutes before it starts to set in. Wouldn’t want to be one of those subcon helots in Dubai. That sort of thing really should be done by robots.
I don’t believe Brexit will ever happen, it in reality amounts to nothing more than a working class English protest movement. The whole concept of Brexit has little to no support outside the UK, this notion that the British are oppressed by the EU is utterly laughable to most foreigners. Britain is seen as the oppressor, not the oppressed and I say this as someone who supports Brexit in theory, but this is the reality. The EU is not exactly popular, but Britain is even less popular.
I think back in 2016 many Brexit supporters hoped that Brexit would turn into a Europe-wide movement and would quickly see the downfall of the EU, in reality the rest of the EU responded by rallying around Brussels and turning against Britain. Brexit actually did the EU a favour because it replaced the ongoing financial crisis and migrant crisis in the news and ironically made the EU look stronger and more united than it really is. I think Brexit in reality amounts to one final struggle of the English working classes, although ultimately futile. Britain, especially England, is a country in an advanced stage of race replacement and the elites have absolutely no intention of handing any power or influence over to the native working classes who largely voted for Brexit.
Would you really want to lower your life expectancy by 40 years?
(1) So? Realpolitik. Many US businessmen were dealing with Germany at this time, too. Israel even concluded a notorious emigration agreement (“Havala”).
(2) A bigger threat were internal communists. Swedish oligarchs were forced by social community groups to give in to major demands much earlier in Sweden than in many other countries. Russia notoriously failed to reform in time and ended up with communism (even if communism was never as popular as portrayed, Tsarist Russia was too slow a reformer nonetheless and made itself vulnerable). The history of the social democrats in Sweden is fascinating, and the social milieu that they sprang out of. Had Sweden not reformed in time, we’d have gotten a nasty surprise, too.
(3) Based af. Let me just add… we had essentially developed all the necessary pre-conditions for nuclear weapons in the 60s but were subject to massive US pressure and backed down (sad!). Still, it shows how capable we are. Sweden had something like 5-6 million people at the time and was able to do our own programme, without stealing (like the Israelis) too.
I’ll add a few more things instead of replying to both of your comments.
You claim Sweden and Poland can’t be compared because we’re small. But our population is roughly the same as Greece and Portugal, which you’re more than happy to compare to. So the issue isn’t our size. It’s that we’re just a lot richer than you which brings you a lot of embarrassment and you don’t want to face that inconvenient fact. Furthermore, Sweden’s total size of the economy is in fact quite close to Poland’s, despite having nearly 4X fewer people. 🙂
As I said: Poor People’s Parity. In nominal terms, Poland is still only 50% as rich as Italy and the gap is unlikely to close for many years. It’s only as 28% as rich as Sweden and I doubt the gap will ever be closed.
Eastern Europe was more than FSU. The space programme had a direct bearing on FSU, not on all of the broader Warsaw Pact countries. Second, many Warsaw Pact countries had in fact quite liberal cultural policies (i.e. Hungary), yet that has not prevented Hungary from being one of the most nationalistic countries in Europe today. Despite that, they are certainly very liberal in other ways.
https://i.imgur.com/xQczbn1.jpg
I think it is fair to say that we don’t really understand the process of cultural change very well, despite huge amounts being written on it by philosophers, statesmen, sociologists etc over the centuries.
They speak Spanish, but with funny intonation, rhythm and adding “shhhhhh” sound to a lot of things (“ll” and “y” is pronounced “shhhh”). They also use a more formal grammar than Spain, but this is common in all Latin America.
I think that “Argentinian accent” is unique for Argentina/Uruguay. It does not sound to me like Italian accent, although tone obviously has a lot of Italian influence.
Racially, I think they look usually like Spanish, Native Indians, or normal Italians (not necessarily Sicilian Italians)?
e.g. 1st student looks mainly Spanish, 2nd student looks Italian, 3rd student looks Spanish (although French name), 4th student looks 100% Spanish, 5th student (Cabrera) looks part Native Indian – although her accent might be Colombian or something
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dUaRakowmw
In terms of accent, e.g. ^ at 0:49 she speaks “está lleno de oportunidades”, as “está Shhena de oportunidades”. Whereas normal non-Argentinian Spanish language, you should pronounce a “yeno de oportunidades”.
No, I have not been in South America.
Just from videos, though I think (at least the most “posh areas” in) Buenos Aires look inspired by Spanish cities much more?
Clearly an absurd map. These pornstars – by what criteria are they defined?
It’s interesting how particularly Argentinian cities, but Latin American cities in general, look far more Spanish than North American or even Australian cities do British.
Culturally and in terms of loyalties, Latin Americans seem to have diverged less from Spain than Anglos have from Britain/England. It’s not unusual for Latin Americans to refer to themselves as “Spanish”, especially in America whereas white North Americans would almost never call themselves “English”.
Americans did surpass the English, but Hispanics did not surpass the Spanish.
They had different budgets. I’m not sure if space actually showed up in the budgets of countries outside the USSR to a substantial degree – although Canada, a vassal of the US, seems to have been contributory to the US program. See for instance, the “Canada arm”, a technology first developed for the shuttle.
While the living standards of Warsaw Pact countries differed, their industrial sectors could be considered to be tightly integrated. For instance, take the example of a chair – no one country would produce the entire chair from its constituent natural resources. One might produce the glue, another the legs, another the seat, etc. This was by design, to make realignment difficult.
Was this true for consumer goods, like food, which I believe had their own national brands? Well, in a more general way, we can suppose that if the USSR depressed its own economy, this would have helped depressed the economy of its vassals. As to the angle of pride, I believe that one country’s nationalism helps build and maintain that of its neighbors, just as one country’s poz helps poz its neighbors.
Of course, communism is not a great economic system and so secondary effects on Warsaw Pact countries may have been trivial. It could be that one of the main attack vectors of poz was English language acquisition, and being required to learn Russian put a damper on this, in addition to other censorship. The USSR was not very tolerant of gays, was it?
I’ve come up with a new idea for the betterment of society:
Mandatory full school year education in parasitology, just as civics (the workings of government) is often a full year subject for schoolchildren. And, at polling stations, you need to walk past three or four graphic posters of parasites: heartworms in a dog, brood parasitism, a moose covered in ticks, elephantiasis.
Though, I guess it could backfire. Could mean more investment in curing tropical diseases => bigger population explosion in Africa.
To the extent that your neighbour’s nationalism is aimed at you, sure, it certainly helps building the case for domestic nationalists as it gives them a strong and credible threat immediately placed on the country’s borders.
Were non-FSU countries in the Warsaw Pact threatened that they’d be taken over by the Soviets in any serious sense? I don’t know enough about these countries to give an intelligent answer.
What about “positive” nationalism of the kind you mentioned, i.e. pride of accomplishment?
In Sweden, Sputnik is portrayed as a Russian achievement, by which I mean Russian speakers of East Slavic origin. Maybe it was propagandised differently behind the Iron Curtain, but that is how it was and still is perceived here.
Language is central to influence. Which is why Indian English-speaking elites are far more westernised than Chinese elites.
It seems to a large extent that countries become more liberal as they develop. Can the Soviet freezer theory simply be accounted for by weaker economic development? Or is it something else.
IMO, two possible explanations:
1.) Simple Economics: wealth produces parasitism, perhaps with the intermediate step that wealth produces softness
2.) Hivemind: increase in communications and indoctrination leading to the propagation of bad ideas. And our past inhibititory mechanisms, which are mainly built around the level of kin and the village, aren’t up to the task of impeding them.
Regarding #2: What was the literacy rate in early 1900s Russia compared to the US? How dull was communist TV, and how many people had sets? How dull were the books and movies? What was the level of secondary education? What were the majors available?
It is not clear to me what the correct choice is, though I guess everything can be linked to economics, at least on a base level.
Did communism, which on paper was an internationalist movement, actually unintentionally help build nationalism everywhere it operated?
That is an interesting question. I suppose one should allow for the possibility that the freezer theory could be entirely wrong, and what happened might have been an active process, rather than something that was merely preservative.
Makes sense, Spain to Hispanics still represents the pinnacle of Hispanic culture, and therefore “Spanishness” is something to be aspired to.
In contrast the US firmly displaced Britain as the main Anglo power and even Australia surpassed Britain as a more advanced Anglo society and therefore Britain to Americans and Australians represents the “old world” and backwardness, not something to be aspired to.
Funny nobody mentioned the works of Aristotle or Plato here, or Farabi and Averroes, according to them, a health society, or the maintenance thereof, is always going to require a fair bit of social coercion and discouragement of individualism from the government, and the the lowest form of freedom is the freedom to do whatever you like.
Poland is so wildly nationalist, because of their history – because they have a lot of invasions, and suffering, with the tragic events of the Second World War in Poland being the apotheosis of this. Poles are very “nationally conscious”, but without imperialism views. (And since the second half of the 20th century, Poland is a racially and religiously homogeneous country like Japan).
Russia is nationalist/patriotic than average countries, because of invasions and difficulties, but also partly in a similar way to America – as a result of being (until the 1990s) one of the world’s two superpowers. (So it’s not exactly same kind of nationalism/patriotism as Poles have, and causes are not the same).
In the Russian Empire, 76% of all people were illiterate. By 1950s, literacy rates in the Soviet Union were among the highest in the world. Around 1960-70, there is attained universal literacy.
Television in the Soviet Union, was of high quality, and almost everyone has television.
Films and books are also of high quality. Access to culture become very widely available as the years progress.
Level of education is quite high, and some of the higher education at an excellent level in a technical subjects. (Weaker, education, however, in humanities subjects).
Although today, I assume that America is having a stronger cultural influence than Spain in Latin America, at least for the youth culture and new architectural projects?
For example, looking at the Brazilian youth – basically a very good imitation of Californians nowadays?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nztKg73ZsxM
Uruguay is converting from its Spanish traditions, into some kind of architectural imitation Miami, with help from Trump.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QEIBUgDJsFc
Panama City is converting from some charming old Spanish city, to another imitation Miami/Vegas.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyCpon5o2WM
Poland won the Junior Eurovision song contest for the second time
in a row. Poland was represented by the 12-year-old singer Wiktoria Gabor
(Viki Gabor). For a 12-year-old she has remarkable control over her voice,
Is Sweden even in Europe? Most Swedes, I understand, think of Sweden
as being somewhere in the middle of the Atlantic. Sweden is on the
periphery of Europe, equivalent to America’s Alaska. In fact, Stockholm’s
latitude is equivalent to that of southern Alaska. Look, for the past 200 years
Sweden has chosen not to participate in the great drama of European politics,
so there is no reason to pay attention to it, although I used to like Bergman’s
movies and ABBA. When it did participate, in the 16th-17th centuries it
brought nothing but horrors to Europe, esp. Poland. Read Henryk Sienkiewicz’s
Deluge (part of his Trilogy). I have little reason to pay attention to Sweden.
Sweden, like Germany, has been a terrible neighbor to Poland over the past
1200 years, and these days Sweden is mostly known as the Rape Capital of
Europe, which is sad for the people of Sweden. I have no animus against
Sweden – it’s just that Sweden is unpleasant to think about. The Swedes are
Germanics, and Slavs and Germanics have little in common. We prefer to
associate with fellow Slavs, although we typically have warm feelings toward the
Greeks and the Portuguese.
As I keep pointing out, in Catholicism (which is the dominant religion
among the Visegrad 4) we tend to follow the Aristotelian/Buddhist principle
of moderation in all things. Both poverty and (extreme) wealth are to be
avoided because both tend to corrupt people. The New Testament says that
“Love of money is the root of all evil.” Western Europe got rich and powerful
400 years ago. What did it do with all this wealth? It colonized the world
and engaged in the trans-atlantic slave trade, something it is trying to live
down today. Wealth means that something has gone horribly wrong
in your life (and so does poverty). It means that you failed to pay attention
to what’s really important in life – pursuit of holiness/enlightenment,
and instead you worshipped Moloch.
I want to add one more thing to my comment: There are 250 million
Slavs in Europe. For centuries we were oppressed mostly by Germanics.
Now for the first time we can get to know and enjoy each other since,
unlike with the Germanics like you, we Slavs have a lot in common, starting
with the languages and beautiful women. One example: because of the
German Drang nach Osten, Poland and Bohemia, fraternal nations
1000 years ago, were separated centuries ago, and now for the first time
in many years we have a chance to rediscover our common roots.
We already produced a singer together, Ewa Farna, who is equally
at home in Czech and Polish.
Of course, Poland and Hungary have always been allies, even though
Hungarians are only partly Slavic.
Re: Wealth
Few things are as destructive of the environment as wealth.
For example, Germany, because of its runaway industrialization,
has one of the lowest levels of biodiversity in Europe.
What a bunch of religiously preening nonsense. Poland has arguably been the biggest loser of European history in the last 300 years, so you’re coping with that fact by inventing a bunch of religious narratives (“Christ of Europe”) etc.
Cute meme. Meanwhile, Poland literally has the highest inequality in the EU.
https://i.imgur.com/BvuPzTU.jpg
https://i.imgur.com/hp9HPbo.jpg
Sources are here and here. The gini-index is of poor quality. When using much more detailed microdata, inequality is very prevalent. Furthermore, this is not a new phenomenon either.
https://i.imgur.com/NGaPhp1.jpg
Source
Maybe you would do well to study the numbers instead of clinging to made-up narratives designed to maximise self-pity.
The ‘Soviet freezer’ theory is entirely wrong. E.g., Russia in the 1990’s was far more tolerant of globalism, ‘LGBT’, anti-racist wokeness bullshit and feminism. Hell, Russia in the 2000’s was far more tolerant of the poz than Russia today.
I wonder how much drug money came into Panama as a backwash from Miami, since they are on the dollar. Probably a lot. Maybe, a lot of drug people retired there.
Using the anarchy of the Russian 90s to disprove the theory is a bit weak
Especially when you have the example of East and West Germany
This new highly conservative, nationalist Russia seems to have emerged quite recently, as in the mid 2000s at the earliest.
An example of the cultural shift would be the Russian group “Tatu” who became popular in Western countries in the early 2000s. The whole theme of that group was LGBT and the two women portrayed themselves as lesbians even though they are actually straight. I can’t imagine a group like that coming from Russia these days, which I think demonstrates the cultural shift that Russia has undergone.
Ireland had a similar history and attitude as Poland, but it is amazing how quickly it has been eroded. Lots of good nationalistic songs. Bands named after national figures like the Wolfe Tones. A fair number of more recent songs from the early 1970s were so nationalistic they even had a violent subtext.
My conception of communist TV is that there were a lot of telecasts of international meetings with long tables and potted plants. I have formed this idea partly by watching Chinese news, as well as by watching indigenous coverage of Chavez’s funeral. Western TV signal was highly sought after in Eastern Germany. I know TV’ s were expensive too, and salaries low, so adoption was definitely later. Contrast a bit with America: Bonanza was shot entirely in color starting in 1959, to help sell color sets.
Then there may be differences in radio, as the “broadcasts” in USSR came through a wire for many years. Personal telephones were probably less common for many years. I have heard that access to good books in the USSR was difficult and that it is a myth that they were widely available. Bookstores had a lot of copies of Marx, etc., but by contrast, it was hard to find something like Sherlock Holmes.
I think you’re overlooking a few things. True Christianity encourages critical thinking, even though many of the more extreme adherents don’t. The dynamicism and economic growth of Europe until fairly recently was in large part due to it.
That means that intelligent Christians capable of critical are a big potential threat to the State. As a result, power-hungry politicals from John Dewey onward have been hostile to Christianity, and have actively worked to destroy it. Nerds probably played a part, but only as willing servants of our true rulers.
Critical thinking..
Irish nationalism is exclusively about hating “the Brits”, in every other sense they are among the most cucked nationalities imaginable. I seriously don’t think the average Irish person cares who enters their country and even who rules it just as long as it’s not “the Brits”, which is why they love the EU so much.
Irish nationalism in a political sense is almost exclusively far-left/Communist. Sinn Fein is among the most left wing parties in the whole of Europe. To be honest I really don’t see much comparison at all between Irish nationalism and Polish/Slav nationalism. They really don’t have anything in common with each other.
https://irrussianality.wordpress.com/2015/12/18/democracy-%E2%89%A0-liberalism/
Probably a result of the failure of the integration of the RF into the liberal bloc.
I hear that kind of crap all the time but think that’s entirely overrated.
For example, my ancestors:
Generation #1 was born in Germany, emigrated to Pennsylvania in the 18th century. A lifelong farmer, he died in 1819 at the age of 79
Generation #2 lived from 1776 to 1844 -68 years. Also a lifelong farmer.
His son, generation #3, lived from 1810 to 1881. Another lifelong farmer. 71 years.
Generation #4 was a farmer and a shoemaker. He lived for 84 years.
Generation #5 was born in 1883 and died in 1965 – 82 years. His son lived from 1916 to 2000 – 84 years.
These were all people who worked hard, but they lived more natural lifestyles and had happier, though poorer, lives.
In reality, in old-timey America at least, your chances of making it to old age were quite good if you made it through childhood and didn’t live in a poorer region (e.g. Southern Appalachia). But even the poorer regions had many healthy, wiry old people like the gentlemen in this video from 1990s western North Carolina: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zqKeya1FDk8
From the internet I gather that Sumadija is a fruit-growing region. So is mine.
But you are right. I have a keen awareness of how my ancestors lived. In fact I even know where my first ancestor in America farmed here in the new world. The barn his son built in the 1800s is still intact. However, I am, by circumstances beyond my control, currently unable to live a life like that. And I, a young man, am struggling to be able to create a family life on a nice piece of land.
The best thing they had was a full-time job – farming – that was integrated with the rest of their life. A job that involved leisure. The average farmer lacked our “leisure time” because he took some joy from the job itself. Modern life is truly a soul-sucking thing.
The worst part for me is having to watch the American business classes destroying our precious farmland with their insane sprawl.
But I am a devout Christian (Catholic) and I believe firmly that we will be rewarded for patiently bearing having to live in a “society” that has separated us from the ways of our ancestors.
Well, the television presentation method, was slower and more formal compared to today.
Do you have an attention span, to watch more than 1 hours of May Day, for example? (But Western television was also slower in those days, compared to today).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9xSu7zhfzRE
Or can you watch more than 3 hours of song festival? However, the song festival was much more soulful than today,- it’s actually relaxing to watch this unlike modern television.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yuty1gmbrs
Television was invented in Russia. Television penetration only becomes universal across the population, however, I guess around 1960-70 (? I’m not sure exactly) – so perhaps a few years later than America.
Yes there was apparently some famous limitation in terms of the selection of books in bookshops. But people apparently could access all kinds of world literature (like Sherlock Holmes), from subscriptions.
In terms of music, record shops were quite limited in their selection, but instead all young people were copying music unofficially through tapes. My mother, for example, somehow became the most expert person in the world, about every kind of pop music of the early 1980s.
There’s some kind of controversy about Trump’s skyscraper in Panama.
Report: Trump Panama Tower ‘Riddled’ With Drug, Mob Money
A Panama City condo high-rise development that carried the Trump Organization’s marketing imprimatur in the late 2000s was “riddled” with drug traffickers and international mafia figures, beset with dubious sales, and became, as one financial-crimes investigator called it, a “a vehicle for money laundering.”
https://www.thedailybeast.com/report-trump-panama-tower-riddled-with-drug-mob-money
However, I would assume, this is not Trump’s responsibility – it is more that this kind of people who are attracted to Trump’s taste for architecture and design.
It’s funny that the role of Trump’s children to do diplomacy for these buildings in the past, is the same people they now use for official international diplomacy for the government of the USA, the world’s only superpower.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1ixnO2_x9Y
In June 2004, the Irish people voted to amend the Constitution to change the laws on citizenship and eliminate the automatic right to citizenship for anyone born in Ireland. There have been plenty of marches against “refugees” – it is not exactly something promoted by the BBC, or the Irish media for that matter.
All nationalists have something in common, except pseudo-nationalists. You are making the mistake of comparing politicians, which differ East and West due to historical factors. Do you really think Nigel Farrage is a nationalist? Do you think UKIP are nationalists? Well, neither is Sinn Fein. Poland itself had its period of treasonous pols – fortunately they did not have weird economic incentives to bring in non-Europeans.
Poland and Ireland are both Catholic and historically have had heavy religious influence in their nationalism, which makes it a shame that the Church is so cucked today. I’m surprised you are blind to so obvious a parallel.
BTW, I’m not sure leaving the EU is a good nationalist strategy. Does it really change the bureaucrats in power? Maybe some of their accents. I do appreciate the British desire to leave though. Hopefully it will succeed and change the center of gravity of the EU to something further South and East, rather than merely flooding the country in a tidal wave of Nigerians and Indians.
I don’t have any schaden Freue for Britain. Those that do, look extremely foolish, IMO. Same in the other direction. I sometimes wonder if it is clever programming by the state media, or if it is a 50-pence army employed by Abuja or New Delhi. Or perhaps London.
Never saw the May Day Parade, but Thanksgiving is coming up here, and the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade will be on in the background. It is funny: I remember a teacher in the 5th grade asking us kids who comes at the end of the parade – the answer is Santa Claus, but nobody knew it. I guess because it is not something people really watch, just have on in the background.
It seems really bizarre, if you focus your attention on it for any length of time. Imagine the Victory Day Parade (I have seen a little of this), but if it was 90% singing, dancing gays from Broadway and balloon and float advertisements. It is like an unintentional satire on globohomo, if you can take it.
I wish it were all tanks and mobile missile launchers.
Excellent points, in my view it’s extremely questionable whether modern urbanites (even wealthy ones) live substantially better lives than people like your ancestors did.
I recommend watching the song festival from 1978. You can see how much better television was, in the USSR. In comparison, to modern television – heaven and earth. I wonder if the decline in American television has been so significant in the same years, or if television was bad in 1970s America?
https://youtu.be/1Yuty1gmbrs?t=4982.
Lol this parade in New York, is just for children and selling toys though?
On that theme – cartoons for children in the USSR, were often like impressionist artworks
https://youtu.be/Bn1UEzYjsp0?t=366.
You don’t have to imagine.
Soviet Union Parade of Athletes 18 July 1939
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z8paJRF8grA
Great footage. Look at them performing for their masters…
Quite curious: all those shirtless men in short shorts. I even possibly detect a hint of pedophilia – the kids in harnesses, reminds me very uncomfortably of homosexual “art” (which I actually saw as a kid on public television.)
I wonder if the guy responsible got liquidated. I’m surprised Stalin would have allowed this.
Still, I think there is a bit of a difference here compared to Macy’s TDP. With that, it is rank upon rank of gay-face and lisp. With this, it is more like a powerful gay told these mostly normal men to undress, and it seems slightly more balanced by displays of young women.
The song festival strikes me as something similar to what you might have seen then in the US. There were a lot of programs like that that had a focus on music. A famous one was “The Laurence Welk Show.” I’m told my grandfather used to watch it.
As to the corruption of American TV, a lot of people mention Norman Lear, and for instance, “All in the Family.” (began 1971) But my theory of entertainment is that people inclined to be entertainers have a personality which makes them more likely to be liberals, (openness factor, maybe?) and so if you watch things with a critical eye, you can see earlier hints, like the infamous black-white kiss on Star Trek. Or stuff even before TV came along. Sometimes, I watch something really old, like a John Wayne movie from the ’30s, and I’m wondering “Is this a hidden message?”
TV has had layers of corruption added, decade after decade. At first, it was hard to notice, but it is impossible now. One proxy for it might be how the number of advertisements kept expanding, the commercial breaks became longer and longer. A lot the commercials these days have a blatant anti-white or anti-civilizational message. The same thing actually happened in magazines (the advertisements more than doubled), and probably in parades. Direct placement (inserting an advert inside a program) was virtually unknown at one point.
This might be an interesting point of contrast to Russia. I believe communist society did not have many adverts. So Russia started from a lower number, when communism collapsed. And now streaming and the internet have come along as competitors to standard TV and magazines.
The idea of this is showing about physical strength of Soviet athletes.
The fashion of the parade changes after the war a bit – and becomes more focused on exhibiting multinational traditions and costumes.
Kazakhs and Ukrainians were still shirtless.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8mMZl04wZA
I think a lot of the decline in television, is the editing and effects, rather than a change in political content.
Old television was far more minimalist – and it does not overstimulate, and has quite calm and relaxing effect, and could probably lower your blood pressure.
You can play old television shows, and relax – whereas modern television is usually too noisy and distracting to play even as background in your computer, and it generally agitates the soul.
And this is a much deeper change, than simply changing political or social message of the programming.
It has a very wealthy bourgeois surface. The singers look like business executives and their wives, rather than singers.
There are no advertisements. (I assume adverts were only once an hour then). Just at 25:40, is this a subtle advert for Hoover?
Most of the music is mediocre (although some of musicians are very technically competent), but this television is still relaxing to play in the background and has a calming effect on the audience, or helps improve your mood. You can also play this on YouTube as background music (it was playing for an hour), and work at the same time without being distracted.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mMHifyBbw1U
At the top end, American multi-episode series have improved for last 20-30 years – above all, in terms of their internal coherence.
I tried watching X-Files, and I could not watch more than a few episodes, as the stories become too repetitive and incoherent between each other. Whereas modern series like Breaking Bad, are highly addictive and coherent between episodes.
Oops I posted the wrong episode. It’s this episode I was writing about. This program is relaxing to use as background music – but if you try to watch visually rather than just listen, you might overdose from 1960s bourgeois American comfort.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1GEVVQRPgiA
The fashion of sport outfits has been changing. At some point there were very short shorts and nobody except perhaps some homosexuals had sexual connotations. But now you do. You can’t watch 1939 USSR parade w/o thinking of homosexuality.
The shorts got longer beginning with NBA and Michael Jordan.
We underestimate the power of culture memes and how they affect what we see and how we see. Several decades ago seeing a priest playing with children would not invoke a connotation with the pedophilia meme in anybody. What we see and how we see is being constructed. After Freud when you want to mention a cigar you must make a disclaimer that in this particular case the cigar is just a cigar because otherwise it would be a sexual Freudian meme. The sexual memes are very hard to be unwired. It seems that once the innocence is lost by society it can’t be restored (It can but at a price). The question is whether the construction of the sexualization of the reality is a part of a concerted effort to demolish traditional societies? E. Michale Jones eloquently argues that it is. See his Libido Dominandi: Sexual Liberation & Political Control.
In extreme it may lead to this:
Mass suicide in Demmin
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_suicide_in_Demmin
I wonder if this is related to Lysenkoism, or if Nazis did shirtless parades. (I don’t think they did) Then again, maybe they would be more fearful of being labeled gay because of Ernst Röhm, etc.
I agree. Nowadays, it is like the camera always has to be in motion, or they have to be moving from clip to clip every 3 seconds. What I really want in entertainment is something like a John Ford movie, with long shots that lull you into the story.
Though it was quite a popular show in its day, Lawrence Welk used to be made fun of as a show that old people watched. I don’t know if this is a commentary on its music, but the old clips of songs on TV performances that I sometimes listen to, never seemed to be Lawrence Welk, even when they are not rock, but older folk songs. But maybe the point is that it is relaxing – no sad or tragic songs?
If I understand the history of TV in the US correctly, variety music programs were used as a vehicle to promote blacks for the purposes of subversion. Nobody wanted to put a black face as the host or main character of a show – there was too much risk involved, when there were so few channels competing against each other and the numbers involved were big, so it was black music acts that were used to break the barrier.
Streaming has changed the economic model for TV. They no longer make episodes consisting mostly of clips of old episodes – that is an improvement. Though, I confess a personal aversion to serials. Partly, it is the time commitment. You will be let down by the ending, most likely. Partly, it is because they tend to replicate the bad aspects of soap operas – there are episodes where nothing happens. Often, it seems like they are written on a weekly basis, and pumped out like sausage. That is not to say that episodic TV is good, though I like how it does not mix the good and bad as much. Each episode stands on its own.
It is easy to dismiss Michael E. Jones in some ways. I believe he said “the only difference between Europe and Africa is 1000 years of the Catholic Church.” And someone said he is a flat-earther? Still, you have to give him credit where it is due. Just mentioning faith nowadays is unorthodox thinking, let alone calling out the homintern. Some of his ideas are pretty traditional, but seem like out of the box thinking nowadays. So it can be refreshing to hear.
I think that is a very interesting theory about the subversion of culture. I often think that why we this new abomination of trans is that it is the ultimate symbol of eroding sexual boundaries, even superior to homos. And that every corruption is ancillary to sexual corruption.
Didn’t know about Demmin or that other incident. Or about the short shorts being the norm until so late as that.
Dmitri, your interests and eclectic cultural vistas know no boundaries! I grew up watching the “Lawrence Welk Show” broadcast every Saturday night accross homes in America during a generally more sedate and innocent time. I was a youngster and already knew that the type of music presented was kind of “square” and something mostly created for an older audience. As a kid, I didn’t have the last word over what our family would watch on the TV tube. I probably kind of liked the show, and certainly enjoyed the familial ambience that surrounded the show. Besides polka music, classical dance hall, show tunes, redone popular radio tunes, classical big band jazz, country wetern the show even played Christian gospel songs (verboten fair today by America’s cultural czars – “poitically incorrect”). Today I enjoy watching this musical variety show for obvious nostalgiac reasons. It’s regularly broadcast on Public televission every Saturday today and there’s still a lot of people that get a chuckle and a experience a soft spot in their hearts for this kind of entertainment.
https://youtu.be/cJlgnDRzPRQ
One of the strengths of the show was the large repetoire of different ethnic music. One of my favorite stars of the show, Anacani, sings Besame Mucho. I’ve always had a soft spot for Latin rhythyms and melodies.
“And someone said he is a flat-earther? ” – I had to check it. Here is what I found: No, he is not. He says that the flat-earth nonsense is deliberately promoted psyop:
and he believes in some kind of geocentrism that Earth after all is in the center of universe and that Michelson-Morley experiment proves it, i.,e, Earth is not moving with respect to ether.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TaP1rDOiyRE
Thanks for sorting that out. I guess I misremembered.
It is easy to dismiss Michael E. Jones in some ways
He’s useful on some subjects but his Catholic victimology is a turn off. He once said on an Irish live stream that Francophone Quebec’s turn to secularism had a lot to do with some Protestant American activist plotting, but when asked about it by someone in chat or comments he admitted he knew little about it. But it’s in line with his thinking: any time Catholics abandon or even question the Church then they must be victims of outside forces. His own two ethnic groups, the Irish and Germans, are also always the victims too. Funny that. It’s a bit like the Jewish worldview of themselves.
He probably went on Owen’s channel – and similar ones – because he knows there are thousands of impressionable young people listening who have already rejected the MSM view but are still searching for something else to believe in. Skate over the more ridiculous stuff in a respectful way and make your pitch directly to such people who are more likely to be influenced by Jones as they get older than by an entertaining host. That’s probably a productive endeavour.
A search of “refugee resettlement program” and E. Michael Jones does not return anything written by Jones. Gee, I wonder why.
https://orthochristian.com/125924.html
Schisms shouldn’t be restricted to Roman Catholics – the time has definitely come.
Serb Orthodox Church (pro-Russian) is already under attack – US based clergy is rogue, English language service, financial malpractice – many Serbs go to Russian churches; the Germany/Austria based clergy plans to introduce German language service in SOC there; Montenegrin SOC hierarchy is thoroughly infiltrated by Ecumenists and Atlanticist stooges, not to mention SOC clergy in NATO protectorate of Kosovo.
Recently, the Bulgarian “investigative” “journalists” started sabotaging Serbia-Russia relations, first through recently released footage of a Russian attache meeting with a Serb agent; secondly, for a longer time, by publishing nonsense about Serbia arming ISIS in Yemen, Al-Qaeda in Iraq/Syria (US and KSA companies, legal sales, just cheap Serbian ammo and guns) and recently – UKRAINE! They first tried to plant 60 mm mortar round (?), then anti-personnel mines and 82 mm mortar rounds.
Again, sold to Polish and Cypriot companies, as if Ukraine doesn’t have MIC infinitely superior to Serbian.
Some disgusting Bulgarian Jew Solomon, former MOD and head of Atlantic Club in Bulgaria also reared its ugly head and talked shit recently.
The Western media complex in Serbia published a first page with a picture from an arms expo – a sniper rifle displayed on table is framed as if aiming at the President. A similar warning was given to assassinated PM in 2003, in a Western owned print as well.
An additional tidbit – Croats really ramped up their bot and disinfo campaign in Serbian social media – one center is Split, the other Zagreb.
There are literally thousands of generic bots (noun + 6 digit number profile id) and false flag (linguistic Serbian/Croatian slips, Cyrillic errors) twitter accounts posing as “concerned citizens”, opposition activists, liberasts, anarchists and pro-West tards.
At the end of the day, I’m not sure outside forces can explain why the Pope recently traveled to Japan and told them to take in “refugees.” Oh, I am sure there were many outside influences, but not sufficient to be excuses.
One problem might be that the Church had its own population collapse. Falling numbers of priests, monks, nuns, and people in attendance.
When as a teenager I read Catholic-influenced American conservative publications like National Review that would say, in so many words, “if only the Pope knew” he would put an end to whatever leftist activities Catholic organisations were up to, I fell for it. I thought, yes, he’s on the side of Western civilisation but clearly those at lower levels are subverting the Church and, well, some day the higher-ups will get around to sorting out these subverters. lol. I’m well passed believing such nonsense. As far as I can tell the Church rejects just about everything E. Michael Jones says so I’m not sure where that leaves him.
How much of that came on high from the oligarch dominated elite though?
Since they’ve lost their language (ignoring the pathetic results of nearly a century of half-hearted ‘revival’) Irish seem to define their identity mainly as ‘not-British’ rather than anything positive.
There are no ‘oligarchs’ in Russia. The faces on TV are just patsy stooges for the people who hold real power.
(You can tell by how the ‘oligarchs’ flee to London to lose their assets or ‘suicide’ themselves once they are past their expiration date.)
The “concerned diaspora” one is pretty common
Usually mentions how much money he or the people in his host country make (it’s always a NATO/EU country) and then talks about how he heard about how bad things have gotten in Serbia, usually followed up by an insult of Serbian people
I didn’t notice errors, but I did see a growing hostility towards usage of Cyrillic on social media, seems like not every bot is trained to use it
If it revs up even more there can be neat dividing line between bots and cucks and the actual patriots who bother to use it
A few months ago the UK and US announced they’d be creating such bot farms to “fight Russian disinformation” or whatever bs excuse
It’s gonna get a lot worse before it gets better
“Mi Srbi smo dno dna”
“We Serbs are the lowest of the low”- Generic Bot line
I think it doesn’t help their sense of identity that to outsiders “Irish” culture appears almost indistinguishable from British culture in any objective sense, so rather than being able to point to obvious differences they have to constantly emphasise that they are “not British”.
Another problem is that Ireland has not existed as a country in its own right and monolithic culture for that long, Ireland for most of its history was made up of warring kingdoms that saw each other as separate entities. The concept of “Irishness” is relatively new.
https://www.instagram.com/p/B5ZkUyKFyQ8/
The actors all got together to perform this drama, they began dressing like the Singhs. Some dressed themselves in blue as Nihangs, others dressed themselves as white Bhujangis [elite warriors].
From their Dumallas they had a Farla waving, appearing like the tail of a tiger [rising above the tiger’s head]. Across their waist they wear a ripped [as the Singhs were poor] Kachera, appearing as if this white band was the hair around a tiger’s neck.
Wearing a brownish torn shawl, [holding] rusted and broken weapons. Upon their head a Chakar [quoit] with a Khanda and iron chain, strapped, they are not lacking weapons at all.
Each individual is equipped with roughly 80 lbs of iron, arriving toward the King properly enraged, they roar the Victory call of ‘Akaal’ ! ‘Akaal’! Within the court they created a great commotion.
A nine-year-old boy was found to be beaten to death, with their parents fleeing.
Media are assuming some sectarian parents -perhaps some kind of exorcism beating? (yes, in 2019).
https://www.facebook.com/e1news/posts/2861594510519864?
Emphasis (in the parade Utu has posted in the 1930s) is showing about the physical strength of the athletes. (In parades after the war, emphasis is more on celebrating the traditional costumes and dances of the different nationalities.)
The strength of Soviet athletes, was demonstrated to be no joke, however. From 1950-1992 (when it was the unified team which won Barcelona Olympics 1992) – there is domination of the Soviet athletes in world sport.
Lawrence Welk Show has very technically good musicians, but its music seems to be trying to create for its audience the most mild emotion possible – something intentionally superficial, or which will not excite you too much.
It is like they believe creating too strong emotions for the audience with their music, would be bad manners.
The gap in the armour, seems to be when they have a Latin American singer – who sings about some passionate romance or something in Spanish (but assuming the audience does not speak Spanish, so they will not be too excited by the words).
If you can assume it was an older audience in 1960-1970 – then it’s possibly representing not 1960s American culture, but a culture more representative of the 1920s American attitude (when the audience were young)?
Every episode they have this genius girl to play rag-time piano. She copies African American performance style of smiling at the camera, to show she does not have to concentrate on her keyboard.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVY1g6YEBkc
If you consider that the Beatles, that launched the great pop music revolution that would follow, didn’t start their assault on a more sedate era, notwithstanding Elivic Presley’s hip gyrating antics, then the Lawrence Welk show accurately reflected music trends among an older audience of the 1960’s – 1970’s.
Lawrence was wise enough, however, to pepper his shows with many pop music hits from that era, belying the notion that he may somehow have been a braindead dinosaur tied to music from the past (including music from the 1920 – 1940’s, Cole Porter, Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie etc;).
https://youtu.be/nAQWMlpecP0
should be:
I suppose the immediate effect of WW2 was to increase nationalism. I wonder if that was also true in Germany though it was defeated.
This year I only caught about 5 seconds of the Macy’s parade. What I saw was a number of gyrating black teenage girls in legless costumes – it reminded me of Rio during Carnival. I doubt the Pilgrims would have improved.
The concept of “Irishness” is relatively new
Sorry but this is just wrong, the Irish called themselves Gaels, the Vikings arrived in Ireland and founded a number of settlements around the coast, they stayed long enough that they stopped speaking Norse slowly switching to using Irish, the Irish then called Vikings foreign Gaels. So they clearly had a concept of Irishness
If the warring kingdoms saw themselves as totally separate entities then they never would have had the title high King of Ireland (Ard Rí)
Some people from England and Northern Ireland like to make these claims to justify their historical crimes, but it matters little. Tiocfaidh ár lá
Should say “approved” instead of “improved.”
Apart from what AP noted, there’s a couple of critical observations – Eastern Europe was backwards around 1900 on account of late urbanization/literacy (which in turn was largely tied to climatic factors), and for most of the rest of the century was kept down by the innate inefficiencies of central planning. But now Russia is again back up to around Portugal’s level, as it was in 1913. If it remains at that location in another two decades, you’d have a point that there are probably deeper HBD or cultural factors keeping it backwards. But five years of sanctions and fiscal and monetary retrenchment is a pretty poor basis for making strong conclusions.
Perhaps. But you come to appreciate it when paying $12/month for 200 Mbps Internet, digital TV package, and unlimited data phone plan.
My guess is that they will end up substantially richer.
The Med countries are wracked by huge problems – brain drain, Third World emigration, and some of the most dysgenic fertility patterns in the developed world.
Also, the Med c.1913 had an advantageous starting point thanks to centuries of (relatively) high urbanization and, as a consequence, relatively high literacy. Eastern Europe, especially Russia, was just emerging from a state where almost 95% of the population had simply been peasants.
Italy was quite urban but were Portugal and Spain? By 1700 Lisbon was a big city (though it had less than half the population of London and Paris, the largest European cities at that time) but in 1700 Moscow was already more populous than Madrid.
It may take a long time under urbanization, with appropriate selection, to produce a people with the intellectual and temperamental characteristics necessary to maintain a wealthier modern urban society.
And the question (which I cannot answer) is how long will it take for a people selected over many centuries to be sly peasants adapted to their uncivilized village life (look out for their kin and neighbors, get away with what they can versus their landlords or other authorities), to become civilized burghers capable of collectively running a high trust modern urban society, a prerequisite for Western-levels of prosperity. The peoples under Poland and the Hapsburgs had a strong head start over the Russians and the Balkan peoples.
Same here, John.
Most of my ancestors lived to their early or mid-60s. This was in the considerably harsher climate of the Eastern Townships, Quebec. Of course, these were the ones lucky enough to live through infanthood and not get polio. But the ones who survived lived decent lives.
Of course my branch of the family has been “lucky” enough to become wealthy, big brain city people in Montreal. Diversity, divorce, atheism, sterility… aren’t we so fortunate.
The “backwards” family members still live out in the country. They are living into their 80s now, just like us, but are much happier people.
I wouldn’t doubt it Indian elite been using Muslim for diversity votes since the 20s
Nomadic tribes in Mongolia were far more advanced than previously thought; we’re only beginning to understand the depth and sophistication of their material culture:
https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/arcm.12413
By the time Mongols were invading Baghdad they were already operating as a major world civilization using not just bows but sieges, bombs, carrier pigeons, etc. India flourished under Mughal rule and came out more advanced that it had previously been. Much of the grand architecture of the world (such as the Qutub Minar or the Taj Mahal) was developed by Turks or Mongols. Many of the most iconic elements of Western European architecture (such as reflection pools) is infact a Mongol emulation. They were by no means less advanced than anyone.
If we go back further in time we find this has always been the case ; the nomadic steppe people from the Scythians to the Mongols were always the most advanced in the world and always the ones ruling the world, a 2000 year tradition of excellence.
Indian Mughal were not Mongols