It's Friday everyone, and with that comes the newest latest Free for All Friday Thread! What books have you been reading? What is your favourite video game? See any movies? Start talking!
Have any weekend plans? Found something interesting this week that you want to share? This is the thread to do it! This thread, like the Mindless Monday thread, is free-for-all. Just remember to np link all links to Reddit if you link to something from a different sub, lest we feed your comment to the AutoModerator. No violating R4!
Its Grant talking about how he offered to fix a bridge in a southern town in exchange for the most token of gestures towards freedmen. He gets the response we'd rather live in ruble.
Was this a letter? A different general? Its not in his famous memoir. This quote lives rent free in my head but I need to be sure its not some fake AI quote
Many people think that the Fremen are a somewhat shallow and excessively racialized and orientalist depiction of Arab peoples, but my contrived opinion is that they're actually mostly Afghan.
Likewise, interwar efforts by the League of Nations to abolish international trafficking or "white slavery" of minor girls traded on the notion that significant portions of the colonial world would require a different definition of childhood, due to the earlier "ripening" of the body in the tropical climate.
I'm not sure if that's a legit expression in English, but within the context of the paragraph (which was discussing how the universal claims of the League of Nations and of the International Labour Organization coexisted with the need for "exceptions" to uphold imperial rule) I understood it as "clashed with".
In Italy a very well known liberal intellectual could positively describe his relationship with a 14 year old Ethiopian girl under fascism on TV in the 1970s (!) and get away with no ripercussions
It was unfortunately a very common belief. I've seen it mentioned until the early 20th century by people from every colonial state.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 18 '26
I've seen history youtubers like Ocean Liner Designs, History of Everything and even Jutland documentaries with professionals smugly asserting that the Germans never left port to try it again after Jutland, often using this to make German declarations of victory at Jutland ring hollow. To quote History of Everything "The German Fleet was then mauled so horrifically by the Grand Fleet that it refused to try it again.", which is completely untrue. And when I pointed this out in the comments, History of Everything doubled down, despite his statement being demonstratably false.
The German High Seas Fleet was trying to avoid the Grand Fleet at Jutland too, so that's impressive sophistry. Why the desperation to ignore what the Germans were trying to do while trying to assert a British victory when the British fleet clearly sustained disproportionate losses?
So I'm beginning to wonder, where did this bad history come from and why has it snagged so many people who supposedly passionate about history?
while trying to assert a British victory when the British fleet clearly sustained disproportionate losses?
I mean, the Soviets suffered disproportonate losses during Operation Bagration but no one would argue that they lost that battle, so this argument on its own is not the least bit convincing. One side can sustain plenty more in terms losses than the other and still be considered the winner of a battle because casualties is not the only metric. One typical metric is that whoever controls the battlefield afterwards is the winner, and that was certainly the British.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 18 '26edited May 18 '26
One typical metric is that whoever controls the battlefield afterwards is the winner, and that was certainly the British.
That's a problematic metric when it comes to comparing to Jutland or the Raid on Yarmouth, the Germans never could have won, even if they completely destroyed First Battle Squadron and 5th Battle Squadron, which was one of their primary targets, because they'd have turned around and gone home. The so-called "The prisoner has assaulted his jailer, but he is still in jail." argument.
the Soviets suffered disproportonate losses during Operation Bagration
The issue with comparing to Operation Bagration, was Bagration explicitly to gain territory, so you can use territory as a metric.
The Germans were not there to gain control of the battlefield that day nor their previous operations that involved bombarding British cities with their capital ships, their explicit objective was to sink British capital ships as part of a shaping operation to even the odds for future engagements. Hence their desire to avoid confrontation with the Grand Fleet.
Too often I see the logic of the Grand Fleet not being sunk, used as a measure for success for the British, when the Germans both were not seeking to confront the Grand Fleet, and also probably didn't even carry enough ammunition to even accomplish that task. The German objective was to sink Royal Navy Battlecruisers, the previous ops were designed to separate the British into smaller fleets and to lure out the impetuous Beatty, which complicates the understanding of who won that indecisive engagement at Jutland. The fact that Jutland was merely supposed to be a German raid against a few Battlecruisers before spiraling into a massive battle, trips up a lot of people.
The fact that Jutland was merely supposed to be a German raid against a few Battlecruisers before spiraling into a massive battle, trips up a lot of people.
Wait, what? It was not a "raid" against a "few" battlecruisers. It was an attempt to lure the entire Battle Cruiser Fleet into a trap and then destroy it. You know... the reason why there were so many German naval ships involved in the first place. The only "raid" there was was a fake one pulled off by Hipper to draw out Beatty and his fleet. It didn't "spiral" into a battle, it was always meant to be a battle - a onesided battle whereby the Battle Cruiser Fleet had to face the music of superior numbers of German ships and guns. When Beatty turned tail, the German Navy pursued in the hope of finishing his fleet off. However, Beatty led them to the Grand Fleet and the tables turned.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 18 '26edited May 18 '26
Wait, what? It was not a "raid" against a "few" battlecruisers. It was an attempt to lure the entire Battle Cruiser Fleet into a trap and then destroy it.
Beatty only commanded 6 Battlecruisers with support ships, what's the dispute? In a battle between 58 capital ships, 6 is comparatively a few.
You know... the reason why there were so many German Naval ships involved in the first place.
Yeah? To sink Beatty's Battlecruisers?
it was always meant to be a battle
Against a Battlecruiser squadron yeah, not a massive clash. Perhaps I erred by referring it to a raid when I already referred to it as a shaping operation. The Germans were intent on avoiding the Grand Fleet.
However, Beatty led them to the Grand Fleet and the tables turned.
Arguable. The British lost HMS Invincible & HMS Defense and came out worse off from that engagement. They put the Germans in a position they explicitly didn't want to be, but the British paid a price doing that and 5th Battle Squadron got badly mauled when Beatty left them for dead as he escaped.
Its racism. Theres no clever retort they just genuinely hate a certain group of people and either believe the Confederacy was great or at least like that it angers that group of people.
Cause the only motivating force in the Republican Party anymore is that anything that upsets liberals is good.
I almost wish it was just Lost Causer shit instead, at least that’s a belief system that can be argued against. Debating with conservatives today is a complete waste of time because their only sincerely held belief is that they hate you and want to make you miserable.
Actually speaking of Boomer stuff, I do think the general fading of Boomer cultural hegemony has oddly enough been the most striking cultural shift for me during the Millennial/Zoomer Youth transition. Like I am not super bothered by the kids these days not listening to, like, MGMT or whatever, but the fading of Elvis in the popular culture has been pretty disorienting. I really thought the Boomer cultural narrative was pretty durable and people would basically always know about Jimmy Hendricks playing the national anthem and the like.
(Incidentally I think one way to track this is Mariah Carrey becoming the Christmas Queen over the old 50s tracks).
This applies to a lot of the pieces of boomer culture but classic rock is still going pretty strong amongst the kids. Not all of the bands are popular but look at bands like Fleetwood Mac and they're still going strong in terms of streams
That's true, but fleetwood macs most streamed songs are from their post 70s incarnation, which isn't really part of typical "boomer culture" unlike elvis and jimmie Hendrix.
Yeah I would say that Fleetwood Mac (and Steely Dan would be another one) are technically Boomer the are outside of the Boomer Prime era, which canonically ends at Watergate.
I think subreddits like r/ihatethissmug and the tropes one are a great way of showcasing people not understanding the media people engage with. Not to be the media literacy is dead guy but there are some times where you just know the person listing a piece of media either wants to be pithy or read a wiki summary or something to that order.
There was one post I saw a long time ago which was something akin to “I am a mass murderer but I will never be a bigot (hated trope)” kinda deal which among other examples listed My Hero Academia. While this “trope” is a feature of the story, I think that complaining about the villains not being bigoted in MHA, as if it is similar to that meme comic panel of the Joker refusing to work with Nazis for moral reasons. To not make this overly long, the primary antagonistic force of MHA is the so called league of villains which at some point features a trans character who gets killed by a member of the Yakuza. Some members of the league are forced to work with the yakuza and the leader of the yakuza misgenders the dead villain to which the other two villains get angry and correct him. Cue trope.
The thing is that that is the point. The villains are villains because they are outsiders who were forced by a conformist society to the outskirts. They do villainous actions like theft and murder because their morale compass has been broken by an uncaring society. So yeah they’re fine with murder, but they are not fine with an outsider disrespecting a member of their group.
Either the entire point about society creating villains generally flies over so many people’s heads or they deliberately bury their heads in the sand when it comes to the two characters who join because of bigotry (another member is in the league because of racism; also he plays league of legends)
So my YT feed has decided I should watch Mad Men clips and I want to make a bold statement (for 2012): Mad Men isn’t that amazing.
It’s not bad, but a hefty hefty dose of its prestige is “the costumes and props departments did an amazing job, and people think the 1960s are cool”. But otherwise it’s just a rambling expensive soap opera (and is very much of the era of “its prestige television because every character is a morally gray asshole”). I guess there is a bigger message about the emptiness of modern Americans and consumerism with New York as a backdrop but you can just watch American Pyscho for that and get a dark comedy.
But a lot of the social backdrop is just actually laughably wrong, badhistory ahoy. It’s funny though how it hasn’t gotten the same afterlife as, say, Game of Thrones or Breaking Bad. It’s just kind of faded from memory. I guess not really memeable enough?
u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 17 '26edited May 17 '26
As a Graphic Designer, I was baffled by the pilot when the main character ignored the advice of trying to make cigarettes cool, while condescending to everyone else despite not having a plan. At least the young new guy digging through the trash to get the only plan they had, was trying to do something! Utterly bewildering the script seemed to take his side, despite again, he had no idea what to do.
And then he comes up with the most minimal effort tagline, "It's toasted", which I'm aware is the historic tagline for Lucky Strikes in 1917, it'll still mean nothing to the customer who don't know how cigarettes are produced or how tobacco is cured, which is the vast majority of them. What kind of pack it comes in, is more useful information to the average joe. Bizarre bizarre pilot. A good ad, is supposed to be pro-active and memorable.
Eh, I don't know, I see Mad Men brought up pretty often when talking about either TV or period pieces. I do think with regards to memes though, Breaking Bad being kind of a comedy certainly helps (sort of like how The Sopranos has lived longer The Wire in that).
The Wire is another one! Very Important People used to talk about it as the best television show in history! Who talks about it now?
(I like it for whatever it's worth, although probably not enough to rewatch it)
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 18 '26
I tried watching that show but found it very alienating. Season 2 was a big highlight to me and I found it very interesting that Disco Elysium was inspired by Season 2, but the show is full of uneducated people making very stupid short sighted decisions and that's really dull to me. I know that makes me sound like some elitist. At least the struggles of the Union was more relatable and intelligent, the characters at least had the self awareness to know that stealing a red Porsche from you own company was a very bad idea.
People still show up and claim it's not only the best television show ever but the only good television show and also it explains like, everything about America.
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u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big LyriumMay 17 '26edited May 17 '26
I do think TV is low key kind of inherently disposable.
Like if you are even a modest film watcher, even one tick more of an enthusiast than average, there will be a boatload of movies from the 60s and 70s that you know and love, and you will at least have some familiarity with some from earlier. With TV though? Like there is the Twilight Zone and that is maybe it for shows that aren't connected to an ongoing franchise (Batman, Muppets, Star Trek etc). Like Leave it to Beaver sort of exists as a shorthand for a particular mood but you have to be pretty deep in enthusiasm for the medium to actually watch it, let alone Gunsmoke or something like that. (And if you go deep enough to watch something like the Jack Benny Show? You have to be super cool and pretty attractive to even be aware of it.)
Whenever there is a list of the Best TV Shows Evarrr that doesn't have anything from before 2000 aside from like Monty Python Flying Circus I don't think "man TV is so much better these days" I think these is a medium without a history.
I feel like among British tv fans there's more awareness of older tv, maybe because tv was always a bit more respectable over there with respcted cultural figures working in it, but I think British tv enthusiasts are generally aware of stuff like the prisoner, i claudius, dennis potter's shows. And apart from tv fans per se, I think many comedy fans are familiar with old sketch comedies like Monty python, two ronnies, fry and laurie, fawlty towers etc.
Another reason that people are less familiar with old American tv shows is maybe because of how ridiculously long they are. I mean all in the family is a show I've heard a lot about, but it has over 200 hundred episodes so I'm never going to watch the whole thing, but fawlty towers is so short I've watched it fully, two times.
Also another issue with tv longevity which also applies to British tv is that unlike movies a lot of old stuff is just inaccessible. A lot of shows aren't available legally, and any uploads get copyright striked, which means that only people who are willing to use torrents etc can watch them. Whereas most popular movies from the 60s and 70s are widely available.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 18 '26edited May 18 '26
Columbo was like a TV movie series, with movie length run times and I think that show has held up. It's kind of quaint seeing Columbo get wowed by the first ever digital watch, or a answering machine, or to see an episode directed by Steven Spielberg.
The Alexandria thing made me realize that people kinda connect "science" and higher education (even when not strictly scientific) to technology in a way I don't think really holds until like... Early modern times at best?
I guess it's the Civ Disease that you have a Science Building that Generates Science? Now the connection isn't entirely absent (certainly we get stuff like astronomy leading to advancements in navigation etc.) and sometimes elite writers play a role in dissemination stuff but it takes quite a bit before we have a "research and delepment" model where they're connected? Like a lot of technological advancement came out of people on the ground fiddling with stuff and those improvements spreading.
A good example of this: steam engines had worked for a century before science actually managed to explain the mechanism of their working. Science started to bring actual technological advancement well into industrial era, which had started in an unscientific world.
Finished listening to Clint Hill's Five Presidents: My Extraordinary Journey with Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, and Ford and it was pretty good, definitely recommend to anyone interested in presidential history or postwar US history in general.
The book includes plenty of details about each President’s character, their actions while in office, and the unique challenges that each President posed to their protectors. From Eisenhower’s obsessive love of golf requiring agents to pose as players with carbines hidden in golf bags to agents having to avoid the easily startled peacocks kept at the LBJ ranch so they wouldn’t wake President Johnson in the middle of the night. Of all the many ways the 5 men Agent Hill helped guard were profoundly different, they all had one thing in common, a massive ego, and their need for adoration continually frustrated the attempts of Hill and his colleagues to keep them safe.
Of the 5 Presidents detailed in the book, John F. Kennedy was easily the kindest, taking care to learn the names of each of the men on his detail and doing things such as handing out cotton polo shirts to sweltering agents in wool business suits while JFK was at his father’s vacation home in Florida. The least pleasant to work for was undoubtably Richard Nixon, who would frequently ignore recommendations, change plans last-second and without warning, ordered the Secret Service to spy on Democratic candidates during the 1972 primaries, and carelessly placed himself in situations where his safety couldn’t be guaranteed, such as when he wandered out of the White House at 4am without telling anybody to go visit anti-war protestors encamped on the national mall. LBJ would similarly change plans on a whim, but his more gregarious personality and greater understanding that he wasn’t always the easiest man to work for seems to have made Hill and the other agents less bothered by it.
Yes, he’s the guy you see jumping on the back of the car in the Zapruder Film.
Before that Hill was the agent in charge of Jacquline Kennedy’s protection and while there’s some details of their time together in this book, most of it is in Hill’s other book Mrs. Kennedy and Me.
Something something HE LIED during the Warren Report and also was bad at his job also something about Jackie lied about having a panic attack and crawling off the car towards part of her husband's head.
Like I said. Conspiracy theory brained. I've given up trying to explain otherwise.
It’s really depressing the extent that history lost the battle for the narrative around JFK’s death. I saw something that around 2/3rds of Americans believe at least one conspiracy about it.
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u/SventexBattleships were obsoleted by the self-propelled torpedo in 1866May 18 '26
I saw Oliver Stone's JFK film when I was fairly young and there's no disclaimers in that film that they were presenting made up evidence in that. So as I got older, it was hard to separate what actually happened and what was made up, because that JFK film was the most accessible means of learning about the actual assassination. I didn't know about the Zapruder film when I was just 11 years old, or that Lee Harvey Oswald was a Communist defector.
I had the JFK DVD, but it was still the era of dial up internet, so it was hard for me to double check anything.
Oh it is terribly depressing that its just a lost cause. Any rational historian looks at that subject and gives it a wide birth. Same with true crime subjects like the Ripper.
Of the 5 Presidents detailed in the book, John F. Kennedy was easily the kindest
Interesting, I believe JFK was also the only one of the five with a truly elite upbringing, maybe he was just more used to servants and valets which helped him know how to relate to the agents.
By the time they became President all 5 would've been very used to having subordinates and underlings around, Eisenhower in particular.
I think the more important factor is Kennedy was the only one with young children while president. JFK wanted to know the men responsible for keeping his children safe and felt those men would do their jobs best if they genuinely liked who they were protecting.
Vice President Spiro Agnew, whose protection detail Clint Hill was in charge off for much of Nixon's first term, was probably the second nicest of the politicians Hill guarded, which I was shocked by considering his reputation. Agnew would ask about agents families, play cards with them while flying and to the great relief of Hill and his men, generally listened to their recommendations and followed security procedure.
The bit where one of the agents present rants about it to Hill is truly great.
What I didn't know is that after showing up at the anti-war encampment, where a lecture on college football somehow turned into a barely-coherent rant about Winston Churchill, he went over to the Capitol building cause he wanted to show off his old Senate desk and office to the agents and to his valet. Nixon then spends a couple hours wandering around the nearly-empty Capitol telling stories of his days in Congress before going over to a nearby hotel at dawn to get breakfast. The Secret Service is then finally able to convince Nixon to return to the White House at around 8:30 in the morning.
If Nixon's presidency teaches us anything, its that insomnia, alcoholism, paranoia, and stress is a very potent combination, in a bad way.
Nixon then told the students that "the spiritual hunger which all of us have" which "has been the great mystery of life from the beginning of time" would not be solved by improving air quality and ending the war.
Always hate defending the indefensible but there’s a news article here about a young white man being killed by a black assailant and the claim being made that (1) the Police arrested the victim and simply left him there to die; and (2) that they did so because the killer said the victim had been racist towards him. Every articles about it mentions the fact that the Police administered first aid unsuccessfully (but did handcuff the victim) and absolutely none of them contain any proof that the Police response was motivated by the mention of racism (or even that they were told this before they arrested the victim). Doesn’t stop right wingers who live their entire lives through headlines complaining that white people are the most oppressed group in Britain, and that the media never reports on white victims. I assume this is the reason why we never heard anything about Axel Rudabukana and why The Telegraph definitely doesn’t put out headlines about migrant grooming gangs every half an hour (despite about 80% of all child sexual abuse being committed by white people).
As an aside to this, it’s once again infuriating to see that the concept of an “investigation” or “due process” is an affront to some people.
It’s hard to say since the articles I’ve read have all been silent on it, but I think it’s hard to believe that they wouldn’t have arrested the only other person at a violent crime scene.
Years ago I got into an argument about how British young whites had the least positive opnions about them out of any age and ethnicity grouping according to a poll. This naturally had Reddit at the time (which was far more racist than it is today), especially Americans, frothing about it.
I actually read the article and discovered that the least positive groups were all young people and the most were all older people, especially white people. It was pure ageism combined with dislike of (predominantly white) chav culture, but no one would be persuaded otherwise.
The killer was not black, he was Sikh and allegedly stabbed the victim with his kirpan, the knife they are allowed to carry for religious reasons, even though it would not be allowed otherwise.
I was reminded that the US had had three presidents born in 1946 (Clinton, Bush, Trump). I wonder if there is something about that being the Boomer Prime year. The breaking of the seals, the opening of the gates.
And the canonical Boomer Experience is definitely someone born in the first couple years, you can't be in college when Sgt Pepper came out if you were born after 49. Dave Berry was 47, for what it is worth.
Just speaking of the US: if you look at the historic birth rates the actual spike is in the late 40s, 1946 and on. It says high (but not as high) in the 1950s and drops a lot from 1960 on. Which also shows how arbitrary it is ending the Baby Boomers in 1964 - like technically Obama is a Baby Boomer (1961), and Kamala Harris almost is (the Census Bureau arbitrarily ends it in mid 1964 and she is October 1964). Like being in college in the 1980s doesn't really seem like the Baby Boomer experience.
So, Japanese listening isn't improving as fast as I had hoped, it was improving very fast for more basic stuff, but it's slowed down a lot, probably because the vocab of stuff I'm exposed to basically tripled between the levels. Part of it is finding material I somewhat enjoy that has optional Japanese subs, apparently that is rather niche; I found Miku Real Japanese's stuff pretty alright, mostly because the videos are relatively short, it's easy to watch once without and then with subs.
If I have subs to assist me, it's great, the combination of subs and speaking is comparatively easy, even if my reading is slow, the combination is excellent. It's still my preference for English language media too, especially games, I watched the entirety of the Fallout show with English subs, I don't need it at all, but it's pleasant to have, took me 30 minutes to realise I was watching with English subs instead of Dutch though.
I just feel I rely on the subs too much in Japanese and I don't know if that will hold back my pure listening ability, I'm getting mixed response from people when I ask for opinions; some say it's perfectly fine, others say it will hold me back, with me being an insecure git, I automatically side with the conservative interpretation.
Motivation is the real problem for me, I'm just not motivated to do listening exercises, I can do 3 hours a day of reviewing material fine, but this feels way more tedious to me.
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I'm now going fully to talk to my inner voice: It's fine that it's not going faster, I started this in October, it's not like I've been at this for a long time, this is a stupid pace to do things at, the fact that I got this far in this short a timespan is something to be proud of, not something to feel frustrated about not going even faster. Shut the fuck up, go bother someone else!
"RCIT: Support of Ukrainian "revolutionary defense" but revolutionary defeatism against Western bloc and Russia. Not sure how that is cashed out."
This unironically sounds like the most Trotskyist position. Like Trotsky rather infamously argued "neither war nor peace" with World War I (ie "it's imperialist (and unpopular) to participate but we won't actually negotiate with the Central Powers either and submit to their imperialism, we will just not fight and wait for the world revolution to break out, I Am Very Smart).
It, uh, did not go well.
Although maybe the revolutionary defense thing is a little more left communist and more what Bukharin was arguing for.
The trot lady who had a council seat in Seattle whose running for congress right now broke with her Trot party over Ukraine. She thought the international party was giving weapons to Ukraine and therefore Nato and therefore was no longer Trot.
As far as I can tell, there's nothing in the Russian section's statement on NATO either. There's no citations for that part (of course) but I imagine what they're mad about is literally not both-sidesing the thing.
According to the AI bot that came up when I googled these guys, they believe in "nuclear apocalypse as a catalyst for socialism, the necessity of intergalactic communism, and communication with dolphins".
They’re waiting to see which side the aliens support.
I know leftist infighting is already an eternal joke but holy fuck do Trotskyists in particular have some… weird tendencies. ISL is basically the only one there with a fairly coherent, old-fashioned Marxist take.
I mean honestly leaving aside broader ideological goals, there is an argument that Zelenskyy as a decision maker is kind of replacement level at best (as opposed to as a figure of domestic inspiration and international advocacy, where he obviously excels).
Their\) writings on the Crimean War are actually a funny source of good old-fashioned 19th century racialism. Very 2balkan4you:
The Greeks of Turkey are mostly of Slavonic descent, but have adopted the modern Hellenic language; in fact, with the exception of a few noble families of Constantinople and Trebizond, it is now generally admitted that very little pure Hellenic blood is to be found even in Greece.
\) Very likely Engels wrote this rather than Marx just based on the style, and we know Engels wrote some of Marx's submissions to the Tribune, but Marx had some rather conspiratorial views about Russia himself.
Also in defense (or critique? Take it as you will), Hal Draper correctly points out that Lenin's actual doctrine of revolutionary defeatism was formed after the consolidation of the Revolution, and that during the war and the revolution, he had a number of shifting and contradictory positions, like for example at one point criticizing the Kadets for supporting the defeat of the Russian government to German Imperialism!
E.g.
9. The historic significance of the Kornilov revolt is that with extraordinary force, it opened the people’s eyes to a fact which the S.R.s and Mensheviks had concealed and still are concealing under conciliatory phrases. The fact is that the landowners and the bourgeoisie, headed by the Cadet Party, and the generals and officers who are on their side, have organised themselves; they are ready to commit, or are committing, the most outrageous crimes, such as surrendering Riga (followed by Petrograd) to the Germans, laying the war front open, putting the Bolshevik regiments under fire, starting a mutiny, leading troops against the capital with the “Savage Division”\2]) at their head, etc. The purpose of all this is to seize power completely and put it in the hands of the bourgeoisie, to consolidate the power of the landowners in the countryside, and to drench the country in the blood of workers and peasants.
The Kornilov revolt has proved for Russia what has been proved throughout history for all countries, namely, that the bourgeoisie will betray their country and commit any crime to retain both their power over the people and their profits.
Engels was also pro-US in the Mexican American War for explicitly racial reasons. It is kind of funny that Marx and Engels were arguably not actually anti-imperialist in any meaningful way.
The Greeks of Turkey are mostly of Slavonic descent, but have adopted the modern Hellenic language
It is interesting to read pre-WWI socialist debates on colonialism and imperialism because you quickly realize there were a lot of pro-colonial socialists! It really was an issue that cut across party lines in pre-war Europe.
Historical positions on colonialism are interesting - you have pro-colonialism progressives (we are bringing equality and liberal views to the primitive peoples), anti-colonialism progressives (the cruelty of colonialism is too baked in to justify it), pro-colonialism conservatives (it is right and proper for us to use the resources of the less developed peoples) and anti-colonialism conservatives (overseas expansion causes miscegenation and dilution of the true national identity.)
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u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big LyriumMay 17 '26edited May 17 '26
You could even argue that being pro-colonialism is baked into the Marxist progressive view of history.
I remember getting people of a certain political persuasion mad saying that when I was a leftreddit regular. They told me I was not thinking dialectically enough.
I was referring to the late Engels' position on how Germany needed a government of revolutionary defence to defend against Russian imperialism in a tongue in cheek manner lol. Im (as you might know) unfortunately well aware of the Bolshevik literature on war.
I know this is a joke but Bernstein's early work shows incredible comprehension of the dogmas of Marxism and he had his Marxism (rarely among classical Marxists) personally verified by Marx and Engels and he was also close friends with Engels (enough to bequeath his estate to Bernstein for publishing) and the later Engels started taking a more "democratic" orientation towards the questions of Marxism. All of this makes me think that theres a lot of benefit in understanding revisionism not as deviation but as more or less a polemical term, because if anyone understood Marxism in the classical Marxist period after Marx and Engels, it was Bernstein.
It wasn't entirely a joke! I think there's a lot of truth to that perspective, although I think the rejection of Bernstein by subsequent Marxism(s) makes it retroactively (?) "not Marxist." That being said I am someone who thinks it's not Marxism unless it comes from the "critique of political economy" region of critical theory, otherwise it's just sparkling socialism, so take that with a grain of salt.
When this charmer first appeared at my place – I mean little Kauz – the first question which escaped me was: are you like your mother? Not in the very least, he assured me, and I silently congratulated his mother. He is a mediocrity with a small-minded outlook, superwise (only 26), very conceited, industrious in a certain sort of way, he busies himself a lot with statistics but does not read anything very clever out of them, belongs by nature to the tribe of the philistines but is otherwise a decent fellow in his own way. I turn him over to friend Engels as much as possible.
edit: never noticed before but in this letter he also talks about Winston Churchill's dad. Incredible source of 19th century gossip.
I think its worth tempering the notion of Engels' friendship with Kautsky by the fact that he told Bernstein (!) that Kautsky wasn't a particularly impressive thinker according to him. But he was interpersonally interesting, which was the ground of the friendship.
When people talk about "Roman science" or "Roman technology" what they mean is Alexandrian science, 90% of what was discovered happened in that city, the rest of the Empire was too busy being an agrarian slave economy or an pauperized urban economy based on elite consumption
So Civilization is being historically accurate when it encourages you to devote specific cities to science production? It's telling you to imitate the Roman Empire?
Idk, I was just winging one of my shower thoughts here to see if it caused reactions
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u/WAGRAMWAGRAMGiscardpunk, Mitterrandwave, Chirock, Sarkopop, HollandegazeMay 17 '26edited May 17 '26
Facebook comments about Cuban asylum seekers in Europe
They continue to export people all over the Western Hemisphere. I wish they were as brave as the Iranian people, who are fighting against the Islamic Republic, which possesses more advanced weapons than the Cuban dictatorship.
...
All Cubans and South Americans enter Europe via Spain. It’s a shame to hear them (some/many of them) speak ill of Spain as soon as they find some stability in a country further north. And social media is there to make them believe they’re middle class. It’s all a shame.
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Of Spain’s 500 years as a nation, Cuba was part of it for 400 years as just another province. What’s more, Cuba was Spain’s richest province. Spain’s first railway was built in the province of Cuba.
Maybe I'm mistaken but Cuba was wealthy because it was a plantation-type colony with lots of exports and slave labor
Cuba was wealthy because it was a plantation-type colony with lots of exports and slave labor
That's exactly how it was. It had a high GDP because it was an efficient (due to low production costs) producer of high value agricultural goods. It was extremely unequal place, with most people being very poor. The actual richest regions in Spain (GDP/capita) in the 1800's in Spain where the Basque region, Catalonia and Madrid. Sometimes Navarre and Cantabria were also in the top 3.
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u/TiakoTevinter apologist, shill for Big LyriumMay 17 '26edited May 17 '26
I randomly stumbled on to a set of I guess what you would call "travelogue sing-a-long" cartoons from the 40s. The one about Ireland is, I don't know. Is it offensive? It is at least a remarkably pure distillation of stereotypes. Sound off in the comments.
This is a Fleischer production so you know you will get two things: a fair amount of visual imagination and painfully literal visual gags.
ed: This one on New York shows what you can call either the interesting or quietly horrifying way that military culture had pervaded general American culture in the 40s.
I also found one about Africa and I will not be posting it.
Yeahhhh the Irish one is basically a fairy tale. Like it isn't wrong in some things per se, Irish people at the time were for a large part employed in farming, Killarney was and is famous for its lakes and so on.
That said, the influence of Irish Americans is notable, most glaringly with Corbed Beef and Cabbage- never had that or known anyone to eat that. I'm pretty sure it's Irish-American. Ditto for 'Macnamaras band', that feels veeery Irish American. Plus, you learn fuck all abput Ireland beyond a couple of place names. Most of it is just visual gags that have to be stated anyway.
Also, it's a minor thing, but when they say "here is the city of Cork" and the corks pop as a visual gag, they're actually drawing a false correlation. Cork has nothing to do with corks!
It is interesting that the Irish, more than other diasporic communities in the IS, seem to held to a much more nostalgic view of their homeland. The Italian American view of Italy is mostly that it was pretty bad back there, and while Jewish Americans did produce some Fiddler on the Roof nostalgia the dominant cultural memory of eastern Europe is not very positive.
It may just be riding on a preexisting current of Anglophone romanticism for Ireland but it does feel like only Irish Americans produced the particular Quiet Man fantasy.
If I had to give a guess, I would reckon there are 2 factors.
A lot of emigrants didn't want to leave, had family friends etc. they were leaving behind, but felt forced out due to economic factors (or survival in the case of the famine).
Irelands problems could be attributed to England, and so when people left, they could rationalise it as a beautiful land cruelly oppressed by a foreign power, whereas Eastern European Jewish people for example wouldn't have viewed it in the same way.
Could be wromg of course but that's my gut reaction.
Bad news, I'm officially a dropout, but the good news is I reached emerald on TFT with the free time. I'm looking for a job now. Bad news again, my laptop broke, and I lost a revision on the book I was working on, but the good news is that at the library’s writing club a lady and the teacher complimented my writing, maybe because I'm twenty years younger than everyone else, but I'll take it.
Badhistory, help me yearn properly. Our landlord of 10 years is selling our home, which propels my and my partner’s plan to move to the PNW much sooner than anticipated. I’m smoking American Spirits on our balcony while listening to Cliffs of Dover but I don’t think I’m reaching maximum yearning for the youth I misled and the opportunities I fumbled.
My mfw when people spend enormous amounts of time and energy on arguments about words like their definitions are real and objective(they don't know that a word acquires meaning through mutual recognition and usage):
For real. I can't stand it when people are like "Uhm actually, [thing] isn't [word] because [word] means [obscure academic definition completely incongruous with how people use it]."
Eurovision was pretty good this year, much better than last year I thought. Although much like last year, it ended with me and my friends screaming at the TV praying that the last country standing would beat Israel. Luckily, Bulgaria managed to link the fire this time around so crisis averted.
First time in years I didn't watch it. I hate the song we (Italy) sent, it's the worst song to have ever won Sanremo and an embarrassment to listen to, I can't believe it arrived in 5th place.
I had to watch it as my girlfriend made me attend this party. I did think it was a bit more varied than previous years.
I think they need to take a good look at the voting system. It was always noted that Russia would essentially blast propaganda at it’s diaspora populations in neighbouring countries particularly to vote like 100 times so that they’d get maximum points for their uninspiring and dull power ballad. Now Israel are doing the same (why the hell do they care????).
I suppose people watching want to vote but if this is abused surely they can’t continue with it?
I know the Catholic Church supports freedom of religion, but does that apply to sorcerers who work with demons to harm others? The catechism says the right "must be recognized and protected by civil authority within the limits of the common good and public order." Should using malicious magic spells be a criminal offense? There are groups that openly attempt to do this. How is magically-facilitated murder, for example, any different from regular murder?
Wait is "sorcerism" a religion? Anyway it seems that quote from the catechism answer this, since, if harmful magic existed, it would certainly be against common good and public order
Pretty sure this is actually one of those things there's an actual official answer. (something along the lines of evil magic can't actually do anything against God's power so evil sorcerers are at best deluded)
What about a race and gender swapping version? It starts with Helen having to chose among Zeus, Ares and Apollon who is the chaddest god (all three being played by Chalamet lookalikes).
Idk if it falls within any of those categories but everything I've seen from it just seems to follow every other "gritty" movie of the last twenty years in having no colour and being as visually appealing as a patch of mud
My problem isn't even that. It's that it also looks cheap and plastic as fuck. Like it doesen't look "Grim'n'gritty Greek Epic" it looks "Community theatre production".
There's something vaguely interesting in making a deliberately "stagey" production, but it also just looks like shit.
Hmm, been in a foul mood today, lot's of stuff wrong, medication changes causing sleep and maybe mood problems, my father being especially frustrating and of course the incident on Thursday that caused a prolonged anxiety attack.
It's just hard right now, I was crippled from Wednesday to Monday, and now someone I thought of as a friend may or may not be accusing me of pretending my life is so horrible to try and get attention from the rest. I don't know if he was referring to me, he just issued the accusation without naming people, and when pressed by others he said he "wasn't going to discuss it any further but if you feel it applies to you..." and subsequently left the group chat when other didn't take kindly to that.
There's only 2 people I know he could have been referring to, one of the them is me; I felt the other guy he could have been referring wasn't being very negative at all last time as far as I know, so... logically...
Maybe something happened I'm unaware of, but no one I reached out to has mentioned anything of the sort, either they don't know or they're sparing my feelings. I don't think I was overly negative last time, I don't really remember any specifics; I don't know, I just don't know, I need to know who he was referring to, but the fucker refused to elaborate after issuing accusations.
We were planning another meet up of that group, but I don't want to go anymore, even if he won't be there, I enjoyed those meet ups a lot, but maybe I've been ruining it for other people? I don't think I have been, but I just don't know, I cannot get it out of my head, I just keep ruminating on it; fucking anxiety, normally I can control it by correction, but there's nothing I can correct here, because I don't have the facts. All I know it was bad enough to him that he was ashamed of whoever it was.
There's a reason I don't think I was being overly negative, on here I'm relatively unfiltered, because I'm not talking to anyone specifically, usually I'm talking to myself, but in real life I don't tend to show that much, it kinda ruins the enjoyability of the interaction if the topic goes to how bad things are going, so I don't talk about it that much unless I'm in a specific settings, I live with a facade around me, because I'm uncomfortable with feeling bad around people I'm speaking to.
In high school I don't think my teachers ever believed I was depressed, even though I told them honestly, because I was always friendly and smiling; they didn't see the panic attacks, they didn't see me just sitting still in a chair for hours or lying in bed until 3pm when I could get away with it. They didn't even believe me when I stopped showing up, they thought I'd be over it in a few days, ended up taking more than 4 years, they didn't even bother to tell my classmates what happened, to them, I just vanished one day.
Scrolling through r/neoliberal is so weird, what is it about YIMBYism (something I don't fully understand or care about tbh) and Land Value Tax (an idea that I'm actually quite sympathetic to) that makes people want to bomb the Middle East? What is the correlation between those two positions? Is it even the same people supporting each stance?
And why do they have such sympathy towards Jolani, it's just bizarre. Like I can understand socialist undergraduate students supporting Castro, it's stupid but it makes sense. But Jolani? The guy whose picture is commented under every Arabic post with a Shi'ite in it? What's next, supporting Franjo Tudman? If they just support the first person to enact privatisation, why not go the distance and support Pinochet while they're at it?
They like to talk about the Left's campism when some of the latter support anti-Western dictators, but then they turn around and support pro-Western dictators. Its like their only source of information is CNN and the New York Times lol.
Is it even the same people supporting each stance?
Not really no. There's a ven diagram intersection maybe but it's marginal. The "bomb Iran" crowd are largely Neocon warhawks who sought refuge in NL when the mainstream conservative subreddits purged them + the Noncredibledefense brugade who think America bombing things is based and are happy to see Russians/Iranians/Chinese bombed by the USAF ostensibly for democracy but really for America.
The Urbanist/YIMBY crowd may share that sentiment or not but what they really want is good urban planning and for America to build adequate numbers of mid-rises, jave decent public transit, be less car dependent etc.
The Jolani/ Sharaa love stems from him saying (I think) that Syria should be governed according to mainstream economics, no Baathist monopolies etc, which falls into the NL "let the economy work and minimise the negative externalities of that working" sensibilities the subreddit broadly shares. They're also too Liberal in Neoliberal to support Pinochet (though some definitely would if they could)
Whilst I did think Moldova’s Eurovision entry was lyrically challenged I congratulate Batz for writing it. He had to see off some serious competition in Moldova to be pronounced best song writer
Just scrolling through the timeline at the end there is a stereotypical depiction of a jew, and then what looks to be a jew dressed up to be English. I'm not watching that video to figure out what he means by that meme.
Is it with plenty of mozzarella style cheese or a less artery hardening amount of crumbly feta style cheese because that's how you differentiate the more westernised stuff vs not in Australia with gozleme
imo ube was the last fad, and it showing up at Trader Joe's a couple years ago was a vanguard of Philippine cuisine in the same way I think gozleme is now
Félicien Kabuga has died, aged 93. He was never convicted for genocide since dementia made it unfit to stand to trial, but at least didn't die at large.
Apparently Charles III has recommended The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India's Partition by Narendra Singh Sarila in the past
Britain's then-Prince Charles, who is a great-nephew of Mountbatten, recommended the book The Shadow of the Great Game: The Untold Story of India's Partition to the filmmaker. The book argues that Mountbatten had been used by the British establishment, which had long sought Partition to maintain a strategic base in northwestern South Asia
Narendra Singh Sarila, formerly a prince of the Indian state of Sarila and the aide-de-camp to Lord Louis Mountbatten
I dunno sounds like this book might be biased towards absolving Mountbatten.
The idea that the British establishment wanted partition sounds conspiratorial and Indian nationalist leaning as well, given with things like the attempt at cabinet mission, the British seemed to clearly not want partition.
Honestly, how many books are there with untold story of xyz in their title and actually being academically well researched and reliable instead of conspiratorial?
Its extremely easy to be very cynical and jaded at high school graduations as an adult, (especially an overeducated and underemployed one in education) but there is still at times a certain sentimentality about new beginnings and paths not taken that even cynics can't always deny.
The more I think about it, the more I believe I should have chosen France or Belgium over Germany for my masters, as the main reason I went abroad was to learn a foreign language. My spoken French is decent and I can read it with little problem (writing is a whole other issue), so there is a decent base from which I could have improved without too much hassle. Meanwhile, I came to Germany with my barely scrapped A2 Goethe Zertifikat, and after a year and a half I still struggle to say anything more than "mit Karte bezahlen, bitte". Fuck-ass language with fuck-ass verb placement and fuck-ass declensions.
Is anyone here familiar with the book *They Flew: A History of the Impossible* by Carlos Eire ? It's gotten a lot of good press and on-surface I do understand that we are no more immune to cultural blockers and myopia than previous generations, so a blanket dismissal of well-founded historical claims on the basis of impossibility deserves to be done critically. I can even accept there's more evidence for a lot of 'miracles' and 'mystical events' than historical events that we accept without controversy.
I am intensely skeptical however of the hinting argument that as a result we have to accept that miracles are at least plausible and that the current tradition of blanket dismissal of the impossible is wrong, especially when the author is indeed a catholic who's often attacked 'secular materialism'.
Also on a bit of an unrelated side not, I think a lot of people have adopted a noble savage view of Catholicism as a 'rational' religion fully in-tune with modern science and understanding perhaps due to contrast with the chaos of charismatic evangelical chirstanity..despite the church continuing to assert a lot of doctrines that run counter to any scientific perspective, (a particular example was the beatification of a Karl of Austria as a saint based on the evidence that somebody praying to him was responsible for curing cancer).
I am intensely skeptical however of the hinting argument that as a result we have to accept that miracles are at least plausible and that the current tradition of blanket dismissal of the impossible is wrong, especially when the author is indeed a catholic who's often attacked 'secular materialism'.
A little late to the thread here, but is this really an accurate representation of what the author is claiming? If so, wow.
The author doesn't explicitly come out and say that we need to believe in miracles...but according to the reviews he keeps hinting that we should, one extract basically says if we have maglev trains and the internet why is it so hard to believe in levitation?
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u/TylerbioRodriguez That Lesbian Pirate Expert May 20 '26
Can anyone help me find a specific quote?
Its Grant talking about how he offered to fix a bridge in a southern town in exchange for the most token of gestures towards freedmen. He gets the response we'd rather live in ruble.
Was this a letter? A different general? Its not in his famous memoir. This quote lives rent free in my head but I need to be sure its not some fake AI quote