Kinda gross how chauvinist americans are in taking the default term “politics” instead of “US politics” while ignoring international affairs. It was gross on reddit and it’s gross here.

They are absurd and it’ll probably be a good thing when we’ve got past their existence. But the problem here is that proving surgery is essentially impossible. It’s quite unlike drugs that you can test for. Maybe implants you could test for but that’s just one thing, and I’m not sure that beauty pageants even have the kind of budget required for advanced tests.

I think it would have been fair to have a rule saying “no surgical modifications”…

How are you intending to prove that that? Only the bad surgery makes itself obvious.

This isn’t just mildly interesting. We should be considering methods of air cooling that do not use any carbon in order to avoid aircon usage becoming a contributor to the climate problem as things get hotter and hotter.

This would be a useful additional feature, I think the shock value of the method I’m suggesting would have potential to interest at least some press outlets (probably not the major ones who would recognise it as damaging to the people they represent though). You need some novelty in this kind of thing to get it to spread.

That’s kinda the point. Being able to see just how few people own literally everything and thus are influencing opinion through means that people currently completely overlook is powerful. Advertising is literally propaganda. Consumer culture is propaganda. When you cut through that and make people conscious of it on a constant minute to minute basis you will see rapid radicalisation occur. Our society relies on a system of carefully designed barriers that create separation between the people and the ruling class in a way that is unnoticeable to the average person without prompting.

Think of it like pulling back the curtain in the wizard of oz for people.

I’ve always believed it would be useful to have a thing like this but for brand logos.

But instead of blurring or blocking the brand logo like an adblocker what it does instead is show you the face of the top shareholder in that brand. Remove the brands and show the assholes that own them. Where it’s not a single person you replace that brand with the name of the hedgefund or bank that owns the investment.

It would bring people’s attention away from brand consumerism and to a constant consciousness of the ruling class looming over them in everything.

Educated people in general have to say on politics the same things that I said earlier, but they are very nostalgic over less criminalized popular culture, better technical education and rules being followed. So am I to some extent actually.

In Moscow? You’re not being fair. Educated people in the soviet union from Moscow lived extremely well and have very positive views. Engineers, scientists, etc will all say positive things. You know as well as I do that hundreds of video interviews will confirm this. Be fairer, claiming that everyone that supports the ussr among the over 60s is just uneducated is definitely untrue. This particular video series is in Moscow and this lady is exactly what I am talking about.

You can’t live in Moscow and say this is untrue. You’re being unfair.

No recollection at all, I’m 1996, but since transition from USSR to modern Russia didn’t happen in an instance, in various institutions and organizations you can still see in some ways how it was. More in my childhood than now, but still.

Brought up in shock therapy then.

if you weren’t in denial.

I’m not in denial. I’m asking you to be fairer. The data does not support your position. You know as well as I do that 75% of the country consider the soviet era to be when the country was at its greatest (and that this is easily verifiable from many sources), and you know damn well that 75% of the country aren’t all uneducated people. You are not being fair.

Educated people in general have to say on politics the same things that I said earlier, but they are very nostalgic over less criminalized popular culture, better technical education and rules being followed. So am I to some extent actually.

In Moscow? You’re not being fair. Educated people in the soviet union from Moscow lived extremely well and have very positive views. Engineers, scientists, etc will all say positive things. You know as well as I do that hundreds of video interviews will confirm this. Be fairer, claiming that everyone that supports the ussr among the over 60s is just uneducated is definitely untrue. This particular video series is in Moscow and this lady is exactly what I am talking about.

You can’t live in Moscow and say this is untrue. You’re being unfair.

No recollection at all, I’m 1996, but since transition from USSR to modern Russia didn’t happen in an instance, in various institutions and organizations you can still see in some ways how it was. More in my childhood than now, but still.

Brought up in shock therapy then.

if you weren’t in denial.

I’m not in denial. I’m asking you to be fairer. The data does not support your position. You know as well as I do that 75% of the country consider the soviet era to be when the country was at its greatest (and that this is easily verifiable from many sources), and you know damn well that 75% of the country aren’t all uneducated people. You are not being fair.

I live in Russia and you do not.

Which area of Russia do you live in and what do the local people over 60 that actually lived in the USSR have to say? I already know of course and could post video interviews of such, but perhaps you could tell the thread what those people say.

Forgive me for assuming but I’m willing to bet you’re in your teens or twenties, making you at best 10 years old when it ended, meaning you have little to no actual recollection of what living and working was like. I could be wrong of course.

Of course nobody wants the same shit, I don’t want the same shit either, I know for sure that the hard left of mszp sit around where I am. Things can be so much better.

And? Socialism does not mean not having a multiparty system. I get that you’re trying to imply that approving of a multiparty system or a market economy is somehow evidence of being against socialism but both of those things exist under socialism. Yugoslavia was a market economy in eastern europe under socialism.

These polls are really out of date. These numbers have since improved substantially in capitalism’s favour.

Feel free to give citations that are better than 2010-2016 lmao.

Implying capitalism does not regularly do mass killings.

7 out of 11 countries believe the end of the USSR harmed their countries rather than benefited them

Reflecting back on the breakup of the Soviet Union that happened 22 years ago next week, residents in seven out of 11 countries that were part of the union are more likely to believe its collapse harmed their countries than benefited them. Only Azerbaijanis, Kazakhstanis, and Turkmens are more likely to see benefit than harm from the breakup. Georgians are divided.

Hungary: 72% of Hungarians say they are worse off today economically than under communism

A remarkable 72% of Hungarians say that most people in their country are actually worse off today economically than they were under communism. Only 8% say most people in Hungary are better off, and 16% say things are about the same. In no other Central or Eastern European country surveyed did so many believe that economic life is worse now than during the communist era. This is the result of almost universal displeasure with the economy. Fully 94% describe the country’s economy as bad, the highest level of economic discontent in the hard hit region of Central and Eastern Europe. Just 46% of Hungarians approve of their country’s switch from a state-controlled economy to a market economy; 42% disapprove of the move away from communism. The public is even more negative toward Hungary’s integration into Europe; 71% say their country has been weakened by the process.

Romania: 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism

The most incredible result was registered in a July 2010 IRES (Romanian Institute for Evaluation and Strategy) poll, according to which 41% of the respondents would have voted for Ceausescu, had he run for the position of president. And 63% of the survey participants said their life was better during communism, while only 23% attested that their life was worse then. Some 68% declared that communism was a good idea, just one that had been poorly applied.

Germany: more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR

Glorification of the German Democratic Republic is on the rise two decades after the Berlin Wall fell. Young people and the better off are among those rebuffing criticism of East Germany as an “illegitimate state.” In a new poll, more than half of former eastern Germans defend the GDR.

28 percent of Czechs say they were better off under the Communist regime

Roughly 28 percent of Czechs say they were better off under the Communist regime, according to a poll conducted by the polling institute SC&C and released Sunday.

81% of Serbians believe they lived best in Yugoslavia

A poll shows that as many as 81 per cent of Serbians believe they lived best in the former Yugoslavia -”during the time of socialism”.

Majority of Russians

The majority of Russians polled in a 2016 study said they would prefer living under the old Soviet Union and would like to see the socialist system and the Soviet state restored.

The above memes are almost always made by Americans, whose brains are riddled with red scare brainworms and are completely devoid of any knowledge or understand of what the left thinks in Europe because Americans do not have a left.

Ahh yes we can just wait for the rich to willingly reduce their profits. I’m sure that will come before the heat death of the planet.

In this thread: Shit loads of people who will say they care about the climate crisis on one day, then say they don’t care about the 18.5% of global carbon emissions that the meat industry causes the next day because they can’t get over the decade worth of anti-veganism jokes and memes that they’ve constantly repeated uncritically.

Individual habits MUST be changed to solve this part of the problem, there is literally no way around that. Getting triggered and writing screeds because you’ve spent decades getting caught up in hate over food choices won’t stop the planet burning.

Growth reaches a saturation point and now they have to cannibalise every single thing in order to continue growth (in company values). This comes at the expense of product quality for the person using it but that’s fine if you have no competition because everything is a monopoly.

The capitalist system is the problem. The system will ALWAYS reach this endpoint for as long as it is a system that demands infinite growth.

Yes. I could not give a shit about “territorial integrity”. This is nationalism. I’m not a nationalist, I don’t like states especially bourgeoise states.

You are putting nationalism ahead of people’s lives.

That’s for the Ukrainians to decide

No it isn’t. It’s for the Ukrainian rulers to decide. The people don’t get any choice in it, that’s the problem. And everyone that opposed this war was rounded up and arrested, every left wing party in the country was shut down, and the left wing tv channels were also shut down, all under the “they’re pro russia” excuse simply for being against the war. There is no “let the ukrainians decide” under that environment.

There is an easy way to end the war: Russian withdrawal. It really is as simple as that.

Not physically possible under russian law.

While we all want the war to stop, it cannot be done at any price. Ukraine must be allowed to return the areas stolen from it and Russia must return to pre 2014 borders. Either they do it willingly or with force. No one likes it, but it’s Russia that chose to attack, not Ukraine.

Again, this is not possible under Russian law. The notion that it’ll be done with force is similarly unrealistic, nukes would fly before these were taken by force. But before that happens you’d have to see the removal of the Russian warships off the coast which will be obliterating anything that comes near Crimea. It just isn’t ever happening without a navy or an airforce.

I hope your friends are safe, but at the same time I hope they have the sense to leave Crimea until things settle.

They’re fine for now. It’s relatively quiet there because the defensive line is so far away, barring these bridge incidents.

And let’s hope for peace, but recognize that it cannot be achieved by giving into the offender’s demands.

We’d be there already if not for boris fucking johnson. I really don’t know why you care about the “offender’s demands” either. Are you a nationalist? People are what matter. I could not give a shit about what flag exists between the two, right now it’s just a situation where two extremely shit sides throw thousands of lives into a meatgrinder and all I want to see is the meatgrinder stop.