General Discussion Thread - Juche 112, Week 33

right here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tianmen_Mountain

It's bigger than it looks in the picture. You're going to need a lot of paint.

if you don't like my electrical grid, just use another one!

I've heard of this being done intentionally in many countries, as (partially) self-sustaining households cut into the profits of electricity companies. Spain is an infamous example, though they seem to have ended the practice in 2019.

Legislation introduced in 2013 by Spain’s then-ruling Popular Party made it compulsory for any individual or company to hook their solar panels up to the national grid to be metered and taxed, or face fines running into millions of euros.

CIA finna tap my phone and wire my house only to find out I'm a pretty boring guy

After a local newspaper reported that Webb had died from multiple gunshots, the coroner's office received so many calls asking about Webb's death that Sacramento County Coroner Robert Lyons issued a statement confirming Webb had died by suicide.[71] When asked by local reporters about the possibility of two gunshots being a suicide, Lyons replied "It's unusual in a suicide case to have two shots, but it has been done in the past, and it is in fact a distinct possibility."

When? Did those cases also happen to involve people who challenged the CIA?

People of high school and university age actually go pursue an education and aren't wage slaves? That's terrible the east has fallen!

The icing on the cake was how they said China's economy had a growth of 4-5%. They said that this would be really good for a European country, but for China it is BAD lmao. Meanwhile the EU is committing economic suicide on virtually all levels.

It's setting up the narrative for when China needs to be rescued from itself.

Imperialist elmo would be a good bit ngl

They’re working on it

Oh I've seen alt right playbook plenty, its very good, but thank you very much anyway.

It would appear to be a custard tart with raspberries and most likely cream, but I suppose it could be "white chocolate" or icing or something like that

Babylon 5. Despite when it was made (in the immediate aftermath of the end of the USSR and all that "end of history" nonsense) it's got a lot of remarkably good takes that aged very well. The show's creator is a student of history. A running theme through the series is "fascists can't be negotiated with, they need to get walled". The show's creator wrote almost all the episodes: 92 out of 110. And most of the ones he didn't write were early in the show's run. Characters just got more and more consistently-well-written as the show went on. The series has a very definitive and satisfying and heart-wrenching finale. This ain't no "Star Trek: Enterprise".

There's also a major theme of respect for others' religions despite the show's creator being an atheist. He's not one of those "new atheist" assholes. His attitude is more "If faith brings someone comfort, and they're not using it as an excuse to harm others, I got no problem with it". The best episode of the series (in my opinion) is entitled "Passing Through Gethsemane", and handles a unique kind of crisis of faith by a Catholic Trappist monk with respect and compassion. A spoiler-free clip of my favourite scene from that episode.

Skip the original made-for-TV-movie pilot "The Gathering". It's not bad at all, it's actually pretty decent. But so much changed between that pilot and the TV series that it's basically an alternate universe. It's worth watching after finishing the series though, as a sort of "what if?" thing.

The first season is rough, but not as rough as its reputation would have you think. I'd put it about on par with the first season of Deep Space 9 in that respect. Skip the episode "TKO" though. It's the "Spock's Brain" of B5. You're missing nothing.

Short version, it's got a lot of consistent themes that left-leaning folks tend to like. Labour solidarity, the problems with aristocracies, the problems with capitalism, the problems with military-industrial complexes, how easily fascism can take root if not continuously weeded out, the dangers of propaganda, the dangers of wishing for a "return" to "the good old days" of empire, the need for compassion and material aid to those who might not be "like us", etc.

I don't know if you've seen it already but I can recommend watching all the Starship Troopers films. A lot of people have watched the first one but the follow ups are great as well. The acting is not Oscar worthy but you'll have a great time. Plus they often have a cheeky society critical undertone.

If you read manga I can recommend Plantes by Makoto Yukimura. It's about a clean up service in space combined with some settler colonialism versus terrorism.

You basically have two Belgiums: Flanders (the Dutch part) and Wallonia (the French part) and they are basically two different countries with different cultures.

Flanders has a bit of a far right problem. It's the most populated and richest part of the country and naturally they are still pretty neolib / far right. Since it's the most populated part, most 'big' cities are here (relatively big, only Antwerp and the Brussels area have population over 1 mil). Most problems with migrants etc will happen over there and that unfortunately leads to bigotry among people. From what I have experienced as a migrant, people in Flanders are very reserved and they tend to 'stick to their own church tower', meaning they probably won't move very far from where they were born. They will have the same friend group since daycare basically and every outsider is treated with a lot of suspicion. For me, this meant it was very hard to make friends, and I'm a white guy from The Netherlands even lol. Luckily I live in Antwerp and was able to find a cool group of people, but I can tell they are considered unique persons by 'regular' Flemish people. So I ended up with lots of queer friends, commie friends, migrant friends and other Dutch people. I wouldn't call the Flemish people bigoted per se. It's not like they are all raging racists, most of them just tend to be very reserved. But I will say that a decent amount of them do have a far right problem. Compared to The Netherlands I feel like people are definitely less open minded. At my first job no one even introduced themselves to me lol. It took them a few months to figure out why I moved to Belgium. And again, I'm white. Can't imagine what it's like to be non-white, non-Dutch speaking.

Wallonia I know less of. They are more left leaning and they even have one actual right wing party versus multiple center or left leaning ones (and our Marxist party, of course!). They are the poorer part of the country, mostly due to the fall of heavy industry. Never ask a Flemish guy what he thinks about Wallonia otherwise he pulls his mask off and goes on a Hitler like racist rant. It's insane how they think about their fellow countrymen. It has absolutely beautiful nature with never ending hills and woods, and they make world class beer. I always like going to Wallonia. The people I meet there are very friendly and down to earth. I don't live there, so I can't fully speak for them, but I'm willing to say they are far less bigoted then the Flemish people.

I wouldn't call The Netherlands that progressive either. A lot of people say that due to the 1970s-early 00s in which we did make great steps forward regarding weed, LGBTQ+ rights and social securities. But for the last 25 years or so, neoliberale policies have taken place and they seem to be a holy line of thought right now. Right wing extremism is on the rise, we are consistently going lower on the LGBTQ+ rights list, inequality is growing at a tremendous pace and society is highly individual. If I were to bet money on where actual revolution would take place, my money would be on Belgium. There's a far stronger class consciousness here. Unions have a lot more power, with over 60% of all working people being a member. We have an actual marxist party and it's growing fast.

Captcha? It should be an archive. It's an economist article (that economist), about the war in Ukraine. It has such wonderful pearls:

As Yuval Noah Harari, a historian and author, wrote this year, “most governments stopped seeing wars of aggression as an acceptable tool to advance their interests, and most nations stopped fantasising about conquering and annexing their neighbours.”

The Correlates of War Project, an international research outfit, has collected data on every interstate war fought since 1816, after the Napoleonic wars. These data confirm that wars—meaning conflicts between states with at least 1,000 battle deaths in one year—are becoming much rarer. In the past three decades there have only been five, including the current one between Russia and Ukraine.

Emphasis mine

War is also rare between democracies (the number of which has increased in the past 200 years), perhaps because voters tend not to like the costs of it and boot out their belligerent leaders. Some scholars even argue that, depending on how strictly you define democracy, two have never gone to war with each other.

So yeah. Wonderful shit

I actually made a bunch of posts about my first semester PoliSci class and you’re completely correct, it was a trip.

But like they actually think the dude ended crime 😂

sorry this was sarcasm lmao