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ronya posted:SEATO hasn't existed for... a while now Yeah I was using SEATO as "Countries that buy a lot of products from Raytheon, but around the Pacific" because I couldn't come up with a snappier way of putting it, should have probably worked harder on that. as compensation, a snipe stolen from PYF Cute Pics: Cartoon Man posted:Why obsess over world war 3 when you can look at cute animal gifs instead.
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Feb 24, 2022 16:24
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ronya posted:SEATO hasn't existed for... a while now
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Feb 24, 2022 16:25
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in APAC it's always hard to tell. You wouldn't think the Vietnamese would be fans of the US, but they're amongst the biggest in the region, beaten by only the Philippines. Conversely their sharp instruments are virtually all Russian. In contrast, Malaysians are not fans of the Great Satan in their domestic politics but they do like NATO weaponry and bilateral exercises with the US Seventh Fleet.
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Feb 24, 2022 16:39
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Guavanaut posted:The main problem with having to go through the pseudo-bourgeois state capital stage to reach the social stage is when all the pseudo-bourgeois state capitalists want to stay there. Yeah, pretty much. Mao literally predicted exactly this outcome too lol. I think Deng Xiaoping does sometimes get a bit of an unfair hearing, and I can see why he changed course to avoid going down the ossified Soviet stagnation route, but jesus christ man. You put your life on the line and fought in the civil war for the reds so I'm willing to believe you must have some genuinely held communist beliefs (unless, as is always possible, you just picked the winning team, I don't know much about his earlier life). But if you're going to open the country to investment and try to develop your productive forces, and you're going to allow controlled private enterprise to facilitate that, at least put some measures in place to ensure the capitalists can't just entryism the party. Tbf I put more of the blame on Zemin, who was apparently the guy who actually started openly welcoming landlords and businessmen into the CCP itself, rather than seeing them as a necessary evil to be carefully watched. Xi does interest me though, because regardless of the party makeup he himself does seem to be fairly sincere in his ideological beliefs, though I do get the impression he views communism more as a vehicle for national rejuvenation and the establishment of China as a geopolitical superpower than anything else. ThomasPaine fucked around with this message at 17:03 on Feb 24, 2022 |
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Feb 24, 2022 16:41
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ThomasPaine posted:Yeah, pretty much. Mao literally predicted exactly this outcome too lol. I think Deng Xiaoping does sometimes get a bit of an unfair hearing, and I can see why he changed course to avoid going down the ossified Soviet stagnation route, but jesus christ man. You put his life on the line and fought in the civil war for the reds so I'm willing to believe you must have some genuinely held communist beliefs (unless, as is always possible, you just picked the winning team, I don't know much about his earlier life). But if you're going to open the country to investment and try to develop your productive forces, and you're going to allow controlled private enterprise to facilitate that, at least put some measures in place to ensure the capitalists can't just entryism the party. Tbf I put more of the blame on Zemin, who was apparently the guy who actually started openly welcoming landlords and businessmen into the CCP itself, rather than seeing them as a necessary evil to be carefully watched. early Mao distinguished between the comprador bureaucrat-bourgeoisie 官僚资产阶级 (who he classed with the landlord) from the national 民族资产阶级 and urban petite bourgeoisies 城市小资产阶级 (with whom he advocated a united front), with the main distinction between the former and latter kinds of bourgeoisie being that the former are compradors (i.e., managing agents of imperialist or foreign capital) whilst the latter are domestic and hence constrained by residual domestic feudalisms and hence part of the useful Marxist developmental forces a transparent argument for a united front with middle-class nationalist intellectuals in a context where China is under active war and occupation, but nonetheless the distinction between bad foreign and good Chinese capitalism would resonate later. Deng's revolution mostly invoked early Mao to defeat later Mao
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Feb 24, 2022 17:00
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When I last read any of Xi’s published speeches (which I think was courtesy of Ronya oddly enough) he was trying to make the case that China needed both Maoism and Dengism to get to where it is today. Late 70s China managed to give the big cities a decent education but was economically a basket case: Deng’s reforms and the rapprochement with the US were what allowed China to develop into 2022 superpower China.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:01
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ronya posted:You wouldn't think the Vietnamese would be fans of the US, but they're amongst the biggest in the region, I mean, you wouldn't think that except for China invading them in '79 and thirty-plus years of US efforts at diplomatic rapprochement. The US isn't the only lovely imperialist power in the world, though granted the last twenty years have made this fact very easy to forget.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:09
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goddamnedtwisto posted:The Taiwan Strait is over a hundred miles wide, so they're still claiming 38 miles of international waters as their "defence zone". Now of course every nation claims all sorts of poo poo beyond the 12-mile limit, but NATO and SEATO aren't going to be getting too arsey about "incursions" like this with the amount of surveillance aircraft they have flying exactly 12.0001 miles from the coast of China, Russia, North Korea and multiple other nations, let alone the whole drones thing. Many of the incursion flights are PRC aircraft flying over the water between Pratas island and the main island of Taiwan (a ~400km gap).
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Feb 24, 2022 17:09
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Convex posted:Everything hosed me up as a child, especially Animals of Farthing Wood and Blake's 7. Christ alive British TV was grim in the 70s and 80s, it's like they mandated every filmed drama had to be set in a rundown brutalist nightmare or a quarry. The two 'Scarred for life' books are worth looking up if you're an of-an-age Brit, though they're dead-tree print-on-demand with no ebook as far as I know. I bought both, anyway. https://www.lulu.com/search?adult_audience_rating=00&page=1&pageSize=4&q=Scarred%20for%20life%20volume Edit: Well bugger there is ebooks now, I will have to snag them for my iPad.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:11
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https://twitter.com/standardsport/status/1496873052294070276
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Feb 24, 2022 17:13
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Going back to those Andrew Lilico tweets, maybe we should clone Roman Abramovich, give the club to the clone, and eat the original.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:24
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Feb 24, 2022 17:25
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NoneMoreNegative posted:The two 'Scarred for life' books are worth looking up if you're an of-an-age Brit, though they're dead-tree print-on-demand with no ebook as far as I know. I bought both, anyway. This is exactly for me, cheers!
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Feb 24, 2022 17:31
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He's only saying that because he's the most well known name on this list. https://twitter.com/Billbrowder/status/1496476388123193347?t=rbYITIJViNZpUa6dIsah6Q&s=19
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Feb 24, 2022 17:33
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Welp. Just got an email from OVO. Looks like my bill will go up by about 50% from April. An extra £600 quid/year by their calculation. Time to turn the central heating off and buy a dehumidifier.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:33
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Jeherrin posted:Welp. Just got an email from OVO. Looks like my bill will go up by about 50% from April. An extra £600 quid/year by their calculation.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:37
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Jeherrin posted:Welp. Just got an email from OVO. Looks like my bill will go up by about 50% from April. An extra £600 quid/year by their calculation. I was reading the other day about an Italian strategy where everyone just collectively refused to pay the higher prices. It was wild, and it worked. There's gently caress all they can do if the entire population just says 'no, prices stay the same, you get what we give you'. Imagine the poo poo we could pull if we had any kind of collective solidarity or class consciousness on this cursed isle.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:38
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Guavanaut posted:There's wrong, and then there's Woke Nonsense: NO White People Nonsense: YES, LOADS OF IT Cancel Culture: CANCELLED
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Feb 24, 2022 17:41
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OwlFancier posted:If only the government could interfere with the cost of things. There was a UK wages and prices freeze in the 70s or 80s. I thought it was early 80s but a swift google suggests it was the 70s. I'm sure there was something in the early 80s too but in my dotage maybe I'm misremembering. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_Commission
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Feb 24, 2022 17:42
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Apparently paratroopers have taken the airport outside Kyiv and tanks are on the way from Belarus and Crimea. So it's either going to be full annexation or a puppet dictator if they're going for the capital.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:42
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Must admit I got it wrong here, I absolutely did not expect Russia to go down the full scale invasion route. It still seems pretty loving... bold, but then I guess Putin knows nobody is going to do poo poo. I'm still not really sure what he stands to gain though, especially given the conflict is apparently very unpopular domestically.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:47
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Labour MP is right.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:50
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Jaeluni Asjil posted:There was a UK wages and prices freeze in the 70s or 80s. I thought it was early 80s but a swift google suggests it was the 70s. I'm sure there was something in the early 80s too but in my dotage maybe I'm misremembering. Definitely wouldn't have been the 80s, monetarists like Thatcher believed price controls were even worse than unions.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:51
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Jeherrin posted:Time to turn the central heating off and buy a dehumidifier. Not the best dehumidifier for summer, because it does heat the air a bit more than a compressor based one, but great for the rest of the year (and saving on heating) for the same reason. ThomasPaine posted:I was reading the other day about an Italian strategy where everyone just collectively refused to pay the higher prices. It was wild, and it worked. There's gently caress all they can do if the entire population just says 'no, prices stay the same, you get what we give you'. Imagine the poo poo we could pull if we had any kind of collective solidarity or class consciousness on this cursed isle.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:52
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Why does a dehumidifier help your energy bills?
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Feb 24, 2022 17:54
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ThomasPaine posted:Must admit I got it wrong here, I absolutely did not expect Russia to go down the full scale invasion route. It still seems pretty loving... bold, but then I guess Putin knows nobody is going to do poo poo. I'm still not really sure what he stands to gain though, especially given the conflict is apparently very unpopular domestically. I'm not surprised at all. Interference in Trumps election, Brexit, spraying weird propaganda, fuelling all flavours of conspiracy and supporting far-right groups. Putin has been sowing division with various degrees of success for the last decade.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:58
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OwlFancier posted:Why does a dehumidifier help your energy bills?
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Feb 24, 2022 17:59
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ThomasPaine posted:Must admit I got it wrong here, I absolutely did not expect Russia to go down the full scale invasion route. It still seems pretty loving... bold, but then I guess Putin knows nobody is going to do poo poo. I'm still not really sure what he stands to gain though, especially given the conflict is apparently very unpopular domestically. I don't think full annexation is the ultimate goal. Expanding Russian control of the Black Sea, a goal of every regional power since before the invention of writing, is probably the actual strategic goal but mixed in is kicking the Ukrainians hard enough for them to think twice about doing things that annoy Uncle Vlad (and warning any other former Imperial Russian/Soviet/Warsaw Pact states similarly). Of course that sort of thing very easily and quickly goes quagmire and I have to imagine there's a powerpoint on a screen in Foggy Bottom *right now* with "Afghanistan 1980" hurriedly scribbled out and "Ukraine 2022" written over the top.
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Feb 24, 2022 17:59
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Guavanaut posted:Literally seconds after you posted that I got a price notification that the Zambezi is at its lowest price ever for a new unit. Are you on your way? (Sorry that's a joke for like 4 people ITT)
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Feb 24, 2022 18:01
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OwlFancier posted:Why does a dehumidifier help your energy bills? Humid air is harder to warm. If I have the central heating on and run the dehumidifier it seems to get warm faster and a stay warm longer.
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Feb 24, 2022 18:01
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Vincent Van Goatse posted:Labour MP is right. Most of them, yeah. e: not a russia thing just sayin lol josh04 fucked around with this message at 18:07 on Feb 24, 2022 |
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Feb 24, 2022 18:05
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goddamnedtwisto posted:I don't think full annexation is the ultimate goal. Expanding Russian control of the Black Sea, a goal of every regional power since before the invention of writing, is probably the actual strategic goal but mixed in is kicking the Ukrainians hard enough for them to think twice about doing things that annoy Uncle Vlad (and warning any other former Imperial Russian/Soviet/Warsaw Pact states similarly). Russia already has Crimea though, and even if they wanted to push their border a bit further along the Black Sea coast there's no reason they couldn't have used the same strategy they did back in 2014. That was still widely condemned, but wasn't perceived as a full scale invasion. This is a huge escalation that does feel a bit like Putin doing a bit of geopolitical dickwaving at Ukraine's expense for what seem to be pretty marginal gains.
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Feb 24, 2022 18:06
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keep punching joe posted:Humid air is harder to warm. If I have the central heating on and run the dehumidifier it seems to get warm faster and a stay warm longer. Wouldn't the cost of running the dehumidifier make your energy bills just as high?
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Feb 24, 2022 18:08
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https://twitter.com/paradoomer/status/1496855640718950410
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Feb 24, 2022 18:08
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Is there a level where you get to be a duke like the old days of buying a commission? Asking for a friend in pizza express.Deketh posted:Wouldn't the cost of running the dehumidifier make your energy bills just as high? Dehumidifiers get you quite a bit more heat per kWh than resistive electric heating because of the latent heat you're taking out of the water, and they're good for health if you're not running the heating, so dehumidifier + sweater indoors is better than damp air and cold, if that's what you have to choose between, while only being a few hundred watts of draw.
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Feb 24, 2022 18:13
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Guavanaut posted:Is there a level where you get to be a duke like the old days of buying a commission? Asking for a friend in pizza express. Interesting. Might have to get mine out although it's old and probably not terribly efficient anymore
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Feb 24, 2022 18:15
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I just tucked all the curtains behind the radiators and haven't seen indoor daylight in a month or so.
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Feb 24, 2022 18:16
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I am way way too cynical for this.
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Feb 24, 2022 18:17
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Deketh posted:Interesting. Might have to get mine out although it's old and probably not terribly efficient anymore Newer ones can be fairly power efficient. Got it due to living in a flat with terrible ventilation but still use it since moving. Also great if you have to hang laundry indoors, really cuts down the drying time. Plus the air just seems lighter and easier to breath. Maybe I'm imagining that though.
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Feb 24, 2022 18:18
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ThomasPaine posted:Russia already has Crimea though, and even if they wanted to push their border a bit further along the Black Sea coast there's no reason they couldn't have used the same strategy they did back in 2014. That was still widely condemned, but wasn't perceived as a full scale invasion. This is a huge escalation that does feel a bit like Putin doing a bit of geopolitical dickwaving at Ukraine's expense for what seem to be pretty marginal gains. Hence me talking about giving Ukraine a good kicking (and why the Baltic states are suddenly very keen on talking to the rest of NATO, as they're similarly sitting in the way of Russian strategic goals). IMO Putin's gambling on the west suing for peace and letting him keep at least the Black Sea coast up to Crimea, although sitting on some of the most fertile (and *probably* climate-change proof) arable land on the planet probably wouldn't be a bad investment for the future too. Of course I'm literally some wanker sitting at a computer thousands of miles away who's played too much Civ so don't claim any special knowledge, but I'd be surprised (although not shocked) if Russia did try and grab the whole lot and hold it long term, but then we all assumed that the US and supporting artists were going into Iraq as a quick land (and oil) grab, not ending up in a grinding 20 year failed occupation. (Originally typod "Baltic" as "Balkan" but the Russians probably wouldn't say no to a nice base on the Med too, but that door's *probably* staying closed for now)
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Feb 24, 2022 18:20
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