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What is the most powerful flying bug? This poll is closed. |
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| 🦋 |
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15 | 3.71% |
| 🦇 |
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115 | 28.47% |
| 🪰 |
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12 | 2.97% |
| 🐦 |
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67 | 16.58% |
| dragonfly |
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94 | 23.27% |
| 🦟 |
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14 | 3.47% |
| 🐝 |
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87 | 21.53% |
| Total: | 404 votes | ||
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Lostconfused posted:Shrug off relatively speaking. Even more shocking the US government started just handing out money to plebs.
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Apr 18, 2024 18:43
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DJJIB-DJDCT posted:Come back to the Old Sod to fight for King and Mother Country! Also, you're not really British, your family can't come. In short, you're basically unwelcome, but technically we share a King so we have to let you take this shilling. Now gently caress off back to Ruga Ruga Land or wherever you're from Askari. i knew that the commonwealth was a big joke (and one in quite bad taste) but god drat they're not even pretending anymore
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Apr 18, 2024 18:50
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Some Guy TT posted:i find it hilarious how this article keeps having to remind us every few paragraphs that putins a big gay liar when he says we sabotaged the deal after giving us factoids like "ukraine had to give up on this version of the draft because it called for the united states to declare war on russia in the event of another invasion and we said no" Western values and the very idea of democracy itself will be destroyed permanently if we abandon Ukraine to Russia. But, uh, we're not actually gonna give Ukraine any security guarantees I mean those things aren't really THAT important.
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Apr 18, 2024 19:09
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Orange Devil posted:Even more shocking the US government started just handing out money to plebs. They absolutely regret that and will move mountains to ensure it never happens again.
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Apr 18, 2024 19:11
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DJJIB-DJDCT posted:e: Also highly recommend that book China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949–Present which discusses this in detail. This book is $75 for a PDF
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Apr 18, 2024 19:14
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Nix Panicus posted:This book is $75 for a PDF China Learns from the Soviet Union, 1949–Present is a banger title
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Apr 18, 2024 19:15
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Nix Panicus posted:This book is $75 for a PDF what your job doesnt give you a monthly reading allowance? i thought that was normal!
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Apr 18, 2024 19:19
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My boss resents the fact that I am literate
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Apr 18, 2024 19:25
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"China learns from the Soviet Union" sounds like the subtitle for a Berenstain Bears book.
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Apr 18, 2024 19:26
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DJJIB-DJDCT posted:Goddamn I love Punch. I have a collected volume of Punch from 1913! It's quite poignant to browse through, particularly their articles and cartoons on foreign affairs, because the whole volume adopts this light, careless tone about everything and it's striking how oblivious they were to what was hurtling towards them the following year. There's even some cartoons with Winston Churchill in (he was considered to be a bit of a clown by most people back then), funny to see he was already a public figure back then, when he's associated with WWII in the popular imagination.
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Apr 18, 2024 19:33
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Nix Panicus posted:This book is $75 for a PDF You don't pirate everything you want to read/watch/listen?
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Apr 18, 2024 19:39
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VoicesCanBe posted:Western values and the very idea of democracy itself will be destroyed permanently if we abandon Ukraine to Russia. But, uh, we're not actually gonna give Ukraine any security guarantees I mean those things aren't really THAT important. it's actually kinda funny that western values and democracy are always rhetorically just one bad election or decision to not kill countless non-western people away from destruction like, even if you accept the premise here it doesn't really seem like a sustainable system even on its own terms
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Apr 18, 2024 19:42
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VoicesCanBe posted:They absolutely regret that and will move mountains to ensure it never happens again. The populist right in Britain were horrified by the mood of national solidarity that Covid engendered and have expended a great deal of energy subsequently screeching that the lockdowns and the massive state interventions were dreadful mistakes that would be deadly if repeated. They were genuinely dismayed to see just how much ordinary people in Britain were still prepared to come together to achieve a goal, despite the decades of propaganda that there's no such thing as society and it's every man for himself. This ties in to FF''s observations on the impossibility of conscription or mass self-sacrifice in a neoliberal state but I'm too vague-minded to fill in the blanks.
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Apr 18, 2024 19:42
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https://x.com/MSNBC_reports/status/1781017521748852945
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Apr 18, 2024 19:43
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VoicesCanBe posted:Western values and the very idea of democracy itself will be destroyed permanently if we abandon Ukraine to Russia. But, uh, we're not actually gonna give Ukraine any security guarantees I mean those things aren't really THAT important. do any of them actually believe in 'the idea of democracy' though? How many are in on the joke as it were? We know by this point that democracy is just a weird game they play with us while corporations control everything via bribes, lobbying, regulatory capture etc etc. We're in an era of neoliberalism and nothing matters except profits, who are the real idiots that actually think all this 'western values' thing matters? How far up the hierarchies do you have to get before they drop the kayfabe?
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Apr 18, 2024 19:45
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Phigs posted:Khrushchev played a huge part in it. I'm still reading up on the situation myself but Khrushchev's secret speech and his other moves to undermine Stalin's legacy fractured the party in a way it never really recovered from. It set the traditionalists and hardliners on the back foot and made it very difficult for them to combat the reformers. Basically, Deng chose unity and Khrushchev chose chaos. There was a risk that the Chinese leaders might have gone a different direction, but I don't think the USSR's leadership was cohesive enough at the end to really say it had chosen its direction. I feel people are either discounting or just not considering the power of tradition and mythology in building national identity and propagating ideology. Khruschev rejecting Stalin took a hammer to the fundamental identity of the Soviet state and allowed liberalism to take root. If Stalin's steadfast dedication to communism, no matter what his errors in its implementation, was no longer the bedrock then the nature and future of the Soviet Union was up for grabs for any faction that could exert influence. Liberal reformers were no longer battling tradition and the legacy of the heroes of the Revolution and the Great Patriotic War, they were just another competing school of thought - and perhaps one that had been unfairly repressed so it was owed to them to be heard out! By declaring Mao the heart of the nation even if he had made mistakes, Deng preserved the supremacy of communism and made clear that reforms would be experiments within the broader context of Maoism. Deng leveraged the mythology of Mao to keep control of the Party and maintain an ideological throughline that the Soviets had thrown away by rejecting Stalin You can't get so far into materialism that you forget human social hierarchies are still based around belief in the validity of that system, and nurturing belief is as important to the continued existence of a hierarchy as making sure your believers are the ones with superiority in the material means to wage violence
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Apr 18, 2024 19:47
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Nix Panicus posted:This book is $75 for a PDF You'll find it in epub format and at a much better price on Yandex.
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Apr 18, 2024 19:48
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Scallop Eyes posted:You don't pirate everything you want to read/watch/listen? Where do I pirate a niche academic book?
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Apr 18, 2024 19:48
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Nix Panicus posted:Where do I pirate a niche academic book? libgen.is
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Apr 18, 2024 19:52
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Nix Panicus posted:Where do I pirate a niche academic book? you don't have an .pdf guy?
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Apr 18, 2024 19:53
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Nix Panicus posted:Where do I pirate a niche academic book? The same place as all the other books can be found
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Apr 18, 2024 19:55
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Flournival Dixon posted:You can do basically anything to the population when they don't have any kind of organization or meaningful way to take action on anything. The 2020 peasant rebellion didn't really do anything other than increase police budgets nationwide. If they want to fight another war they'll probably learn their lesson from where Ukraine's headed and get a bunch of violent nazis to just arrest or kill anyone who tries to resist mass conscription. I imagine they'll skip right to the later part where everyone has to fight no matter who they are rather than trying to do anything with a volunteer army. A thing to consider is that Americans are, in general, fat, sick, and fundamentally hostile to the concepts of discipline or being personally inconvenienced. An American conscript force would likely be physically unable to carry out a military campaign and would require the entire regular army to enforce any kind of training regime or basic field discipline. If you were to just drop us into battle there would be crying, mass desertion, and fragging.
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Apr 18, 2024 19:55
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Cerebral Bore posted:i knew that the commonwealth was a big joke (and one in quite bad taste) but god drat they're not even pretending anymore It's actually one of the more disgusting and revealing things I've ever seen, but Orange Devil is going to make fun of me if I list all of the reasons why. fits my needs posted:what your job doesnt give you a monthly reading allowance? i thought that was normal! Mine's only $500 a month, and they keep refusing my requests to raise it or peg it to inflation.
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Apr 18, 2024 19:57
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uninterrupted posted:libgen.is Huh. Well then.
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Apr 18, 2024 19:57
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https://finance.yahoo.com/news/eu-send-ukraine-more-patriot-175132089.htmlquote:(Bloomberg) -- German Chancellor Olaf Scholz said European Union leaders are planning to send seven additional Patriot air-defense systems to Ukraine as Russia escalates missile and drone strikes on the nation’s energy infrastructure and urban centers. More air defense systems on the way. Germany will have given Ukriane 3 of its 11 Patriot air-defense launchers. In addition to the other systems. They're also asking the other NATO states for anything. Hawks have long been decommissioned, so maybe some of those will be handed over. quote:Germany has launched an appeal to collect Patriots for Ukraine and other air defense systems, including Samp/Ts, Nasams, Hawks and Iris-Ts.
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Apr 18, 2024 20:02
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Nix Panicus posted:Huh. Well then. Your life is going to change. I think I crossed 5000 pdfs and 2500 epubs a while ago. I still prefer paper, but I've filled both my offices, a locker, headboard, night stand, coffee table, TV stand... the bookshelf I just picked up for the living room... I'm running out of space.
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Apr 18, 2024 20:02
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A heroic Soviet past and a destitute post-industrial present make the provincial Russian town of Yelnya in Russia susceptible to the Kremlin's aggressive anti-Western propaganda, leading to the militarization of society from kindergarten to pension age. With few exceptions, Yelnyans raise their children to become good patriots. They don’t mind the eerie, all-encompassing militarization of society. Filmed over three years, this film introduces Western viewers to the people who admire Vladimir Putin's mission to make Russia great again. Yelnya has remained economically marginalized ever since the Soviet Union collapsed, but people believe that President Putin is bringing back glory and power to the Russian nation.
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Apr 18, 2024 20:10
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DJJIB-DJDCT posted:It's actually one of the more disgusting and revealing things I've ever seen, but Orange Devil is going to make fun of me if I list all of the reasons why. the thing is, it's like take the king's shilling and fight and die for great britane and we might treat you like a third-class citizen if you're lucky the fact that this at any point seemed like not only a workable idea but also an acceptable idea is one huge indictment on the british government, not that we needed any more of those
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Apr 18, 2024 20:16
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OhFunny posted:Germany will have given Ukriane 3 of its 11 Patriot air-defense launchers. In addition to the other systems. hold the loving phone here, they had all of eleven patriot systems for all of germany? it's like, what do you even say to this poo poo anymore?
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Apr 18, 2024 20:18
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Cerebral Bore posted:the thing is, it's like take the king's shilling and fight and die for great britane and we might treat you like a third-class citizen if you're lucky I would like to know how you get so divorced from reality that you could come up with "Once you have completed initial training you will be earning enough to bring your spouse or partner to the UK (subject to them meeting the qualification criteria). If you have children please be aware that it will take you several more years’ service before you earn enough to bring them to the UK as well." lol start a war with Russia over Ukraine, see what happens. I'm sure the West Indies, and India, will empty out of men who are willing to die for a country that openly despises them, leaving their children behind (but their wives can come if they have a university education or work in certain fields, pending English evaluation). DJJIB-DJDCT has issued a correction as of 20:24 on Apr 18, 2024 |
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Apr 18, 2024 20:21
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DJJIB-DJDCT posted:I would like to know how you get so divorced from reality that you could come up with aristocracy brain plus "there is no society" liberalism plus "Homo economicus"
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Apr 18, 2024 20:22
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bedpan posted:aristocracy brain plus "there is no society" liberalism plus "Homo economicus" It's so alien to me, I don't even know what to say. It's really hard to wrap my head around how they're clinging to faded glory while working to be worse. It takes ingenuity and effort come up with something this awful. I mean that, it's counterintuitive to have a policy where someone who joins your military can bring their wife, but a means tested amount of children based on salary. You set the salary, you can give them permission to bring their kids! Someone had to come up with this, it's not a "default" position anyone would land on.
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Apr 18, 2024 20:27
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bedpan posted:aristocracy brain plus "there is no society" liberalism plus "Homo economicus" I believe one of FFs repeated points is that, historically at least, the aristocracy understood the important of the loyalty of the people for their continued existence, even if they disdained them as lessers This is something worse than aristocracy brain. CEO brain? Generic liberalism brain?
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Apr 18, 2024 20:30
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Cerebral Bore posted:hold the loving phone here, they had all of eleven patriot systems for all of germany? They, ah, have four more on order from the US? Delivery expected by 2027?
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Apr 18, 2024 20:31
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they have become alienated even from positions of leadership as more and more options of what can be done are being constrained by Data and Projections. The Algorithm says we can do Plan A or Plan B, which are not wildly different, but both are projected to keep inflation right around 2%. Loyalty? Sorry, we don't have an entry field for that. We're not gathering that data.
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Apr 18, 2024 20:35
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lol at the title
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Apr 18, 2024 20:37
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Pepe Silvia Browne posted:they have become alienated even from positions of leadership as more and more options of what can be done are being constrained by Data and Projections. The Algorithm says we can do Plan A or Plan B, which are not wildly different, but both are projected to keep inflation right around 2%. Loyalty? Sorry, we don't have an entry field for that. We're not gathering that data. My wife works in policy and this is painfully true
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Apr 18, 2024 20:38
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Aristocracy brain is paternalism/condescension/admiration/homoeroticism towards the Sepoy/Gurkha/Askari and the social prestige from being a (white) officer in the Indian Army/Brigade of Gurkhas/King's African Rifles. Showing that you understood the language and customs, could "handle", what's a good euphemism... foreign recruited soldiers... was a point of pride. Famously, and with pretty dire consequences Tankbuster could elaborate on, the British Indian Army invented, codified, standardized and disseminated, the traditions and customs of "How to Be Sikh", and as so many Sikhs passed through "the School of the Nation", shaped Sikh culture in India. Pakistan is the product of soldiers of the British Indian Army who were instructed in the Martial Races, taught how to command their respect and scorn their (racial) inferiors, and then were let loose on Bangladesh. 90% of what people think Scottish tradition is, was the product of the Highland Regiments of the British Army. That's even more true in Canada, Australia and South Africa. Though, as we've seen, South Africa is really cool about this, so big props to them for being able to identify good from bad. This isn't Etonians trying to be good Sahibs to Sepoys recruited from the CW, because the British Army in India saw part of their reform (slash racial makeover) of India as instructing them in being proper Indians (darker, inferior, Englishmen) by building houses and schools for wives and dependant children. They took a lot of pride in that sort of thing, though on top of social engineering and race science, also it was common sense in preventing another Mutiny. A District Officer used to customarily visit the homes of veterans when touring the district, making sure they had been provided with the right standard of housing and their pensions were paid, though yes this was in large part making sure the British reproduced a sort of traditional military pretty aristocracy, which was loyal. Tankbuster could explain better with the Farmer protests, but in areas where the Army recruited heavily it left deep marks on Indian society, not just socially and culturally, but in terms of patterns of land ownership, who was placed where in military institutions at Partition and after. All of this to say, this is not cricket.
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Apr 18, 2024 20:44
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Nix Panicus posted:I believe one of FFs repeated points is that, historically at least, the aristocracy understood the important of the loyalty of the people for their continued existence, even if they disdained them as lessers i feel like it's the ruling classes getting so complacent in their assumption of superiority that they no longer understand that they have to maintain that superiority somehow, feels like it's a common problem in dying empires like, correct me if I'm wrong here if you're a classicist, but wasn't the proximate cause for why the western roman empire fell that they relied almost exclusively on the goths to fill their armies, and then the goths asked for roman citizenship in return and the emperor and senators just went "nah, we don't really want you" and then the goths just took over by force
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Apr 18, 2024 20:45
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and by the way, barn tank is the greatest military innovation of the 21st century and i'll not hear otherwise
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Apr 18, 2024 20:47
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