rottingleaf
@rottingleaf@lemmy.world
- Comment on Why does America feel the need to control the world? Do what they say? Instead of taking care of their own problems at home? When did the US become police officer of the world and enforcer? 4 days ago:
No. NATO is an extension of this particular shark. Countries in NATO or allied to it are abusing with impunity those not in.
- Comment on Why does America feel the need to control the world? Do what they say? Instead of taking care of their own problems at home? When did the US become police officer of the world and enforcer? 4 days ago:
Food delivery as something normal, I’d think. Plumber coming soon after being called. Appointment with doctor to a close enough date.
Those things affected by actually having labor rights and less dependence on colonial mechanisms.
- Comment on Why does America feel the need to control the world? Do what they say? Instead of taking care of their own problems at home? When did the US become police officer of the world and enforcer? 4 days ago:
I have an answer different from the others.
US economy depends on the US intellectual property system, a few US monopolist companies and the US dollar, and the financial system.
Especially the intellectual property system. However different laws can be in various countries, in fact everybody tries to follow US law.
It means that a lot of things produces elsewhere mean royalties to US companies, and a lot of things can’t be produced without permission, control of markets, planned development of microelectronics and tech in particular, yadda-yadda.
So - if, in some hypothetical situation, that IP system is undone, with some countries having similar laws, some more like USSR’s “public domain by default with some fixed payment to patent holders”, and all the intermediate variants, then you’ll just have a second depression. Because a huge part of the economy will shrink.
US foreign debt is a meme subject, but honestly, if USD stops being the world’s most reliable currency, you’ll also probably have a default.
US actual industrial production (what doesn’t shrink as easily) is not so impressive when looking at its size. A lot about US level of life doesn’t really match the efficiency of the economy. Say, if you look at Germany, life there is very different. In some ways better, maybe, but many things normal in the US are not achievable there.
My point is - the American IP laws were spread around by pressure. Not just that, but sometimes the monopoly roles of American companies. Part of that pressure is the military guarantor role.
If that stops being relevant, a lot of things which were a given for your economy for many years will stop existing. And for a few other economies too. It might not look as bad as the USSR’s collapse, but it will probably look as ruined and unpredictable as the 1960s world.
- Comment on Why does America feel the need to control the world? Do what they say? Instead of taking care of their own problems at home? When did the US become police officer of the world and enforcer? 4 days ago:
I’m sorry, this seems to imply the US doesn’t “feast on the smaller sharks”. It went as far as threatening Japan with sanctions because they were considering “digital sovereignty” with TRON OS as opposed to Windows at some point. Japan is almost a non-optional ally.
And also one good solution of preventing someone from doing that is arming the smaller sharks. Yet USA seems even more against more equal spread of technologies and weapons than the “next two sharks”.
- Comment on What was life like for the "average" person living in Nazi Germany 1 week ago:
That’s more or less what I’ve read.
In the movies it’s portrayed as if Nazis made everything clean, orderly, “civilized”, but the unfavorable people were removed and killed, slave labor was used and so on, and all of it in the atmosphere of “civilization and normalcy”.
It’s probably to communicate the shock, but in fact things were like you describe them.
Nazis would rule in a medieval way, so to say, minus divine right to rule. Random murders (again, without normalcy or formality, just so, and quite brutal sometimes), torture locations in buildings with windows always open amid crowded enough places, where sounds of someone being beaten to death were heard day and night, such stuff.
The other guy is right too, most people learned to perceive this as normal and not everyone was killed for being not loyal enough, just a few.
Like in today’s Russia not every 16 years old schoolgirl gets into prison for 8 months for blowing up a petard in a public place, the number of whose who does is not big enough to imprint in the public that this even happens, but enough to spread non-verbal fear. Similar with posting a random protest text, or saying something about war, etc. That’s called making an example.
OK, Russia’s regime has that innovation of doing these things covertly enough for there to not be open intimidation. Cause open intimidation causes public reaction more than they need. They are more careful.
- Comment on What was life like for the "average" person living in Nazi Germany 1 week ago:
I mean, technically there was some from Austrians against Turks.
- Comment on What was life like for the "average" person living in Nazi Germany 1 week ago:
Klemperer’s “Lingua Tertii Imperii” is a good read. It’s not all, just a bit to add.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
You didn’t, somebody else did. Or maybe you didn’t know it. Or maybe you have such a metabolism. Whatever.
But I always put an effort into separating my clean clothes from my room stink, and making sure I always showered before I left the house.
There is a huge space called depression, in some parts of it people can shower, in some other parts of it people can’t leave the bed.
But I also have the high masking flavor of autism, so maybe that’s why that level of effort has come naturally.
“Masking” and “natural” kinda contradict each other.
- Comment on I guess it wasn't a nazi salute after all 3 weeks ago:
Changing wars to be more democratic, so to say.
- Comment on I guess it wasn't a nazi salute after all 3 weeks ago:
You might be right, but you are incapable of reasoning to support that.
Also quite a few people who’ve contributed more to the humanity than you or me have minds with much worse rot than mine. Mine is, strictly speaking, not rotting, just weirdly designed, so it’s faulty half the time. =)
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
There are guys whose parents have spoiled them, but impressed it upon them that they are not spoiled. Behaving like that.
There are also ones like me, whose parents … not neglected them, rather didn’t understand shit about parenting and didn’t really try and were very arrogant, but did that with enough effort to instill the feeling of being spoiled and the shame for it indefinitely.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
Nose blindness is terrible when you’re autistic. Or when you just had a vacation with no plans and just spent it all inside killing time being depressed.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
I think that other guy was joking and the problem was, I dunno, fearing to stumble when standing up.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
How does being so particular in body wash and demanding for accommodations from another guy become compatible with manliness? Especially the latter.
It’s also a bit funny to read “I ain’t no bitch” with caps and punctuation and all that, as if intentionally spelled out. Produces the impression opposite of what they were trying to make.
I think all those movies and series, say, with Jon Snow not cutting his hair (shaving and doing a haircut are not very technologically demanding processes, and starting with Iron Age they were norm in most places), looking greased in shit and wearing an animal skin, and talking in that perpetually hysterical “roaring/whining” voice, and similar portrayals of “real man” as what would be called “gay sex symbol” 50 years ago, have given sprouts.
- Comment on I guess it wasn't a nazi salute after all 3 weeks ago:
Then some worthless fool calls you a Nazi for mumbling Radetzky-Marsch all the time, or even having an autistic fixation on German and Austrian marches in general, or even on those of 30s, it doesn’t matter - liking to listen to something and supporting an ideology are completely orthogonal. And then your life doesn’t matter, and the worthless fool’s life does matter, because the worthless fool uses all the right words and connotations from modern popular culture, while never seriously discussing anything, and you are trying to make some order starting from whatever ends you have.
Say, I live in Russia.
Worthless fools here who happened to be lucky enough to have an environment, an education and a location to be liberal, - they use the word “bydlo” (Polish for cattle) for most of the population, their understanding of the mistakes and crimes made by their side in the last 30 years is “too busy to talk about this, something bad happened, but we are the virtuous ones”, and their plans for “after Putin” start with “how do we reform the state”, these bloody morons don’t even understand that any healing attempts for Russia should start with wide democratic participation with frequent rotation (so that everyone would have an experience of shortly doing a few kinds of something political by their 30s, it’s not about interest, it’s about knowledge of the workings of the state and even distribution of ability to affect things around us) in a non-opinionated system, because whatever they “plan” for the rest will be a bullshit spectacle otherwise, a repetition of 1993 and 1996, and also that their opinions what’s good and their wishes shouldn’t be used in those plans - they should only build a system to channel the opinions and wishes of the people.
Say, I absolutely hate a lot of things about USSR, but the most important bifurcation point was during USSR’s breakup, when on the referendum the majority in most of the union members and their regions voted for the new union treaty, for preservation of the union and against its breakup. So the democratic action was to reform the USSR and not kill it, that’s what democracy is. And what Yeltsin, Kuchma and others did, with their own arbitrary agreement to which they had no mandate, was not democratic. Yet it’s the popular narrative in both ex-USSR (among worthless fools of liberals, not the wide populace) and outside that this was somehow the democratic path chosen.
The fallacy was that Yeltsin and co are “democrats” and thus whatever they do and whomever they kill, these are actions in support of freedom and democracy.
Then that same party\group\mafia continued on their path at breaking whatever fledgling representative democracy, even with those checks and balances often talked about, that the 80s USSR had built as part of Perestroika.
I have not lost my thought. I wanted to say that this relatively recent example applies to every time you look at someone’s stated ideology and not what they’re doing.
Elon did Starlink. IMHO that’s more important than everything that DOGE has broken and more important than Tesla.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
Obviously, my point was that remembering a word is easier than remembering a letter.
- Comment on [deleted] 3 weeks ago:
A phrase is better:
unlucky friendly monkey got raped by feral donkeys the monkey ran away from donkeys led astray
It’s not very different from a sequence of 13 symbols, but there are many more words in English lexicon than symbols in ASCII plus 10, and the password becomes easier to memorize.
This is also an adaptation of a joke from a Russian cyberpunk novel, one of the last good things by its author, called “Labyrinth of reflections”. It’s still very good BTW.
One my friend has a very good taste in books and poetry, but when you talk to him, you wouldn’t think that. He spews bullshit about “patriotism”, alternative history, “anti-male laws” and such, believes that he can feel energies, and the only way to notice there’s something much better buried underneath is to talk about random life events for long, not trying to fix on anything in particular or reason logically. Yet every book he’s advised has been precious to me.
- Comment on 'Andor' Season 2 Debuts to Nielsen Viewership High With 721 Million Minutes 4 weeks ago:
I’m not a big enough SW fan in general to spend my precious little reading time on SW comics and books.
Yeah, well, your first paragraph reads so impressed that I’m certain you haven’t read at least X-Wing books (all my favorite, Stackpole’s ones are sometimes too comfortable, Allston’s ones are sometimes cringe in technical and logical regards), the Thrawn trilogy (the part of the EU usually recommended first) and the Death Star (to compare the old and the new). I liked Andor, once again, and I would like it without Disney’s dark years, but those things were very good and deep too.
I’m sure there’s lots of merit in them, but not for me when there’s so much else to read in far more interesting universes.
To each their own.
- Comment on 'Andor' Season 2 Debuts to Nielsen Viewership High With 721 Million Minutes 4 weeks ago:
Prequels are weird, not bad. What people criticize about them can be said about Babylon V even more, but I haven’t seen many people calling it a bad show.
I’m not impartial - I’ve grown on “prequel EU” as much as on “original EU”, but started with the former, trying to really interpret Jedi philosophy and such. My brain is not agile enough to separate pieces of EU and their closest movies by now.
But there’s that moment that with prequels the EU and the movies were being created simultaneously, there were official layers of canon and Lucas himself would even refer to EU. So - I don’t know. Maybe as self-contained movies they are bad. Their aesthetic gave me a lot, their emotion feels more real than Andor’s second season (its first season is better though), their music.
- Comment on 'Andor' Season 2 Debuts to Nielsen Viewership High With 721 Million Minutes 4 weeks ago:
Dunno, the languages seemed AI-generated based on French and German, or something like that.
Would make them similar to Mando’a, so no complaints, not the first time in Star Wars.
But - for me it’s good because it resembles the old EU.
So if you have little acquaintance with the old EU and liked Andor - I recommend delving into it.
- Comment on 'Andor' Season 2 Debuts to Nielsen Viewership High With 721 Million Minutes 4 weeks ago:
Eh, we’ve had books involving characters like Mon Mothma, Garm Bel Iblis, Wedge Antilles, Tycho Selchu, Korran Horn and many others. We’ve also had comic books. We’ve had the “Death Star” novel, the previous version, so to say, of how those plans got out initially. The EU path involved a few hops at each of which the rebels were barely able to slip it further, with a few very lucky coincidences. Ending in the transmission to Tantive IV. Except the Rogue one moment with Vader literally having seen the ship and tried to board it, IIRC, was kinda inconsistent with how they talk in the 1977 movie, as if it’s still perfectly plausible that Tantive IV has nothing to do with the plans.
I appreciate Rogue One for trying to tread the same path, leading to a good story and maybe more good stories with the same approach, but its not the first on it.
- Comment on 'Andor' Season 2 Debuts to Nielsen Viewership High With 721 Million Minutes 4 weeks ago:
KotOR II is mature. Last of the Jedi books are mature. X-Wing books … vary, some are very stupid, but some are very good.
SW EU is kinda big, words like “best” shouldn’t be thrown lightly.
But yes, even with the old stuff being so burnt into my brain I can’t be impartial, I accept Andor is real Star Wars and it’s good.
- Comment on 'Andor' Season 2 Debuts to Nielsen Viewership High With 721 Million Minutes 4 weeks ago:
It’s obviously inspired by quite a few EU books and comics. Which are not worse.
(One thing I like about it, it manages to pretend Disney sequels just didn’t happen, and makes looking directly at Disney SW things optional. And makes a lot of EU references.)
Maybe if you mean on screen, then yes. I still think it’s not better than 1977 and 1980.
- Comment on 'Andor' Season 2 Debuts to Nielsen Viewership High With 721 Million Minutes 4 weeks ago:
I agree, but sometimes one can encounter trekkies and other dubious types pretending it’s better than prequels or even OT, that is too much.
- Comment on 'Andor' Season 2 Debuts to Nielsen Viewership High With 721 Million Minutes 4 weeks ago:
BTW, I want an unpopular advice - where to you legally get these shows as seamlessly as torrenting?
Suppose I’m a Linux or FreeBSD user, and don’t like too many steps being required due to being autistic and thus easily irritated.
Because with Andor specifically would really want to pay for it.
- Comment on “This script is fantastic. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman.” 5 weeks ago:
Greek and ME people sometimes look very light. And face powders too exist.
So I wouldn’t say there’s anything too weird with her appearance. I suppose portrayal of Americans in North Korean war films is weirder.
- Comment on “This script is fantastic. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman.” 5 weeks ago:
Anything between Commodus and Charlemange is especially cursed
Helmets with horns, yes? And Roman army looking like cabaret.
- Comment on “This script is fantastic. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman.” 5 weeks ago:
OK, thanks. I sometimes forget to check myself before forming a sentence in my mind.
- Comment on “This script is fantastic. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman.” 5 weeks ago:
Tbh - if you do any academic study of history, that’s what it all starts to look like.
Even without academic studies - I wanted some context for Tolkien (analogous periods\events), Walter Scott, Dumas, who not. And I wanted some context for R:TW and M2:TW games, so I found mods like Europa Barbarorum. And eventually I’ve read some of Icelandic sagas, and some of medieval poetry translations, and so on. Same with context for fantasy books, some alternatives IRL.
So, after that, there’s just nothing on screen I can watch.
Icelandic low-budget movie kinda associated with Beowulf, but making Grendel a neanderthal (yep), looked cool due to seemingly authentic buildings and weapons and clothes and everything. But it wasn’t a very interesting movie.
I’ve seen a Danish low-budget movie “Eagle’s eye”, some things felt like fine, but again, the story itself just didn’t seem right. Except for the one-eyed guy seeing through the eye of a bird - eh, I dunno why it was an eagle and not a raven, but his relation with the king and with the bishop seemed an interesting allegory on heathenry and christendom.
Roman empire - just leave me alone.
like no, the man was not a proto Thomas Jefferson
The man also, when he found out his wife had a lover, made her a bath filled with his blood. That was in his youth, but.
At the same time he called her “so meek, so simple-minded, so kind” when thanking gods for her.
He became very wise by the end of his life, but, eh, not in US founding fathers’ direction. More like Obi-Wan Kenobi made emperor.
- Comment on “This script is fantastic. Let’s get Julia Roberts to play Harriet Tubman.” 5 weeks ago:
Or Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra.
Cleopatra was by ancestry mostly Greek. So I don’t get what you mean.
Most of her subjects weren’t quite “black” either.
Sorry for this interjection, but I hate wrong corrections, especially when they give up cute chains of thought like “queen of (hellenistic, that’s my own addition) Egypt -> Egypt’s in the African continent -> black”.