Everyone wants to belong

Everyone wants allies, close friends, brothers and sisters they can rely on and love and support

In the modern world we have pale imitations and crap. There is no village, there is only a dim landscape through which we shuffle, largely alone.

And so there is craving for some substitute, because the under structure is unfulfilled

It seems unlikely that it’s all that mysterious

OpenAI/Microsoft, Amazon, Meta, and Google

There you go I solved the mystery

BOB: Well, when you have TIME magazine do a cover story on Palestinian rights you see that the perception of the problem is changing.

Any fuckin day now

The interfaces are relatively modern too, with VGA and a PS/2 keyboard.

Yeah, you’re right. It looks like there’s a consensus now that the population in the Gulag was way lower than I thought. Fair play. There’s also a chart year by year, in the “history” section, which I missed.

If it was 2.4 million in 1953, out of total population of 179 million, that’s 1,340 in detention per 100k. The modern US is only 40% as bad as the literal Gulag at its peak. Fuckin hooray.

Yeah; that’s probably why there is such a lack of data. The period for which there are estimates vary by a factor of 20 between low and high estimates. 🙁

Ah, got it. I was talking about USSR, not modern Russia. Modern Russia is its own thing and its own brand of horror but not the same as OG Communist USSR which was more what I was trying to highlight.

Yeah. I’m taking the high side of the widely varying estimates of the Gulag population, which in the period of the 1940s range from 3.5 million to 17.6 million depending on who’s doing the estimating.

The Gulag at the peak housed about 7,500 (edit: 1,340) per 100k of the Soviet population.

(And yes, the US’s 531 is still also an atrocity.)

Where did you get 329? I actually couldn’t find any post-Kruschev numbers, but I know after privatization, Russia was pretty competitive with the US’s dystopian nightmare.

Edit: I was way wrong about the size of the Gulag

Ha, that is fair. I was just poking fun at dessalines’s habit of giving a free pass to any country that is openly mauling and torturing its citizens as long as they wear the right color hat. But yes, it is fully accurate that the US’s prison system is an authoritarian nightmare that preys on its minority population without rest or mercy. And, comparing the US against countries which don’t even make the claim of being “democratic” and finding it competitive with the worst of the open tyrannies is maybe fair.

Also, I just looked, and I don’t think these numbers are accurate. I think they’re straight-up ignoring some countries with millions of people, and I think the numbers are about 8 years out of date. The US incarceration rate has been falling back down to merely horrifying levels after the Stalinist peak it rose to after Reagan+Clinton teamed up to ruin the world.

US Incarceration Rate

List of Countries by Incarceration Rate

The majority of states in our land of wonderful freedoms are newly competitive with such beacons of hope as El Salvador, Rwanda, and Turkmenistan. The march of progress!

Cool now do USSR

Ha, yeah, I get it. “lol they gay” is usually a joke. In this case it is not, as you mentioned:

In Sparta […] the cropping of the bride’s hair and transvestism likely aimed to transform her temporarily into an adolescent Spartan boy – a less threatening figure to the groom, who probably had made his own transition to adulthood via a close emotional and sexual relationship with an older male

It is just what was up

I was being sarcastic but I was in no way whatsoever joking

Surrrre that’s the reason

OH LOOK

Here are the main points covered in the transcript:

• Elliott County, Kentucky has unusual voting patterns, having voted for Democrats in every presidential election for 144 years straight until 2016.
• In 2016, Elliott County had the largest swing from Obama to Trump of any county in the US.
• Despite voting for Trump in 2016 and 2020, Elliott County voted for Democratic Governor Andy Beshear in recent elections.
• The county is rural, 99% white, with limited economic opportunities and a median household income that has barely changed in over 30 years.
• Historically, Democrats were seen as the party for working class and poor people, associated with unions and FDR’s New Deal programs.
• Over time, the Democratic Party shifted focus away from rural blue-collar voters towards white-collar suburban voters.
• Many residents express frustration with both parties and feel abandoned by politicians.
• Economic concerns, including stagnant wages and lack of local opportunities, are major issues for residents.
• Immigration and border security have become top concerns for some voters, despite the county’s distance from the southern border.
• Governor Andy Beshear won in Elliott County by focusing on local economic issues and distancing himself from the national Democratic brand.
• Some residents recognize they have more in common with working-class immigrants than with wealthy politicians.
• There’s a desire for working-class unity across political lines, but also a sense of grasping at any potential solution to local economic struggles.
• The influence of money in politics and the growing wealth of billionaires are seen as problems by some residents.
• Trump’s outsider status and promise to “drain the swamp” appealed to voters frustrated with traditional politicians.

This summary captures the key points about Elliott County’s unique political situation, the economic challenges facing its residents, and the complex factors influencing their voting patterns.

Emphasis is mine

I actually think the forgotten-ness of rural voters and their jobs and ability to make a living, by both sides of the aisle, is a hugely important story that almost no one in Washington understands, and specifically vis-a-vis why Trump got so much support. I don’t fully disagree with the thesis of the video and especially as it applied to Washington 8 years ago.

However

I like to talk about this explosive growth of working class wages over the last 4 years (nowhere near enough but also something worth giving credit to Biden for). I wondered if that applied also to Elliot County – I still don’t really know the answer, but I found this, and if you click back to 2020 the bars only go up to $60k and in 2022 they were going up to $95k so that tells you some level of something.

It’s also notable that I was able to predict what the piece would say without anything to go on other than educated guessing about what it might cover.

I would be curious to see something actually diving into how things have worked out (specifically taking Elliot County as an example) for the last few years, where that $95k actually came from, how common it is, how things worked out in 2023 and why, etc etc. Basically a real unbiased version of what this video is a somewhat blinkered form of, would be fuckin fascinating.

This isn’t it though

Here’s my prediction about “More Perfect Union”, just based on the channel name and the downvotes:

• Weirdly high production values
• Reasons why people don’t support Harris / Democrats and you shouldn’t either
• General leftist vibe but no particular leftist plans other than DEFINITELY NOT VOTING FOR DEMOCRATS
• No particular affiliation with any existing leftist organization or personality, just arrived from nowhere

I could be totally off base. That’s just my guessing prediction based on a learned level of suspicion that at this point verges on furious unfair cynical prejudice

Brb

I honestly cannot remember whether it was me or the other lefty guy that was comparing the US army to the Nazis. But yes, one of us was.

Super fuckin dystopian

You never played as the “bad guys”. You and your team on your screen were always American, 100% of the time. The terrorists you were fighting saw a presentation on their own screen that you were the godless terrorists, and they were the heroic Americans. No one was ever the bad guys. Except, some “other” in some distant place. But not you.

We had heated arguments at one place I worked when AA wanted to hire us for some short contract. The one side of the argument was, guys, they literally just want us to set up and configure one web service for them. I don’t think we’re gonna wind up killing anyone from the global south in the course of setting up that server. The other side, which I remember verbatim, came in the form of a heated retort:

“Would you set up a blah blah blah server for the NAZIS?”

There is a particular type of emotion which “The VVitch” and “Hereditary” get absolutely perfect. It’s actually not really my favorite type of movie; it’s not particular scary, per se, but it is just some stuff that is really awful that you don’t want to see. If you don’t want that, they may not be good, but if you vibe with that particular emotion they are hard to beat for it.

The HBO “Chernobyl” miniseries is absolutely straight-up horror. It has pretty much all the elements of a perfect horror movie, except it’s (with tiny exceptions and artistic licenses) all 100% true.

“As Above, So Below” is fairly good “normal” horror of a fairly unspicy flavor.

That’s honestly all I can think of that really does it well. Horror books in my experience are far better. “The Shining,” “Pet Semetary,” “Night Shift,” and “Skeleton Crew.” Also lots and lots of HP Lovecraft; the “Dunwich Horror” collection is wonderful.

Hope this helps.

Imagine how embarrassing it would have been if some of these executives who’ve been so aggressive about the importance of maintaining a good public image had their spouses or children die in a totally preventable inferno, or suffocate to death. Or have a long uncontrolled descent back to hit the ocean, dying on impact, knowing the whole way down what was about to happen. Like the Challenger crew. Or, if one of these Boeing executives had had their child on one of the 737MAXes that flew itself inexorably towards the ground and no survivors because of a minor sensor failure.

Super embarrassing, it would have been. Fuck em, the lot. Hope they have trouble with their careers.