Skiluros

The site is a giant shithole, but as the saying goes even a broken clock is right twice a day.

Mainly due to his political views.

I am just curious, what exactly were these political views? And why do you think they are legitimate and not demagoguery?

The reason I am asking is that while living in the US, the impression I got is that most polemicists were demagogues. It was a method to get money, grifting so to speak.

This was a while ago, but I vividly remember several nominally anti-abortion politicians getting caught getting their mistresses pregnant and then pressuring the mistresses to get an abortion.

It’s incredible that the fellow got fired over such a truthful and insightful comment.

I was in the US in my late teens, and one thing I realized almost straight away was how shallow American polemics about any socio-political topics were. American “free speech” polemics (among all other polemics) to me seemed like an attempt to act out and engage in theatrics that had nothing to do with the concept of free speech (which is actually an extremely complicated and nuanced topics).

There is a silver lining to this, I think at least some people (on the margin) might stop treating local polemics as undeniable truth.

Fascinating stuff. Although from the time I was living in the US, Kirk seemed like a relatively low level public demagogue and grifter.

Perhaps this will push Europe to take their security a bit more seriously (and take sober attitude towards the russians), but it’s going to take a complete change in thinking and some bold and brave actions.

While I genuinely hope this will serve as a wake up call (not in the seemingly fake and preformative way done by the California governor) for the locals, from my time living there I have my doubts, it seems that Americans are a bit too well off and risk averse to take action.

Perhaps it may make sense to share a vignette from an Asian country I was travelling in.

We took the train from a regional capital to a smaller city. A week later, we were on our way back to the regional capital to catch a plane.

We go to the railway station and find out that Maoist rebels bombed the railway. So we we find a driver with an off-road vehicle to travel through the jungle road (it was in a terrible state, don’t think a regular car would have managed) to the regional capital.

On the way through the jungle we approach a group of burned out trucks with the military surrounding them. We ask them what happened. The military said the Maoist rebels stopped the trucks, let the drivers go (I believe they were actually treated well and the military said they were dropped off at the nearest village completely unharmed and with their belongings). The truck drivers were merely employees and get shit pay with significant dangers (trucks are often heavily overloaded, you constantly see them crash because of this).

So you might say, well what does this have to do with the US? While I don’t support Maoists (even though they likely had good reasons as that region was particularly corrupt and did not benefit from broader national economic growth), one has to admit that they definitely are not risk averse and are willing and able to go through.

To cite another (fictional) example, it’s like that scene in The Godfather 2 where Michael Corleone sees the commitment of the Cuban rebels and realizes that the Batista regime is not going to hold after he sees the Cuban rebel blow himself up to take out the goon leader, rather than face arrest (and likely torture and death).

America is not that kind of place (for better or worse).

P.S. Note this is not doomerism, nothing is final until it is. That being said nothing in this world comes easy. Freedom is not a mere polemic statement. Freedom requires painful, scary choices and immense sacrifices.

I am not astronomer, but I get the impression there are likely a lot of large trans Neptunian objects that yet or be discovered.

Ah, I see what you mean.

Personally, I think they switched to scamming pretty early (medicine is one area where IMO “fake it till you make” doesn’t work), but never figured out a proper exit strategy for the scam.

Wasn’t Theronos more of a cut and dry scam?

Oceangate wasn’t a really scam, more like the CEO thought his shit didn’t smell and got himself killed over this.

Isn’t Rand Paul that demagogue who was lying about taking horse tranquilizer for COVID?

Corbyn is a genuine committed supporter of russian genocidal imperialism!

He is the perfect example of preformative and retrograde western “leftism”.

I’m not sure that just dropping multiple bombs in the same spot wouldn’t work.

I have no clue whether this approach would or would not work. I am assuming the question would be how many times you need to drop bombs on the same location to target the facilities.

I was just going the info in the article saying that haven’t touched Fordow.

Sounds like the strike was significant, but not decisive. In particular, they can’t target the plant in Fordow.

If anything Israeli action reduces the likelihood of any deal and increases the possibility of the aytollahs quickly rebuilding nuclear infrastructure (article implies they have the capability) and going full nuclear.

I thought I don’t know any modern rock/metal hits because I stopped listening popular music around 2005 or so. I guess my assumption was wrong.

But I also think 90s and early 2000s were probably the peak for the American music industry in terms revenue as share of cultural spend and in broader significance.

That being said it was a different time, I think there are less “hits” in terms of broad listening these days in general.

Fascinating article, I would have never imagined a mosh pit could trigger smartwatch/smartphone emergency service alerts.

As a side note, when was the last big hit by Korn? I feel like it’s been at least 20 years.

That is very low.

YoY declines need to hit 60-70% or more. Even they 50% decline in European countries should be higher.

Even by the low standards of American oligarchy, Musk is a terrible individual.

For sure, I agree that US security services seem rather trigger happy and there are massive issues with propaganda in the US (far worse than in many other countries, perhaps even most countries).

Just sharing some thoughts.

I am not going make any predictions, but with the expansion of anti-regime protests, it seems that the situation is entering a new phase.

As the old saying goes, “There are decades where nothing happens; and there are weeks where decades happen.”

While I agree that American security forces tend to have what I call “wannabe cowboy syndrome” (I have firsthand experiences when I was living and travelling to the US), I would also consider more base human reactions with respect to the attitude of the security services.

No one wants to be the one forced to do the dirty work and take the bulk of the risk. This is human nature. And at some point US security forces might question whether they want to take the heat for some oligarchs and other senior criminals.

I would also question the willingness of the US pro-oligarch plebs to actually engage in “war”. There is a lot of crazies (especially with the militia LARP that’s popular in the US), but the average pro-corruption American arguably has a very low tolerance for challenges. It’s one thing to talk big and another thing to well actually put your life on the line (engaging in “war” also means there is a solid chance you get hit).

Just some thoughts from someone who has loved in both the US and Ukraine (this were I currently live too).

There is no clear cut point.

These sort of things have a life of their own and it only becomes clear in retrospective.

In Ukraine that point was when the government started killing protesters during Maidan (Feb 2014), that’s when many people (who were generally strongly opposed to violence) started to believe that protestors fighting back was justified.

For me, as a Ukrainian, it’s surreal to read about this sort of news in the US.

I will note that Maidan protest against Yanukovich, the traitor and russian agent, accelerated in February 2014 (they had been going on since 2013) when Yanukovich tried to criminalise protest including specifically targeting covering your face.

At any rate, I have a feeling the situation in the US is entering a make or break phase. Good luck and courage to all sane Americans.