I don't know what's going on

no i don't. cheers

Stranger things

Captain America: Brave New World

The income gap between the global North (the advanced economies of the core) and the global South (the developing economies of the periphery) has increased by between 170% and 270% since 1960, according to a study by the Institute for Environmental Science and Technology at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (ICTA-UAB), Spain, recently published in the journal New Political Economy. The research, conducted by ICTA-UAB economists Jason Hickel and Dylan Sullivan, delivers a blow to the popular narrative that poorer countries are "catching up" to richer nations through capitalist growth. The study, titled "The myth of catch-up development: trends in core-periphery inequality from 1960 to 2023", is the first to analyze income inequality over the entire period with complete annual data for 173 countries representing 99.9% of the world population. The findings challenge claims made by prominent figures like Steven Pinker, who in his 2018 book Enlightenment Now argued that capitalism and market liberalization are driving a "Great Convergence".

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While 18 relatively small states—including South Korea, Taiwan, Greece, Portugal, and several Eastern European countries—have been reclassified as "advanced economies" by the IMF since 1980, the study emphasizes that these cases represent exceptional geopolitical integration rather than a generalizable development pathway. According to Jason Hickel, ICREA Professor at ICTA-UAB: "These countries are not randomly distributed across the globe; they are located almost exclusively in Southern Europe, East Asia and on the eastern border of the EU, forming a cordon sanitaire around the former socialist bloc. Their integration into the core served US geopolitical strategy during the Cold War and after." The study documents how the United States provided massive economic and military aid to these strategic allies—with South Korea receiving more US aid between 1953 and 1961 than the World Bank lent to all independent Third World countries combined. Israel has received approximately $310 billion (constant 2022 dollars) in US economic and military aid since 1946, around double the amount given to any other country. Dylan Sullivan, PhD candidate at ICTA-UAB and Macquarie University, commented: "The conventional narrative tells us that poor countries are simply 'behind' and will eventually catch up by following the same path as rich countries. Our research shows this is fundamentally wrong. The core-periphery divide isn't a development gap—it's a structural feature of the capitalist world economy.”

We have got to stop framing our oppression in ways that promote the idea that other people cannot relate to our struggles. Not only does it isolate comrades in the struggle, it actively diminishes recognition of other struggles--often including those even more horrific than what we are at risk of. And this happens especially between Gay and Black struggles.

"when have straight people ever had to check what states were safe for them?" Sundown towns are still a thing. Starlight tours. What states have abortion access? What states have open carry? What states have stand your ground? What states have 3-strike rules? Women, people of color, disabled people, immigrants, and more have had to be abundantly cautious where they travel to. Straight trans people have much more travel risk right now than gay cis people.

It's a new iteration of the same tired question: "imagine if straight people weren't allowed to marry" interracial marriage in the US is younger than my parents. We disgrace people of color by forgetting their history and contemporary struggles, and we abandon queer people of color, Black queer people, by segmenting their overlapping fights.