Vile Valyrian Sorceror

like what aspect of the way that grrm told the story makes you think, oh yes, the lesson here is to NOT follow your heart, and to always sacrifice love for duty.

Russia's offer to join NATO during 2000 was never sincere. Putin's demand was that Russia be omitted from membership criteria like democratic reforms and anti-corruption efforts, and also demanded a leadership role complete with exercising veto power and stopping the Vilnus Group from joining NATO - particularly the Baltic States. NATO membership for the Baltics would permanently end Russian revanchist goals to incorporate the Baltic states under Russian military and economic hegemony (the reason the Visegard and Vilnus groups wanted to join NATO in the first place largely was due to fear of Russian revanchism along with desire for US and European investment into their economies which had calcified under their communist dictatorships).

Thanks for the question, Claudius.

Boris: "You should leave Europe and Asia to Russians. Just stick to Americas." Bill: "Done! You have no idea how many voters wonder why we even have NATO anymore."

Next week's headline: "China And European Union Sign Unprecedented Treaty For Trade And Military Cooperation!"

2020:

And remember, by 2020, BLM had been around for six years. It was already a highly controversial movement, and I saw plenty of the alleged Russian Chaos Tumblrs fanning the flames.

I feel like that heavily contributed to right-wing mistrust of The Narrative. Especially when many DAs also refused to charge rioters.

There's the obvious question of "how much damage was done by COVID itself, and how much was done by the responses to it?" A

lot of people treat the two as synonyms.

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A more cynical person would go "they're deliberately conflating the two to downplay human responsibility", but I don't think that's the case.

Context for other users:

On the morning of April 7, 2026, a fire was started at the Kimberly-Clark Distribution Center in Ontario, California. It escalated to a six-alarm fire and took nearly twelve hours to extinguish. The facility was completely destroyed and declared a "total loss". There were no injuries or deaths. An employee who was working in the warehouse is accused of arson.

Authorities stated that the employee had shared videos of himself starting the fire on Facebook, saying "all you had to do was pay us enough to live" and "there goes your inventory" while lighting pallets of toilet paper ablaze.

ALL YOU HAD TO DO WAS PAY US ENOUGH TO LIVE

No injuries. No deaths. This was a protest fire. This is why unions are important, to prevent frustrations like these, to ensure people are paid enough to live.

Do you think the heroic impoverished proletariat is doing better or worse now that their workplace has burned down and they can no longer perform labor in exchange for wages? Was this an effective action to empower the heroic impoverished proletariat, or was it destructive and helped nobody except as it provided masturbation material to communists?

It wasn't a protest against ICE. It wasn't some grand statement about Fascism. It did absolutely nothing about international exploitation (not that there even seems to be any notable examples of that attached to Kimberly-Clark as a company.)

It was quite simply some asshole working at a distribution warehouse burning everything down because he felt underpaid...

At a job where he was paid about 17-23 dollars an hour. Which is just above minimum wage in California, but California is a hellhole of bad policy decisions and extravagant costs.

So yeah. Basic form is that it's a shitty guy high on his own politics who destroyed his workplace because he wanted to be a folk hero. And unlike his heroes, he openly stated he did it so his plea of not guilty is kinda gonna go nowhere.

"There is an evil empire next door to you, and they keep trying to invade"

"Well, just let them? Borders aren't real, silly!"

"When they invade they want to stop you from passing down your culture, ban your language, stop you from celebrating your holidays, kidnap your kids and scatter them to the four winds."

"Well, I would just stop them, I would say no! I'd hashtag RESIST!"

"Then, they will kill you, and everyone who tries to resist."

"Well then I would fight back, I'd form a resistance movement against them, we'd train with weapons and learn to make bombs and..."

"Wouldn't it be easier if you had already trained that resistance before people were dying? Maybe, get them to learn how to hold a rifle or pilot a drone before they have to do it in secret?"

"Yeah, probably."

But the thing is, it absolutely does. People from the countries that haven't known war for decades or have always been the aggressor are equating any military with evil. Even if they say they discern between the perpetrator and the victim fighting back, there's still this underlying feeling of contempt and mistrust. And it is very much interfering with Ukraine's ability to defend itself.

At the beginning of the full-scale invasion, plenty of the so-called 'progressive' westerners were opposing arming Ukraine because 'weapon bad', berating queer Ukrainians posting about taking up arms to fight russia, asking others to disregard charities related to the military needs. People were willing to donate to foodbanks etc, but not to charities collecting money for the frontline needs. Which is fine as a personal preference, and we are grateful for any help, but when it turns into a stance where supporting the military is considered bad, it's equals holding a person's hands back while they're being attacked with a knife so that they can't defend themselves, and then nobly tending to their wounds.

And what's worse, it leads to complete disregard of the victims in the military. While the civilian deaths can draw at least some attention, the deaths in the army are met with indifference. And no, not in all instances it's by design of the military as a system made to kill, so the argument 'if it wasn't for the military, they'd be alive' doesn't work in Ukraine's case. In Ukraine's case, if it wasn't for the military, they'd be just as dead, and many more people would be dead as well.

And still, I remember a post of a female Ukrainian war medic interacting with the foreigners, and realizing that her fellow figters and veterans do not even make it to the list of those deserving sympathy in their eyes despite defending the others (with the adult Ukrainian civilians being far at the bottom of the list way below animals and 'great russian culture', but that's a different conversation). And the military are one of the most vulnerable groups in the Ukrainian society at the moment due to constant danger, exhausting 24/7 work and life-changing injuries. The only way they could become even more vulnerable would be if none of us were given weapons and trained in defense at all, an entire society becoming a target with zero chance of fighting back. So, you know, if there was no military.

a source explaining how home ownership worked in cuba after the revolution:

https://reimaginerpe.org/19-1/hamberg

For 50 years the great majority of Cuban households have legally owned their homes as a form of “personal property,” but with some limitations.

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After the Cuban revolution in 1959, evictions were halted, most rents were reduced and urban land speculation was largely controlled. Through the 1960 Urban Reform Law, tenants became homeowners by amortizing the purchase price of their units through rents. Landlords and other property holders were allowed to keep their own home as well as a second vacation home. State-built housing was offered as long-term “leaseholding,” with rents set at 10 percent of family income. Private renting was prohibited. In addition, vacant units confiscated from emigrants were distributed to people in need, and the Cuban lottery was transformed into a short-lived vehicle for financing new housing. Residents of poor urban housing remained as long-term leaseholders, but by the mid-1960s, no longer paid rent.

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The 1984 (and 1988) General Housing Laws converted most leaseholders into homeowners, legalized most illegal and ambiguous tenure situations of tens of thousands of self-builders and others, permitted free-market private rentals and sales of roof-rights, and fostered self-building by both individuals and newly permitted housing cooperatives (which never got off the ground). The only groups not converted into homeowners were residents of tenements and shantytowns, who remained rent-free leaseholders, and occupants of units directly “linked” to workplaces.

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By the early 1990s, more than 85 percent of Cuban households were homeowners, paying little or nothing for their units except for maintenance, repair and utilities. There were no mortgages or land and property taxes. Financing for purchases of units or repair was considered a loan, not a mortgage, and therefore dwellings were not used as collateral.

article 22 of the 1976 Cuban constitution is also relevant:

Like, do you understand that Cuba. And the USSR. Are two entirely different nations with different policies and viewpoints, even if they vaguely held to the same general political model?

I had to just comment here because jesus fuck you're just not a good person.

second: it's not true of the Soviet states either:

Most apartments in the Soviet Union were distributed by the state on the basis of waiting lists. But there were other paths to becoming a homeowner as well.

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homeowner

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jesus fuck you're just not a good person.

>and that only capitalism has ever allowed anyone pleasurable luxuries.

????

The propaganda blog's source? Planners Network. A literal propaganda group. The far left constantly does self-referential BS to sound legitimate.

https://repository.law.miami.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1181&context=umiclr

from the extremely anti-communist article "Castro Systematic Assault on Private Ownership In Cuba":

That very same month, the Castro regime enacted an urban version of the Act, which also stripped constitutional protection from property and contract rights in yet another important societal area. Article 2A of the Urban Reform Act specifically prohibited all types of leasing and sub-leasing agreements. The Urban Reform Act went beyond proscribing any future leases. The Act rendered all existing leases of urban property null and void. Through the Urban Reform Act, the Castro regime ordered the compulsory sale of urban houses and apartments at prices fixed by the state. In order for any Cuban citizen to sell or transfer a house or apartment, the consent of the Council of Urban Reform was now required.

In addition, rents for government-built housing were capped at no more than 10% of household income. Between 1959 and 1988, nearly 1.4 million new housing units were built in Cuba. However, about half of this total housing stock is considered to be substandard

this article makes a constant effort to put an anti-communist spin on things, (considered substandard by who? in comparison to what?) but even it concedes that the Urban Reform Act cracked down on landlordism, and, significantly, acknowledges that this happened through the compulsory sale of these rental units (it plays coy about who they were sold to but the answer is "the tenants") rather than the housing simply becoming government property. and we can find numerous sources confirming Cubas current high homeownership rate:

Do you think anti-commie Yanks all think capitalism and communism are the only two economic systems that have ever existed?

@syabm

well, not *all* anti-commie yanks, but i've certainly met a lot of anti-communists who thought all societies in history could be described as being somewhere on a spectrum between capitalism and socialism, on the basis of thinking "capitalism is when there's trade, socialism is when there's state violence"- leading to the absurdity of people declaring ancient Rome to be either capitalist or socialist (largely on the basis of whether the person speaking likes Rome or not) when in reality of course ancient Rome pre-dated either capitalism or socialism.

edit: perfect example of the kind of thing i'm talking about, here's someone claiming feudalism is socialism:

here's another obvious disparity:

Wow, I wonder what influx the US has had in recent decades that was suddenly vastly expanded in the last decade and the reasons behind that.

That's a new one.

LS>well, not *all* anti-commie yanks, but i've certainly met a lot of anti-communists who thought all societies in history could be described as being somewhere on a spectrum between capitalism and socialism,

Oh, I see, its' the classic "NO U".

I'm not American, genius. And I was implying there are other economic systems.

>on the basis of thinking "capitalism is when there's trade, socialism is when there's state violence"

"State violence", IME, is most often used by the left, and libertarian/anarchist types. Who tend to be against authoritarian economic systems in general.

Including fascism.

I doubt they make up the majority of anti-communist Americans, and I doubt that's what Yogurt (who is not you) meant.

Also, libertarians and anarchists strongly stress free trade as inherent to capitalism. That qualifier is important.

>edit: perfect example of the kind of thing i'm talking about, here's someone claiming feudalism is socialism:

Let me guess; you specifically searched for people saying that, and then cherry picked a random reddit post.

>(a bit of a tangent since obviously ancient Rome wasn't feudal either)

It's not just a bit of a tangent, it's a complete tangent that's barely related and only being used for point-scoring.

But I feel I should make clear that D&D the game itself is not exactly at fault here: like, okay, it is sort of at fault in the sense that it is a game of fantasy killing people with swords and magic. And it is easier for people to accept the killing with people with swords and magic part when they can imagine that their characters are at least to a degree justified. That is sort of just built into the game (and the game has built into its lore varying levels of making the fantasy of killing certain types of guy justifiable).

But D&D is not at fault for making people go "okay so it's bad when you kill orcs simply because they're orcs. It's better when you kill people who are bandits, who are a class of evil criminals where killing them is actually wholesome and sensible." Like, yeah, most people probably don't think about it that deeply, but the reason people don't think about it that deeply is ultimately ideological.

In older editions of D&D, which were much clearer on the expected gameplay being "go into the dungeon and steal the stuff," there wasn't really this layer there. The rules for combat were generally quite harsh on player characters so combat was certainly something they didn't want to get into too casually, but ultimately the player characters were just going into the dang monsters' house and stealing their stuff. The monsters were arguably the ones acting in self-defense (but they're evil so who cares).

But in the WotC editions the self-defense justification is still fraught because modern D&D especially is an action game. It's a game where characters mostly have access to various methods of visiting violence upon their environs and where the gameplay itself rewards them for violence, because combat is the main source of experience as written in all WotC editions of the game and characters primarily grow in combat effectiveness.

The self-defense angle I feel is not supported by the game's rules itself, but is more of a narrative contrivance introduced by groups to make their characters feel more heroic.

My friend @tenleaguesbeneath once described it as, and I am paraphrasing, "characters hunting things for sport but the things attack them first so they can claim self-defense." Characters want to get into fights (because that's where the rewards are), characters primarily grow in terms of being able to get into cooler fights, but because getting into fights on purpose isn't heroic there's an angle of "those goblins started it" to make the characters feel more heroic.

The reason people don't think about it that deeply is ultimately ideological.

By Anastasia Lebedenko - A Personal War

I wish I said this phrase to a man who was screaming at me last Sunday, comparing me, Ukrainian, to a Palestinian. It took me a week to cry this situation out, and then another few days to try and put it into words. So, here’s a story of how an apartment viewing turned into a political fight and (sort of) a harassment case.

Ukraine is in a funny spot. It’s abandoned by the people on the left because they see the West as inherently bad, and refuse to see russia for the imperial hellhole that it is, sticking to its romanticised communist-dream past. Ukraine-russia war is not viewed through an imperial lens, because people cannot fathom the idea that imperialist agenda does not have a skin colour. It’s abandoned by the right because why should anyone get involved in a war that’s not theirs? Ukraine is seen as an altogether separate entity from the so-called West — what happens there has no real bearing on life of an average American or European, so it should be none of their business.

Ukrainians are even in a funnier spot — seen as too white to be suffering the consequences of imperialism, too Christian to be suffering from a religious persecution, too similar to the neighbours who attack them to be differentiated from them. We’re all the same, the Slavs, right? A vast and empty steppe full of Russian-speaking people (oh wait, do you have your own language?) Can’t you just divide up a territory, if you’re one of the same?

This fandom will look at a big pool of Targaryens where there's 1 (one) kind of meh and like 5 ranging from ok/harmless to even great and be like "see how it was always an absolute truth that in a very not eugenics promoting way Targaryens were by birth full of rot and must be eradicated. As a specific race of people. As a Liberal Thought 👏 👏👏👏"

alice is dragged from place to place without warning, forced to play stupid games with no good prizes, grilled over her schooling and manners and recitation and dress, scolded, judged, insulted to her face, sent away, given gifts she didn’t ask for and doesn’t like, corrected incorrectly, been subject to shifting and arbitrary rules, and then when she gets snappish with all this bullshit everyone acts like a little girl’s temper is the end of the fucking world.