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Cake day: January 4th, 2025

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  • So, you’re right that higher NATO spending is bad for the US. That’s why historically they haven’t pushed for it. But now the US is im the grip of nepo baby morons that have no understanding of anything. They think army guys & bombs are le hecking epic & that’s the extent of the reasoning. See also: like every hereditary monarch ever.

    European democracies obviously do understand the long term implications which is why they’re taking the opportunity to arm up.










  • To be clear: Russians aren’t communist or behind everything. Russia’s a typical country with an imperialist administration, it engages in information warfare because it helps it win harder at imperialism (the highest form of capitalism).

    I’m not even sure convinced they’re deliberately targeting MLs, honestly. It seems like the sort of thing that’d self organise inside the communication medium: The platforms they post on will recommend based on factors like your political leaning, material position, etc. So will the people in your social network.







  • Israel won’t stop fighting upon gaining the historical borders of Israel & Judah. That was never the final goal, it’s just the current justification.

    The Israeli state is sort of doomed to be in a constant ethno-religious war with its neighbours, because-

    1. the Israeli state is full of fascists.
    2. Most of its neighbours have islamic fundamentalist governments, or otherwise have authoritarian power structures that will have to bend to the religious right in times of crisis.

    This means that Israel presently relies on an external backer for its security (the US). Its number one policy goal is to change that fact. As a fascist regime, it’s only really got one tool, which is to invade its enemies and engage in settler-colonialism (google Greater Israel). Like it’s doing in Gaza. The fringe ultra-right in Israel are already calling to annex Lebanon, to “eliminate Hezbollah”.

    This is also doomed to fail and cause even more misery.





  • First, want to note that I’m not arguing for anything like the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, I don’t think that language can really change your cognition, though it clearly has some affect on social organisation.

    Those interests are not defined by language

    While this may seem true in a sort of logical, definitional sense (one cannot construct a symbolic method for determining a person’s interests, given their language, or vice versa). It’s not true in a connectionist sense. The human brain picks up on associations between everything, and one of those associations is language-&-behaviour. In my experience people will often prefer people with similar socio-linguistic signifiers. One might call it irrational, but I’m not sure I would label it that, when there really is a probabilistic link between language and political alignment. Though, If you speak a prestige dialect you may not have experienced this, I would encourage you to keep your eyes open for it.

    being isolated from other cultures tend to result in less developed cultures that have lower quality of life.

    I’m not 100% sure what you mean by developed, as this is a notoriously difficult to define word. However if you’re talking about technological development, as in, the ability of the culture to impose its will over reality, then yes I would agree. I didn’t intend to make any moral statements in my original post. Note however, that if the goal of the people of the culture is (axiomatically), to retain their culture & language, then assimilating is not an effective way to achieve that goal, even if it grants them access to more effective tools.

    Differences in language never prevented an authoritarian power to exert their will over minorities or neighboring countries. … I have not seen any example of this advantage shown anywhere ever

    I would really encourage you to do some reading, if you look at the historical record, this is something that happens frequently, though it comes and goes throughout different periods. A few examples.

    • The Romans were easily able to conquer Greece & (Greek) Egypt, in part due to the willingness of the Roman & Greek elites to cooperate, due to their shared use of the Greek language & its cultural-aesthetic signifiers. Contrast this with the rebellion-fest in Western Europe, where the Gallic speaking people were othered & subject to ethnicisation.
    • During the middle ages, language was less politically important, because the nobility of each nation primarily identified themselves as members of a Latin-speaking internationalist group, (Christendom, or, the imperial sphere of the Catholic church).
    • Austria-Hungary’s failed imperial project in Bosnia. Language was a major factor in this, as various groups called for a counter-force on the basis of their shared language. This contributed to the start of WW1.
    • The decolonisation movement had a strong national & language-based character, though this is recent history so I’m sure lots of people would love to argue about the causes of it.

    But again, it’s not binary. Language differences are not sufficient to prevent imperial influence, but decrease the probability of effective power projection. They also interlink with other factors i.e. cultural & religious differences often cause communities to resist external rule, and language mediates the spread of those ideas.