• 4 Posts
  • 660 Comments
Joined 8 个月前
cake
Cake day: 2024年1月22日

help-circle




  • Yup. I argued to a Russian troll before that the “similar culture” is not good reason to violate national sovereignty. Like, UK could not forcefully retake New York simply because New York once belonged to the UK and both speak English. The troll responded that if the people want to join another richer country, then just let that happen. Which is a farcical argument, even for a Russian soaked in Putin’s propaganda, that the US is ten times richer than the UK, and of course New York would wish to remain with the former, if economy is the arbitrator on where one should side with. It did not also occur to the troll that he/she should apply the same logic to Ukraine as to why they want to align with the EU/West. Because the West the way richer and even ordinary Russians know it.

    Sorry Vlady, the West could afford a bigger wedding ring.



  • Attacking Ukraine to prevent them joining NATO would have worked had Ukrainians been as weak as Putin thought. But nope, what does Putin expect from a group of people, whom his country had subjected to Holodomor before? Somehow happily rejoin Russia for another round of persecution? That’s like UK invading Ireland again, and expecting Ireland to give up and happily rejoin the UK despite the previous 800 years of atrocities.

    Putin had also thought the Ukrainian military are still the same Ukrainian forces who were doing badly in 2015. But the fact that Ukraine was on the verge of defeating separatists in Luhansk and Donbas, before the Russian invasion of Ukraine, would have hinted to him that the UFA have matured. Former Ukrainian defense chief, Valerii Zaluzhny, attributed the eight years of fighting in Eastern Ukraine for allowing UFA to gain valuable combat experience that has been indispensable in the current war. In hindsight, the Russian meddling in Eastern Ukraine only helped Ukraine to gain more experience! Thank you Putin!



  • Shittiest take on this community by far.

    It’s an myriad of reasons from what I can tell. Americans are conditioned to think along the status quo lines even if there is certain degree of freedom of thought. The American corporate media carves the political landscape to intentionally but subtly influence folks to pick either only Democrats or Republicans.

    Another reason is that, I suppose rugged invidualism won out in the American society for better mobilisation. As you rightly pointed out, there just isn’t grassroots activism among American people (not counting civil and lgbt rights which are undoubtedly grassroots activism and successful ones at that). But this isn’t what it used to be. Before and in the early 20th century, there have been other third political parties still gaining respectable number of votes, the last one being the Socialist Party led by Eugene Debbs. He won a respectable 1 million votes as a presidential candidate while campaigning from prison during World War I.

    Not sure what happened why political grassroots activism that could counter either Democratic and Republican parties died out, but my guess is that the proliferation of mass media in the 20th century may have had a hand to convince people to stick with two parties, as well as heavy emphasis on individualistic values.






  • I had a friend who was never christened by her atheist parents and thus never had to be drilled to believe in any religion. Welp, it was rather refreshing to hear someone’s perspective that all the proselytising just sounds nothing to a person who had never been indoctrinated since infancy. Someone from another religion might still consider the stories from other beliefs; but hearing religious story by someond who was never baptised into any religion? For that person they would just say “cool story bro”. Even for myself who is no longer a believer, I still get some pangs in my consciousness brought by early exposure to Christianity. But I am lucky that I have never been extremely indoctrinated and therefore I don’t feel any fear of an eternal damnation in hell for leaving Christianity. Some former Christians, though, essentially have PTSD by being made to feel guilty for leaving, and have existential angst of the possibility hell (the original Torah/Talmud never even mentioned hell so why should Christians believe in one?)


  • For me, the worst is either Batman and Robin, or the first 30 minutes of The Killing Joke where Batman fucked Batgirl (say what you will about their relationship, it is just plain weird of them to become romantically involved).

    As for the Dark Knight Rises, I see where you’re coming from. I think Nolan directed the last movie in such a way so that people would not crave for another sequel. It’s not bad, but it is not titilating. A lot of directors “underperform” on their works so that the audience would not demand for another. Some movies just doesn’t deserve more sequels than needed.