nerdspeak

A lot of leftists try to draw an analogy between Hamas and the Viet Cong. The problem with that is that the Viet Cong had the DRV and the USSR and China all funneling weapons to them. The strategic situation was much more favorable. Hamas did succeed in putting Gaza back in the center of public discourse, though. Which, I think was their goal. If they had succeeded in provoking Israel and the US into a regional war with Iran, that could have been a step towards weakening US/Israeli power in the region, because it would have been a debacle worse than Iraq or Vietnam. But it looks like the US avoided falling into that trap. To be clear, I am a leftist, but I don't support Hamas.

I was able to do something similar with organic DMT (yopo). Which kinda makes sense, a lot of people with “powers” use plant medicine. I’m a bit talented with stuff like this already but don’t have these abilities without psychedelics.

The Salisbury Poisonings were targeting a former FSB double agent. Putin cares way more about maintaining fear and escalation dominance within his state security apparatus than he does about a YouTuber who hasn't lived in Russia for thirty years.

You think the Dems can be pushed to the left on this though? The centrist Democrats like Schumer seem to prefer Trump to Sanders. Which makes sense, since Schumer’s donors are the banks.

Short answer The disagreement about diagnosis would be that Vlad believes the decline in democratic institutions is a sui generis problem, caused by a multiple factors -- technological changes, the GFC and its aftermath, etc. Whereas my view is that democratic political institutions in an undemocratic economy is inherently unstable. Moreover, his periodization is very different from mine. He has stated that democratic decline began in ~2005. Whereas I would put the starting point a lot earlier, in the late 1960s or early 1970s, when capitalist elites in the West started to think maybe they had offered too many concessions to workers in the postwar era, and it was undermining their power over production. So, they dropped the goal of full employment and decided they needed to use the threat of the sack to get their power back. Longer answer I think you could characterize Vlad’s views in two ways, both seriously flawed from my perspective. The uncharitable view of Vlad is that he’s a neoliberal. Vlad has said Western democratic institutions are presently in “decline” relative to the ~2005 period. This suggests that things were healthy during the War on Terror, and while the banks were fueling a huge speculative bubble. I disagree and think there was just as much corruption then, but it’s become more visible in recent years. For various reasons capital has had to take a harsher stance with people and cut their living standards, and this has provoked a revolt. Although, unfortunately that revolt has been co-opted by skillful propagandists who are using it to impose an even harsher neoliberal/authoritarian regime. The more charitable view of Vlad is that this statement about 2005 was an anomaly, and that he’s a social democrat. He believes it is sustainable to have a capitalist economic system but with certain public goods, like healthcare, education, a media sector dedicated to actual journalism, and basic housing rights guaranteed to all citizens by the state. I disagree. Not because I don’t think such a society is unappealing. However, my view is that social democracy will always fall apart. The major capitalists will find ways to rebuild their societal domination by removing those social rights. This is because those rights threaten their power, particularly in the workplace. Bosses don’t like it if workers can easily walk out of the factory and still meet their basic needs. It increases wages and workers’ demands for better conditions, including control over the workplace. When these conflicts reach a certain level, the capitalists will move their capital abroad and/or plot to take over the government to weaken the workers' power (usually some combination). This has happened a lot of times. The collapse of Swedish social democracy, Thatcherism in the UK, the threatened capital strike under the Mitterand government in France, etc. This has been written about a lot, by Leo Panitch in "Impasse of Social Democratic Politics," by Pontusson specifically on the Swedish case, by Peter Frase. The instability of full employment welfare states was predicted by Kalecki in the 1940s, in "Political Aspects of Full Employment." As a result of this fundamental disagreement about the sustainability of social democracy, we have very different ideas about what is to be done. Social democrats think you can protect social rights through careful attention to institutions. Democratic socialists are more pessimistic about the power of institutions to control big asymmetries in economic power, and that the only way to guarantee social rights long-term is to use the state to make economic power more equally distributed. That doesn’t mean you can’t have people owning their own houses or small businesses under democratic socialism, but huge intergenerational fortunes and private control over hospitals, banks, etc., need to be prohibited, because that kind of economic power inherently translates into political power.

He thinks the problem is populism, I think the problem is the capitalist state. He thinks the rise of populism is due to “democratic decline” in the West. I disagree, and think the last fifteen years of crises have exposed just how illiberal supposedly democratic states are when capitalism gets put under stress. See what French and German banks did to Greece during the Eurozone crisis, Obama’s decision to bail out the banks without conditions but evict the homeowners, etc. I don’t think real democracy is possible under capitalism. Both because you cannot have true democracy if your workplace is under the authoritarian control of the owners, and because the capitalists will capture the state and the media and manipulate conditions to serve their interests, even if the institutions are nominally democratic.

I like some of Vlad’s political commentary (but not his political theory). However, he has a tendency towards grandiose self-referential victim narratives. That he is promoting this theory is not surprising given other statements he’s made.

Realistically you should just get decent at app-driven dating, which requires a big market, ie, a big city as others have said (it’s like any kind of online advertising). Get good photos and buy boosts. I found Berlin to be okay for online dating. France was much better, especially Lille for some reason. Brussels and Amsterdam were also good.

Two resources I used to recommend: https://shamik.net/teaching/materials/dasgupta a brief guide to argument mapping.pdf https://www.academia.edu/2247188/Dont_Panic_The_Procrastinators_Guide_to_Writing_an_Effective_Term_Paper

I agree with what Leo said but will add some specifics as I taught college for a while. The biggest issue undergrads have is their papers are evidence rather than argument driven. A good analogy is that they write more like speculative detective’s reports presenting a lot of evidence to the lawyer, rather than a lawyer’s brief to the court about why they should convict someone. You should make a claim I can agree or disagree with. A common structure is “Many scholars hold x, but I hold y, as shown by evidence 1, evidence 2, evidence 3.” Another is, “Common theory x is confirmed by point 1, point 2, point 3.”

Yeah agree. It’s very childish.

It’s really not that rational, what works in nightclubs or first two months of dating with women under 30 is not “how it works” objectively

This is true of female abusers too, although of course the risk of physical abuse is much lower. But most men are children too, the management and/or manipulation tactics you use with them are just slightly different.

I often fantasize about this, but I can’t last more than a month when I try. It’s not the lack of sex, it’s the isolation and lack of support. Probably part of why Nietzsche went mad. To pursue celibacy, I’d need to live in a monastery or commune. Or at least a small town where I constantly run into friends. In college or high school lack of sex or intimacy never bothered me due to (1) institutional support; (2) constant interaction with friends contained by the institution.

There are guys like that but that's the most damaged 10-20%. Men who are a bit more secure don't have the desire to "pimp," that drive comes from trust issues. When I was in my 20s I had lots of short-term relationships but some of them turned into longer-term more serious things that lasted a few years. I don't think I "pimped" these girls even if it was a one-night stand, we were having fun. I think if you told these women they got "pimped" they would be offended, and say that they were having fun and liked it but it didn't go anywhere serious. If you're talking about teenagers, yeah okay, maybe they should be protected and just date people from their high school and college, that I agree.