I’ve usually gone for sci-fi lately, sometimes fantasy. I really really really enjoyed Becky Chambers’ Wayfarers series (they’re so cozy!). Recently finished Tchaikovsky’s Children of Time which was really interesting. When I’m in the mood for fantasy I’ve been working my way through Fionavar (super weird narrative style though) and Shannara. I can also highly recommend In the Name of the People, a Chinese political drama.
The gradual increase is good, means that nobody nearing retirement age will suddenly have to work more additional years they weren’t expecting to, unlike in western countries which raise the age. Still not ideal but I’m sure the government looked at all possible alternatives in depth before coming to the decision.
Can’t speak to everything, but I remember reading about special schools and workplaces for (I think) autistic people. Places where the person’s individual strengths and sensitivities are respected and where the people are able to really thrive. It could have been something like a restaurant and a workshop with caretakers and maybe even parents present.
I’ll try to remember to find the article when I have time.
Of course she’s a russophobe.
Scott Ritter wrote about her two years ago and I always think back to his response to a comment from a concerned listener:
Monica, you are correct. I should not have mumbled anything that linked Chrystia Freeland, Canada’s Deputy Prime Minister, to Nazi ideology or the odious Ukrainian ultra-nationalist, neo-Nazi, white supremacist military movement, the Azov Regiment. For that I apologize.
I should have shouted it out loud at the top of my voice.
https://scottritter.substack.com/p/chrystia-freelands-nazi-problem
Maté’s hypothesis feels a lot like the quacky libertarianish mass formation psychosis some far-right grifters were talking about during covid.
In general I’ve learned to steer clear of Gabor Maté. He has a lot of really strange ideas about the world.
Don’t forget Freie Demokraten (FDP). They’re turbo-neolibs. All they care about is cutting social services in favour of handouts for the rich.
What gets me about the the mainstream political discourse is how vilified the AfD rhetoric and policy proposals are, only for all of the main parties to jump on the bandwagon and do the things.
Important observations in what way? What credibility does being the author of a poorly written and shoddily thought out book bring with it? In fact I would argue the best way to read 1984 is as the terrified inner voice which says, “this is what our authoritarian British colonial society turned inwards could look like.”
I would suggest reading the Red Sails article On Orwell linked in another reply to my comment.
It must also be said that Orwell could not forgive the Soviets for defeating Hitler and the Nazis, nor could he move on from red-bashing and anti-semitism even after the Holocaust.
All of this fuss over various non-aligned messaging services is solely to further entrench imperial surveillance capabilities.
If it had anything to do with their usual excuses of counter-terrorism or child abuse they could just use the resources at their disposal and deal with most of it. Even when people use encrypted messaging the rest of their opsec is sloppy enough to find a way in if you’re so motivated.
After reading the article and looking into this Dr. Busby I feel like caution is necessary.
While I wouldn’t put it past the imperialists to use nuclear weapons, the author has taken some questionable positions in the past. The again said positions are merely not in line with the narrative the imperialist project presents, so maybe there’s nothing to be concerned about here.
The UN for example stated in 2006 that his claims of DU munitions being used In Kosovo and Iraq (part two) are empirically false, but since then the US and NATO have admitted to it.
He has a very strange theory of radiation effects on humans, one which doesn’t at all match with long established evidence, the mainstream theory, nor more modern theories.
He also claimed the Fukushima disaster (and Chernobyl) was much worse than it’s generally agreed to be, and was selling some sort of anti-radiation pill of questionable effectiveness to Japanese people in the area.
The people who already mentioned cold fusion in this thread have made good points as well. I can’t find much on this Del Guidice character but there’s a bit in the German Wikipedia entry noting that his and his collaborator Giuliano Preparata’s ideas on cold fusion and the “memory of water” were not well accepted amongst peers.
Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory director Harold Brown and Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev both described neutron bombs as a “capitalist bomb”, because it was designed to destroy people while preserving property.
Of course.
It’s just how people were back then. You have to evaluate people as a product of their times. Just because he was a rapist, plagiarist, cop, anti-semitic, homophobic, and liked Hitler doesn’t mean he was wrong about evil totalitarian stalinism! /s
Also true.
Didn’t Orwell say he couldn’t bring himself to dislike Hitler?
Some slave owners like Jeff Bezos are so nice that they even thank their slaves for all their hard work that they did to send their master into space for a couple seconds on a phallic rocket.
As far as I’ve seen it’s just libs who are desperate to smear him. It’s embrassing having your only talking points dismantled with primary sources.
The US isn’t even the best at that grift. Germany spent about double that over a decade while emissions increased.
IIRC his wife admitted at some point that Gulag Archipelago was a work of fiction.
I’m only superficially familiar with Fisher’s concept of capitalist realism, but it speaks to the same idea. As the tagline on his book says, is there no alternative?
I feel this. It’s also something I try to talk about with others, but I always have the feeling that it falls on deaf ears. At best I get general uncomittal agreement and some liberal platitudes about how this is just the way things are in return.
/s