wow, a glitch in the otherwise fair and good system inexplicably caused a horrible tragedy. that's like when your mum fingers your prostate for boxing day! points at the image in the corner and improv shouts for 45 seconds

Melvyn Goldstein is one of the most famous Tibetan anthropologists. in the 90s, there was a ton of atrocity propaganda about forced sterilizations in Tibet, almost exactly like what's currently being alleged in Xinjiang. Goldstein's research essentially disproved it, and now even Tibetan exile organizations largely accept the reality.

https://sci-hub.se/10.2307/3182072

https://savetibet.org/new-report-disputes-charges-of-forced-family-planning-in-tibet/

especially nice is on page 24, they describe how women in Tibet have essentially the same fertility rate as indigenous Tibetan communities in Nepal.

IPA zealots are getting bolder....

The theory of Permanent Revolution wasn’t that the USSR should have been invading and establishing socialist states in other countries. It’s more so that the Comintern (which was dominated by the USSR) should have maintained a more revolutionary line internationally. As we get into the Third Period of the Comintern and then the Popular Front we see the focus shift towards fascism and social democracy. Those debates resemble this one but I’ve already written too much.

What does this mean practically? The Soviet Union being more Rhetorically proselytizing in the League of Nations? Conducting itself with the moral character that will inspire foreign proletariat to rise up? Covertly sending (more) money and advisors to communist parties in capitalist countries? building revolutionary parties to lead uprisings sooner, like the Yugoslav Communists tried and failed at during the Interwar period? The philosophy seems coherent, but I'm struggling to think of what actions they thought were being unfairly deferred, which at all seemed remotely viable with the retrospective they had even then.

why do you need to pay to get cracks of the most popular AAA games? shouldn't those get cracked the fastest and for free?

it didn't really vibe with me, but I've seen some terrible takes on this movie, so I've kept my mouth shut. pre-colonial Africa is a historical setting I'm eager for more of, so I think it's tragic they took the framing of "good" Dahomey vs "evil" Oyo.

If any well financed Auteurs are reading this, try making a Historical film in Damagaram.

Kuvira is obviously a KMT stand in. she's a progressive force, regardless of Radio Free Earth Kingdom has to say. Ultimate proof is that the resolve the series by balkanizing the Earth Kingdom into it's province republics so they can never again present unified resistance against military or financial imperialism.

Sapkowski is a troll who lies in interviews, and has never given a straight answer about where his politics lie. In the Hussite Trillogy, the main character literally says in the 2nd book that he's joining the hussites to establish "Communism" by name which is pretty impressive considering it's 1426.

I watched Cross of Iron and I thought it was an amazing denunciation of Nazism by saying "look at these stupid, hollow men and their threadbare rationalizations, and hypocrisies, and so on" and then when I looked back at it in college when I wanted to write a paper on it, I realized, no, the director is saying "Those rationalizations are valid and completely exonerate Steiner, and the German army, and maybe even Stranksy"

this is the future Americans are scared of. that their social media feed will just become videos of John Cena apologizing in Chinese and fashionable young women scolding American culture.

Damn. I thought Pao was alright, because she criticized reddit informally associating with Ghislaine Maxwell, and was forced out of reddit after she took the blame for making it more inclusive, while the new CEO kept all her changes and continued down the same path, only worse.

the 2020 book The War on The Uighurs is really badly written and lays out of a lot of interesting contradictions. For example, education is at once both widely imposed on uyghurs to assimilate them, but also too exclusive and inaccessible, keeping them marginalized. they cite as evidence the fact China has reduced the number of free points Uighurs get on national exams from 50 points to 15, which if that was the case it wouldn't make sense to give them preferential scoring at all. but then this argument becomes even more confusing, because he goes on to say when the brightest Uighurs do get accepted they are being assimilated by attending schools with mandarin classes and han schoolmates (and every university in China has a Halal Canteen). In short the CCP is keeping too many Uyghurs from enrolling in the schools that are being used to erase their identity.

another very funny section is where he discusses Xinjiang Preschools, and desperately tries to read something sinister into the statistics that China is building exactly enough daycares for the number of students that are expected to enroll (Preschools were overcrowded by 400,000+ students previously), because it must be all their parents are in prison and they need new facilities to keep their children in custody.