https://bdsmovement.net/

FYI HP (and Dell, but not Lenovo) are priority targets on the BDS list. Please do not support them even if they support Linux.

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Food, energy, and currency sovereignty is the trifecta that nation states need in 2026 if they want to maintain real sovereignty. Nukes are useful too, but I would posit that having the three things I mentioned above has better prepared Iran to defeat the US empire despite not having a nuke.

Personal property is respected under communism. Your possessions are yours. Countries like China, the DPRK, Vietnam, and Cuba have some of the highest home ownership rates in the world, for example. It’s productive private property - the means of production - that are limited. That means things like factories, farmland, etc. But even with productive private property, what we have learned over the last century is that socialism is a transition from the old to the new. And practically speaking, trying to completely eliminate any sort of small business emerging isn’t particularly helpful in the early stages of that transition.

Regarding self-expression, I don’t see why that would be limited under communism. Go to China now and see that people express themselves in just as many ways as other places, for example. I guess if you are talking about collective versus individualist values… we already have some fully capitalist societies that are more collectivist than others (say, Japan versus the USA). It appears to me in those instances, collectivism is not mutually exclusive with self-expression, no?

I think this is the work of Stephen Miller and Elon Musk - the two white nationalists close to Trump - moreso than anything Trump is initiating or even really cares about.

In the white nationalist world, the “white genocide” narrative is their lodestar.

Vol 2 is great! I mean there’s definitely some dry parts (the chapters on Smith and Ricardo were absolute slogs for me to get through) but Parts 1 and 3 have some of my favorite stuff Marx has written!

Now that everyone buys everything off Amazon, even inside houses I am noticing people are owning a lot of the same first-that-came-up-in-a-search items.

Age verification is truly a bipartisan effort. California, Colorado, Illinois, New York… none of these are GOP strongholds. The federal bill was introduced by one Republican and one Democrat.

They have always been very clear that they will comply with Swiss law, they have never said otherwise. They chose Switzerland to be based out of due to existing legal protections there are better than most countries. And they limit what they hand over to the legal minimum, again something they have been clear about.

My Neighbor Totoro

I’m hopeful that this attack on Iran will have the long-term beneficial outcome of accelerating the move to renewables in the Global South. What’s happening to Cuba right now should be a warning to everyone: if your country relies on fossil fuels, the US can and will cut you off from those fuels if it doesn’t like the cut of your jib. I think that’s the real reason Trump is going so hard against things like windmills. He wants to see everyone dependent on oil - and is positioning the US to control global oil flows in order to force the world to bend to the US’ will. Any country that wants to preserve its sovereignty needs to be looking into getting off oil dependency yesterday. And thankfully, China is building out the capacity now to satisfy that demand for renewable energy.

I needed a Bluetooth speaker for my work PC (I work from home). I got one with a radio tuner as well. I’m fortunate that I have several radio stations in my area that play music I like. I prefer having some music on in the background while I work, but I was getting tired of having to actually think about what I wanted to listen to next. So I’ve been listening to OTA radio quite a bit, and it’s a nice change of pace from streaming music. And it’s not like the radio bits added much to the cost of the speaker.

Edit: also eyeglasses (sure, I’ll count that as a “gadget”). I hadn’t been to the eye doctor in probably 20 years. Hadn’t really noticed any problems but wanted to get my eyes checked since I had just gotten insurance. Doc recommended a prescription and now it’s like seeing the world in HD instead of standard def. If you’re in your late 30s/early 40s and haven’t gotten your eyes checked, it’s possible your vision has slowly degraded over time and eyeglasses will help more than you realize.

The bill is sponsored by Elise Stefanik and Josh Gottheimer, two of the more notable Zionists in Congress (and that’s saying something). If that doesn’t point to the real intention of these laws I don’t know what does.

Trump is objectively a greater threat to attack another NATO country than Putin is.

I feel like it’s well known that kissing up to Trump is the wrong move. Deep down he hates that and doesn’t respect it. He might bluster at first but eventually he respects people who stand up to him or at least don’t give in and kiss his ass (Kim, Sheinbaum, Xi).

Gorbachev sending a letter to George H. W. Bush (which he would not respond to) practically begging to tell what kind of government he would like to see in the USSR is my #1 all time pathetic boot-licking given to a US president by a foreign leader. But Rutte’s “daddy” comment is a close second.

I don’t disagree, I just happen to find the theory that the US really only entered the war not because of high ideals but because if France and the UK lost, then the US would be left holding the bag as they defaulted on their loans, to be very plausible.

But when you dig into the history of the US in the 20th and 21st centuries, you start to notice this isn’t just a “Trump” thing. Outside of WW1 and WW2 (though the US had spurious reasons for joining WW1), the US has been the bad guys in every other instance.

The US is the imperialist hegemon, Trump has just been more open about it.

In addition to what others have said, you have to run very large, very persistent trade deficits for your currency to become a reserve currency (in addition to obviously needing to be a highly stable currency). Of the only currency issuers that could potentially fill reserve currency role (US, EU, China), only the US is interested in persistent trade deficits in order to pump the globe full of their currency.