There numerous solutions to addressing child safety online that do not violate personal privacy. This is one example, there are others. Solving the problem when you want to address this specific problem isn’t difficult. But the reality is that all of these measures being pushed are not meant to provide real safety to children, but rather to be able to de-anonymize the internet, so governments can better identify “dissenters” (i.e. people who criticize Israel) and provide higher quality information to AI and online marketing firms.

It’s estimated that 30-40 children died on Oct 7th. Consider the reaction most (white) Americans had to that event to the 165 schoolchildren killed in Minab recently. Neither Israel nor Iran are meaningfully “closer” to Americans than the other.

Needs a jaunty MIDI tune à la the Lincolnshire Poacher numbers station.

This is a great write-up, thank you for sharing! For those who want to know more, do you mind if I plug Luna Oi’s translation of a Vietnamese textbook on Dialectical Materialism? In terms of books I’ve found it to be a great long-form explanation of Dialectical Materialism.

One thing I appreciated in the book is that it separates Dialectical Materialism and Materialist Dialectics - the former being the philosophy and the later being the tools. It might seem like a distinction without a difference but separating the two helped me understand both better.

Mashallah

Europeans love their colonial history and will celebrate it any time they think they can get away with it.

I think it was Macron who, just a year or so ago, was talking about how countries in North Africa should be thanking France that they got colonized by them!

FWIW I don’t think Rubio buys any of this “western civilization greatness” business. I think he is fixated on Cuba, it’s his white whale. He has dreamed of reverting Cuba back to being a colonial holding of the US, toppling the socialist project there and installing Miami gusanos in control of all economic and political aspect of the island his whole life. I think he’s just playing along with whatever Trump wants vis-a-vis the rest of the world in order to get what he wants.

Thankfully, as brutal and criminal as US actions against Cuba have been, it appears that the Cuban people are holding the line and I believe at the end of the day Rubio will be very disappointed.

Edit: want to point out that Rubio was confirmed as SoS by a vote of I think 99-0 in the Senate.

I recently chose to read this because Twain’s “there were two reigns of terror” is my all time favorite quote from anyone.

I enjoyed it. I think even though it’s by no means a “historical” account, the book provides a good characterization of just how much life sucked for most people in the Middle Ages. Twain really is a brilliant writer.

That said, my only complaint is that I found Hank Morgan to be an unlikable character to me personally. I don’t know if that was Twain’s intention or not. It didn’t really alter how I felt about the book because I don’t think you need likable characters necessarily to enjoy a book. But I don’t know, his personality just didn’t jive with me and I felt he was a largely shallow and arrogant protagonist.

The EU is looking for tech independence

Issues of whether or not the EU is actually looking for tech independence aside… I find it remarkable that open source software offers so much potential for breaking free from US-dominated tech giants like Microsoft and Google, for relative pennies, and no one seems to want to pursue it. I imagine a country like France or China could develop versions of Linux (for desktop, mobile, and other applications like spreadsheets or web browsers) that blow away what we currently have for a cost that would be a rounding error of a rounding error in their current state budgets. Not sure why this hasn’t already happened, tbh.

“Autarky doesn’t work” is something that all economists - from the Marxist to the Austrian - agree on. Every country must exchange the commodities and resources it can produce for the ones it can’t. The large countries blessed with large populations and an abundance of resources (USA, Russia, et al) can get away with a bit better. But a small, resource-poor island with a centuries-long history of colonial exploitation? To imply that Cuba’s economic woes stem from anything other than being mostly cut off from international trade strains credulity.

Thanks! I’m working at a slower pace since this is my second time reading Vol. 1 (because I wanted to read it alongside Heinrich’s guide, and it only covers the first 7 chapters so he goes through it slow), but I’ve previously read Vols. 1 & 2 so I’ll jump in and see if I can contribute anything.

or need breeding facilities

Setting aside the weirdness of this comment, the DPRK’s birth rate is significantly ahead of ROK’s, to the point that I wouldn’t entire rule out ROK seeking reunification eventually in order to avoid demographic collapse.

What the EU doesn’t have, at least in the short/medium term, is energy. That industrial base needs (a lot of) energy. Russia was able to supply this cheaply, while the US is charging an arm and a leg. Of course in the long run, renewables can help keep that energy production local, but that means developing closer ties with China. And right now the US is trying to throw up walls to prevent other countries from accessing China’s renewable energy products.

The EU does indeed have a significantly larger potential industrial base than Russia. But that also requires coordination, intentional action, and long-term planning. So far the EU hasn’t seemed capable of doing these things but who knows, maybe Trump has been the wake-up call Europeans need.

I also hope Trump has shown Europeans that the US is the bigger threat to European sovereignty than Russia. And this will be true after Trump is gone, it’s not a one-time thing (Biden did things hostile to European sovereignty but that goes under the radar because he was more supportive of Ukraine). But yeah, if the EU makes some coordinated effort to build military defenses, they shouldn’t have a problem protecting their sovereignty against Russia. And that assumes Russia wants to try and military conquer parts of Europe, which I do not believe but even if I did, a more robust, domestic EU military would be enough to prevent an attack even if that was Russia’s intention.

The US is Europe’s fake friend - with or without Trump - and it frustrates me to no end that Europeans can’t see it.

I think because, as cruel as the blockade is, legally there are exceptions allowed for food and medicine. For now at least.

Sanctions and blockades have always been sold as an attack against the government and not the people. That’s of course a complete lie - sanctions are meant to make the people suffer enough that they rise up against their government (or so the aggressor hopes).

But this is much more blatant. The ghouls in the Trump admin are openly stating they want to harm the people. They want to create a humanitarian crisis, create suffering, and kill people, all so the Cuban government sees this suffering and decides that capitulating is better than seeing their people die. Truly evil stuff.

The IOF is accepting it because they know it is a significant undercount.

I think last time around, the US was signaling - directly or indirectly - that they were “just” targeting nuclear sites and so long as Iran didn’t “overreact”, then the US would just leave it at that.

The attack that the US/Israel seem to be preparing for appears to be much more substantial and brutal. Closing the Strait is a huge deal, but Iran needs to be willing to use it.

I’m assuming a significant part of the reason for the unprovoked attack on Venezuela and forcing them into a neo-colonial relationship - forcing them to route their oil through the US system - was to try and prevent an oil price shock to Americans in the event of a major attack on Iran and the closure of the Strait.

Cuba’s government is elected by the people. Their elections are objectively more democratic than what the US has. If every member of the current government stepped down and new elections were held, more or less the same people would be elected. The Cuban people proudly support socialism and anti-imperialism, and any fair election will reflect that (which is why Cuba has the government it has).

But I suspect Rubio et al already know that. When he says he wants “regime change”, what he means is he wants the current elected, democratic government to step down and in it’s place, Rubio will act as viceroy and for the country to operate as an undemocratic colony of the US.

One place in the lemmyverse that’s been able to buck US-defaultism a bit is the news mega thread on Hexbear. That was done by seeking out and elevating news and voices that are explicitly not in the US (and the Global North, more broadly). But even then, you need both people who are actively seeking non-US perspectives AND people who have those perspectives and are willing to invest their time. I’m not sure how to replicate this more broadly in the lemmyverse, but it’s worth noting where it’s worked and what was done.

That is 100% what happened.