The real horror of the future is climate change, which is usually the first thing people cite when questioning if it’s a good idea to bring kids into the world at all.

100% this was a CIA operation.

When George Lucas was filming A New Hope he did not have the notion developed that Vader was actually Luke’s father, and that he only came up with it after the movie was released. There is no actual foreshadowing of this, no hints, and really nothing in A New Hope would even point to this possibility. To say Vader “killed your father” but to really mean “uhhhh I meant the ‘Vader’ persona metaphorically ‘killed’ the person your father was” is such a ridiculous stretch I just don’t get why more people don’t ever call this out. The much more straightforward explanation is that Lucas came up with the idea as a way to build up drama in the movies that followed, after A New Hope was already out.

deleted by creator

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.

deleted by creator

It’s a good thing first and foremost because tariffs have been Trump’s #1 tool to bully other nations into bending to his will.

“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.

I believe the reason Labour in the UK, SPD in Germany, the Democrats in the US, etc etc are so hated at this moment is not because they are “too woke”, but rather because when they have been in power, they have done nothing to help alleviate the material issues that the people face. The answer to defeat the rising fascist tide is right there for the left: do things that help the working class in their material circumstances and tell billionaires to fuck off. And yet (so far) they seem incapable of doing so. I hope for success in places like Portugal and France and then that can be a model for everyone else.

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.

Unclear what he means at this point, my hunch is it means allowing for a larger US military presence in Greenland but no transfer of ownership, watching a live interview with Trump now and he’s definitely avoiding any implication that Greenland will be “owned” by the US.

People who are saying to just delete Facebook or don’t use it aren’t wrong of course (I say that myself, to be clear I hate FB); but as someone who tries to buy and sell things secondhand (I see it as being environmentally responsible), this is largely becoming impossible to do locally without Facebook Marketplace. I honestly have some grudging respect for Facebook’s ability to survive just when you think they might start to become irrelevant. Things were headed that way for them, then they bought Instagram. And then the last couple years, it was sort of common knowledge that the only people who use it anymore are old folks and Nazis… and then FB Marketplace kills Craigslist and becomes the only app people use for local buying/selling.

Idk maybe there’s some opportunity here for some local buy/sell federated service?

“We need to get beyond the arguments of slop vs sophistication,” Nadella wrote in a rambling post flagged by Windows Central, arguing that humanity needs to learn to accept AI as the “new equilibrium” of human nature.

I’m starting to notice a recent trend in tech CEOs. They seem to be saying “yes, we know you hate it but too bad get used to it”.