The riper the better

Unciv is a pretty cool game! It’s basically FOSS civ 5 that can be played on mobile. Huge timewaster haha

So here’s the thing. I wouldn’t view it as impolite in all cases. It just… depends on the context a lot.

I have no love for my cultural heritage at all. The reason I came to Canada was to get away from… all that, right? So if you’d ask me excitedly about my “roots”, I would give exceedingly one worded answers hoping that you’d drop the topic. I don’t want to glorify the culture I grew up in, because there’s nothing to glorify. Ah, now if you wanted to have a sociological discussion about it, I would be very interested in talking with you. So as I said, “context”, right?

Often, racist white folk also tend to ask about “culture” as a sly way to remind non white folks that they “aren’t really Canadian” or whatever. Yeah, it makes no logical sense to do that, but well… It happens. So you know… It depends.

Lemme explain the sensibility even when we use 1.a.1. I said the idea of a nation itself should cease to exist.

An analog would be religion. If someone asked me, “what’s your religion?”. I would say, “I’m non religious”. I wouldn’t reply by saying, “my religion is atheism”.

Similarly, if someone asked me what nation I belonged to, I would say something along the lines of “technically, I’m under the jurisdiction of XYZ state, but I do not identify as a member of any nation.”

I’m hoping that this becomes the majority viewpoint. That’s how my answer is sensible even with 1.a.1.

And as for “will inevitably rise within any sovereign state which will persist for a long enough time”, it’s not true necessarily. Example being myself and so many other people (anarchists, lib socialists, even right wing libertarians). Yes, it has been true throughout history (descriptive), but I’m hoping it isn’t going forward (normative).

My bad. I incorrectly assumed that the above terminologies were common knowledge. I should’ve provided direct links. Well, here they are:

Difference between nations and states

Definition of a “nation-state”

When I talk about nations and states, I talk from the perspective of these definitions. As you can see, they’re not really synonyms. It’s not squabbling about terminologies. If we have a different understanding of what different words mean, then our logical arguments are going to look very different. I’m not saying that your definition is wrong or whatever. I’m just clarifying how I define these terms in my arguments. That way, you can understand what I mean to say.

As for the “questions” you posed… I’m not sure exactly what answers you want me to provide. I already told you that I do believe that states need to exist. We’re in agreement there. I just don’t think that it’s healthy for society to divide itself among different nations. Seems quite a waste of mental space, resources, etc. ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

That’s why I didn’t propose an anarchist vision. I do recognize the need for states. Just very very weak ones.

Nation states are a different case altogether though. You can have a multinational state. Sure, it is easier for a state to continue existing if the landmass it controls identifies as a single nation. That helps give it legitimacy.

I’d recommend reading more about nation states and why nations ≠ states.

How about the concept of a nation itself ceases to exist? How about free movement of people, very weak states, consumer cooperatives as the only capital controlling entities who are allowed to buy labor only from worker coops? Economic democracy, competition, choice and so on?

How about a world without kings and non consented rulers, a world where we stop wanting to conquer each other, and instead focus on conquering the limits set on us by nature? How about a world where we build a Dyson swarm, solve interplanetary, interstellar, and dare I say intergalactic travel?

Aight imma go cry myself to sleep now

From what I recall, the reason why they specifically reflect the green is to moderate the amount of sunlight they absorb.

Hence, if plant life exists, around red dwarfs, it is likely to be red in color.

And I’m not dead yet so I guess I’ll be alright

In “Way less sad” by AJR

For which office? You guys already have elected progressives in some offices

The only terminal goal that corporations have is to make money. As much of it as possible.

Production of Andor was greenlit with the assumption that investing money in it would result in a positive ROI. Nothing more, nothing less. The same applies to them funding the fascist admin.

I’ve no idea why I thought reading the comments would be a fun experience, but holy moly… I’m so sorry you guys had to go through that, holy shit.

My worst pain that I can remember was probably when I fell on my knee from my bike after tripping over a pothole. It hurt like a bitch. But yeah… But now after reading the comments… I’m glad this was my worst experience lol

Most monologues and speeches from Andor:

• Nemik’s manifesto: Talks about liberation and authoritarianism.
• Kino’s speech: I interpreted it as a call for revolution against the ruling class.
• Mothma’s senate speech: Talks about how fascism rises with a loss of an objective reality (in the public consciousness).

Andor’s really a banger! Please consider watching it if you haven’t already.

Yes.

The argument for privacy in monetary transactions is much more nuanced than the one for simple text messages. Reducing privacy in text messages only punishes the “good guys”, as bad guys can still use e2ee communication media very easily.

For monetary transactions, things get more complicated. Tax evasion, money laundering, human trafficking, purchase of weapons can be done using super private payment systems. If adoption of this becomes widespread, then liquidity of these currencies increase. For example, if I’m selling illegal weapons, then the Monero that I receive from that purchase needs to be somehow converted into real money so that I can buy a house, groceries and so on. If Monero becomes widespread, then I don’t even need to this.

Imagine Bezos, musk and all the other crooks just getting way way more of powerful.

How do they handle the traceability aspect? Like, if it’s a blockchain, that makes transactions public by definition right?

Not quite. They use something called “ring signatures”.

Centralised payment systems are much more efficient. Yes, corporate capture can make them suck (visa/MasterCard duopoly). To ensure security, financial infrastructure tends to be super capital intensive. This leads to an oligopoly in a best case scenario and a monopoly in the worst case scenario.

Being a natural monopoly, I would highly highly be in support of state owned financial “stuff”. Cooperativize operations as much as possible, but let the state raise capital for this. Good for national security too.

Certain types of crypto can be very good if you want transactions to be anonymous (Monero being the best example). Wanna purchase drugs from an illegal ecommerce platform? Monero is untraceable. Wanna buy weapons, launder money, etc? Monero works. Otherwise, it’s pretty much useless in the face of existing non crypto services.

BTC sucks for transactions. But its value proposition is kinda different. It’s kinda like gold (kinda).

Humans throughout history have based currencies based on items that can be easily verified to be real, and are scarce. Gold is an example. Gold can be mined, yes. But it’s pretty scarce. It’s easy to tell gold from “not gold”.

Hence, in a world where financial systems weren’t exactly integrated and digitized, assets and market info was hard to track, trust in other countries and their institutions was super low, gold worked.

But we abandoned the gold standard for a reason. Hence, do we really want a digital gold equivalent (in terms of verifiability and scarcity)? What even is the point? That’s why BTC doesn’t make sense (for me)

Sorry for the non answer, but here’s a little rant:

Honorifics should go away. They unnecessarily create and restate hierarchies that don’t really need to exist.

On the receiving end, it has always felt weird being called “sir”. A smile is more than enough, thank you very much.

Ew. What a repulsive dude…