Roko's Basilisk is communism, but instead of a computer torturing digital clones forever, it's us, putting this man against a wall

Dread it, run from it, destiny arrives all the same

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The term brainwashing was first used by the US military during the Korean war (a calque from Chinese 洗脑 (xǐnǎo), literally "to wash the brain") in order to discredit their own pilots who claimed - correctly - that they'd been engaged in biological warfare, specifically dropping bomb cases full of pathogens, infected fleas and crop pests, all over the north Korean cities and countryside.

When the pilots, who had been shot down and captured by the Koreans, made these public confessions, it was easy to dismiss them by saying they were under duress or threat of torture. But when those pilots returned home and kept making the same claims, the idea of "brainwashing" was invented to explain how actually, the evil communists had taken over their minds through spooky psychological conditioning and persuasion techniques, to make them continue believing lies even without the immediate threat of torture.

Bring back the Heptarchy but with socialist republics

Strap me to a rocket and fire me into the Taklamakan desert to build thorium nuclear reactors, I am ready

Fable 3 taught me that there's no point collecting rent from the poor, because they have no money, so you should set their rent to zero so everyone loves you while making the rich pay double to give you a fat treasury. It also taught me that every public works project can be funded easily if the state just takes ownership of all land and housing.

Or Biden could have, even a single time, refrained from handing them billions of dollars of bombs and missiles.

But he didn't, because he didn't want to, because Biden is a rabid hardcore Zionist who wants the Palestinian people exterminated just as much as Netanyahu, and was hiding behind the pathetic excuse of "Oh, he's just so mean and won't listen to me! There's nothing I can do! Oops, I just gave him another $8 billion!"

And now Trump has demonstrated that was all a lie, and that the instant its master demands it, the attack dog is called to heel.

I'm a Jojaccelerationist

He targeted gamers.

GAMERS.

The easiest people to con are those who think they're in on the con.

Assuring the average imperial core denizen that they're a uniquely freethinking rebel who would never fall for propaganda has gotta be one of the masterstrokes of imperial propaganda.

Notably, US soldiers actually were used in a massive impersonal human wave meatgrinder machine.

Just a little after the anniversary

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...the US should begin its response preparations

Always on the defense, of course - just preparing for our pre-emptive retaliation. We have to be ready to respond in an instant, even before our opponent moves!

This meme in all its forms really annoys me, because all the item descriptions and NPC dialogues DO mean something, they often trace out very interesting background stories either in the text itself or from the placement of items, in an extremely natural and detailed form of environmental storytelling. There is no meaningless gibberish, people just blaze past and don't think about anything, and then complain they don't understand what's going on or that it's nonsensical. I watched a friend play Sekiro and it was so frustrating to watch him skip through basically every NPC's dialogue, and then he didn't know why he was doing anything he was doing!

It's just like, I play through Elden Ring and see the pinnacle of this art, telling stories in some cases with literally no words, just the placement of objects in space, knowing how much time, effort and creativity must have gone into the process and then people say "it's all just random, the people making this game are stupid and you're stupid for pretending there's any pattern".

Like, if you want a two-hour effort post just ask me about the foreshadowing of the Three Fingers throughout the course of the game.

It would be SOOOOO easy for them to just say that AFAB people can undergo the Spacemarinification process, you just end up with a being that is physically indistinguishable from an AMAB Space Marine.

Either invent some "gene-wash" process that tweaks literally a single one out of four dozen chromosomes, or, frankly, say there always was one and the chapters using it just didn't broadcast the fact.

It's the laziest option that resolves the problem, while also being almost kind of interesting - a warrior order that doesn't select only men, but that joining causes you to become a man.

In fact fuck it, I paint Space Marines, from now on under their armor half my dudes have non-functioning vaginas instead of non-functioning penises.

Bridge officers dying in space combat from being thrown off their feet and hitting their head on a panel or screen, or from debris falling on them.

I feel like wearing the slightest amount of armor (or even just a bike helmet!) into battle would have saved dozens of highly decorated ship captains, even admirals, from abrupt ends to their careers.

If you want to be completely immunized against all capitalist philosophy forever, I recommend The Destruction of Reason by Georg Lukacs.

He goes through the history of philosophy in Germany, taking apart each 'significant' philosopher in turn (Schelling, Schopenhauer, Kirkegaard, Nietzche, etc.) and showing that, at each stage, the philosophy being written (as well as the period in which it becomes popular) are entirely dependent on the psychological needs of the bourgeoisie in justifying and maintaining their rule at that specific moment in time.

He also shows at every stage how dialectical materialism is correct, and is the only true successor of the entire philosophical movement originating in ancient Greece. Just like communism is an evolution beyond the highest degree of capitalist organization, dialectical materialism is the evolution beyond the highest development of liberal philosophy (Hegel's dialectical idealism).

There is a price for this knowledge though, as the book is over 850 pages long.

If you want just a key slice, the chapter on Nietzsche is very good and gets across some key points, and is 'only' about 100 pages.

[lying in the foxhole, wounded] "Ah fuck, which pocket did I leave that in... not that one... not that one... there it is!"

"...death is not the end... blah blah blah... glory of a hero is eternal... ah! A grenade! Right, got that! And now... under the chin? Alright, well here we go!"