I do a lot of ranting in front of my kids, and when we're confronted with obvious bullshit like a bunch of people having to live under a bridge, I make sure to conclude the rant by telling them Stalin would've dealt with the people responsible for this.

I also tell them that in this family we talk to strangers, and then model that behavior. We spend a lot of time learning about the lives of people around the world and the collective accomplishments of the people in maligned places like Appalachia or China. We study foreign languages and speak to people in their native languages. As a general guiding principle my wife and I have agreed that we want our kids to grow up with self awareness that they are part of the workers of the world.

I read on Wikipedia that klezmer music was banned in the Stalin era USSR. Of course, you can easily find klezmer albums recorded in state owned studios in the Stalin era USSR. Pointing this out is "original research", which isn't allowed by Wikipedia. Instead you have to use a so-called reliable source, which means any dumb shit published by someone like Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic is just fine. I advise against using Wikipedia for anything. Even a straightforward fact like a date of birth isn't to be trusted unless you're planning to dig through all of the citations.

A few years ago I heard from a few people that breast cancer is not treated in Canada. That seemed highly unlikely, and about 1 minute of research confirmed it wasn't true, but do you have any idea what people were talking about?

Somebody must have at this point.

I don't feel threatened by China. It's easy.

Someone elsewhere on this site pointed out that Yemen doesn't have any aircraft. If that's true it means anyone shooting at aircraft new it was American. So, probably not friendly fire.

They were barbarians before Europe new North America existed. They perpetrated the single most barbaric crime of the 20th century. I always knew they would be get back on top.

Is the ghost of Kiev killing thousands of Russian soldiers on Snake Island?

China has elevated billions of people out of extreme poverty, and they did it by curbing the political power of the bourgeoisie. The west will never forgive them.

They also don't care about capitalist restoration in Ukraine leading to an increasingly violent ethnic cleansing, which was what finally led to the Russian intervention in Ukraine.

8. That is far too much.

I once read a Yitzkor book written by a jew that had been enslaved during WW2 on a kulak nazi collaborator's farm in Nazi occupied Ukraine. One day he saw a Soviet military plane fly over the farm. I want to emphasize that this was in the 1940s Stalinist USSR, not even the 1950s Stalinist USSR referenced by this guy. Even in the allegedly backward Soviet Union, seeing this plane was only noteworthy to this jew because it meant help was coming soon. Seeing a flying machine didn't cause him to panic like a superstitious American.

Some days later he could hear artillery in the distance. He knew he would probably live long enough to be liberated, unlike his son and several other jewish slaves who's corpses were piled by the barn.

As the Soviets got closer, and liberation was imminent, the kulak farmer begged this jew to tell the Soviets he had been kind to his slaves.

The Soviets finally arrived, and he was freed from the misery, death, and destruction brought to him by a supposedly advanced (and absolutely not barbaric) western society.

I don't think he testified on behalf of his former owner. He didn't say, but I don't think it had to be said. There was probably no trial anyway. I'm guessing justice was swift.

In conclusion, this random internet guy that got me worked up should take Stalin's name out of his mouth.

So, in all seriousness ( which is no fun), all of these drone flights are just some kind of training exercise the military is doing, right? It's not that hard to follow a drone to where it's landing.

Hell yeah! It's slow, but I'm getting better.

Without the aid of a dictionary, "and there our (unspecified plural noun, maybe soldiers?) struck Plekhovo"

I used to make fun of my friend for doing what we called the transcontinental booty call.

Yeah, I used to observe the democrats in action and think it was weird that I was so much better at doing political messaging in my own organizing projects. Eventually I realized that their messaging appears to suck because we're not actually pursuing the same goals. I don't know if they tricked me, they changed, or if I deluded myself, but now I have a more developed understanding of class conflict and no longer find them worth paying attention to.