7 overrated live-action movies. The one directed by Cuarón is pretty good actually.

Check out 12Tone on YouTube. He breaks down pop songs from a music theory perspective. Then just google the words you don't understand.

The Stormcloaks are very racist but their lands are being occupied by a foreign empire. You can either see them as wounded nationalists who want to disengage their society from an otherwise benevolent empire ruled by people they consider racial inferiors or you can see them as a national liberation struggle.

Have sex? Couldn't be me.

They paid like $250 for a 55 in Android TV. I don’t see the dumb TVs going on sale that often even if the base price is only a little more. They really don’t want you to buy them.

East Asian countries generally have strict drug laws. You could attribute it to Confucian values (with drug use being an individual act that is harmful to the community)* or to the legacy of the opium wars, where a foreign power forced the drug laws of China to be lenient in order to flood the country with drugs.

*attributing cultural differences between the west and Asia to Confucianism is a little orientalist sometimes imo

And then you only get to be in charge for 13 out of 71 years in the postwar era and consider being the junior partner in a grand coalition a victory.

Reminder that u/CorticoefferentCrab and u/GucciBananaBricks were co-founders of that sub and also huge fans of Hay'at Tahrir al-Sham (sorry "the opposition") in Syria struggle sessions.

The MAGA mob does not stand in opposition to or support of global finance capital, they represent the interests of assorted local notables and regional barons, the "beautiful boaters." Lots of large businesses have condemned the riots; the National Association of Manufacturers has even asked for Pence to depose Trump using the 25th amendment. A victory for the MAGA mob (assuming it would be possible) would merely be a victory of one type of capitalist over another, not the victory of capital writ large.

Without a dedicated right of way (which would make it light rail) a trolley and a bus are basically the same thing.

Brutalism was the house style for federal buildings for a long time because it was considered as "monumental" as neoclassical architecture. I think a lot of the bad rap brutalism gets comes from people associating it with imposing and alienating government buildings.

The Armenian genocide was some white people type shit.

I'm sorry but I'm not moved by anti-Turkish (or anti-Japanese for that matter) racism. Once your culture has produced a genocide you're white and fair game. No different than making fun of a German or French name.

Hot take: I think Gorby was actually trying to do what he thought was best for preserving the USSR but he was wrong.

If you’re a white man who didn’t graduate college and can’t get into the trades then you’re just less underprivileged instead of privileged. I’m not sure what the income distribution of the suicide rate is but “deaths of despair” are on the rise among whites in general.

...immediately fighting a massive border war because they haven't abolished the nation state form yet. Tito didn't get along with Stalin and Mao didn't get along with Khrushchev, there's no reason to believe that the nations of India and China would put millennia of competition behind them just because they both have red flags. Why wouldn't there just be two socialisms in one country?

Those joint exercises with the Polish really did a number on their supplies.

The space force exists so some lanyards can put "did x to help establish Space Force" on their resumes and some space command guys can say they work for a new branch instead of for the air force. The imperial bureaucracy is just a bunch of people with degrees giving each other jobs. The space people wanted to feel more important and saw Trump as an opportunity. Creating the space force let both Trump and the space people feel good about themselves, and the people in the military who might have opposed it were ignored by Trump because Trump thought the space force was cool.

If Huawei really is basically a PLA front like US natsec state says (the tech and defense industries are hand and glove in every country that is strong in both, so it's a pot calling a kettle black there) then the PLA will just move on to other companies. Huawei was a big success story as a national champion but this is a minor setback for China in the long run.

The US defense industry is partially dependent on the Chinese electronics industry, but the Chinese electronics industry is very dependent on a global semiconductor supply chain that is still mostly controlled by US-aligned states. The goal of the US natsec state is to keep it that way. The empire is actually shooting itself in the foot by forcing China to accelerate the growth of its semiconductor industry. A deal where Huawei continued to buy chips from TSMC and continued to sell equipment to the west (with the west's security concerns addressed) could have been reached, and that deal would have kept China dependent on the west for longer. Now they're going to put even more effort into growing SMIC and the microelectronics industry generally.

“Tankie” only made sense when there were actual tanks.