For one of these China Watcher youtubers, those are pretty pathetic viewcounts. Usually you see the bots push them up to like a million in a day.

I think he would have far more credibility with his audience if he was a white guy who taught English in China for a semester.

"Commanders rejected calls to restore democracy" What a framing, like that is ever something Nuland has been concerned with.

Yes, the US is purposely starving the world.

Unironically yes. While the US is particularly fond of bombs and drones, another favourite weapon of theirs is starving the countries of people who have the audacity to disagree with them. See: Cuba*, DPRK. As a bonus, they even get to blame the countries they are starving for the lack of food.

Not even only other countries, the US is happy to do it to their own people because the hungry are easier to exploit. The US has an absolute staggering amount of food waste, it is the largest component of most US landfills. They'd sooner throw away food before giving it to the needy. In many cases, they will punish you for giving it to the needy (see the charitable organizations repeatedly fined in Texas for feeding the homeless).

*Incidentally this exact same map can be used for countries voting to end the US sanctions of Cuba.

Conscription in the framework of modern warframe makes increasingly little sense to me. It's always been a pretty terrible thing, but one could argue that throwing a pike in the hands of a farmer and pointing them at the enemy had some degree of success. There was definitely a period of history where having more warm bodies than the other side was extremely important.

These days, so much of warfare is conducted without even seeing your enemy, I am not sure how much it accomplishes. Having one more guy on the front lines to get hit by a mortar doesn't do much, and you probably aren't putting conscripts on roles like drone operator or artillery from my understanding. Having trained soldiers seems increasingly more important than having more soldiers.

It doesn't matter how much money you spend on giving fancy gear to your military if the military is comprised of civilians who have no idea how to use them.

Japanese permanent resident here.

Epidurals are very rare. They exist but they are not popular at all. Some is the belief that a "natural" birth is better. In some cases it is just availability of an anesthiaologist that is equipped to do one. Some people just don't even realise it is an option. The only people I know here who have had one were non-Japanese residents.

I don't think people necessarily look down on a mother who has one, it's rare enough that nobody would even ask probably, but it's just not a common procedure.

Technically the work week is the same, not factoring in commutes. Folks who work in Tokyo often live in neighboring cities like Saitama and commute in.

There's typically a lot of unpaid overtime though. There is the concept of "black companies" that force employees to work up to 100 hours a week. To some degree the government has been trying to crack down on it, and has met with some success, especially with the bigger international. My company is the Japanese branch of a US company, so we are a little better than most, but some of that still happens. I probably work about 45-50 hours a week on the clock on average, plus maybe 2-3 off the clock. I don't live or work in Tokyo anymore, so my commute is fairly insignificant.

Thankfully the "you have to go out drinking with all of your coworkers after work" thing has mostly fallen by the wayside. Those events still happen, but it is way more acceptable to just...not go.

Source: I have worked in Japan my entire adult life

I stand corrected comrade. I admit I lack the technical expertise on doohickeys, I need to study more.

I did, they were handwaved away as "well, everyone makes racist jokes with their friends, it doesn't mean they are racist! Plus that was all in the past!". The cliches were overwhelming.

I said my piece and moved on. Anyone seeing the thread can see proof that laowhy is a racist piece of shit, so job accomplished. The argument was more for anyone who might think those guys were an authority on anything about China.

The fact you guys have The Blaster as an emoji is just

Pick up artist, I believe.

Ouch, I knew they treated their girlfriends/wives like garbage, I didn't know they did whole sexpat series. Though honestly, I am not remotely surprised.

Obviously it's all part of the evil government campaign to censor them, but it is a sacrifice they are willing to make for the people they definitely don't hate. The white man's burden is very heavy afterall.

Rats get a really bad reputation, they make great companion pets. Extremely smart and social, very clean. Not too demanding to take care of as long as you are willing to spend time with them.

Manifesto is an easy read, but probably not the best introduction. There was a good beginner reading list posted around here recently, I agree with their recommendation of Harman's "How Marxism Works" pamphlet. Super fast read, and can really help capture people's attention to read something a bit longer form.

Don't always agree with a lot of Harman, but he gives a really easy to understand overview.

"Protect our freedoms". How? Which freedoms are threatened by middle-eastern farmers and ranchers? Which freedom are soldiers stationed in South Korea, which commit a staggering amount of sexual assault, protecting? Or in Japan, where they terrorize the locals in Ryukyu? Can't imagine why they are enduring hardship and hostility when they murder and assault the locals. My fascist brother (we aren't on speaking terms) came back from a military construction contract he had in Afghanistan, laughing about a time he saw civilians killed.

Which soldier is so devout as to want to read the bible while on deployment, but not devout enough to have brought one with them or availed themselves of the hundreds of free versions online?

Honest question, because I might be out of date with my language use. I didn't realise it had misogynist undertones, my understanding was always that is just the feminine form of "bastard" and they are used relatively interchangeably?

I generally agree, but speaking for me it depends on a few factors.

One is where I am posting. I don't post exclusively on lemmygrad communities, and I am aware that if I am posting about politics on other instance communities will probably meet with a more hostile reception. I have even noticed lemmy.ml has definitely been drifting more and more liberal recently. I try to engage in good faith there when I can not necessarily because I expect to change their mind but other people may become interested (I even maintain a second account there just so people don't instantly disregard everything I say because of my instance). Whereas the liberals who wander into lemmygrad communities are either there to actively troll or very very lost; there's not much of an audience that needs convincing because a lot of the audience will be well...us.

Obviously there is the content too. If they are willing to argue in good faith I am more inclined to have a polite discussion. I think it is important we recognize the difference in people who are actually interested in discussion and those who are just couching their trolls in more polite language. I have definitely been fooled by people in the latter category before I realized they weren't even reading my replies to them and just using a mask of respectability to sound more appealing.

Speaking personally, I remember back when I still identified as a socdem and hadn't really read theory much yet. I remember checking out /r/genzedong /r/genzhou and /r/sino specifically because I heard they were horrible places, and I wanted to see why. Not only did I find that not to be the case, I found them to be very friendly and welcome for the most part. I probably would have become a socialist regardless of reddit as I actually read books, but it definitely didn't hurt.

Just a reminder that no matter how much you sell yourself out to try to fit in, if you are ethnically Chinese (or Russian, or whichever ethnic group the US currently is scapegoating) you will always be the Other and the first to be targeted. Doesn't matter if you get the passport, become a soldier or a cop, you will never be one of them.

Since they are going to get blamed for it and railroaded whether they did it or not, I hope they at least actually did get some information to China. I can't imagine they had all that much China didn't already know about though.

They've been transitioning to scapegoating them for a while now. Blaming them for nordstream, a gradual increase of articles in MSM that are at least passingly critical of Ukraine and/or Ukraine's chances of winning the war. They can't do it too quickly or it would be just a little bit too obvious.

In a few years we will be reading about how nobody could have seen the fascist elements taking control, and how ever could that have happened. Wouldn't be surprised if some kind of task force were assembled to liberate Ukrainian oil reser-I mean, bring democracy to the people of Ukraine.

Not begrudging your interests, but I think this post kind of summarizes why I have never been able to read any western comics.

I like really concrete beginning/end points for fictional media. I like to be able to say "This is book 1, I can start here. This is book 4, it's the last one". I also hate jumping into any series in the middle, even if it is absolutely designed for it. Anytime I have thought about trying to read any western comics (or warhammer on the same note) it just seems like a massive ambigious undertaking.