i figured things were trending this way when i tried to play a dvd on a laptop a few years ago and it turns out they don’t include the software to play dvds anymore and msft just took me to their store page where i could buy it. thankfully i knew about vlc player but i wonder how many people get swindled every year from shit like that

i remember seeing a chart with quality of life on one axis and sustainability on the other and cuba was already in a league of its own. hopefully there will be many more of these solar parks and other renewables to come

Armed conflicts hit post-WWII record in 2023

More armed conflicts took place in 2023 than in any other year since the end of World War II, a new study has found. The Peace Research Institute of Oslo (PRIO) said 59 armed conflicts took place worldwide last year, led by the wars in Ukraine and Gaza. Twenty-eight of the conflicts were in Africa, followed by Asia with 17 and the Middle East with 10. Just three conflicts were recorded in Europe and a single example in the Americas. Although the number of conflicts grew last year, the number of countries that experienced conflicts declined from 39 in 2022 to 34.

Peace Research Institute of Oslo sounds like a typical western scam NGO but i haven’t actually looked into them. even if it isn’t 100% accurate it does feel like the amount of violence around the globe has been increasing, and with climate change and declining capitalism/american imperial position i worry it’s gonna get worse before it gets better

i imagine if it was going to stop in spain while en route from india to israel it was trying to avoid the red sea. but they’ve said they are going to start trying to get ships in the med too so here’s hoping

‘Old friend’ Putin arrives in China for state visit, summit with Xi Jinping

In discussions later, Xi greeted Putin as an “old friend”.He told the Russian president that China and Russia’s relationship had stood the test of time and that they had provided each other with “strategic guidance” in their more than 40 meetings over the past decade.“China is ready to work with Russia to stay each other’s good neighbour, good friend and good partner,” state news agency Xinhua reported Xi as saying. The two men are expected to continued discussions over tea and a walk in the park, Russia’s RIA Novosti news agency reported.

2016 opened my eyes to the nature of the game but at least the game was kind of fun to watch in '20. this one has been so weaksauce that even a story as juicy as a candidate having literal brainworms just didn’t hit right

that’s actually the first good argument against megabalkanizing germany i’ve ever heard

Hello, and welcome to “What the fuck is wrong with the Germans,” vol. MCCXLVII. Tonight’s top story: “German “activist” in “Israel” is protesting that he cannot join the IDF - because he isn’t Israeli, Jewish, and can’t speak Hebrew”

i can understand that as an abstract or longterm goal, but doing this in particular to achieve it, and less than 6 months before an election at that, feels extremely boneheaded

between this and… every other goddamn thing, i have to imagine the democrats are actually aiming for the “30,000 voter election” that the chapo guys were joking about a couple years ago

edit: also while the EV and solar tariffs are really really bad from a climate change perspective, increasing steel tariffs to 25% when china produces well over 10x as much steel as the US feels practically suicidal from an industrial perspective too. what the fuck are they hoping to achieve here?

a book that i really enjoyed about vietnam was Victory at any Cost, a biography of Vo Nguyen Giap. it’s focused on vo, but does a good job giving an overview and context for the era of french colonization up to their final victory in 1975. the author is not a communist and there are a small handful of “betrayed revolution” sort of comments about post-revolution vietnam, but it’s clear that he has a lot of respect for vo and the revolutionaries as a whole and understood their need for overthrowing french colonial rule and american neocolonial rule (even though the author was himself in the american military iirc)

he’s trying to get the toby keith vote

it’s a bit unclear from how i excerpted it, but Wolff isn’t even a convert. He’s a gentile German who pretended to be Jewish so he could have a career Writing Articles. Lol

edit: like Warren, according to him he was told by his mother that they had Jewish roots and he never really looked into it himself and he just went with it

One German Jewish historian, Barbara Steiner, has written a book about the phenomenon and history of Germans converting to Judaism. She finds, perhaps unsurprisingly, that the primary motivations for most converts are manifestations of guilt in one guise or another. Steiner elsewhere characterized Fabian Wolff as an antisemite who assumed his identity with the express purpose of criticizing Israel. She, too, is a convert.

converting out of guilt is so wild to me. some kind of strange pascal’s wager going on in their head

i have to imagine that if you already have grown out a payot and have learned hymns circumcision would be the only thing keeping you from just fully converting. the article also talks about how converts are a pretty substantial proportion of the countrys jewish population and have an outsized say in the community

Very funny article ( archive link ) about a growing bizarre trend in germany: faking Jewishness.

Some years ago, a friend of mine was invited to a Shabbat dinner. The attendees all gave the appearance of being religiously observant. They knew the hymns, the men wore kippot, one even had payot. The hosts insisted that my friend recite the various blessings. Through a chance comment during dinner, he discovered he was the only Jew in attendance. They were Germans who enjoyed enacting Jewish rituals, and wanted a Jew to unwittingly give his blessing.

Reminds me of americans () insisting they are 1/24th cherokee.

‘My vote snatched’: How to win India’s election without a single vote

Two weeks [before the election], the Election Commission of India (ECI) had already called the seat in favour of Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) after cancelling the nominations of the opposition Congress party’s candidate and five others. The eight remaining candidates all withdrew.

Yet, Surat is only the most extreme example of a peculiar phenomenon that is playing out in multiple constituencies across India: opposition candidates dropping out, joining the ruling BJP or alleging threats to their lives. Even as the BJP has denied any foul play, opposition candidates claim these instances are evidence of an uneven political playing field.

the soviets: we noticed that CIA agents often hang out with CIA agents

the us: fuck. how could they do this to us. how did they know. we’re so fucked

hard to imagine a future for ukraine right now that isn’t fucked for the next 15+ years at least. depressing to think that even after the war started they could’ve ended it a few months in, from a position of relative strength, if it weren’t for fucking boris johnson and the western MIC

many such cases