FriendBesto

Watched it for the lolz. Lots of rhetoric aimed at their bases, with very little in the name of actual policy, outside short slogans that got repeated 3 or 4 times over with next to no detail. Each trying to 'gotcha' the other and each tried to miscategorize the other a few times. Each echo chamber will claim their person won, yet as an outsider and non-American with no skin in the game, I would say they both did pretty poorly with both stating a couple of valid comments, but few and far between. A couple of ABC commentators later said the same.

Looking forward to the headlines cheerleading their pre-selected person on Wednesday. Each camp trying to out meme the other. Lastly, weren't the microphones at the debate supposed to be muted when the other was talking? 'Cause they weren't at times. This made the thing funnier. Would have been better with an actual audience. Otherwise, it looked so fake and performative.

On my laptop, I update my bashrc on Excel, in Wine, then export it as a PDF, OCR to .md, Pandoc it to an .Org, and then finally, write it down on paper and re-type it on my phone's Termux's Emacs instance, then TRAMP it to my PC, in the other room.

I use biebian, btw.

Personally, I like it. Usually I will have something playing, music or the like in another tab or will have multiple media tabs, so I will have a small PiP on the bottom right hand side, makes it easier to manipulate on the fly. Alternatively, I will just push the tab with the screen onto the sidebar, since this is what I did before this option became available.

The US follows the Super Power playbook, which is, they will invent some ridiculous, random, flimsy reason as to why they can allow themselves to break International Law. I mean, what is anyone else going to do? Invade them?

I mean, is not like invading Iraq, Afghanistan, among others, and covertly helping overthrow dozens of democratically elected Heads of State since WWII was like, 100% Legal.

If anything, at least more people see the blatant hypocrisy, now more than ever.

I guess if they are illegals than sure, why not?

Agreed. It makes sense that if you live in the West that you are going to get Western propaganda. What was a bit more surprising was the wall-to-wall level of psy-op grade propaganda coming from the Americans and of some of the other countries, like the Germans.

The reductionist mindset of a multi-layered, regional geopolitical situation was reduced to we, the Americans.NATO = the white-wearing good guys, Russians = bad guys.

I mean, it is not like this has not been done before and from all sides. Yet the level in which any valid criticism of what is essentially an exercise in NATO expansionism, and the repercussions of that push, which ends with the Ukrainians being used a cannon fodder as a way to weaken the Russian military is a prime example of a Machiavellian strategy, in my opinion.

Ukraine will be the one to pay the highest price, just like the Cubans have, in the inverse case, since the Cuban missile crisis. I was looking at a demographic chart of Ukraine and their population has taken a huge blow, either due to deaths or people fleeing the country. Now, who do you think is going to the all the contracts to rebuild everything back up, later on?

Sure, why not? I put sriracha on some the pizzas we get, or make at home.

Some Italians may find this offensive, alas not as offensive as lathering pizza in ketchup.

They are tropes because they literally happened. How many millions died due to famines or ideological persecutions say, Russia, China or Khmer Rouge? Please, provide a number.

Are you going to claim that current China is not a surveillance State, on top of that? With property that can only be owned for 50 years and homeless outside main cities? I mean, I could go on and on, video does exist of this. The point is that I have looked. To say that some of these regimes did not have at least some positives is silly, simply put, the positives in most cases do not outweigh the oppressive, propaganda State negatives.

Dude, I lived in Canada, know people in the Nordics, I know what I am talking about. You are wrong. Saying it is "false" does not cancel reality. Most Canadians enjoy a standard of living higher than 90% of the rest of the world in the aggregate. I lived in a major city and got tired of the cosmopolitan living and moved a small city, I look into a river every morning. I am not rich, albeit a bit lucky.

In general, the Nordics have it better. You should go visit Iceland, albeit it is expensive, but at least you are not going to risk getting robbed as you would in many parts of Mexico or Honduras. Colonialism is a silly claim, all human beings, and most civilizations have done this since the beginning of time, just colonizing each other over resources. You think the while folk invented this? It has been done by all, often brutally. Did you think the Mongols, the British of the Muslims during the early Islamic conquests got where they get through hugs and kisses? Alexander the Great got to India by whispering sweet nothings into the armies they destroyed along the way? Surely. Africa and the Americas were killing each other all the time and had slaves before any white person got there. Who do you think sold black people to the Europeans? Other black people.

My point is that the Nordic countries can afford to have socialized services because they enjoy the protection of USA imperialistic or militaristic hegemony. Never said that was a good thing, nevertheless, that is just the current reality. They do not have to worry about paying for large standing armies because the USA would not allow it. Since it is simply not in their best geopolitical interest. Same reason why Costa Rica or Panama do not need large armies, either.

In a true Communist state, as in like what Stalin wanted and aimed for, there was no room for private enterprise. Mao and current China has their fingers into all so-called private companies. Not really private, really. What if your name is Jack Ma, and are a full blown billionare, and get a bit lippy in the wrong think, you just disappear for 3 months to be, straighten out. So, not sure if that is really "private."

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-64781986

Cooperatives operating in a capitalistic environment, is very different than one existing under a Marxist or Communistic one. I mean, I cannot believe that this has to be stated. So, no, your answer is as vague as every other communist/marxist/socialist/etc that I have honestly asked, who themselves usually throw all the tropes of some type of communist paradise that has never existed in the form they suggest, while ignoring major aspects of history, the human condition and how said humans actually work and exist because we are all very different people. With different abilities, and qualities and many do not like to play communism or Marxism. I mean, Marxist and more specifically Leninists do know this, otherwise, they would not have invented the underhanded concept of Vanguard parties in order to manipulate the populace in a particular direction.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vanguardism

What is not rocket science is what has been done historically, and of how badly treated and persecuted people who did not want to LARP with their communist-minded citizens or who were found guilty of wrong-think. These stories can be found throughout most of the 20th century in Russia and Eastern Europe and, behind what we would call the iron curtain and China and elsewhere.

I was honestly asking a question, which you could have answered in good faith, rather than coming off defensively as if I had not done my homework. You do not know what I know, so you should perhaps not assume, friend. Keeps conversations better. Would you wager to try again?

I do not know either. But with the recent Google, Anti-Trust ruling, there is a chance the Courts could force Google to break the deal they have with Mozilla in the future. I assume Google will appeal, but if that goes, so does 80-85% of Mozilla's income. Selling Mullvad's VPN is not going to cut it, so maybe they think they can cash in with "AI" somehow. Since you are right, maybe the best VPN's aren't dirt cheap but they are certainly not expensive in most Western countries. Besides, most users do not use VPNs. As of 2023, only about 31-33% of all internet users do.

What "I" believe is irrelevant. History is the point. So yes, tens of millions died during Communism. If you are focusing on Russia, sure, let's go there. First and foremost, during the later part of the 20th century until the Fall, Russian was essentially a corrupt, authoritarian State. This is widely known. Plus, I have old Russian friends who lived there, so I will certainly trust them over some possible ideologue on the internet. You know that living while you are concerned of being on the States radar over wrong think is not necessarily something that I would call a quality life. I have Romanian friends whose parents lived under the shadow of communist, oppressive propaganda and forced group think. Russia is not unique but they were one of the most forceful. One of the things that many pro-Communists never like to talk about was what happened to the people who society who did not want to LARP along. Generally they were re-educated or considered traitors or enemies of the State. Feel free to look it up.

Regarding vacations, makes sense that since you were seen like a cog in a machine, that for most, vacations, mandated by the State would be given generally, all at once and time off depended on a number of factors. https://www.rbth.com/history/334213-soviet-union-month-vacations Worth noting that the above is a Pro-Russian site, so there is bound to be some bias.

Found this person who claims that some type of vacations given to workers would be booked, group vacations. Not my idea of a vacation, however, if you ask me.
https://reddit.simo.sh/r/AskHistorians/comments/pejfni/i_am_an_average_soviet_citizen_who_wish_to_go_on/ So, no, more time off is not necessarily the only metric that should matter.

Secondly, millions died due to political persecutions, like in the Great Purge, at least 1.2+ million Kulaks, just to mention one. Their crime being only slightly better off plebs. On top of that millions of others died of famines, in order to get the USSR "going." Same happen under Mao, in fact way more died under Mao as they too played the class game as to label citizens into different bins. They called them the 5 different black categories, partly borrowed from the Russian approach. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Five_Black_Categories

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kulak https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge https://allthatsinteresting.com/how-many-people-did-stalin-kill https://www.nytimes.com/1989/02/04/world/major-soviet-paper-says-20-million-died-as-victims-of-stalin.html https://news.stanford.edu/stories/2010/09/naimark-stalin-genocide-092310

The presumption that I would be dishonest is silly and reeks to bad faith. Do not just try to cherry pick a time period for what seems to be benefit. How many millions dead over governmental ideology shift does the US have? Also, would you not say that the standard of living in say, the USA was superior in the aggregate to Russia's during the same time period, or would you deny that?

Friend the ignorant here seems to be you. Cheers.

Fair. should have been more clear. I use Betterfox with my own tweaks, essentially a mix of AK and BF. Since BF is just based off AK. The AK maintainer has stated in the past that he just steals it off him. However and as you said, when jumping to site to site, AK is more likely to break things, which requires a bit more troubleshooting. Which I do not need for work since I know most of the sites I will be on. So outright privacy is not the primary goal there.
I used BF and tweaked upwards, rather than to undo AK settings. It's just less of a hassle.

If I want AK, I use LIbrewolf since it already uses a lot of Arkenfox, along with my own tweaks for personal use, where I take privacy more seriously. Each browser has different uses.