ℭ𝔥𝔦𝔫𝔤𝔞 𝔩𝔞 𝔐𝔦𝔤𝔯𝔞

And it so happens I discovered it and installed it yesterday, out of frustration with asdf.

c/asklemmy isn’t supposed to be a relationship advice forum. It’s supposed to be Lemmy’s version of r/askreddit.

There absolutely is a deep state, though conservatives’ conceptualization of it is bonkers.

Michael Parenti, Dirty Truths:

Almost as an article of faith, some individuals believe that conspiracies are either kooky fantasies or unimportant aberrations. To be sure, wacko conspiracy theories do exist. There are people who believe that the United States has been invaded by a secret United Nations army equipped with black helicopters, or that the country is secretly controlled by Jews or gays or feminists or black nationalists or communists or extraterrestrial aliens. But it does not logically follow that all conspiracies are imaginary.

Conspiracy is a legitimate concept in law: the collusion of two or more people pursuing illegal means to effect some illegal or immoral end. People go to jail for committing conspiratorial acts. Conspiracies are a matter of public record, and some are of real political significance. The Watergate break-in was a conspiracy, as was the Watergate cover-up, which led to Nixon’s downfall. Iran-contra was a conspiracy of immense scope, much of it still uncovered. The savings and loan scandal was described by the Justice Department as “a thousand conspiracies of fraud, theft, and bribery,” the greatest financial crime in history.

Often the term “conspiracy” is applied dismissively whenever one suggests that people who occupy positions of political and economic power are consciously dedicated to advancing their elite interests. Even when they openly profess their designs, there are those who deny that intent is involved. In 1994, the officers of the Federal Reserve announced they would pursue monetary policies designed to maintain a high level of unemployment in order to safeguard against “overheating” the economy. Like any creditor class, they preferred a deflationary course. When an acquaintance of mine mentioned this to friends, he was greeted skeptically, “Do you think the Fed bankers are deliberately trying to keep people unemployed?” In fact, not only did he think it, it was announced on the financial pages of the press. Still, his friends assumed he was imagining a conspiracy because he ascribed self-interested collusion to powerful people.

At a World Affairs Council meeting in San Francisco, I remarked to a participant that U.S. leaders were pushing hard for the reinstatement of capitalism in the former communist countries. He said, “Do you really think they carry it to that level of conscious intent?” I pointed out it was not a conjecture on my part. They have repeatedly announced their commitment to seeing that “free-market reforms” are introduced in Eastern Europe. Their economic aid is channeled almost exclusively into the private sector. The same policy holds for the monies intended for other countries. Thus, as of the end of 1995, “more than $4.5 mil­lion U.S. aid to Haiti has been put on hold because the Aristide government has failed to make progress on a program to privatize state-owned companies” (New York Times 11/25/95).

Those who suffer from conspiracy phobia are fond of saying: “Do you actually think there’s a group of people sitting around in a room plotting things?” For some reason that image is assumed to be so patently absurd as to invite only disclaimers. But where else would people of power get together—on park benches or carousels? Indeed, they meet in rooms: corporate boardrooms, Pentagon command rooms, at the Bohemian Grove, in the choice dining rooms at the best restaurants, resorts, hotels, and estates, in the many conference rooms at the White House, the NSA, the CIA, or wherever. And, yes, they consciously plot—though they call it “planning” and “strategizing”—and they do so in great secrecy, often resisting all efforts at public disclosure. No one confabulates and plans more than political and corporate elites and their hired specialists. To make the world safe for those who own it, politically active elements of the owning class have created a national security state that expends billions of dollars and enlists the efforts of vast numbers of people.

Yet there are individuals who ask with patronizing, incredulous smiles, do you really think that the people at the top have secret agendas, are aware of their larger interests, and talk to each other about them? To which I respond, why would they not? This is not to say that every corporate and political elite is actively dedicated to working for the higher circles of power and property. Nor are they infallible or always correct in their assessments and tactics or always immediately aware of how their interests are being affected by new situations. But they are more attuned and more capable of advancing their vast interests than most other social groups.

The alternative is to believe that the powerful and the privileged are somnambulists, who move about oblivious to questions of power and privilege; that they always tell us the truth and have nothing to hide even when they hide so much; that although most of us ordinary people might consciously try to pursue our own interests, wealthy elites do not; that when those at the top employ force and violence around the world it is only for the laudable reasons they profess; that when they arm, train, and finance covert actions in numerous countries, and then fail to acknowledge their role in such deeds, it is because of oversight or forgetfulness or perhaps modesty; and that it is merely a coincidence how the policies of the national security state so consistently serve the interests of the transnational corporations and the capital-accumulation system throughout the world.

The “forever” part is hyperbolic, but I hear that it’s otherwise quite good. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29tITqtnJU4

There’s a new edition of Gabriel Wyner’s Fluent Forever, and it’s a perfect time to revisit. Will it make you fluent? Forever? It changed my approach to language learning ten years ago, and he’s updated his approach with even more language learning tips. So if you’re not sure how to learn a language, we’ll talk about exactly what you can learn from fluent forever to become a polyglot.If that’s your thing.

Their old URL seem to be broken, so:

• https://app.dreaming.com/
• https://www.youtube.com/@DreamingSpanish

The USSR was only isolated from the imperial core states, not from other socialist nor non-alligned states. The imperial core, in its hubris, often calls itself the “international community,” but they’ve always been a minority in terms of population, land, and natural resouces.

You need to abandon the term “globalism” altogether. The left doesn’t use it, and on the right it’s a dog whistle. The word has no coherent meaning. It’s a floating signifier.

When the right speaks of “globalism,” it is a dog whistle for anti-communism & anti-semitism, a euphemism for the “global Judeo-Bolshevik conspiracy.”

When the left criticizes the World Economic Forum, it does it in the context of class war, not in the right’s racist, harebrained context.

It’s pretty amazing how quickly the US speed-ran through decades of anti-communist & anti-China propaganda.

An espresso group head and an AI prompt.

sudo make me a sandwich

I’d say you’re trying to compare apples and oranges. They’re both called languages but their differences dwarf their similarities.

Once you learn one programming language, learning other ones is easier, because now you know how to program, which in many ways is the hard part, and distinct from the languages themselves.

A Great Firewall so that domestic video hosting services can be developed.

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Censorship_of_YouTube#Countries_where_access_to_YouTube_is_currently_blocked
• https://www.bilibili.com/video/BV1pu4y1a7Lq/

If you let slip your opinion, they’re likely to vet themselves. May be risky in a workplace scenario, though.

This would be even more effective as a dead baby joke.

Because it’s a big club, and you ain’t in it.

The Epstein Emails Show That Conspiracy Theorists Are Right: ‘Eyes Wide Shut’ Is Real

“Bourgeois Democracy”: What Do Marxists Mean By This Term?

📺 Jeffrey Sachs and Aaron Good Discuss ‘American Exception: Empire and the Deep State’

Blah blah blah. We went over this two months ago. Did you forget?

Also, you still haven’t answered my question.

Also during Christmas time people wear traditional hoods that look like KKK in US. They are not KKK.

Always good to give someone a heads-up on that one 😅 Roman Catholic tradition predates the KKK by centuries. Presumably the KKK stole their look, like the Nazis stole the 卍.

He may be incurious,but the real reason is that he and his cohorts have an agenda.