I mean, it sort of does, particularly as far as retirement is concerned. I know some MAGA diehards that are, to a significant degree, judging by the metric of their 401k/Roth retirement savings accounts, and the value of those accounts are necessarily going to be tightly linked with the overall performance of the stock market by virtue of the fact that they are investment account.

Now, if we’re being honest with ourselves, the US stock market has been largely decoupled from reality since at least 2008. Consequently, the current state of the stock market no longer functions as any kind of meaningful metric for economic health. It is, in my view, just a system for speculation which exists to transfer wealth out of the pockets of the people attempting to beat the market and into the pockets of the people who already have enough money or influence to make the market. Even decoupled from reality as it is, however, I find it a dubious prospect that the line can ever keep going up indefinitely - they never do, and especially not when so many other (arguably more concrete) economic indicators are pointing the other way.

Looking at you, load-bearing (and suspiciously bubble-shaped) AI hype, looking at you.

Should such a crash happen, I’ll be very excited to hear what rationalization they pivot into this time. Who knows, maybe Trump will get control of the fed like he wants and then we can throw hyperinflation (and likely a subsequent de-dollarisation) into the mix to really take the already roaring garbage fire up a notch. I’m certain that this fascist will be just as cautious and responsible with the money cannon as his dictator peers have historically been.

There’s something comically absurd to me about censoring “fuck” on a post that jokes about pedophilia lmao. Feels like the priorities might be slightly out of order.

When they go low, start hitting below the belt until they cry foul.

I don’t really know what I put there that qualifies as purity testing? If it’s the final paragraph, I should say that it was intended to be unserious; I just wanted an excuse to continue the ‘fetter’ bit.

As stated, I think the situation is very unlikely, to the point that it’s not worth seriously considering unless we have a demonstrable, compelling reason to believe that a flip is presently happening. My point was rather to say that Fetterman’s flip was less unexpected than it would initially seem given what information existed at the time, and if he’d gotten the kind of attention Mamdani did when he was running, it likely wouldn’t have been as surprising as it ended up being. Conversely, however, even after the intense scrutiny Mamdani has received from both the media and people on the left and right, it would be a genuine surprise to me if he was being anything other than truthful about his beliefs and intentions, and so the two aren’t really directly comparable. It is speculation, yes, but it’s not as if it’s entirely baseless, and it leads into the conclusion of ‘all we can do is wait and see. There’s not a reason to be worried at this time, but there are plenty of reasons to be hopeful.’

Plus (and to your point), even if Mamdani turned out to be less progressive or less effective than I’d hoped, so long as he’s this side of sane about the current fascist takeover, then I’d say we should count him as an ally, regardless of anything else mentioned.

I mean, Fetterman had some questionable views even before the point that most acknowledged that he’d flipped, he simply got less coverage than Mamdani and had the benefit of running against Dr. Oz so a lot of it was missed/overlooked. I think it’s significantly less likely that Mamdani flips because, to my understanding, he’s been very consistent in his views for quite a while now, even from the time before he was in office.

That said, if Mamdani flipped I could see it doing significant damage to the left on the basis of perception alone, so it could be that I’m just praying the left won’t be… fettered, by another pretender giving progressive policy a wrongfully bad name.

I’m somewhat similar, but I find that I have a tendency to remember interactions and conversations better than anything else regardless of emotionality, likely because of my chosen strategy when it comes to adapting new behaviors for social situations. I have a practice of, after any given interaction, doing a ‘post match review’ of sorts, assessing what was said, how I reacted/responded, how that was reacted/responded to by the other parties, etc. Once I’ve done that, I can then adapt new social behaviors for future use. It’s a weird sort of VOD review type thing which, frankly, sounds somewhat sociopathic when I put it in those terms 😭.

I definitely remember interactions like this post mentions better than your standard conversation, but I don’t think it’s as a consequence of the emotions themselves (at least, most of the time; breakup conversations definitely stick because of the emotions). Rather, I think it’s more that if an interaction is emotionally charged in the first place, I’ll generally review that more times or more in depth for ways to better handle the situation, regardless of if I’m trying to provide comfort or hit back at someone being a prick. Repetition makes something stick in my memory, and emotional situations simply get more screen time and re-runs.

That’s just me, though. Neurodivergence takes a plethora of forms, and none of my IRL friends with autism use this framework, so who knows lmao. It also carries some environmental hazards in that, if you aren’t able to stop yourself from spiraling, you can fall down a hole of fixating on social mistakes, so it’s certainly not ideal.

Yeah, I think a lot of comedy works because there’s an ‘aha’ moment where the person hearing the joke makes a novel connection and it finally clicks into place. That’s why explaining a joke immediately renders it unfunny. Imo, the final line feels like it sabotages the joke to some degree because it makes the joke too clear, but I’m honestly just operating on vibes here.

I honestly think this joke would be funnier without the final line

Fr. I died when I saw the title because it reads like a conspiracy theory class roster lmao

Very confused why this is getting downvoted so heavily. Sewer socialism is a pre-existing term and is not a negative descriptor. This opinion piece in particular is pointing out that Mamdani is seemingly aiming to be another in a long lineage of successful socialist mayors who made it their mission to focus on the day-to-day infrastructure of a city, even the dirty kind like sewers, as a way to measurably improve the lives of their constituents.

My assumption is that people are downvoting this without actually reading the article, as generally .world seems to heavily favor Mamdani, unless I’m missing something?

I give decent odds that we’ll be past the ‘lost ballots’ stage and into ‘edited ballots’ territory tbh

Preach. Unless you come from one of the coastal states with multiple big cities or the capital of your state, you’re pretty much always gonna be describing in relation to the capital when talking to anyone who isn’t at least from/living in that state.

Also, by far the most American thing in your comment is describing the relative position of South Pennsylbumfuckia in units of travel time, rather than units of distance. I never even realized I did that until a dude in Amsterdam asked me to describe the location of where I was staying in km rather than minutes lmao.

I’m gonna be real, “linguistically challenged dingus” is an impressively clever series of words for someone who claims to be linguistically challenged.

Don’t sell yourself short. Keep that chin up, your crown is falling, king.

Apologies it took me so long to look at this - got busy irl, but that’s a fair take, and an understandable one at that. I’ve long been of the opinion that sanctions on nations like North Korea and Iran are, at this point, completely ineffectual, and are essentially just inflicting pain on the civilian populace for little gain. Past a certain threshold of sanctioning, you essentially decouple your economy from the one you’re sanctioning, and in so doing you lose any leverage you might have had. I also will make clear that I consider the US’s actions in the case of Cuba to be utterly reprehensible; that particular case is as clear cut as it gets, and is illustrative of the way that the US has historically wielded its geopolitical and economic heft with all the precision of a cudgel as part of its broader aims to impose its own (flawed) economic view of the world.

The thing that I would note, however, is that the US isn’t the only actor, and that sanctions on North Korea haven’t been continuous by other western actors. In particular, sanctions were easing to a significant degree in the 90s and early 2000s under the Agreed Framework as a consequence of Seoul pushing for normalized relations during that time. This changed, however, when North Korea first withdrew from the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, and then in particular tested nuclear weapons several times from 2006 onward. At that point, several western nations which had lifted sanctions re-imposed them as an attempt to discourage other actors from pursuing the same path. Now, I will admit that this is a somewhat unfair argument, as it fails to note that the US broadly did not hold up its end of the deal within the Agreed Framework, only agreeing to it in the first place on the assumption that the Kim regime would collapse before they needed to hold up their end, and Israel is similarly in violation of the NPT and hasn’t faced anything like the consequences that North Korea has, but it isn’t as if there aren’t modern reasons for the sanctions, nor is it the case that North Korea isn’t somewhat guilty here.

All that said, however, I still don’t think that the North Korean sanctions as they exist now are serving American interests, and the reason I say that is because it has pushed North Korea into alignment with Russia, as they have essentially zero to lose by doing so considering how heavily sanctioned they already are. Historically, the primary limitation of North Korean nuclear weapons is not the warhead, but actually the technical aspect of the delivery system, and North Korea’s recent collaboration with Russia may actually resolve that particular problem for them, as Russia has the industry and technical know-how to create some truly cutting edge ballistic missiles. In a certain sense, the American over-use of sanctions may, at this point, have actually become entirely self-defeating in a geostrategic sense.

Sanctions do make sense in the case of Russia, though, as they are a net positive producer in most critical civilian industries, so the populace is unlikely to go hungry regardless of sanctions, so the sanctions instead serve a primary purpose of providing an extra layer of friction in Russian imports of technical systems, increasing cost for domestic military manufacturing, and an extra layer of friction for Russian exports. One specific example is OPEC capping the price of oil at such a level that Russia is unlikely to actually make any kind of profit on such an export. This allows the global price of oil to be kept steady (and keeps the price high enough that, ideally, Russian civilians who work in the industry aren’t faced with economic pain) while simultaneously limiting how much Russia can benefit from the export of such goods. That’s not really relevant to North Korea (except, perhaps, insofar as technical imports by Russia might be used to assist in warhead delivery system development, but I’ve covered that already), but I figured I would mention it as I do believe there is a case to be made for sanctions in some scenarios, separate from the fact that the US’s overuse is, at this point, clearly not what should be aimed for. Sanctions (just like tariffs, good lord the current admin is braindead) are a tool which should be considered with a surgeon’s mindset; only used in very specific scenarios where it is both necessary and sensible, and wielded with the precision of a scalpel, and not that of a blunt instrument

Regardless, though, I’ll acknowledge that your view isn’t unfounded, and that it’s not so cut-and-dry as I had implied. Thank you for providing that study, I’ll definitely be keeping that on hand for future reference.

Yo is that the new McDonald’s Egg MacGuffin?

What a strange take this is. If you are trying to equivocate the two situations as a condemnation of Ukraine, I would note that sanctions are leveraging economic power, while conventional warfare leverages military power, and you obfuscate this difference by using the word “blockade”. It isn’t a blockade, it’s sanctions. Blockades involve military power, sanctions do not. Do I believe that the US is guilty of immense human suffering as a consequence of the usage of sanctions in international relations? Of course, and I’m equally aware of the diminishing returns of pulling such an economic lever, but between economic and military power, North Korea is under economic pressure, and Ukraine is under military pressure. Having a military government only makes sense as a solution in one of these two situations, and the situations are similarly not comparable.

If, however, I instead take you at face value, likely against my better judgement, and interpret your point instead to mean that it’s valid for North Korea not to have elections because they are also justified in martial law, then I am perhaps even more confused, because it sounds like you’re arguing for martial law because of sanctions endured by North Korea (if so, see above why this is not a justification for martial law). What confuses me, though, is why you would pick that justification in the first place. You could, for example, argue that because North Korea only has an armistice with South Korea, they technically remain still at war, and thus are reasonable for imposing a permanent state of martial law. My counterpoint would be that South Korea is, at this point, incredibly unlikely to invade for a variety of economic, political, and demographic reasons, and North Korea has already shielded itself against existential threat via nuclear weapons (their opponent’s capital is 40km from the border, Seoul can’t even get much warning, much less intercept the nukes). Regardless of sanctions, there isn’t actually that much reason that North Korea should still be devoting so many of its resources to its military, nor is there that much of a reason for martial law to still be in effect.

I would also question if you genuinely think that any kind of meritocratic process occurred in a military sense when, rather than elect a leader (reflecting a peacetime footing), or have an experienced military officer take the role (reflecting a wartime footing), leadership instead passed down through three generations of the same family. Frankly, I don’t think martial law can justify that, regardless of whether or not martial law itself is justified.

Edit: Also, if you happen to have that study showing the 500,000 figure on hand, I would actually love to take a look at it. I wouldn’t be surprised, as often it is the civilian populace who bears the burden of sanctions, but it would be good to take a look at it to see if I can get a credible number to attach to that idea.

At this point it’d be faster to list what isn’t wrong.

Certainly. I don’t mean to say that Zelenskyy’s time in office has been without controversy, even after his steadfast response to the war boosted (frankly, saved) his approval. The incident with NABU and SAPO, anti-corruption bodies in Ukraine whose independence was under threat back in July of this year, is a perfect example of this. I think, however, the fact that the government backed down on that in the wake of domestic protests and international backlash is a good indicator that Ukraine isn’t a dictatorship at the moment.

As the other commenter responded, you’ll be told you’re wrong. Because you are. Presumably you’re referring to the fact that Ukraine hasn’t had an election, despite Zelenskyy’s term being over?

War. It’s war. The answer is because they’re at war. Martial law has been declared, a state of emergency, and their constitution suspends elections during such a time. If they want to keep drafting soldiers in order to fight against the war of conquest declared on them by Russia, then this cannot change.

Putin could end Zelenskyy’s term right now if he simply chose to end the war. Anyone who believes the situation is so simple as “Ukraine is a dictatorship” is not only wrong, but dangerously wrong, and likely dangerously stupid to boot.

True. I’m 5’ 6” and would absolutely call someone on this lmao