Because it’s part of an entire worldview, an entrenched information system (I.e. framework for narrative, how the story is being told), with fully intertwined rationale and philosophies of justification. In there are woven many positive emotions as well, and rhetorics hitting the right emotionally resonating notes—patriotism, belief that the west is the light in the darkness, that you’re the good guys, doing the right things, etc. Behind it is also a foundational belief that US is powerful enough to crush anything it doesn’t like, so who really cares about nuance—sometimes, not even conscious.

To give up this worldview, one has to give up a lot of deeply held assumptions about one’s life, one’s self identification, one’s “tribe”, etc. It’s unlikely to happen just with some debate here or there, or reading some news stories from far away.

I enjoyed that movie so much, and now very excited for the third :)

Paper in general, gun powder, compass

Scholz recently welcomed Li Qiang (Chinese Premier) in high style, though afterward he had to say he lectured the Premier on all the correct talking points. It’s crazy to think his party is actually the most pro-China (a.k.a realistic and actually working slightly for the benefit of Germany) out of all three in charge. The rest seem to actively want to destroy all its manufacturing capabilities.

And Macron is showing a definite urge to move away from complete vassaldom, being the only country in Europe that can, with an independent military, once it’s been humiliated enough by the US to remember a faint memory of De Gaulle.

Oh man! <3

They wish it’s this easy to keep people. If businesses knew how to monopolize the market forever, they wouldn’t have been so desperate to set up these walls.

I dropped cable for Netflix years ago with a shrug, and as Netflix and all the streaming services are turning into cable I dropped them too and will wait for the next thing. If talking to some large group of faceless masses becomes annoying and spam filled, I’ll keep my resources for other things I can turn my attention to.

It’s weird to me to see these artificial structures treated as though they’re some real solid thing with no alternatives. That’s literally these companies’ PR to make us believe it