Objection

That's a good point. The real problem is that the land and resources they stole through brazen force still remain in the hands of Western megacorps in a system of neocolonialism, and whenever any of the exploited countries try to tax or regulate that (much less reclaim their resources altogether), they get sanctioned into oblivion, if not overthrown outright.

Put it this way: I don't think PJ is a fed, but I think the fact that he's the feds aren't paying him is wage theft.

I don't understand how there's ever a business model since people can just run their own models locally.

Lol, what a load of drivel.

Chat-gpt, give me 10 takes from the recent China summit, shit on China as much as possible, no other analysis necessary.

That's intuitive but actually completely wrong. There is no "absolute" reference frame, and nothing can move faster than light in any relative reference frame.

The only thing that gets around that is the expansion of space itself. It's not that the objects are moving away from each other, it's that the distance between them is expanding, causing them to become farther apart.

The best analogy is to picture an ant crawling on the surface of an expanding balloon.

Um, actually, Adam Connover has appeared on Um, Actually multiple times

It's wild how ideas like this continue to exist despite being so contrary to evidence and reason, just because it shifts blame away from systemic issues and the ruling class.

The kind of atmosphere a planet can have in the long term depends on having enough gravity to keep gas particles from floating off into space. Mars' gravity is smaller than Earth's, which means that even if it had oxygen, that oxygen would be lost over time. Mars likely once had a dense atmosphere heavy in carbon dioxide, it wasn't lost in one specific event, but gradually losing it over a long period of time.

Meanwhile your quote highlights the fact that Orwell thought that being honest about the Soviet Union and its critiques in political discussions is a mark of intellectual honesty, which isn’t really pro-fascist, since you can critique the United States and still be anti-communist after all.

In that case, you reject the reasoning in the initial quote.

When the Soviets were fighting the Nazis, criticizing the Soviets was either pro-fascist or it was not pro-fascist. If it's pro-fascist, then Orwell was a hypocrite for doing so. If it isn't pro-fascist, then the reasoning in OP's quote is wrong.

Somehow this "our side or their side" broke down for him when considering the Soviets fighting on the same side as the Allies.

If a crazy guy attacks you on the street, would you just stand there and let him kill you because of all those societal consequences that are working against him?

No, because I'm not a pacifist. But what I'm saying is that this "with us or against us" argument is reductive and wrong. The question of whether pacifism is correct is a separate question from whether the "with us or against us" reasoning is valid.

If someone asks you to fight back to save yourself and your neighbors…no…they aren’t the ones doing you harm.

I think you and I have very different understandings of what the term "forcibly conscript" involves. It's not "asking."

Not only that, but there are an enormous amount of assumptions that you're making here. Not every conflict is between fascists and non-fascists, as I said, WWII is an exception and you can't make a rule from that exception.

Provided that neither side is exterminationist in nature, the conflict may just be a question of which oppressor rules over you, and in that case, you are not fighting, "to save yourself or your neighbors" but to preserve the power of one oppressor over another.

WWI provides a very clear example of this, and historically, the pacifists had the second best take on that conflict, better that virtually anyone else in the West. Likewise in Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Iran. Every one of those conflicts was framed as being "defensive" and "if we don't fight them over there, we'll be fighting them over here," again, pacifists were much more correct than anyone who participated in those conflicts.

Technically, when it comes to violence, it is that simple. There is the side attacking you…and you.

No, it isn't. Even in the purest, simplest scenario of like, crazy guy on the street comes after me for no reason, it still isn't that simple, because it's not a zero sum game of his interests vs my own. For him to assault me goes against his own interests, it's likely that he'll face legal or social consequences for doing so. At the same time, those legal/social forces are not necessarily "my side," they might act to protect my wellbeing (or at least punish someone after the fact), but I don't control them, and they may act against my wishes. For example, I might prefer that my assailant get rehabilitated rather than incarcerated.

This isn't even an abstract thing for me. I have a relative who used to be very mentally unstable, suffering from paranoid delusions, caused or made worse by the meth he was on, and the war he had fought in. He was a danger to myself and my family, and to everyone in the area. For him to get clean and find treatment that worked for him was in everyone's interest.

This is in the most extreme example of assailant and victim, and no one else. If you try to scale things up to a nation and pretend that there are only two sides, it's utterly ridiculous.

"My" side might forcibly conscript me to be sent into some pointless meat grinder, killing people who are in the exact same boat but who happened to be born in a different country. Are they not aggressing against me by doing that? Perhaps the real "sides" are the working people of both countries against the rulers sending us to die.

You can't oversimplify the world in to "our side" and "their side," and say "if you're not with us, you're against us." There are countless different sides and there are factions within those sides that have different motivations and agendas. That's simply a fact, and to pretend otherwise is just lazy.

Pacifists are generally more correct than most people because they've figured out the "no war" part of "no war but class war," and the vast majority of war is not class war (or is perpetrated by the ruling class). I'm not a pacifist but I have respect for those who are.

To be fair, Orwell's argument is understandable in the specific context of WWII, but it is not a generalizable principle.

The DNC has argued in court that it has no obligation to provide a fair elections in the primaries. That's also just not really how parties work in general. Parties can purge whoever they feel like.

If we're supposed to just rely on primaries and treat them as free and fair elections, then what exactly would be the issue with a one-party state? If you don't like the way the one party is running things, just join them and start an internal movement to change things. It's the exact same logic.

no new characters for like a thousand years now.

Maybe you'd prefer Taikyoku shogi?

That's not being "dishonest" that's just how debates work. You seem to be reading an incredible amount of things into the fact that I wouldn't do your homework for you.

Although, you had already decided you knew all sorts of things about me from your first comment. Since you had already made up your mind, there was never any way for me to change that.

But I will say, I appreciate that you did finally do your homework. It will be nice to have those sources if I ever need to refute similar claims in the future.

That sounds like one of the deeper circles of Hell.

Now that you've finally done your homework, presented the sources of your beliefs for me to examine, like I told you to do about seven times, I will happily go through them, since you are no longer trying to make me go on a wild goose chase hunting down every random internet user with something negative to say about the USSR.

Your first source, as mentioned before, is a random Quora user. That's not remotely credible and it's ridiculous that you're still trying to use that even after I addressed it.

Your second source, Russia Beyond, I've addressed countless times. It quite clearly says that the average wait time was 6-7 years. Public sector employees might have to wait 10 or more, but the claim was about the average in general, and as I've repeatedly told you, 10 is also less than 20-30.

Your third source says:

On the positive side, the boast that 'there are no homeless in the Soviet Union' is generally true. But the homes are not what a Western family would tolerate -- or what Soviets want.

Which again, the claim was about housing in general and not about upgrades.

Moving on to your fourth source:

I won’t tell you which page that’s located on because I want you to find it for yourself.

Lol, being deliberately obtuse is not how you get people to engage with a source. Nevertheless, because I have such tremendous patience, I looked it up, it's on page 9. Once again, this is an single individual and tells us nothing about the overall statistical reality, and once again, 10 years is less than 20-30.

Your fifth source says:

Waiting lists for separate apartments could take 10 years or longer

Meaning, you'd have a shared apartment but might have to wait 10 years to upgrade to a separate dwelling. 10 years is still less than 20-30.

Also, Radio Free Europe is affiliated with the US government, just fyi. I take it with a grain of salt, like with the Russian one, but, like the Russian one, it contradicts your position, so that's your problem, not mine.

Your sixth source says:

But if the room was 14 sq.m – they received the right to improve their living conditions and were included into the waiting list for the new flat, granted from the State (this people are called ocheredniki) . Some ocheredniki have to wait for several years (in Moscow and Leningrad – 10 years and even more).

Once again, that's saying 10+ years for an upgrade (in specific cities), contradicting the claim of 20-30 years to get anything at all, because, and this is true, 10 is less than 20-30.

Your seventh source says:

During the Stalin era, between 1927 and 1955, the USSR did not increase the extremely low per capita built-up area rates that existed in 1917, 4m2. Cohabitation was frequent and necessary, with about 35% of the population living in shared apartments until the end of the USSR. The queues of waiting to obtain housing took around 10 years.

This one says around 10 years to obtain housing in the Stalin era. I'm not sure if they mean, housing outside of a shared apartment or housing in general, and the situation was worse during that era than later. Once again, 10 years is less than 20-30.

Your eighth source is a Rickroll. I'm not sure why you think trolling me for reading through your sources is a good idea. I think your frustrations have more to do with the fact that you seem very confused about the purpose of sources and how debate works in general, rather than anything on my part.

Your ninth source says:

Instead, the MZhK movement started to be seen primarily as a shortcut for solving the housing problems of young families, who otherwise had to wait in the queue for years or even decades.

This is perhaps the closest any of your sources has come to backing up the claim of 20-30 years, however, it doesn't explain where that claim actually comes from or how typical it was, or if it's talking about waiting in the queue for an upgrade, or for housing at all.

There. See, when you do your homework, I do my part too. I'm just not going to do the part of trying to guess where you're getting your claims and beliefs from.

I'm not sure what part of that Jesus is so broken up about tbh 🤣