It is increasingly looking like the global majority has had enough.

sure is

That’s probably what they were going for, but definitely felt kind of hamfisted to me.

I really enjoy doing martial arts as a way to stay fit. I find I get really bored going to the gym, but with martial arts there’s a lot of stuff to keep your mind busy and the exercise becomes mostly incidental.

Avoiding the discussion of the politics of the drug war definitely felt kind of surreal watching it. I do agree that in terms of execution the show was great though. I just found the ending with Saul giving himself up really hamfisted and completely out of character for him. It just felt like moralizing for the sake of it.

Indeed, the ending basically ruined the whole show for me.

Slightly off topic, but I really liked this take on better call Saul https://www.counterpunch.org/2022/08/23/better-call-sauls-liberal-guilt-trip/

I very much agree with this. Hobbies are the way we self actualize. It’s developing our own interests in a self-directed fashion. It’s a fundamentally different activity from doing something out of need.

In my view, a core goal of a communist society should be to minimize work that needs to be done by humans, and maximize the ability of people to pursue self-directed development. And this has to go even further than just providing people with free time. Imagine people having access to collectively owned industrial machinery, computing resources, and so on.

Personally, I don’t think there’s any realistic chance of that happening in practice. India is not Ukraine, and they see themselves as a world power as opposed to a vassal of the US. In fact, we can already see increasing tensions between the US and India as a result in divergence of policy towards Russia. I do think the US will continue to try to put pressure on India and that will simply result in India further distancing itself from the west. I also expect that China and India will be able to work their issues out in the end because their disputes aren’t really existential.

Indeed, the traffic situation in major cities is only getting worse. They keep building new condos without building the necessary infrastructure along with them. It feels like there’s complete and utter lack of city planning.

exactly, they’re still unsure whether it’s ok to say what they really think publicly

ah ok

States represent the structure of a society, and enforce the rules that society agrees upon. Up to now, vast majority of societies have been built around concepts such as feudalism and capitalism, which are the underlying drivers that lead societies to enact atrocities.

indeed

Yeah, the original poll shows that only around half would choose communism, and I’d wager if push came to shove the undecided would side with fascism in the end.

https://yougov.co.uk/politics/articles/50352-communism-vs-fascism-which-would-britons-choose

Might be Pyongyang, but not entirely sure.

bringing up reality is a well known Russian talking point

The sad reality is that it’s actually the right that is much better at coming together largely because they are completely unprincipled, and they simply rally around things they hate collectively.

Also why western propagandists now use the term “Kremlin talking points” as seen here:

The indictment charges two Russia Today employees with providing nearly $10 million to the media company that often spouted Kremlin talking points.

They’re not disputing the factual accuracy of what’s being said, they’re just complaining that these points support Russian position.