Jim Gavin was the only candidate I saw that put posters up. Imagine being so forgetable and unknown you need to plaster election posters everywhere in a 3 person national election. It really is no competition, Connolly is the only one who can actually speak Irish for fucks sake. Honestly, I dont really think it matters either way, I can probably count on one hand the amount of times I actually heard Miggedly speak and not just shake someones hand or cut a ribbon.
Holy shit in that article they link to another about a woman suing google for contributing to her kids suicide with a chatbot and Google tried to claim that the chatbot was protected under free speech laws.
Black Library does have some geniunely good sci-fi hidden under all the crap. The trick is to completely avoid anything involving the Space Marines or anything that might affect the setting’s status quo. Eisenhorn/Ravenor Trilogies is pretty good. Last Chancers is one of my favourites though, It was written when 40k authors were still allowed some freedom with the setting, its about a penal legion being sent on a bunch of increasingly more clandestine suicide missions. Peter Fehavari’s books are an interesting attempt to carve out his little niché. Basically every book he writes, from the full novels to the short stories they write just to promote new models are all interconnected in a very cosmic horror web of connections. Warhammer Crime has some pretty good sci fi in it too, its essentially a series of short story omnibuses and full novels all written by different authors themed around sci-fi detective stories.
To me the Horus Heresy’s popularity makes zero sense. I get how someone can sit through and enjoy a marvel movie alright. But how in the hell can someone sit down for hours to read the book equivalent? Its so much more excrutiating to do.
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I think my favourite mural of all time has to be the Cuchulainn mural that portrays him as an Unionist Icon because he was an Ulsterman fighting off an army of Irishmen. I always thought it was a shame we couldn’t pivot all that mural stuff into an actual art movement as its probably the closest thing we have to a distinct modern Northern Irish art form and a good mural really does improve the general feeling of a place.
Anyway, heres that dumn Cuchulainn one I was talking about:
There is a reason that Northern Ireland is the birthplace of the term “recreational rioting”. “Prominent Members of the Community” (read: paramilitary drug dealers) start them and then the recreational rioters roll in no matter the reason for the riot in the first place. Loyalists start these riots for the same reason they march through nationalist neighbourhoods every year, intimidation. Like all settler cultures the Unionist (with a big U) is now completely detached from the origins that they base their culture on. Ignored by the British, who just see them as Irish anyway, they have adopted a siege mentality that requires periodic shows of force to stop themselves from becoming completely irrelevant. Racism is a fundamental part of the culture because without it they would have to admit that they are, after 400+ years of living here, identical to the Nationalist cultures they discriminate against.
Children are far more likely to be killed by rubber and plastic bullets because of their height. Of the 17 people killed by them in Northern Ireland 8 of them were children, plastic bullets alone seriously wounded 615 people from 1988-98 in NI.
Rubber and Plastic Bullets were invented by the British forces for use in Northern Ireland and killed 17 people, over half of whom were children, while seriously injuring over 615 people between 1988-98 including permanent blindness and loss of eyes.
If you post a paywalled article please post a archive link: https://archive.ph/jAKpa Lot of people doing this with SCMP in particular.
They will most likely be made to turn around like the last two ships before the one that was bombed.
I think this might be a miscalculation here. Dr Yueh is an extremely sympathetic character whose wife was being held hostage and helped Jessica and Paul escape while also providing Leto with the poison to potentially kill the Baron. If it was some yellow peril bullshit then why would they show Paul speaking mandarin too? Why use it to establish the protagonists close relationship with Dr Yueh. Dune has so many brainworms (I stopped halfway through God Emperor of Dune because of all the fucking Homosexual Suicidal Urges stuff that was clearly Herbert lashing out at his own gay son) but I do not think this is one of them.
I am merely stating that the historical knowledge of the practicalities remain and that the sort of fanatical anti-communism that infested the rest of Eastern Europe when NATO swept in has not taken strong roots. The truth is most of our theory and all of our historical analysis is based on societies that have always been capitalist before being overthrown by a revolution. We dont have any sort of precedent for a former socialist society that is now capitalist returning to socialism.
I don’t have any answers. All I am saying is that the reason that a peaceful revolution is impossible in most societies is because the forces of capital would not allow it. But in Russia the unbroken chain of capital that exists in most countries does not exist, their forced opposition to capital forces from the west have isolated and weakened them. Putin brought them back from the brink, and he will remain in power for as long as he wishes. But once he is gone then who knows. Probably Nothing Happens™, but maybe something does.
Russia is capitlaist. We are capitlaist. There is no reason to not do business together.
Russia is, and always will be, America’s enemy. They can provide all the resources and services America can to the rest of Europe at much cheaper and efficient rates. This is why even after the USSR collapsed instead of absorbing them into NATO they continued to be seen as the enemy, its why Nordstream was blown up and its why the proxy war in Ukraine is happening right now. America has to keep the rest of Europe separated from Russia whether they are capitalists or not.
This will also, I believe, potentially blowback on the US. Unlike the rest of the Eastern bloc they could not simply pour in and wipe the last 80 years of history away. Russia today still holds the muscle memory of the practicalities of a communist state and when Putin goes there will be the possibility for a return to it. See my below comment for clarification.
You called it a week ago congrats : https://hexbear.net/comment/6106194
This was easy to see coming. I think alot of Kneecap’s international audience don’t understand that their personas, songs and whole aesthetic are making fun of the post-troubles west Belfast hoods. People who were (like Kneecap) born in or after the 90s and are aping an exaggerated form of surface level republicanism that lingered beyond the ceasefire especially in Nationalist strongholds like West Belfast. When talking about the influence of the Troubles on the post-GFA generations I am often reminded of a quote from Marx; “The tradition of all dead generations weighs like a nightmare on the brains of the living”. These hard lads who run around pretending they’re in the IRA because they sell drugs and spray slogans on walls are really just using the aesthetics of resistance to mask the fact that they are actively harming their own communities.
I believe Kneecap’s popularity abroad stems from this mask of resistance that they initially put on to mock destructive elements in their own community but that people missing the local context see as genuine and are using to LARP as revolutionaries. I don’t personally know them so I wont make judgements but sometimes it seems like the lads in Kneecap have also fallen for this trap themselves.
At the end of the day they are really just like any other successful band, and they will prioritise their income above their empty slogans any day.
Kneecap are Northern Irish, so they could definitely be prosecuted under those laws. This is also why there was all that stuff about them getting art grants from the UK and the south.
Yes, they have already sent bricks made of a volcanic material similar to lunar regolith to Tiangong a few months ago to study their exposure to space. Chang’e 7 will use a unique hopping rover to hopefully scout Shackleton in ways a conventional rover ever could. It almost sounds like one of those stupid venture capital buzzword baits that NASA might fund a feasibility study on and then shelve. But that is just a sign of how much more advanced China’s lunar exploration program is, they are doing quite literally what NASA can only dream of.
Of course this will not stop American so-called “Space enthusiasts” from completely ignoring these facts and claiming that because they sent some guys there in the 70s and then completely gave up for 50 years that anything done in space from now unto the heat death of the universe is second place.
Considering that we now know the US funded anti-vax stuff during Covid in the Phillipines (thats the one they admitted to at least), this is probably a smart move.