Iran has been trying hard not to get involved in a war with the US, sidestepping multiple Israeli provocations, or responding with pre-arranged agreed-upon strikes to save face.

But now suddenly they decided to be bold and try to assassinate the US president because… it’s Trump?

We must unite with the genocidal capitalists to defeat capitalism.

I have a 90-year old neighbour from Estonia who immigrated here, after he retired. The way he describes it, the youth in the Baltics in the late 70s and throughout the 80s were for some reason attracted a lot to Western culture (films, rock music, jeans, etc). Because many of those things were inaccessible or banned, they started feeling resentment towards the state. Now those people grew up and are running the countries.

Unfortunately there isn’t. The only decent one I know is the 2003 RTS Rise of Nations, which has a mode that allows you to play a very limited form of grand strategy set during the cold war (you play some cards, take a couple actions, then move your armies to enter into an RTS match with the military of another country)

I’ve been looking for years for the same kind of game, but it looks like nobody is interested in making it, or everyone thinks it’s too hard to implement. There’s a couple games that advertise themselves as Cold War simulators, but they usually only focus on a nuclear exchange, or they are really just a click-intensive RTS game happening on the world map (e.g. Supreme Ruler).

There’s an upcoming grand strategy game called Espiocracy, set to release sometime in 2025. I hope it’s the Cold War grand strategy we’ve been looking for.

Until then, HoI4 mods are all we get. The good news is you can mod them further if you wish. Changing words in events is not that hard. All you need to do is find the event in the english localization file and change the offending words. It’s just a bit time-consuming if you want to do a bunch of changes.

Not exactly what you asked for but here’s a very good summary on how democracy in the GDR worked. It was modeled after the Soviet system.

Anything by Pete Seeger

The country’s energy-intensive businesses have suffered from the lingering impact of the energy crisis sparked by Russia’s war in Ukraine.

Yeah, ofcourse, nothing else sparked an energy crisis. Russia put sanctions on itself and then blew up its own gas pipeline.

And even after all that, the things that probably caused the government to collapse was Volkswagen announcing the closure of factories in Germany, the Trump re-election and the impending tarrifs that he will impose, and Intel’s decision not to open a chip factory in Germany. It’s always about the interests of the elites and capital.

The only way Germany has to get out of this free-fall is to elect or appoint someone willing to end the wars and re-establish relations with Russia and its cheap energy exports. Considering German politics, this is very unlikely to happen from within the government parties. And the only ones willing to do this are the fascist AfD, and Sahra Wagenknecht (who is increasingly patsoc). I think the German people are going to realize this, and considering their leanings unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly clear that an AfD victory in Parliament and for the Chancellorship is looming on the horizon. That is unless Die Linke manages to pull its head out of its ass for once (even if they do, they’ll likely end up being just another SPD), or by some miracle, the communists manage a come-back.

When the Reddit exodus occured, .world was set up to accept new users immediately, and skip the queue for approval on other instances. As a result all the toxic idiots nobody else wanted congregated there.

Important context that is missing from the article: The Maccabi fans were causing havoc in the city since the morning before the match was held. They were going around shouting anti-Palestine chants, climbing buildings to take down Palestinian flags from windows, burned down at least one Palestinian flag, attacked a taxi driver in his taxi with metal chains, and broke store and apartment windows. There’s also numerous reports that they’ve been attacking people in the street who had attempted to stop their vandalism.

Source: https://english.almayadeen.net/news/sports/israeli-fans-vandalize-amsterdam--tear-down-palestinian-flag

In traditional Israeli fashion, these goons are now trying to present themselves as the victims, after pissing off an entire city with their provocations and barbaric behavior.

Chang is Chinese-American (has a Chinese parent I think), so the author is saying Chang is selling off his people?

To me both comments sound ironic, though that may be because I’m still an optimist.

Of course, Jesus was an excellent capitalist. If he had 2 shirts, he sold one. One time at a wedding he took advantage of the huge demand for alcohol and sold watered-down wine for 10 times its price. It was a miracle! He made a killing providing quality healthcare at a premium price to the blind who needed eye correction surgery. He always preached about saving money and selling for a profit. And my favourite is when he visited the temple and congratulated all the merchants for their incredible business acumen.

The military agreement is not in effect yet.

The US is going along because of elections, and the funding of Ukraine is an issue. Adding hated enemies to the pot makes it more desirable.

I’m not saying there’s no possibility DPRK sent troops. I’m saying we don’t know how true it is, and we shouldn’t operate as if this is a certainty. It plays into Ukrainian propaganda if we do.

If Ukraine and the West had evidence they’d show it already.

The DPRK minister going to Russia and saying “we’ll support Russia until victory” might seem a bit suspect, but it doesn’t actually say anything concrete.

A reminder that so far all we have to go on are Western and Ukrainian officials saying DPRK troops are being deployed in Russia to attack Ukraine with no evidence. The only credible evidence we have is a few Tik Tok videos posted by Russian soldiers, showing soldiers picking up uniforms in a military camp in Siberia. The makers of the videos claim these are North Koreans, and some random South Korean internet users are saying they can pick up a few words in Korean being spoken by these soldiers.

There were also reports that during covid, Boeing charged the Pentagon 600 000 to produce 15 trash cans. That’s 40 000 dollars per trash can. Previously, the same trash cans cost the Pentagon 300 dollars per item.

Oh, you are right, I read that wrong. Apparently it started out at 100 000 rubles, and doubles every week. So yeah, we are getting there.

It might get there eventually. The fine increases by 100 000 rubles every day that Google keeps Russian media blocked. So in about 40-50 universe lifetimes, if Google doesn’t reverse its decision, the fine will be approaching a googol dollars. Depending on inflation :P

The reason I liked Andor was that it portrays the revolutionaries (Luthen, his assistant, and later Andor himself) as understanding that they need to do the “bad stuff” to achieve results. They are not burdened by idealistic notions of a utopian and pure fight of good vs evil. There’s a scene where Luthen monologues that he sacrificed his soul to the cause. That he is trying to bring about a sunrise he will never be able to enjoy.

Liberal media usually use the arc of the gruff vengeful revolutionary softening towards the end, as they are faced with fateful choices, and not having the courage to go through with it. Andor reverses this arc and I think it’s better for it.

If you like sci-fi read Red Rising.