CicadaSpectre 3w ago • 100%
I wish I'd seen it. Sounds darkly funny.
CicadaSpectre 3w ago • 100%
Do you have the clip by chance? Or better still, is there a cache of all the videos, articles and posts of Ukraine being a "totally normal democracy"? I remember there was a giant shareable document breaking down and debunking the Uyghur genocide myth a few years ago.
CicadaSpectre 3w ago • 100%
I agree. When the Russian intervention began and Western media did a huge crackdown on the truth, the only people I saw allowed to tell the Russian side on mainstream were MAGA crackpots who looked crazy doing it. Can't say there's no censorship, because the narrative is allowed on mainstream media, but presented from the side progressives hate and distrust the most. It's an insidious kind of manipulation.
CicadaSpectre 4w ago • 100%
Yeah... there's always just enough self-awareness in their words that I have to wonder if they're poor liars, or suffering some kind of ingrained mental block that keeps them from finishing the line of logic.
CicadaSpectre 4w ago • 100%
I love this game. I did well on my first playthrough, but of course I managed to get the two characters I wanted to save most killed :(
CicadaSpectre 4w ago • 100%
Did people even ask the easy questions (without being banned and censored)? Y'know... questions that would have been answered by looking at the photos of the Ukrainian soldiers and the symbols they wore? Or the posts and comments they frequently made? I'm actually curious what the "hard" questions could be, when a lot of the answers were pretty apparent.
CicadaSpectre 1mo ago • 100%
And here I thought California would at least be a little better about maskers.
CicadaSpectre 1mo ago • 100%
I had forgotten about that.
CicadaSpectre 1mo ago • 100%
I've been noticing the articles are saying he was a chaotic mess, a hindrance to the war in Ukraine, and acted like he was the personal representative of all American volunteers there. Not sure if any of that is true or if they're just trying to distance themselves from him, but I could see it being true.
Doesn't change the fact he's a pro-Ukrainian who tried to assassinate Trump, and failed miserably. Kind of makes me wonder if the first assassin was also pro-Ukraine.
CicadaSpectre 1mo ago • 100%
What's funny is that I remember the original conspiracy they're referring to. It was told to me as a funny story, about how a doctor found the best way to convince anti-vaxxers to get vaccinated was by telling an even more ridiculous conspiracy theory.
And then this dipshit immediately admits they'd believe the conspiracy theory, then proceeds to edit it with a dozen other conspiracy theories to justify sinophobia. The lack of self-awareness is astounding.
CicadaSpectre 2mo ago • 100%
My understanding is they edited the guy out because he was responsible for excesses driven by personal prejudices, and then he was arrested and executed. That's correct, isn't it? Please excuse my ignorance.
CicadaSpectre 2mo ago • 100%
True, but my experience is limited to the US. I'm assuming it's more or less "always the same map".
CicadaSpectre 2mo ago • 100%
Ah, so you saw the article, too. Yeah, I have no idea how much that person got paid to write that article, but it was too much.
CicadaSpectre 2mo ago • 96%
I saw an article about how the photo doesn't matter anymore and everything has changed, and I thought people somehow finally realized the picture is taken out of context to prop up a conspiracy theory, but... no. It was an article about AI editing and how people can "erase history" and remove "Tank Man" from the photo and people can be "tricked" into thinking it never happened.
Which is stupid as fuck. The pic happened. The video happened. Ironically, they do more to disprove the massacre narrative than support it. The massacre didn't happen, and editing a picture isn't going to erase that myth from a country obsessed with believing it.
CicadaSpectre 2mo ago • 100%
I was wondering when they'd try bringing the Uyghur thing back to the foreground. With the ongoing Palestinian genocide, I wasn't sure if they were trying to avoid it so Americans don't oppose Israel more, or if they were eventually going to bring it out to try and project onto China - again. Seems they might be trying the latter.
CicadaSpectre 2mo ago • 100%
Omg, that analogy is perfect. I think I'll start using it.
CicadaSpectre 2mo ago • 100%
I almost prefer this propaganda to the clearly staged animal wholesomeness ones. I keep seeing posts get circulated of wholesome animal moments "with the army", and immediately recognize them as Ukrainian posts. People share them without even realizing it, and it's very disheartening.
CicadaSpectre 2mo ago • 100%
It's not about what power the president has. The president exists for manufactured consent. If Biden gets in and commits genocide and fails to do anything progressive, it's proof "socialism" can't work, that we consented to genocide, and that democracy works because he didn't overstep his authority. But if Trump gets in and ignores his opponents, does whatever he wants, etc., then we consented to that and are fine with the erosion of democracy if it means more fascism.
It's a farce, and personally I think we're being guided towards a fully fascist transition in the figure of Trump. Not because he, as a person, is anything. He's a moron. But because he's the kind of bigot chud that half the country idolizes, and through them the illusion of democracy can be shed and capitalists can take full power. After all, if more than half the voters support a fascist takeover, then isn't that more or less how our failed model of democracy works?
For context, I'm a USian who became interested in Islamic cultures as a young adult, and from there found something magnetic about the faith of Islam. I have many LGBT friends, and whenever I've reached out to mosques, the answers I get are rather disappointing. The best one I've gotten still invalidates homosexual relationships. I'm cishet, but as I said I have many LGBT friends, and I'm also poly. I have a comrade who is trans and converted to Islam, and I see that many LGBT Muslims exist, but this confounds me, too. Even the most open-minded of them will say something is "what Muslims believe" and then clarifies that it is from a Hadith, not strictly from the Quran. The comrade I know is a "Quranic" Muslim - one who follows the Five Pillars and the teachings of the Quran itself, and I know the Hadith are controversial outside of the majority of Sunni Islam. I want to be a more spiritual person, but the type of Islam I encounter promotes teachings I know in my heart to be wrong. I know, too, that many Christians, Muslims, and Jews have this odd personal combat with God, for lack of a better term - a struggle with the divine, wherein they work out various personal sins/failings or disagreements with the scripture. I know Jews that eat pork, Muslims who drink, Christians who don't pray. I sense there's a spirit to the faiths that is more important than adherence to prescriptions of the text. I am white (part Native American, but this isn't visible in my appearance or culture). No part of my lineage comes from any land associated with Islam. It feels like appropriation for me to want to convert to a faith, but then pick and choose which parts of it I want to believe and follow. I dabble in tarot and the occult. I'm poly. I believe all consensual love is valid and sacred. So, I guess my question is aimed more towards the Muslim comrades here who are LGBT or allies, who balance the secular with the spiritual, who might be able to show me the way: How can I call myself a Muslim without compromising my beliefs? Is there a sect or denomination I can seek guidance from? Am I just wasting my - and your - time?
I'm currently an emergency certified teacher, but I'm really interested in maritime work and know a little bit about the career path and some options of how to navigate it. I tried finding a maritime community on Lemmygrad, but I didn't have much luck, so if it exists I'd appreciate a redirect. Any comrades here familiar with maritime work and law? I've got some friends who want to move to Shenzhen. I used to live in Beijing for a time as a ESL teacher. I don't really enjoy teaching, and I want to do maritime work, but I also rather miss China. So, I was curious: can I live in China, doing maritime work? As an ESL teacher I know companies will hire and help me with visas and the like in order to live there, but shipping is an altogether different matter. I know in most countries, maritime work hires foreign nationals all the time, but it's also a security thing. As an American citizen, would it be possible for me to get a Chinese visa and work in the maritime industry while living there? This is really just a pipe dream at the moment. I don't have much maritime experience, and I don't have a maritime job at the moment. This is more of a five-year plan type of situation - something to start working towards, if possible. Any help would be appreciated!
I'm an emergency certified teacher for geography in middle school in the US. Our textbooks are most odious propaganda I've ever had to witness, and I just can't deal with it. I managed to swing some alternative sources when we covered Eastern Europe and Western Russia, and when we covered China, but now we're going over Central Asia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Russia. The textbook is just vile. Takes any opportunity to overrepresent every negative aspect of socialist countries in ways obvious to people like us, but innocuous to children. I've been struggling to balance my lessons in a way that teaches the regions, but isn't brainrot. Some of the stuff I can let slide and use the textbook for, but anything Soviet related is written in an insanely biased way. We have to rush through the region to catch up to where other classes are, so I only need a few days' worth of material, but it's difficult to find things on YT that cover history of the region that's 1) easy for kids to understand, and 2) doesn't try and make the region out to be some kind of nightmare.
I'm painting a Stormcast army in an original color scheme, and I know so little about their organization. Do I need to invent a whole Stormhost for them, or can individual Chambers/Conclaves of a Stormhost have their own unique names, color schemes, etc.? I'm more familiar with 40K Astartes structures, or Chaos warbands. The military structure of the Stormcast sort of confuses me. I imagine Stormhosts are more like Astartes Legions, with individual Chambers varying in color schemes and character like the Astartes Chapters. Since AoS is very open to making your army your own. I thought I saw something about a Chamber from one of the big Stormhosts that took on the symbols and colors of one of the Cities of Sigmar. I'd like to tie my Stormcast to my (hopefully) future Cities of Sigmar army, thematically and lorewise.
Last of the repaint 'Mechs I have so far, it's the Lyran Guards from the Lyran Commonwealth. A pretty popular color scheme and I can see why. The cyan and white really *pop*. The Lyran Commonwealth is a German-coded faction with a heavy emphasis on mercantilism, to the point where their military suffers from "social officers" - officers who merely buy their ranks and positions, rather than based on their quality. At one point, the Lyran Commonwealth joins up with the Federated Suns to form the Federated Commonwealth, becoming the dominant power for awhile. War and internal divisions inevitably lead to them breaking apart, though. I'm really happy with how these turned out, though. Very crisp. Some of my best work with any minis.
Second lance I repainted in canon colors: the Free Worlds Guards of the Free Worlds League. I went with which color schemes I liked best, not the best names. The Free Worlds League is really more of a loose confederation of various duchies and individual worlds that united for mutual defense. They are, canonically, paralyzed by this lack of centralized leadership, with the various near-sovereign political bodies constantly bickering and countermanding each other. The only time the FWL can effectively unite is when House Marik, one of the setting's five Great Houses, takes over and forms a military junta. They're the most ethnically/religiously diverse of the Successor States, and are genuinely depicted as rather benign. Still ruled by nobility, and its constituent states range in practices and freedoms of its worlds. Honestly know the least about this Great House/Successor State, and very little about this military unit. I just liked the color scheme.
Not Warhammer, but I'm hoping the community doesn't care. I didn't want to post to Lemmyworld, because BattleTech community is - like the Warhammer community - plagued with fans that can't see the issues with the franchise. These are Death Commandos, an elite military unit that are loyal to the Chancellor of the Capellan Confederation. They are canonically very skilled and ruthless pilots, able to conduct secret missions and leave no survivors, be it as infantry or as MechWarriors. I could (and probably will) make a post about everything I find wrong about the Capellan Confederation in due time, but to summarize: imagine if you combined every negative trait about Nazi Germany (but dial the racism back from "master race and genocide" to "our culture is dominant and people should look and act like us"), the military incompetence of fascist Italy, and the underhanded deception and sinister machinations of the US and UK (particularly the overreliance on deception, proxy wars, war crime-grade weapons, and subterfuge). Now, imagine if you coded the entire faction as Han Chinese/Russian. To top it all off, the leaders are genetically disposed to being insane, and incestuous, and they have a rigid caste system and a violent, evil Thugee cult (the cult the British made up to help justify brutalizing India; it's real in this setting, and members of the Capellan leadership follow it). And they call themselves socialist because centralized economy. I could write a thesis paper about the Capellan Confederation and what it says about the creators, and the fanbase, but I'll save more ranting for another post. Suffice it to say, it's the biggest hurdle for leftists to enjoy the setting, and given the general libertarian bent of the fandom, that's not surprising. Would love it if more comrades could like it, too. Just like Warhammer: why should rightoids get all the fun?