No. NATO is an extension of this particular shark. Countries in NATO or allied to it are abusing with impunity those not in.

Food delivery as something normal, I’d think. Plumber coming soon after being called. Appointment with doctor to a close enough date.

Those things affected by actually having labor rights and less dependence on colonial mechanisms.

I have an answer different from the others.

US economy depends on the US intellectual property system, a few US monopolist companies and the US dollar, and the financial system.

Especially the intellectual property system. However different laws can be in various countries, in fact everybody tries to follow US law.

It means that a lot of things produces elsewhere mean royalties to US companies, and a lot of things can’t be produced without permission, control of markets, planned development of microelectronics and tech in particular, yadda-yadda.

So - if, in some hypothetical situation, that IP system is undone, with some countries having similar laws, some more like USSR’s “public domain by default with some fixed payment to patent holders”, and all the intermediate variants, then you’ll just have a second depression. Because a huge part of the economy will shrink.

US foreign debt is a meme subject, but honestly, if USD stops being the world’s most reliable currency, you’ll also probably have a default.

US actual industrial production (what doesn’t shrink as easily) is not so impressive when looking at its size. A lot about US level of life doesn’t really match the efficiency of the economy. Say, if you look at Germany, life there is very different. In some ways better, maybe, but many things normal in the US are not achievable there.

My point is - the American IP laws were spread around by pressure. Not just that, but sometimes the monopoly roles of American companies. Part of that pressure is the military guarantor role.

If that stops being relevant, a lot of things which were a given for your economy for many years will stop existing. And for a few other economies too. It might not look as bad as the USSR’s collapse, but it will probably look as ruined and unpredictable as the 1960s world.

I’m sorry, this seems to imply the US doesn’t “feast on the smaller sharks”. It went as far as threatening Japan with sanctions because they were considering “digital sovereignty” with TRON OS as opposed to Windows at some point. Japan is almost a non-optional ally.

And also one good solution of preventing someone from doing that is arming the smaller sharks. Yet USA seems even more against more equal spread of technologies and weapons than the “next two sharks”.

That’s more or less what I’ve read.

In the movies it’s portrayed as if Nazis made everything clean, orderly, “civilized”, but the unfavorable people were removed and killed, slave labor was used and so on, and all of it in the atmosphere of “civilization and normalcy”.

It’s probably to communicate the shock, but in fact things were like you describe them.

Nazis would rule in a medieval way, so to say, minus divine right to rule. Random murders (again, without normalcy or formality, just so, and quite brutal sometimes), torture locations in buildings with windows always open amid crowded enough places, where sounds of someone being beaten to death were heard day and night, such stuff.

The other guy is right too, most people learned to perceive this as normal and not everyone was killed for being not loyal enough, just a few.

Like in today’s Russia not every 16 years old schoolgirl gets into prison for 8 months for blowing up a petard in a public place, the number of whose who does is not big enough to imprint in the public that this even happens, but enough to spread non-verbal fear. Similar with posting a random protest text, or saying something about war, etc. That’s called making an example.

OK, Russia’s regime has that innovation of doing these things covertly enough for there to not be open intimidation. Cause open intimidation causes public reaction more than they need. They are more careful.

I mean, technically there was some from Austrians against Turks.

Klemperer’s “Lingua Tertii Imperii” is a good read. It’s not all, just a bit to add.

Alaska. SW prequels. There’s also the Soviet movie “Until first blood”, where kids play “Zarnitsa” and learn something.

Changing wars to be more democratic, so to say.

You might be right, but you are incapable of reasoning to support that.

Also quite a few people who’ve contributed more to the humanity than you or me have minds with much worse rot than mine. Mine is, strictly speaking, not rotting, just weirdly designed, so it’s faulty half the time. =)

Yes. It’s addictive.

Then some worthless fool calls you a Nazi for mumbling Radetzky-Marsch all the time, or even having an autistic fixation on German and Austrian marches in general, or even on those of 30s, it doesn’t matter - liking to listen to something and supporting an ideology are completely orthogonal. And then your life doesn’t matter, and the worthless fool’s life does matter, because the worthless fool uses all the right words and connotations from modern popular culture, while never seriously discussing anything, and you are trying to make some order starting from whatever ends you have.

Say, I live in Russia.

Worthless fools here who happened to be lucky enough to have an environment, an education and a location to be liberal, - they use the word “bydlo” (Polish for cattle) for most of the population, their understanding of the mistakes and crimes made by their side in the last 30 years is “too busy to talk about this, something bad happened, but we are the virtuous ones”, and their plans for “after Putin” start with “how do we reform the state”, these bloody morons don’t even understand that any healing attempts for Russia should start with wide democratic participation with frequent rotation (so that everyone would have an experience of shortly doing a few kinds of something political by their 30s, it’s not about interest, it’s about knowledge of the workings of the state and even distribution of ability to affect things around us) in a non-opinionated system, because whatever they “plan” for the rest will be a bullshit spectacle otherwise, a repetition of 1993 and 1996, and also that their opinions what’s good and their wishes shouldn’t be used in those plans - they should only build a system to channel the opinions and wishes of the people.

Say, I absolutely hate a lot of things about USSR, but the most important bifurcation point was during USSR’s breakup, when on the referendum the majority in most of the union members and their regions voted for the new union treaty, for preservation of the union and against its breakup. So the democratic action was to reform the USSR and not kill it, that’s what democracy is. And what Yeltsin, Kuchma and others did, with their own arbitrary agreement to which they had no mandate, was not democratic. Yet it’s the popular narrative in both ex-USSR (among worthless fools of liberals, not the wide populace) and outside that this was somehow the democratic path chosen.

The fallacy was that Yeltsin and co are “democrats” and thus whatever they do and whomever they kill, these are actions in support of freedom and democracy.

Then that same party\group\mafia continued on their path at breaking whatever fledgling representative democracy, even with those checks and balances often talked about, that the 80s USSR had built as part of Perestroika.

I have not lost my thought. I wanted to say that this relatively recent example applies to every time you look at someone’s stated ideology and not what they’re doing.

Elon did Starlink. IMHO that’s more important than everything that DOGE has broken and more important than Tesla.

Obviously, my point was that remembering a word is easier than remembering a letter.

I’m thinking of house cockroaches.

I dunno. If there were no meat at all - over time I’d probably think about it. Turned into some insect flour, then compressed into something between meat and mushrooms, then roasted.

But right now no.

A phrase is better:

unlucky friendly monkey got raped by feral donkeys the monkey ran away from donkeys led astray

It’s not very different from a sequence of 13 symbols, but there are many more words in English lexicon than symbols in ASCII plus 10, and the password becomes easier to memorize.

This is also an adaptation of a joke from a Russian cyberpunk novel, one of the last good things by its author, called “Labyrinth of reflections”. It’s still very good BTW.

One my friend has a very good taste in books and poetry, but when you talk to him, you wouldn’t think that. He spews bullshit about “patriotism”, alternative history, “anti-male laws” and such, believes that he can feel energies, and the only way to notice there’s something much better buried underneath is to talk about random life events for long, not trying to fix on anything in particular or reason logically. Yet every book he’s advised has been precious to me.

Playing Europa Universalis IV for many hours instead of going for a walk or a bicycle ride to the park. Sundays should be used better.

All pr0n watched, all sweets eaten, cause they affect my ability to concentrate and also cause weird feeling of irritation.

OK, since most of that happened a bit earlier than strictly 24 hours back, not so good, but still.

Greek and ME people sometimes look very light. And face powders too exist.

So I wouldn’t say there’s anything too weird with her appearance. I suppose portrayal of Americans in North Korean war films is weirder.

Anything between Commodus and Charlemange is especially cursed

Helmets with horns, yes? And Roman army looking like cabaret.

OK, thanks. I sometimes forget to check myself before forming a sentence in my mind.

Tbh - if you do any academic study of history, that’s what it all starts to look like.

Even without academic studies - I wanted some context for Tolkien (analogous periods\events), Walter Scott, Dumas, who not. And I wanted some context for R:TW and M2:TW games, so I found mods like Europa Barbarorum. And eventually I’ve read some of Icelandic sagas, and some of medieval poetry translations, and so on. Same with context for fantasy books, some alternatives IRL.

So, after that, there’s just nothing on screen I can watch.

Icelandic low-budget movie kinda associated with Beowulf, but making Grendel a neanderthal (yep), looked cool due to seemingly authentic buildings and weapons and clothes and everything. But it wasn’t a very interesting movie.

I’ve seen a Danish low-budget movie “Eagle’s eye”, some things felt like fine, but again, the story itself just didn’t seem right. Except for the one-eyed guy seeing through the eye of a bird - eh, I dunno why it was an eagle and not a raven, but his relation with the king and with the bishop seemed an interesting allegory on heathenry and christendom.

Roman empire - just leave me alone.

like no, the man was not a proto Thomas Jefferson

The man also, when he found out his wife had a lover, made her a bath filled with his blood. That was in his youth, but.

At the same time he called her “so meek, so simple-minded, so kind” when thanking gods for her.

He became very wise by the end of his life, but, eh, not in US founding fathers’ direction. More like Obi-Wan Kenobi made emperor.