Sam (ABeardedPanda)

Greetings new arrivals. I'm Sam and for the most part I am but a humble shitposter. I have a background in studying Nazi Germany, the late Russian Empire and the early USSR which I thought would be a neat party trick but then Timothy Snyder started appearing on MSNBC and now I hate everything

From the outside, a lot of DSA internal politics these days looks like a clash between people who are becoming increasingly successful at democratic politics and people who want to act like authoritarians despite having no actual authority

Yeah, this is really bad. It's good that El-Sayed distanced himself from it, but I am in awe at how Cenk's left-wing PAC managed to combine antisemitism with transphobia and pitch it as *supporting* the Democrat in this race.

bsky.app/profile/gonk...

anyone ever notice how republicans don't run on half the evil shit that they do? ever notice how that works?

eh go fuck yourself. "be neutral on [insert interest] when you run and then stick it to the industry when you win" is a time honored way of actually getting things done.

Doesn't this org have an anti-demcent clause?

While I have yet to read this, I have to say, what an awesome cover for a white paper

Dawg we are talking about 1966, no American white working man was suddenly getting left high and dry by deindustrialization or austerity or recession The only “radical shift in the material conditions” was “you have to let black people into your school/office/shop/apartment block now”

just building on this thread shitting on RFK, the mosfet, the literal foundation upon which all modern electronics (particularly computers) is built, was invented by an egyptian guy named mohamed atalla en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed...

it's really, really fucking infuriating to be ruled by public officials so unbelievably, unfathomably, stupidly fucking racist such that you can't really finish your thoughts on the matter out loud because they are in fact public officials

WHO WOULD WIN objectively best living conditions in human history VS. "i have to see transgenders on twitter :("

National borders have *never* been containers for politics and political processes. I don't have time to write a full thread, so here are some resources.

honestly this ad is insane, idk if they're just so cooked by antisemitism they think its a winner or Uygur wants El-Sayed to lose and lay the blame at the foot of THE JEWS! and is hoping this ad will turn off enough Jewish voters to sink AES in a tight race either way, crazy, evil, racist.

Republicans, they're not like us.

You literally need to be so immersed in western propaganda to keep saying china is this authoritarianist totalitarianist state with no freedoms when you can watch worlds and see with your own eyes that every LPL team is so fucking free

Beyond disgusted by even more rape allegations against the President of the United States. "In total, more than 25 different women...have independently accused Donald Trump of rape, sexual assault, or other sexual misconduct." Report w/ new details: democrats-judiciary.house.gov/sites/evo-su...

i don't think it's that crazy it's a lot harder to use public money to build a complicated interconnected grid of rail infrastructure than it is to use private money to build a bunch of big warehouses. like i don't think it's great only one of those is possible but what i do not think it is is crazy

My latest: on the history and future of the tank on the battlefield. “Survivability, like attritability, is in the eye of the commander, after all. It’s all about what it buys you in your engagement, battle, and campaign in the aggregate.” open.substack.com/pub/breaking...

An ambulance team was just hit by Russian attack on Kyiv while heading to a call to help people wounded by the attack . There are victims , early reports say .

one of the really useful takeaways from fukuyama's political order books is a clear conceptual understanding of what corruption *is* in its fundamental nature. and the answer... is patronage networks organized on personal connections! corruption is *inherent* in these discretionary systems!

i think cities should enable development according to impersonal rules and then levy impersonal taxes on land to pay for impersonal social services free_speech.png

looked at in longer perspective, it's striking how much this resembles the premodern system of exclusion, rents, and personalist connections, which was--and this part's important--radically worse than the modern system of impersonal rules and general taxation

A single billionaire megadonor is propping up the Republican effort to stop Dems from flipping Pennsylvania’s Senate and gaining full control of government—to a much greater degree than Elon Musk is doing it at the federal level

a weird set of people who only exist online are people who celebrate the defeat of global fascism in every other country and are then horrified and appalled at the idea that they should also be expected to vote for their domestic opponent of global fascism if some of their stances are Problematic

yeah again part of my frustration with yglesias' comment is that, having read somewhat history now, it is impossible to escape the transnational dimensions of politics and political change. it's just a constant across history. telling people not to care is just denialism!

The “something” in question was the workers themselves deciding by 1966 that they no longer wanted New Dealer welfare capitalism if it meant black Americans would benefit from it while anti-war protesters were free to burn the flag

The quincy institute doing multiple events with noted far right lunatic joe kent is wildly irresponsible

I also think it is important here to distinguish between a sports-esque 'rooting interest' and a recognition that populist authoritarian leaders and movements tend to understand themselves as allies of each other. Orban and Putin spent a lot of money promoting authoritarianism abroad.

I'm going to try to do this cleanly. Today's right wing governments are networked to each other. Those networks are well-documented. You can read about them in books. Following the elections in one node of that network is good practice for understanding the U.S. node.

"libertarian candidate for state senate in north carolina is currently in a shootout with the cops and live-tweeting his planned suicide", while not exactly surprising, is still a weird thing to read

From Zelenskyy. Patriot interceptors that could save innocent lives are sitting in European countries for weeks, which they paid for, unable to be transferred to Ukraine because Hegseth refuses to sign off.

My girlfriend’s 96-year-old grandmother, still sharp as can be but ailing, braved going out to vote for Lula. She lived under dictatorship and said she wants to die knowing her family will not have to live what she lived. She braved the rain and lack of access to do her part. A legend.

TL;DR the whole reason we have this discourse is because Dems have been very resilient on trans issues in the face of extremely dedicated and very dangerous attacks so any potential cracks in the armor throw up alarm bells everywhere the correct response is making sure the crack doesn't spread

a counterintuitive synthesis here is that it is probably a good sign that the "impending Democratic backslide on trans rights" is constantly looming elaboration below:

If your only mentions of Taiwan on this website are about Taiwan getting invaded, you don't really care about whether Taiwan gets invaded or not.

During one of the burrito taxi discourses, I got lectured by a white leftist who had spent time in SEA (so clearly that makes her more worldly than a dipshit fake Asian like me) who told me delivery services are normal because "Asians don't freak out about this like in the west"

These guys have won (in practice). Their guys are in power. Cdrsalamander has been whining about how POC, women and other minorities were the only thing stopping the Navy from greatness since like 2007! And they still all sound like a bunch of whiny losers.

I didn't realize there was a sharp downturn in Youtube influencer ad and sponsorship revenue. May be an underrated contribution to both the "why are economic vibes are terrible" conversation and the "why did Gen Z turn on Trump" conversation youtu.be/vCMfltmszHY?...

It’s funny how western leftists seem amazed at features of Asian societies as public infrastructure that is quickly repaired or public transportation that is always on time without seeming to realize that the secret sauce is worker exploitation