Dmitri Smirnov, KGB.

I’ve even tried to HELP vegans by giving them useful tips on how to advance their cause, like, “Never bring it up under any circumstances,” or, “Stop making people feel bad by bringing up the consequences of their actions,” or, “Why don’t you try eating meat sometimes in order to be more relatable to non-vegans?” But they never listen to me! It’s like they completely write off what I’m saying just because I fundamentally disagree with everything they stand for and all of my advice essentially boils down to “Shut up and go sit quietly in a corner.” Clearly this proves that they don’t actually care about advancing their cause and just want to congratulate themselves and feel like they’re better than everyone just because they’re objectively reducing the amount of suffering in the world.

This doesn’t seem that bad? It’s expanding on this

Oh god, if this becomes widely available we’re going to get so many takes where some smoothbrain on Twitter tricks the model into saying something ridiculous and then presents it as China’s ideology.

Death of the author doesn’t have to do with whether the author is literally alive or dead (this is still a shit interpretation, obviously)

Do you now or have you ever had an account on a tankie instance?

Do you now or have you ever had an account on an instance federated with a tankie instance?

The artist is Eli Valley

We live in a society

Bottom text

Fascinating. So if one state doesn’t recognize another, that means that it “clearly states its aim is to fully annex it.” So for example, the US doesn’t recognize the government of Afghanistan, so that means the US “clearly states” it aims to reinvade and fully annex Afghanistan, do I have that right?

Or maybe you meant to say that Russia implicitly suggested that it intended to fully annex Ukraine, according to your speculation?

they have clearly stated was fully conquering Ukraine?

Source?

The first thing to note is that Buddhism is a broad term that contains a lot of different belief systems. It is also plagued by poor translations of terms that don’t translate well into English, especially without looking meanings of the original terms.

Imo, your friend has distorted and misrepresented Buddhist teachings in order to justify not changing their behavior regarding meat-eating.

I’d challenge the use of the term “deserved” altogether, and I’d say “caused” might be a more accurate interpretation. Karma is not about an intelligent, all-powerful being passing judgement and smacking you down. It’s sometimes referred to as “the law of cause and effect.” It’s described as a function of the universe, the same way that physical laws makes objects fall to the ground when dropped. The exact way in which this works is up to interpretation. More secular-minded Buddhists might point to logical and observable consequences to explain it, while more spiritually-minded ones might argue that it’s more of an invisible, unexplainable force that carries over between lifetimes.

To use an example: a child that is fed a hamburger by their parents does not have knowledge of the animal’s suffering that was required to make it, nor do they have agency to control their diet or to prevent the animal from being harmed. But, an animal is still harmed through the process. The intent and agency of the actor are not important in the same way that it doesn’t matter if a ball on top of a slope is pushed or knocked over. It would only really matter if you’re dealing in terms of judgement.

It is not your responsibility to enforce karma on others. Karma isn’t a positive or negative force, and just because something happens that doesn’t make it good or fair or deserved. Rather, the idea is to navigate the world in such a way that you minimize undesirable consequences. Buddhist precepts are a list of guidelines that are intend to do just that, the precept about nonviolence being the first. The idea is: “Bad things seem to happen a lot when people go around killing living beings so it’s probably better to not do that, generally speaking.”

You are correct that your friend’s interpretation and worldview is a mess of contradictions that could just as easily be used to justify harm to humans, and that they’re blatantly violating the first precept. But I would argue that they’re not accurately representing Buddhist teachings, and their views shouldn’t be held as representative of the belief system, though admittedly, like I said there are a lot of different traditions and beliefs.

Well, I hope he recovers from his lack of sickness soon.

Beginning to think the body double conspiracy theorists were right all along.

They’re talking about the general case. Unfortunately I can’t seem to locate that user or find the post to clarify. But given two interpretations of, “This person was speaking 100% literally and believes in complete nonsense about poverty fetishization that nobody agrees with,” or, “This person omitted a probably necessary qualifier to come across more strongly while making a reasonable and correct point” I’m inclined to go with the reasonably charitable interpretation. Though the poor phrasing might be why it didn’t get many upvotes, and more comments.

That post is literally just saying that material conditions influence people’s politics, a point he himself has made.

All The Shah’s Men by Stephen Kinzer covers the1953 coup and is pretty good (afaik)

Under the monarchy, women were forbidden from wearing traditional religious garb and would be stripped of it and beaten in public, because the shah wanted the country to appear more Western to appeal to chauvanists (like the people you find on ). After the ban ended, a stigma remained and women who dressed traditionally were assumed to be poor and uneducated.

pennies on the dollar

Psychopathic framing. “Look how efficiently we’re killing people!”

Also great example of conflating states with people. Maybe Ukraine still wants to fight, but Ukrainians are being conscripted against their will. In the same way, wearing Russia down may serve the interests of the US government, but it certainly doesn’t benefit the American people in any way. The best thing for the Ukrainian people would be to stop the killing at any cost, even if it meant territorial concessions. They could’ve saved countless lives if they’d done this from the start, and eventually that’s what’s going to happen anyway, but unfortunately countless people have died and countless more will before the ruling class decides to stop forcing the poor into the meat grinder.

How the fuck is my life supposed to be better because of dead Russian soldiers?

NATO is seeking to take control of decision-making powers on future aid packages — normally led by the US — in an effort to limit the impact of a potential second Donald Trump presidency on the ongoing conflict.

This is wild. It’s bad enough that the US president has the power to start wars wherever he wants with no congressional approval. But now they’re trying to make it so that the only people with the authority to withdraw from a conflict are unelected NATO officials accountable to no one.

Dronies will support this, because they love endless war across the globe and want to remove any potential for popular support to achieve peace.

girls dressing like men

As a transfem in a situation where I frequently have to present as a guy: thanks?