gland acknowledgement
3.8K posts
A riddle from 1688 goes: "If a man born blind can feel the differences between shapes such as spheres and cubes,if given the ability, could he distinguish those objects by sight alone?" In 2003, the riddle was solved when five people had their sight restored through surgery. They could not.
lyrify@lyrverse
Hit me with some creepy facts.
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@44NNNNNNNN @BrianMcDonaldIE You can't pump anything if you don't have it (Germany) or if you are blocked by ecofreaks (UK), so no, it's not just 'buy equipment'
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@temedar @BrianMcDonaldIE it doesn't cause those are not interchangeable
advanced tech requires stable govt, complex supply chains, intellectual property, highly educated specialists. it creates much more wealth and human capital
for gas u just buy equipment and start pumping
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Nominal GDP is a terrible way to measure a state like Russia, and it's one of the reasons poorly informed Western pundits keep misreading the country.
On PPP, it’s the world's 4th largest economy (over $7 trillion) and bigger than Germany or Japan, with full-spectrum industrial capacity. That’s not a "middle power."
Russia can build nuclear submarines, icebreakers and nuclear power plants, launch people into space, produce advanced weapons, export energy at scale and, perhaps most crucially, feed and fuel itself.
Italy can’t.
Dan O'Brien@danobrien20
'great powers, including China, Russia, and the United States'. Russia is not close to being a great power - it's economy is smaller than Italy's. What differentiates it from middle powers like Italy is its willingness to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of its people in imperial wars, and Russians' willingness to be sacrificed. Comparing Russia to the two superpowers is common, but it is a category error of epic proportions.
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@saulgalindog @BrianMcDonaldIE You think Russian industry pays international prices for oil or gas, right?
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‘Naked’ gdp does in fact matter when it comes to international power.
You can’t pay engineering, raw materials, informants, foreign mercenaries, arm foreign corps, pay allies debts, etc with ppp gdp: you need nominal dollars to do all of that.
Ppp is good to estimate living conditions, and that’s all.
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@44NNNNNNNN @BrianMcDonaldIE This argument also works in reverse for most developed nations - they can have all the advanced tech, but they still need oil, gas, metals, etc.
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PPP is also a terrible way to measure russia, its not richer than japan or germany lol
yes you can buy many more haircuts and potatoes but once you need precision machinery it's irrelevant. russia addicted to importing tech even for such crucial sectors as gas/oil.
no domestic auto industry, no computing
the drone tech is iranian with chinese components
10% of the economy are tanks and mercenaries that will get popped in a week and not create value
60-65% of exports are oil, gas, timber etc
it's true that westerners often exaggerate how backwards russia but let's not pretend it's some kind of a superpower
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@darko31414 @Annatar_I Depends on whether you count Central Asians as white (SPb has almost zero Blacks/Arabs/Latinos and very few 'true' Asians)
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In 2025, St. Petersburg & Finland had almost exactly the same level of births, deaths, TFR and population. Demographically they are identical, only difference is life expectancy is somewhat higher in Finland.
andyd@andyd10
Russia St.Petersburg 2025 births 48,800 (+3.82%) deaths 57,600 (-7.54%) popul. 5.6 mn (+7k) forpost-sz.ru/a/2026-03-25/r…
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@burrrson @PAstynome 'Africa tier GDP/c' as in 1.5x Mauritius, 2x Gabon, 2.5x Botswana, 3x South Africa, 5x Nigeria? (sorry I don't have the data for Wakanda)
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@PAstynome It's partly the same reason as Ukraine. On paper Africa tier GDP/c, in reality huge shadow economy and world class technology and knowledge base and human capital allows for efficient capital mobilization and allocation when shit hits the fan
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Somehow despite all of Russia’s economic and technological dysfunctions, they almost always manage to be an upper tier great power. It’s baffling really.
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@w643423152354 @PAstynome What's the Ukranian for 'we wuz kangz'?
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@PAstynome dafuq are you talking about? they literally dont have anything save for oil and gas, and all technology they had during the USSR was invented in Ukraine.
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@dahkelor @Alejandro_SocEU >I used to remember what Europe was like
It used to be much more violent, your just nostalgia brained lmao
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Germany, in my opinion, has two options if it doesn’t want to repeat a 1933 scenario in 2033:
1. Ban the AfD once and for all.
2. Or have the Union break the firewall, as moderates did in Sweden, for example, and force the far-right party to moderate itself and face the wear and tear of governing.
By the way, to those who claim that tougher immigration policies curb the far right: Olaf Scholz’s liberal-left government saw the AfD rise by 10 points in four years during a worse economic situation. Friedrich Merz has increased it by 5 points in just one year, even talking about ‘problems with the urban landscape.’ And yet, there will still be people who think the solution is to become more racist...
Deutschland Wählt@Wahlen_DE
BUNDESTAGSWAHL | Sonntagsfrage Forschungsgruppe Wahlen/ZDF Union: 26% AfD: 26% (+2) GRÜNE: 15% (+3) SPD: 13% (-2) LINKE: 10% (-1) Sonstige: 10% (-2) Änderungen zur letzten Umfrage vom 27. Februar 2026 Verlauf: whln.eu/UmfragenDeutsc… #btw29
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@TheGnomeOfYore @EastEndJoe It's not necessarily about age. It's the fact that the zoomer ICE goons in the photo have no muscle mass and look extremely soft to every generation before them. The kids in that WW2 photo would easily kick their asses.
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"Too stupid to know that murder is wrong" is a great reason to execute someone.
It is not a reason to set them free to murder more people.
Bugman Hegel@FedPoasting
This man was found incompetent to stand trial for randomly shooting into a car with three people in it, and he was just released onto an unwitting public in May 2023. He went on to murder an 18-year old college student five months later. The reason he was originally declared incompetent and released? He had an IQ of 71. ~17.5% of black people have an IQ less than 71 assuming a normal distribution and a mean IQ of 85.
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This movie is set in 1932 and there’s a woman twerking in modern sportswear. How tf did this garbage get 16 oscar nominations?
cinesthetic.@TheCinesthetic
SINNERS (2025)
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@DailyMail I get why 'n-word' or 'r-word' might be problematic, but what's the problem with 'tea-towel'?
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University embroiled in legal battle after student, 20, suspended for making a 'tea-towel' joke about Pro-Palestine activist's headscarf trib.al/BRlLz3A
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@jon_stokes @CartoonsHateHer Bottom right looks like Aella though?
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omg these protest pictures are literally this @CartoonsHateHer comic IRL
Eneasz Brodski@EneaszWrites
Half the local rats are at the Stop The AI Race March
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@SaladBarFan A classic Soviet joke says that if commies were in charge of Sahara they'd run out of sand
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Spain is basically an experiment in “what if American urban DSA progressives ran an entire country?”
The result: a massive housing shortage
Polymarket@Polymarket
BREAKING: Spanish Prime Minister announces decree to freeze rents nationwide due to Middle East crisis.
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@HackingButLegal You'd prefer they work in a child castration clinic instead?
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🚨😳 Some 11th grade students at Belleville High School in New Jersey (90% minority enrollment, 73% Hispanic, 62% economically disadvantaged) received a message from their guidance counselor through Google Classroom to earn service hours at an ICE detention facility
Eyewitness News@ABC7NY
Parents outraged after students got message to earn service hours at ICE detention facility abc7ny.com/post/bellevill…
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Yorkshire NHS dietitian told patients that lime water is '1,000 times better than chemotherapy' to chew each bite of food 32 times and even instructed one patient to consume a specific type of biscuit from Lidl
examinerlive.co.uk/news/uk-world-…
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@ThePosieParker @J_A_Fernie @oldtrafffaith White/black brain size difference is larger than male/female brain size difference
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@J_A_Fernie @oldtrafffaith I’m saying they’re not as meaningful as sex differences.
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@criticalthink88 @KathrynPorter26 @UniofOxford US domestic gas prices have barely changed since the war started
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@KathrynPorter26 @UniofOxford not when a geopolitical event happens. in that case gas rises 5x, wind doesnt.
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'Staying the course on clean energy would not only save households three times as much money but render the UK truly energy secure for generations to come.'
Maximising North Sea production would reduce bills by just £16 to £82 per year, say researchers from the Oxford Smith School ⬇️
theconversation.com/would-more-nor…
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