Roderic Day

Whether I'll ever write again remains uncertain, but meanwhile I'm seeing where this other road takes me. youtube.com/watch?v=Zk3rGY…

@xroseofsharynx Not yet. But thank you.

@RodericDay Welcome back?

It's frustrating how common it is to mount opposition by rhetorically depriving a target of all virtues. Good strategy requires understanding both positive and negative, and how they interact. "Nietzsche was an artful chauvinist" is a sharper critique than "Nietzsche was bad."

Going deep is not for everyone. It's like surgery—hands deep inside a grimy bloody cavity, trying to splice good tissue from bad. But even if you don't want to be a surgeon, you should still be able to recognize not everyone is one, and that there's good ones and bad ones.

It's profoundly foolish to imagine being able to mount an opposition in this way, with precision and honesty, makes you weaker or compromised. Doubly so if you pair it with a belief that increasing amounts of untrammeled screeching means a person is more committed to a cause.

@prolewiki @MLToday @agent_of_change They're part of some awful Greek sect I think. Impotent in every material domain, they react by puffing up like loud toads trying to squat on whatever ideal they can by means of sheer obnoxious gloating. Marx wrote a whole tract against such losers—"Heroes of the Exile."

@MLToday @RodericDay @agent_of_change But sure, 60k tons of rice is nothing. 34% of daytime electricity through solar is nothing. You want China to follow the USSR's path - get dismantled by external imperial pressure trying to do everything. Only after their death will they be "real socialism" to you.

A Russian tanker carrying ‌100,000 tonnes of crude oil has arrived in Cuba, and Moscow says it will work on further deliveries. While the US attempts to starve the Cuban people into submission, Russia – along with China – is doing what it can to aid the island and to help defend Cuban sovereignty. This should be a reminder to all that Russia is an anti-imperialist power that stands firmly on our side of the global barricades – for peace, progress and multipolarity.

@MLToday @agent_of_change China does not export oil. China exports solar panels. Honestly, with loud economic illiterates like you around it's no wonder communism has such a trash reputation.

@agent_of_change An oil tanker from capitalist Russia is first to arrive. When will the oil tanker from socialist ( with Chinese characteristics) China get thru?

@MasonJettericks @mbauwens @craigaroo @policytensor I don't think you're worth convincing, so I won't spend time trying. I just think your stubborn attitude is telling.

@RodericDay @mbauwens @craigaroo @policytensor I mean by these standards Iran is also not a war of aggression and regime change - we haven't invaded with any soldiers and Iran makes threatening statements about ending the United States all the time. But those are silly criteria.

When I talk to my European liberal western friends (I have very few non-liberal friends, though I would not mind having them), who are generally well educated, I am genuinely puzzled by their certainties, and really believing that Russia is about to invade, and that the Ukraine war needs to continue, etc ... I think this is a very important part of the reason: < it is impossible for the Western mind to process military defeat. > The Europeans can't believe the Ukraine was defeated 2-3 years ago; and the Americans, who have nearly fully accepted this defeat and just continue the war to sell more weapons, cannot accept that Iran has strategically won this war already.

@MasonJettericks @mbauwens @craigaroo @policytensor You can hope for something without planning around it, and you can use military strategies that seem odd to amateurs to shape the battlefield. Either way, neither critique comes even close to the main thrust of his argument.

@RodericDay @mbauwens @craigaroo @policytensor The post is contradictory (saying both the Russians believed their invasion would trigger an internal coup and that regime change was not a goal - both of those can't be true) and ignores facts like the Russians making an attempt to blitzkrieg kiev and decapitate Ukraine.

@ChavieVina67151 @nikstankovic_ @Truckerforfun You cannot speak like this—"allowed to succeed", etc. The reality is rough. Either you face it factually head on and overcome it with organization, or you give in to it with moral cynicism. Idealistically pining that it ought to be different is the worst of both worlds.

@nikstankovic_ @Truckerforfun That "project" was not allowed to succeed, just like USSR, Venezuela. Libya, Iraq and they are trying their hardest to get Cuba on its knees. Death to Capitalist, imperialist class worldwide!

Milosevic fans--I was not and am not--point to prophetic statements like this that Milosevic was a visionary. The problem is not that he saw things before others, problem is that he could not navigate the times for the benefit of people in Serbia. Which was his one job. Serbia suffered immensely economically during his rule through sanctions and him simply being an incompetent administrator, first, and finally Serbs have been ethnically cleansed out of Croatia (250K, 80%) and Kosovo (150K, >50%). He's lost two wars. It was also then bombed by NATO. In Bosnia, he managed a draw, at best. These are all historical national losses. When you add to that the million or so, many young, talented, educated people who emigrated, and all this in a 10-15 year period results are catastrophic. That is the net-net result of his rule. Oh the excuses, NATO is evil, what could he do? Just because NATO is evil, you don't go to war against them, alone, at the height of their power. That's dumb. Serbia is not Iran. He was expecting Russia's support and Russia chickened out, they say, betraying Serbia. Well, so then Milosevic misread the situation. Russia in 1991 was not Russia in 1914. I actually don't blame Russia. Etc. Not to belabor on that whole thing again. The point is, seeing things is one thing, navigating them to your benefit another. He didn't just not do what is best for Serbia, he did what's worst. To be clear, like I said, Milosevic is trash, but he is our trash. This is why all of you outside Serbia who think you "liberated" Serbia from Milosevic are simply the enemy.

@MasonJettericks @mbauwens @craigaroo @policytensor Honestly, he gave you a post that stands on its own. Were I him, I wouldn't bother giving you any "authorities" to engage with. You'd just use them as pillars to weasel your willing lack of understanding around.

@mbauwens @craigaroo @policytensor Who are some of these historians and "geopoliticians"?

@jucheposting @NiaFrome This is exactly right. Unless you figure out a way to get a prize for being right, following him in his wrongness is more profitable. Pathetic, etc. but true.

@NiaFrome My theory is that no-one believes him, but they all assume that the market does, so they all react in unison no matter how untrustworthy he is. All of finance is a ponzi made up of suckers who believe they're the only non-sucker.

why hasn't the market priced in the fact that trump is a pathological liar

who else is supposed to be building their economy lmfao

@beebis005 @BolshevikBeyond For what it's worth, I agree with the thoughts up above thus far.

@BolshevikBeyond redsails.org/losurdo-hegel-… I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on this one, there’s plenty of good stuff on Hegel on there tho

The thing one must understand about Marx and Hegel is that they are not as philosophically opposed as “turning him on his head” implies. Hegel’s panentheism is already a partial secularization of christianity, and his Jena era philosophy even emphasizes sensuous activity (labor)

@sathvikpg @literalbanana "I have freedom to follow my will and work for an employer of my choice; I am not owned by a master" is uncontroversial. Coercing this logic into the question of whether you have "free will" relative to *your own brain* is metaphysical. There's no "self" outside of your brain.

@sathvikpg @literalbanana Wittgenstein argued entire categories of philosophical problems are just confusion about language, brought about by taking a term well-defined in one space and carelessly applying it elsewhere. "Free will" without context is one such poorly-defined concept.

I read it before the scandal so I somehow missed this lol

@cucumovirus @bidetmarxman 🔥🔥🔥 We are now on the same page!

@RodericDay @bidetmarxman As a side note, here a fun example of what can be done with this downwash: youtu.be/hnvtstq3ztI?is…

It’s fun to read goofy guides written for time travellers visiting the past that describe how to reinvent things like penicillin and powered flight while also watching the struggles of a man in the outback trying to reinvent technology from scratch but stalling out at mud bricks.

@cucumovirus @bidetmarxman Yeah it's a tricky needle to thread in communication. ETT is wrong, but the thing that ETT tries to explain (a kind of "suction lift") is in fact legit and primary.

@RodericDay @bidetmarxman As I find that people usually default to equal-transit theory.

@cucumovirus @bidetmarxman I just think that "pressure differences" do in fact play a big role? You can certainly fly with a bunch of flat plywood boards, but my understanding is that "suction" will play a big role, not just some kind of "impact bounce against air."

@RodericDay @bidetmarxman The angle of attack matters here more than the shape. But the shape isnt inconsequential, our modern aerofoils are more efficient. You're right that pressure does play a role but the pressure differential is created by the wing pushing air down which is what I wanted to highlight

@koshkinetic @bidetmarxman @cucumovirus We know how planes fly, but it's not always taught well. It's common to claim that particles that split at front must meet at end, which is false. But a wing doesn't mostly fly by being pushed upward by air underneath; most of the lift comes from "suction" over the top surface.

@RodericDay @bidetmarxman @cucumovirus Wait I never really looked too deep into this. Do we really not know how airplanes fly? I thought that was a joke.