Personally, I view it as propaganda still, but I don’t view propaganda as bad inherently.

Propaganda to me is just an organized effort to persuade a larger audience of people politically. Its only bad if the aims are harmful unjustly.

So people organizing a take over to reiterate “No fucking Nazis!” Is a propaganda campaign, but its based.

Societal collapse? No gold won’t save you. Tools and how to use them will.

Maybe during hyperinflation though.

Gods not a terrible investment but it doesn’t have a short term ROI just a REALLY long term one.

I hate Bitcoin but its probably a better investment (and just as useful) than gold.

I’m a fudd though and ONLY buy stable stocks that yield reliable dividends though. ETFs, S&P stuff.

I recommend

“SPQR” by Mary Beard for a good comprehensive book on Roman history

If you prefer chronology for some reason

“The origin of empire” by David Potter is really good

Also “Inventing the Renaissance” By Ada Palmer

I went to college for this shit and these books, while very long, do basically smarize everything I learned on these two subjects. So I’ve saved you probably $10,000

You would love reading any Roman History book and then “Inventing the Renaissance” by Ada palmer.

You’re right. It really does feel like were in the death throws of the republic of rome and the Empire is forming.

Which, naturally, will fall eventually and will likely turn into a nationalist nostalgia and inspire a Renaissance.

You should also be aware that most modern authors have 1 boon and 1 bane. Their boon is significantly more evidence than any other surviving roman historian ever. Their bane is that they will have Tue biases of our modern issues.

Its my favorite thing how much historical interpretation gets done through the eyes of a contemporary. Historians love to go on and on about not having bias, but their human so they do. A good example of this is Edward Gibbons “Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire” which revitalization our modern tradition of Roman History studies. Unfortunately (or fortunately if you’re like me and wanted to study intellectual history) this whole series is often used as a criticism of the British Empire in the 17th century.

Of course a lot of it is good enough roman history, but whole stories within the book are complete fabrications. There is no evidence that they happened to Emperor X or Province Y, but the series of events and the alleged public disapprovals of them do match up with the events of his contemporary political moment for which it would have been illegal for Mr. Gibbon to criticize publicly.

And this means of using nostalgia around a long dead empire to affect contemporary politics is what happened in the Renaissance.

Ada Palmers book she effectively (and very accessibly) argues that the Renaissance was more or less just a massive propaganda campaign since by no measure was the “Renaissance” better or worse than the middle ages. In fact the span of the “renaissance” is so grand that it often includes the middle ages or it doesn’t depending on where you want to believe the renaissance started which is constantly redefined.

Based.

There’s a few options now, but you can get Intel N100 ITX boards Like this one from ASUS with a soldered on N100 CPU for the cost of a normal motherboard.

If its just a NAS, and I do recommend having a separate Just a NAS, that CPU fucks hard.

Then the media cycle that would have been about the columbine shooters is about the mad stranger who killed two innocent high schoolers and vanished.

I respect that Steve was able to control himself and only make a 25 minute video on this.

https://piefed.ca/comment/2532727

Oh wow, I got all the important parts didn’t I?

Crazy…

TL:DW;

Mr. Nexus still thinks its news that, under capitalism, production of luxury goods will always be sold to the highest bidder and not “the masses”

I didn’t watch it either. But its about Micron no longer selling consumer ram in favor of the AI industry customer.

Well seeing as its invite only still. Probably not yet.

I doubt anything that tightly under the creators control is going to be “soiled” yet

I don’t have pride in my government or its actions.

It was actively causing a lot of harm for most of its existence and is now turbo charging its ability to enshittify the world.

The LEAST I can do is make it clear we’re not all in support of this shit.

Love the country and people though. Lots of cool forests to roam and lots of people who don’t suck.

Nah you about got it.

Exactly what I was thinking.

Trump probably saw he was popular AND I’m sure Mamdani said polite things to the guy, and now were here.

We go to a buffet by the lake.

Its honestly really nice not having to Cook, but it does feel quintessentially american to make someone else do it.

I just want busses. That tears up nothing.

I just want bollards protecting pedestrian and bike traffic. That tears up nothing.

I want passenger trains between cities where there’s already railing. That tears up nothing.

Is this honestly a bigger ask than a decade long rebuild of an interstate that will need another widening in 5 years after?

I actually said they’re a net negative and I stand by that.

Lithium mining, their fixed short life spans, and the problems of car focused cities as a whole are not addressed by going all EV. Marginally better than combustion? Sure. I’ll give you that.

But ultimately its manufacturing and the lack of repair ability make it bad over all.

Gods, this is how I sell public transit to pro car people.

I am traffic. I want to be off the road and in a bus.

I just don’t want my bus ride to be over an hour and a half long when the car ride is 10 minutes.

I’ll settle for a bike commute because that’s 30 minutes but it would require riding down a major road where the only thing protecting me from a car going 60 MPH is a painted white line and trust.

I do think there’s a debate to be had as to if were in a “better place” then if Clinton had won

If she had won, we wouldn’t be better off relative to 2015. We would have been in the same shit we were in 10 years ago with a housing crisis on the rise and COVID would have still happened and probably wouldn’t have gone too radically differently.

Wed still have increased income inequality and we saw under Biden that the main Liberal answer to climate change is Electric Cars which net doesn’t help and in fact worsens our e-waste issue.

Obviously, I don’t know this is how it would have gone for sure, but the democrats really haven’t given me much to believe in.

So would we have been “better off” with a dem successor compared to the 2015 status quo? No I don’t think so and I think we all knew that and it doesn’t inspire people to vote or participate in elections.

Would we have been better off to what we got? Yeah probably. But that’s stuff we didn’t completely know until hindsight kicked in. I think we all assumed he’d be a lame president and not a modern Commodus or Nero.

Now, I don’t subscribe to acceleration ist views, but there is that view point as well.

Under that ideology, we are better off compared to a Clinton or Harris win because they would have subdued the flakier radical elements in society longer.

Trump being president and his flagrant disregard for our status quo system is a massive stepping stone towards a revolution of some sort to hopefully fix the problems of our 2015 society plus the additional inflated issues by Trump.

Damn. All this talk of conservatives being throat goats and we completely forgot how much Warren likes head.