Zompist Bboard Again

Apparently horse breeders in the UK once banned American horses over concerns that they weren't purebred. I can't help but imagine a stuffy Englishman intoning "I hear these American horses have got a little zehbra in them."

Besides, your view of things under a democracy is, oddly enough, too rosy. Most people either don't care much about politics, or leave the thinking to their respective political camps' leading politicians or commentators. That was precisely my point. Democracy in the US is collapsing because too ma...

Nothing lasts forever, and fascism has a particularly poor record. Let's look at the history books, The Confederacy: 5 years Nazi Germany: 12 years Mussolini's Italy: 23 years Those all collapsed from losing wars rather than internal problems, though. They could easily have lasted indefinitely if t...

malloc, you clearly want to believe that Trump is some unstoppable force, when in reality he has been chronically failing and waffling at much of what he has attempted to do. Look at how he turned around and backed down on much of his China tariffs for practically nothing in return! So much for bei...

*sigh* yet again you move the goalposts, and then wonder why nobody is as panicked as you are. read your own post. Generations ago, China was a kingdom, and generations ago, my ancestors were mining the Welsh hills, likely with your ancestors shooting at them. The revolution that brought the curren...

grrrrrreat, now we have to ask you to define words again, if thats what you think a dictatorship is. You don't consider China a dictatorship? thousands of tanks and aircraft...flown by whom? Trump's having trouble keeping planes from diving into the ocean. and it likely escapes you that soldiers ha...

so not only are you ignoring the vast majority of the news on pretty much every tv channel and youtube channel, you're also starting to make some of us think you have a hardon for America turning fash and trying to fight everyone else. This interpretation is based on looking at historical analogies...

why do you refuse to answer the question? why do you think that only democracies - and suddenly now only the (pre)existing democracies - could bother to fight and defeat a more-evil-than-satan America? Other dictatorships might fight the US but they won't replace its dictatorship with a liberal dem...

Except that World War II involved precisely that kind of alliance between authoritarian regimes. One can easily imagine the US working with Russia and whatever major powers fall to fascism in the coming years in the next world war. Even without that, though, the US has such an enormous and well-fund...

the trajectory is moot; not even Babe Ruth could hit a baseball through a building. something always stops trajectories - and we've already seen more than a few somethings where Trump is concerned. Eventually sure, but that does not necessarily mean things getting better. The evolution of larger an...

If you refuse to resist the fash, then do some conlangs or something. It's up to you to make something of your life, not us. What does resistance even mean here, though? The problem is that the reactionaries have an overwhelming advantage in everything from funding to propaganda to firepower and I ...

You have to consider the current trajectory of the situation, though. Reactionaries are gaining ground all across the world and especially with younger people. They clearly have the momentum and will only get stronger if present trends continue. You need to show me some good reasons to believe that ...

zompist wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 6:50 pmAdmittedly the US has problems. But jeez, what is happening in Liechtenstein, which is almost as bad?

It has quite a small population so presumably it only takes a few extra murders to drive up its homicide rate noticeably.

hard to suspend it, when he doesn't know what it is - which goes for more than just the corpus. He doesn't have to know what it means to suspend it, anymore than he had to understand science to suspend funding to scientific institutions. If he wants habeas corpus gone, it will disappear, regardless...

Meanwhile the MAGA regime is already jailing politicians and planning on suspending habeas corpus. Realistically how does one fight a regime that thinks nothing of jailing or deporting anyone it wants?

if that were true, England (as an example off the top of my head) would have no criminals, at least none outside of prison, and China would not be having trouble with the Turks or Tibetans. Except that neither of those groups are anywhere close to breaking free of China nor do they pose any credibl...

If you're referring to my blog post, the message is not "hope", it's RESIST. Sure, but I fear we are rapidly approaching an age where resistance has become unfeasible for various reasons. Sufficiently pervasive and well-crafted propaganda can gaslight even the toughest minds. Increasingly...

The contrast between Zompist proclaiming hope about our situation and everything I am reading elsewhere feels ever more jarring.

Trump administration ‘looking at’ suspending habeas corpus for migrants, Stephen Miller says
Newark Mayor Arrested While Protesting At ICE Detention Center

FTL stories are basically "the Age of Sail but with lasers." They are a great excuse to visit extremely exotic countries, now that we really can't shoehorn any into our own planet. Yeah, it feels like the modern world at least has little room for such things. I had a project long ago that...

Weird article about chatGPT leading people to quasi-religious delirium.