I am a ML and everything I have seen of Jenkem’s posting here makes me think they are probably a leftist.

We probably don’t agree on everything, but they’re no liberal.

We both know it wasn’t even Che Guevara T-Shirt socialism. It was definitely “I think the nordic model is pretty cool” socialism.

the only viable left leaning political party in the US?

I might be misunderstanding you, so I apologize if that is the case, but if you are referring to the Democrats they are far from left leaning. They aren’t even center leaning.

You can’t even say they have a better track record than the Republicans. They bomb countries as much (or in recent years even more) than the Republicans. They advocate for wars. They fund ICE even more than the Republicans. They stand up just as much for reproductive rights (read: not at all). They just do all of it while waving a rainbow flag.

I really hope you meant the Greens or the CPUSA; which have their own issues but are certainly more left than either the Democrats or Republicans.

We never had blockbusters here, but our local equivalent is actually still doing quite well. I think streaming movies is more popular, but a lot of people go there to rent music CDs. Actually buying physical music albums is really expensive.

We still have Toys R Us too actually, I think it does pretty well here for the most part.

So I guess my answer defaults to Radioshack.

She didn’t have kids already, but she wanted to have them in the future. I absolutely do not want kids, I even got a vasectomy in my early 20s.

It’s not really an issue you can compromise on as a couple, so it was better to part amicably than pursue something with no future, for both of our sakes.

You don’t want to use a wiki that makes your battery start to visibly drain away?

I am childfree, she wasn’t. 100% not going to work, but we ended on good terms all things ocnsidered.

Tropical Connect the Dots.

I’ve said before, but we need to stop making dystopian films/tv because it just gives them ideas.

Give my regards to Winnie.

Shock, the guy who watches racists is a racist.

‘and we aren’t talking about the Chinese people, the Chinese people are good people, we love China, we are opposed to the CCP’?

The white man’s burden bullshit argument. Oh those poor Chinese people can’t possibly really support the CPC, they are just misguided and need us brave foreigners to come save them.

If you want to talk smack about Laowhy then you better provide proof.

Laowhy desecrating remains. His girlfriend (at the time) calls him out on it and he tells her to shut up because it makes good content. Nobody who loves China descreates their dead. You can’t even use the excuse that he was confused or didn’t know what it was, he was told to stop and refuses.

His treatment of his wife. Makes her sit on the floor of the car while he makes racist jokes with his family. Sorry to link to reddit, I don’t keep extensive archives of these guys.

Not expecting you to suddenly change your opinion on the CPC, but these guys in particularly are indefensible and nobody should be encouraged to watch them.

I used it a little bit, not extensively. I watched Diggnation with Kevin and Alex though semi-regularly, as I used to watch TechTV prior to that.

Cancelling the US subscription is really hard, they actually charge you a premium for the cancellation service. I have been working on it for a while, but the customer service is just atrocious.

Not many I follow too closely to be honest these days. I just did a big purge of a bunch of my subscriptions so there’s only a handful now.

Gaming/Entertainment:

• Nextlander: General gaming; comprised of three ex-members of Giant Bomb (Vinny, Alex, and Brad).

• Mr. Samuel Streamer: Primarily focused on Rimworld and Crusader Kings, just an extremely witty guy that puts a lot of work into what he does. Often spends 8-9 hours in gameplay and editing to make a 30 minute episode, every day.

• Nilaus: Factory/automation games, like Factorio and Dyson Sphere Program.

• The Jimmy Dore Show: Semi-leftist, has liberal tendancies but is more political comedy than serious commentary, so I categorize him more as entertainment than political. I often don’t agree with all of his takes, but the show can be good sometimes.

• CryptTV: Mini-horror episodes, often with a few recurring monsters. Really well done effects work.

Politics:

• Li Jingjing: China-based journalist, covers China and the global south as a whole. Does both serious stories and cultural/interest pieces. Great for somebody just interested in seeing more China without the anti-China rhetoric.

• George Galloway: Left-leaning talk show host, some reactionary tendancies but he does have a pretty good range of guests from time to time, including the above. He’s been around for ages, very well established.

• The Deprogram: Leftist talk show and podcast.

That’s kind of my entire subscription list at the moment, it has been cut down a lot recenty.

Oh no, not the racist sexpats. Not sure I would necessarily want to be using those guys as your source of news in China. Laowhy is an absolute piece of shit to his wife, and actually made a video of himself desecrating gravesites in Taiwan and laughing about it. Complained that his daughter looked too asian. Just an absolute piece of garbage.

They found out being condescending towards Chinese people sells right now, and that has been their entire brand since they left the country. They’re probably useful in that anything they say, you can assume the exact opposite is the truth.

Living in Japan, this almost didn’t register to me. I have literally never met anybody that didn’t have one. When you move out, you use your family’s old one until you can buy a newer one.

Everyone should have one, absolutely.

Everyone? I have never owned a car, probably wouldn’t come in super useful.

I have two major oppositions to capital punishment, and neither are rooted in the possibility of rehabilitation or not.

1. The state is not infallible. If you put someone into prison for ten years and find out you messed up, you can at least release them. You can’t give them those years back, but you can try to do right by them as much as you are able. You execute the wrong person? You’re just a murderer.

2. Personally, life in prison (and not a cushy wall street exec prison) seems like a way worse punishment. Even if I was only concerned with providing somebody the worst possible punishment, lifetime imprisonment would be worse.

Mostly though for me, it is number 1.

It makes the perfect excuse for the emperor to surrender on, no doubt about that. Put yourself into the emperor’s shoes. You’ve been lying to your people about their efficacy in the war, your country is devastated. Do you admit you led the country into war or that one singular scientific breakthrough that nobody could have seen coming was responsible? You shift all blame off your shoulders and that of your leadership, and all onto this one perfect excuse. It also placates the Americans. It enhanced the perception of US military power; whereas if the soviet entry into the war was a deciding factor, the same would be true for the USSR. Attributing the surrender to the bombs is basically better for every party involved, except the soviets.

There are a few reasons why, looking back at it, that it doesn’t make sense that the nuclear bomb was the deciding factor.

Well in advance of the surrender, Deputy Chief of Staff of the Army Torashiro Kawabe said that “The absolute maintenance of peace in our relations with the Soviet Union is imperative for the continuation of the war.” Japan always knew that they would not be able to fight that front of the war as well and that the USSR entering into the conflict would end their ability to continue.

There are the timing issues I already mentioned. The second bombing could not have possibly be involved, and a three day turnaround from the first bomb to even starting talks to discuss surrender (in fact, directly rejecting that discussion at one point) seems extraordinarily slow. Did it probably come up in those discussions? I would be surprised if it wasn’t mentioned, but the details of those talks were never made public. Was it the impetus for calling the meetings? Decidely not.

At this point in the war, Japanese leadership had little illusions that they were going to defeat the United States. They may have convinced large swathes of the population of that, but their outlook wasn’t good. So what were their avenues for the best surrender terms that they could get. As outlined by Ward Wilson, a position I quite agree with, they had two viable paths. There was the diplomatic route, with the soviet union acting as a mediator for Japanese surrender to America. Sokichi Takagi wrote about this option in his diaries if you are looking for a primary source (I can provide the Japanese if you can read it, but I am not sure where to find an English translation) . Which would undoubtedly present better terms than an unconditional surrender to the US would have. Obviously an option that was not on the table when the soviets entered the war.

The second was the military holdout, which is what people often cite as the best justification for the bombing. However, in anticipation of the US invasion, Japan had moved the vast majority of their troops to Kyushu, leaving little to nothing to defend Manchuria and Hokkaido. A last stand against one super power from one direction is one thing, the same feat from two directions was impossible for what was left of the Japanese military. The Soviets would have had met little to no resistance moving into Hokkaido from Manchuria. Any hope of bleeding the US forces out in a month long war of attrition evaporated; large swaths of northern Japanese territories would be occupied by the Soviet Union in weeks.

I don’t mean to write a full on essay here, but I am happy to go into detail on any particular subject if you would like.

This is a really common line that is patently false, the nukes had very little to do with triggering the Japanese surrender. The meeting to discuss surrender occured days after the first bombing, and started prior to the second bomb. I wasn’t privy to the Council discussions, obviously, but it is exceedingly unlikely they would sit around for days after the first bombing before meeting to discuss surrender. What did happen immediately prior to the surrender meeting was the Soviet invasion.

The nuking, of primarily non-military targets by the way, was largely a show of force demonstration to the soviets. It was not a “necessary evil” to save lives, and it was sure as hell not a mercy.

And I’m not going to be able to argue against your first hand account of rural North Korea.

Unless you are from the US or SK, when things open up a bit more that is looking to be possible again. I would encourage you to try visiting if you have the time and means. Even if we totally divorce things from the politics, there’s a lot of beautiful nature there.

Anecdotally, you seem relatively reasonable and I think it would be an interesting experience.

However, I don’t see the people of North Korea being able to put political pressure on their government to change policies.

It does depend to what extent, people can definitely enact policy change. While all political organizations do ultimately belong to the Democratic Front for the Reunification of Korea, they have multiple political parties under that umbrella that do different on some issues. Obviously they aren’t going to suddenly pass laws making the place capitalist, but they can do and do change some things. The Social Democratic Policy is notably more liberal in their attitudes as it was formed by a lot of the petite bourgeoise. They actually have published journal articles that are critical of the ruling party.