I technically have three names (given name, patronymic, family name). I’ve lived in a few countries, all with different name systems. I’ve found that this is the best easiest rule set to avoid trouble:

• If possible, use only the first and family name, those are very widely understood.
  • If possible, when making a passport in your country of origin, request that those are the only names recorded, and they are transliterated into latin according to some official (or at least widely recognized) ruleset.
• If possible, use the latin transliterations as written in the passport.
  • Otherwise, look up official transliteration rules from latin to local language and use those.
  • Don’t try transliterating by yourself, or transliterating from the original names, it will cause issues.
  • If some system somewhere transliterates your names otherwise, complain loudly before they get committed anywhere.
  • If the local system forces you to have a “common” first name and your name doesn’t fit, choose one that’s as close as possible to the rules described above. If there is no close alternative, choose the one you like, but be prepared for issues down the road.
• If possible, leave all other names as blank, otherwise as -.
  • Don’t try fitting a “middle name” from one system into another.
  • If possible, avoid fitting into the local system at all, e.g. don’t make up a second family name even if the system calls for it. In my case, I didn’t reuse the patronymic even when the local system had it as well, because my father’s name is obviously not a local name so it would look really weird.
  • If asked, say you don’t have any other names.

Of course, this is just what worked best in my specific situations, other countries may be different.

And also, I don’t care at all about my legal name (all my friends call me by another name anyways) so I’m fine dropping a part of it, the goal here is to just make interactions with governments, banks, etc as smooth and easy as possible.

The checks and balances are working mostly as intended. The purpose of the system is:

1. Protect the oligarchy from external threats, should any anti-oligarch politician slip by all the various election disenfranchisement techniques,
2. Moderate any conflicts between factions of the oligarchy to stabilize the dictatorship of the capital.

As far as I can tell,

1. Billionaires are making more billions every day while the rest struggle to get by,
2. Almost all dem politicians and their wealthy neoliberal donors are doing alright despite a literal fascist party being in power.

Besides, even when someone like Mamdani gets elected, they can’t effect any meaningful change because they are “checked” by the pro-capitalist legislature and “balanced” by the corrupt judiciary.

It doesn’t need a reboot, it needs a complete realignment of who’s in charge.

Even with a solid majority, the house and senate democrats will be too full of individual self-interests too do anything of the sort.

It’s not individual self-interests, it’s pretty blatant corruption to protect their donors, the US oligarchs. Any real investigation into republicans will implicate “democrat” billionaires as well.

Nazis took inspiration for holocaust from manifest destiny, soo…

Please put an NSFW tag on that image, it can get you in trouble if you accidentally show it in public in many countries, for good reason.

Nah they were. Being a nazi makes you a bad person, categorically. It doesn’t mean there’s no possibility for change or reform, but it does mean that while someone holds nazi believes they are a vile piece of shit.

What’s up with approx. 1.8?

I’ll say it’s a 6-9 depending on my mood.

Sure this may sound ridiculous but it’s basic knowledge that studying your opponents viewpoints is the best way to counter them and get new insight yourself.

I don’t think this is necessarily empathy. I’ve read Hitler, Ilyin and Dugin, understood their arguments and point of view. If anything it made me less empathetic to them, seeing their vile hatred spilled on paper like that; but I agree that it is useful in practice to understand people who hate your guts.

To me, empathy means not only understanding the individual’s viewpoint, but moreso understanding how they got to it. This is how I can still slightly emphasize with any awful individuals, from nazis to billionaires: I understand that their viewpoint was formed by their position in the capitalist hellscape we fine ourselves in, and by incessant capitalist propaganda. If I was born in their stead and lived through their experiences, I would likely share similar ideas. This makes me more hopeful in the possibility of reform even for the worst of the worst; if a person was convinced of something, they can be convinced that it is wrong too; noone is born a nazi, and so noone is beyond hope in my opinion.

As for my family, they can be incessantly racist and homophobic, not to mention all the various small things like climate change conspiracies etc. I politely disagree with them and try to nudge them towards more inclusivity and empathy for others; we’ve never had a screaming argument despite holding very different opinions about things so dear to my heart. But yeah at times, especially when I’m in a bad mood, I also just shut down political conversations with them.

Can’t wait for the Satanic Temple Primary School to apply for vouchers too

Communism is the antithesis of religion. The former is based on materialism, the latter is idealism incarnate. Soviet republics turned churches into cinemas and warehouses and other cool shit, while capitalist countries were betting more and more on religious propaganda to calm the masses.

I would argue that Wi-Fi is also fundamentally the same as it was invented, it’s just network packets sent over high-frequency radio waves, but there has been a lot of changes in specifics. It’s the same for wheels, while the fundamental principle is the same, the differences between a wheel 4000 years ago and today are staggering.

It’s very niche, but the only thing I could come up with is Kvevri, a traditional Georgian winemaking vessel. They’re sold today (and still used for their stated purpose, aging wine), I’ve personally seen kvevris with the exact same shape buried in a wine cellar of 12th century monastery, and at least going by the article they’re like 8000 years old, and haven’t changed much in that time.

My other ideas were:

• Bricks (turns out the earliest sun-dried mudbricks, which are very different from modern ones)
• Concrete (turns out it changed a whole lot since the Romans, modern concrete is much easier to pour, sets faster and is much stronger)
• Nuts & bolts (initially were hand-crafted and non-interchangeable - yuck!)
• Knives (I’ll let knife enthusiasts speak about that one)

Wheels have definitely changed a lot though.

So 86% of registered republicans have never read a middle school history book? About checks out actually.

Sure, just highlighting the similarities here.

I’m from Russia just for context. The playbooks are exactly the same down to the justifications (“protect the children” for destroying online privacy and anonymity, “terrorism” for arresting any unfavorable protesters).

UK right now is giving me some serious Russia 2018 vibes (except even worse because this brand of authoritarian bullshit aligns with the US). I suspect if things go in this direction and there is no revolt of some sort, UK might start a dumb special military operation somewhere. Oh wait there are already helping to genocide palestinians. Maybe this is actually Russia 2022 vibes 🤔

This is literally just talk (promise) about a bunch of other talk (recognition). While talk is better than silence, nothing of substance is happening yet. They still trade with Israel, including some weapons.

It’s not the extermination camps the allies were worried about. It was invading “countries that mattered”. If Germany just stopped at Austria, Poland and some other eastern european countries there might not have been a world war at all.

Physical media is the only media you really own.

Hard disagree. You can own any file encoded with an open standard. And it’s easier to index, search, manipulate, back up, etc. It feels more like owning than having the data on a micrometer-thick metal layer sandwiched in a fragile plastic disc that can easily scratch or discrot. There is a reason people have been ripping CDs since PC CD drivers became a thing.