AreaSIX

That's not a Västgötaspets, looks more like a mixed breed.

It's definitely not a good precedent for governments to shut down communication platforms. But free speech is for all, and Twitter censors speech it doesn't like, mainly left wing opinions. So I'm not going to act like free speech is the main issue here, even if I dislike governments shutting down or blocking platforms.

You know that Twitter isn't banned in Turkiye and India because they complied with their requests for censure, since you know, those are right wing governments run by strong men that the Apartheid beby likes? Funny how free speech becomes the issue just when the requests come from governments whose ideology don't align with this particular clown's. GTFO with the free speech posturing, if you're defending the free speech of a platform where it's fine to harass trans people but you're banned if you correctly call someone cis gendered. Free speech my ass, Twitter is a right wing cess pool, not a beacon of free discourse.

There's evidence of apple cultivation in the middle east from around 5000 years ago as far as I know.

He ran in 88 and 2008, ran as a vice president 2008 and 2012, skipped 2016 and ran again 2020 and 2024. I'd say it lines up, Biden always wanted to be president, and his only regret seems to be that he was persuaded not to run in 2016.

Here I thought I was ancient because it was combat. Seems like there are many of us old farts around here.

"ingrained in the middle eastern mentality"? I'd have a look at my own mentality if I was this comfortable generalizing several hundreds of millions of people like that. It seems like you have disdain for both victim and perpetrator irrespective of which in your mind is which, because they're middle eastern. Weird.

Meanwhile here in Sweden, everyone's criminal record is public, and even available to search online. Unless the crime is something minor punished with a fine. It's really ridiculous, everything is publicly available online, like addresses, phone numbers, the cars or pets people own. Unless you have a protected identity, it's all available to everyone online. I tried to apply for a protected identity on account of being a public servant that is involved in making decisions many people very much dislike. But I couldn't provide a concrete threat so it was denied. It's like the system is still geared towards pre-internet times. The system itself in fact doxxes every resident in the country.

Jfc, a media outlet asks a presidential campaign a question, and the answer from the official spokesperson is "your phone must be fucked up." It's amazing how fast standards seem to be unraveling within the US political system. Even random student groups have better judgement in their communication with the media, this is like a spokesperson for a shitty frat house talking to Mother Jones.

Spent a year in the south/south east of Africa, and different variations of fermented maize beer were the most common alcoholic drink among locals.

Thobwa is the Malawian/Zambian version, while umqombothi is the South African one.

If so, then it's just as inaccurate and ridiculous to say that Uganda, India, Algeria and Morocco have regressed in their development. What part of that do you consider controversial? Are you unwilling/unable to have a negative attitude towards the current regime, while also acknowledging that they've done more to develop the country than the Pahlavis ever did? There's no contradiction at all in that in my view, those are just the facts. Iran has raised its HDI by +40% in the last 35 years, going from 0.577 in 1990 to almost 0.8 in 2018, with the international average for countries with high HDI being 0.75. Iran went from non-existent research output during the Shah's reign to being number 15 in the World, placing 4th in Asia after India, Japan and South Korea. All of this happened within the framework of the "theocratic shitheads", despite the existence of socially repressive laws, and not during the Shah's time when the laws were more relaxed and all of the West supported his regime in any way possible. He was just uninterested in channeling that support into things beneficial to the people of Iran, and suffered the consequences of that by steering the country into revolution. So just comparing a picture of a woman in a miniskirt in the seventies to the mandatory hijab of today and concluding that the country has regressed in general seems like the most uncharitable and shallow analysis possible. It's not helpful in understanding the World at all, and leads to foolish slogans like "they hate us for our freedom", which in turn leads to disastrous decisions like the invasion of Iraq.

I don't know why it should be so difficult to acknowledge that there are different degrees of bad, and the record suggests that the current "shitheads" are still far superior to the former. Nothing I wrote was meant to imply that the current regime doesn't do a lot of bad stuff, there are no governments that don't do bad stuff. To make sense of international politics at all, I think it's essential to be able to compare different degrees of bad and grade on a curve. Just pointing and saying it's all bad doesn't seem like the best of ideas to me. But to each his own.

Or look at the literacy rates. At the time of the revolution, so past when this photo was taken, less than 40% of Iranians could read and write. And let's not mention The Celebration of the 2,500th Anniversary of the Founding of the Persian Empire by the Western puppet ruler, spending millions and millions on a tent city for foreign dignitaries in the desert plains, while his subjects were living in abject poverty without access to education or health care. Let's just look at the mini skirt in the photo and wonder at the enlightenment of those days and the backwardness of today, when the literacy rate has more than doubled in 40 years for example. But they have hijab, therefore the society has obviously regressed. That's the measure for how advanced a society is, the length of the skirts of the few who are well off.