• 1 Post
  • 20 Comments
Joined 5 years ago
cake
Cake day: June 29th, 2020

help-circle





  • Yeah I predict next Trump may turn to big pressure on Russia (more sanctions and whatever else he can muster) to attempt to get them to agree to a “temporary” (not really wink) ceasefire which allows France, UK, etc to say conditions are met and mobilize their troops as ‘peackeepers’ into Ukraine along the western bank of the Dnieper to prevent Russia getting any further. Of course if Russia is wise they understand this plan and won’t agree to a ceasefire to prevent this escalation which will result in nothing more than media sobbing (including from reactionaries who were acting friendly towards Russia of late) about how unreasonable they’re being, about how they’re the ones preventing peace now and how horrible and warlike they are and so on. After a while of this they may come around to offering Russia better terms in desperation or maybe up the weapons supply but I feel the US is so focused on China they’ll just find a way to offload it to Europe and say Europe lost it and the corrupt Ukrainians lost it and Biden lost it, etc.



  • Counterpoint: As the victor of the Ukraine conflict Russia can afford to be magnanimous towards its defeated enemies. Some leadership in Russia may even foolishly believe they’ve already survived the worst the west can throw at them so they can re-integrate from a position of strength. I think there are very strong ties between Russia and China but I also think the nature of Russia as a capitalist nation that desires to integrate with and ultimately influence to its benefit (and profit) the capitalist EU should not be overlooked.

    They are anti-imperialists by circumstances alone. If Putin died next week (quite possible, he’s not that young) there could be power struggles that could lead to a faction that favors this gaining power. If the US is willing to throw EU under the bus, if the US pushes through reactionary parties winning across the board in the EU, parties friendly to Russia who say turn on the Russian gas again, who come to Russia offering deals and money, and opportunities for profit, and who allow Russian influence penetration, I wouldn’t be so sure.

    Never say never. After all within living memory of those who currently rule were people who sold out the USSR, sold out a flawed but more equitable state for Pizza Hut, Coco-Cola, etc and the siren song of the west.

    I don’t think Russia will have a Sino-Soviet split moment where they turn antagonistic towards China but I think if the US plays its cards right, if things align, and if the Russian leadership are greedy as well as realpolitik embracers who don’t want to be the junior partner in a BRICS relationship instead of the “big man of Europe” in a partnership with the west that Russia might be swayed into a more west friendly position as the west antagonizes China. Not directly aiding the assault of the west but not aiding China, slinking away when the time comes for China to count its friends in a vote at the UN. That type of thing.

    Never trust capitalists who were after all foolish enough to allow all that has happened to happen. They were fooled for many years by the west and though they may have learned on matters of their border security and NATO encroachment not to take suspicious vague promises from the west but only solid agreements. Doesn’t mean they can’t be fooled on other things when profit, the greed of their eyes would have them believe otherwise and point to say some change in their power over Europe as evidence that a Ukraine situation will never happen again and that they can profit from the west and act “neutral” towards China. Neutral in secretly selling the west advanced military tech (not production, knowledge) for example.



  • The one possible upside of this is that with the site management being the way it is, I’d say that possibility of the site being some fed honeypot has definitely gone down a few notches.

    Does it really though? Right after USAID funds are frozen along with all kinds of other ops and funding through third parties?

    spoiler

    Getting into the weeds of this devil’s advocate paranoia here it would be the type of unimportant thing delegated to some cut-out, the exact kind of people locked out of their funds, their offices, their emails right now.

    I mean think of the Iraq sub-reddit, it’s clearly important to the US empire to manage that space yet it wasn’t CIA officials but some think-tank cut-out of US imperialist interests running it. I’d imagine in this hypothetical scenario much as people like to imagine someone at FBI HQ personally reading the website every day that it would be delegated to some cut-out.

    Now to be clear I’m just playing devil’s advocate in this argument. I’m not saying the top admin was in the pocket of the US or anything that nefarious (though the timing is enough to ensure jokes should be made until the end of time), not trying to freak people out with wild accusations, just that this does nothing to prove or disprove really who the head admin who held everything is or what their agenda may or may not have been. All it really proves is that the other admins of that site have messed up in not pushing much harder to get that access and in not having someone pay attention to this given their infrequent contact with the other person. Certainly if they had someone checking up on this they would have sounded the alarm 30 days ago when it expired and giving people plenty of time to take steps.



  • darkcalling@lemmygrad.mltoGenZedong@lemmygrad.mlHexbear down?
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    47
    ·
    edit-2
    10 months ago

    Wow the admin drama there is truly spectacular as this isn’t by any means the first big thing. The fact they couldn’t get contact with this person and just merrily let the timer tick down on website expiration without putting plans into place within a week of the expiry or at least saying something to the community 24 hours before it happened is not a good look.

    That domain is GONE. If the reactionaries from other instances or channers or youtubers don’t spot this and drop a ton of money on it to “own” the commies, still have to contend with some reseller grabbing it because of its connection to a memecoin or because of previous website rankings and wanting to squat it to attempt to turn a profit. The only thing that can be said is at least right now USAID and all the other ghouls are having their bank accounts frozen and in full panic mode so I don’t think any of them or their think tank friends are likely to dump 10k on it.

    Edit: Just checked and it actually expired on the 12th of January. Their registrar even gave them a 1 month grace period to re-up and during that time no one noticed, no one put plans into place. So it wasn’t like “oh they’ll renew on time”, it was a month of the person failing to renew on time or even in the grace period and either no one noticing or everyone assuming this was fine that they’d missed their re-registration deadline and were on borrowed time.


  • What may very well be happening right now is a soft coup that will place Trump as dictator for life, for lack of a better word. Remember that Nazi Germany was funded by capitalists (much like the Musks of the time) and gained power through the limits of liberal ideals. Hitler didn’t seize power with a rifle; he was invited to rule by the elected chancellor. Before that, he was also considered to be a joke and a clown.

    Increasingly feeling this way myself. Especially the whole clown thing ringing a little too close for comfort. I suppose the one thing that makes me question it is Trump’s age. He is not in the best of shape though with the healthcare he receives I suppose he could easily live another 10 years even with the stressors of office. Though it also strikes me with the Greenland stuff, incorporating Mexico, beyond being part of a potential wider plan and move by the bourgeoisie may be vain attempts as well to secure his legacy, that he desperately wants some lasting thing that confers greatness to his name in historic terms.

    Certainly the naming of harmful, deranged sycophants like RFK who just cleared committee and wants to add to trans people, also people with ADHD, probably others non-neurotypical people who take drugs to help their conditions by setting up camps for them and setting them up as another enemy or at least victim to brutalize while claiming to “help”.

    It’d be hilarious how easy it is for them to just stop environmental laws and good health practices purely via executive department actions because none of this was even a little codified by Democrats in congress if it wasn’t so vicious and I wasn’t so increasingly worried about whether in 2 years buying prepared food has a 5% chance of just killing you with some illness or heavy metals or whatever because those regulations have all been destroyed along with any consequences and the bourgeoisie have received the loud and clear signal to grab as much profit as they can. And the Democratic party apparatchiks nod approvingly at this “disciplining” of their base for daring not to vote for them for genocide in Gaza (Trump just announced plans to clear Gaza, maybe use the US military but approval of displacing all the Palestinian people there and building a luxury resort city).

    Very, very bleak stuff. Obviously long-term this does point to a decent chance the empire falls for good but those stuck in it like myself are in for some dangerous and interesting times.


  • A lot to say without much actual proof. Those things COULD be used to persecute the LGBTQ+ community but that doesn’t mean they are. As could many things, a country could selectively enforce all kinds of much more neutral sounding laws exclusively on gay people as a means of persecution.

    I’m sorry but without any proof I’m not ready to go throwing them out and cede to liberals and reactionary anti-communist rainbow-washing forces that they are actually indeed so. There’s so much misinformation about the DPRK it’s not even funny.

    If being gay is considered a decadent act by the government

    That one IF is doing a huge amount of lifting, your argument falls apart when you take it out.

    which it likely is,

    Proof, we need proof, not “I feel like it is”. And yes all countries have persons in them, including those attached to the party who hold backwards views on a variety of things.

    In particular I’ll note Eastern notions of frowning on something are not the same as western active persecution. There are also issues of things lost in translation. China doesn’t criminalize being gay but they very much crack down on LGBTQ-CIA organizations (we need a Buttigieg rat emoji) that advance a western, liberal slant.

    I make no claims they are some bastion of rights for queer people as they’re likely not given their history and material circumstances but I think this whole post is making a mountain out of a molehill of evidence. You can’t just leap from one conclusion to another more severe one.

    At the end of the day cfgaussian’s take is mine but I think OP jumped the shark with a sweeping and unsupported by evidence alarmist proclamation.


  • Simply say the magic words in the right order “please president Xi, help us rebuild our bridge” and later of course “Biden don’t, but Xi do” and presto after the immigration permits are issued you’ll have a new even better bridge in 6 months, they’ll even throw in a rail crossing for only a little more and no extra time. And be sure to ask about excellent deals on Chinese state rail company rolling stock while you’re at it.







  • Decomb filter is set and will increase the effort needed. Unless the video is noticeably interlaced (line artifacts, not likely for most blurays) and you’re trying to fix that there’s no reason to run it. (Note however this is the least time intensive thing you’re doing, I just mention it for completeness, to be honest handbrake may have detection so it only runs while needed but I’ve always set it manually and only as needed)

    Besides that though you’re using software encoding which while better will take much longer. Try setting the encoding tune under video settings to something faster.

    Alternatively set your encoder to use NVENC version of the scheme you want (264) With NVENC encoding 30 minutes without anything else should take 7 minutes or so.

    One last thing. You seem to have it set to burn subtitles in. This generates a lot of extra work and is not advisable unless your hardware or software does not support soft-subs as a separate stream in for instance an mkv file. Most modern streaming devices will handle plain text and PGS image subtitles in my experience. Try instead to set the default and forced flags if you want subtitles to be on by default.