this post was submitted on 08 Dec 2025
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Over the last week, Sri Lanka has been hit by their worst national natural disaster since the 2004 Boxing Day Tsunami. Over 2 million people (about 10% of the population) were affected; the death toll is currently climbing past 600; nearly a hundred thousand homes have been damaged or destroyed, transport infrastructure is heavily damaged; industry has been damaged; and farmland has been flooded. The cost of damage so far looks to be about $7 billion, which is more than the combined budget spent on healthcare and education in Sri Lanka.
While there is plenty to say meteorologically about how this yet another concerning escalation as a result of climate change (Sri Lanka does experience cyclones, but they are usually significantly weaker than this), it's important to note that such disasters are, to at least a certain extent, able to warned about and their impacts somewhat mitigated. However, this requires both access to early detection and warning equipment, and an economy in which development is widespread - in this case, particularly in the construction of drainage systems and regulated construction, which has not generally occurred.
The IMF, on its 17th program with Sri Lanka, is doing its utmost to prevent such an economy from developing, as they instead promote reductions in public investment. On top of this, the rebuilding effort for Sri Lanka is already being planned and funded, and such donors include, of course, many Sri Lankan oligarchs, who will rebuild the damaged portions of the country yet further according to their visions, while sidelining the working class.
Perhaps neoliberalism's decay into its eventual death occurring concurrently into the gradual intensification of climate change and renewed wars signifies the rise of the era of disaster capitalism.
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The Zionist Entity's Genocide of Palestine
Sources on the fighting in Palestine against the temporary Zionist entity. In general, CW for footage of battles, explosions, dead people, and so on:
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English-language Palestinian Marxist-Leninist twitter account. Alt here.
English-language twitter account that collates news.
Arab-language twitter account with videos and images of fighting.
English-language (with some Arab retweets) Twitter account based in Lebanon. - Telegram is @IbnRiad.
English-language Palestinian Twitter account which reports on news from the Resistance Axis. - Telegram is @EyesOnSouth.
English-language Twitter account in the same group as the previous two. - Telegram here.
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Examples of Ukrainian Nazis and fascists
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Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section.
Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war.
Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
Simplicius, who publishes on Substack. Like others, his political analysis should be soundly ignored, but his knowledge of weaponry and military strategy is generally quite good.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language.
https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one.
https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts.
https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel.
https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator.
https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps.
https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language.
https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses.
https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Pro-Ukraine Telegram Channels:
Almost every Western media outlet.
https://discord.gg/projectowl ~ Pro-Ukrainian OSINT Discord.
https://t.me/ice_inii ~ Alleged Ukrainian account with a rather cynical take on the entire thing.
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Millions of children and teens lose access to accounts as Australia’s world-first social media ban begins
Here's a list of apps exempted for now:
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2025/dec/10/social-media-ban-australia-explained-banned-apps-list-guide
They're still allowed to play some shitty gacha game or visit 4chan. I guess Aussie kids are going to be radicalized towards reaction by Steam chat or some shady Discord instead of Facebook and Twitter.
Fucking Roblox is literally a child labor exploitation platform (just for a start to its problems). Imagine giving it a pass while screaming about how you're allegedly acting on behalf of child welfare.
1000s of queer and otherwise marginalized kids are gonna lose the only little bit of community they have away from their shitty parents and "communities"
Why else do you think they made this ban? Apart from the kids finding out about Palestine of course.
As an added bonus of this ban, the kids will now be going to places like 4Chan, which don't require an account to post, which is exactly the best place for 11 year olds to congregate. Shit's fucked in this country.
BTW the us is rolling out something similar to the EU chat control & "online child protection" scam.
Idk, maybe this is an alien idea to white people but have you tried...idk...maybe being a fucking parent?
Social media is a fucking cancer but letting age bans go through that are gonna effect everyone aint the answer.
It's very strange to me that there's parents that recognize the problem yet allow their kids to keep using social media regardless. They don't know how to get their kids away from the devices? Don't know how to do it in a way that doesn't screw up the kid's schooling?
I'm young enough that it was a legitimate problem for my parents that I couldn't be grounded by having my devices taken away because it meant I couldn't do my homework. I can see how that could be a legitimate issue for parents who don't know how to properly set up more granular controls on their kids' access to apps and websites.
I don't know, honestly if it wasn't for the privacy aspect and the necessity that queer kids have for the internet as a source of critical information/community they can't get IRL, I'd find it hard to disapprove of a law like this. People should generally spend less time online because the internet is becoming a source of pretty great harm in a lot of ways. It was true before the slopification of everything but it's so much worse now. That goes double for kids, but even adults who choose to drop off the major social media sites because they don't want to jump through the hoops the government is asking them to are probably better off for it. People who can't (for a variety of very valid reasons) find community IRL but do find it online are the main ones being hurt bad here.
This strikes me as very draconian. I think what China did with a time limit on gaming is much more reasonable - but I don't know if that would be technically feasible for social media websites more generally speaking.
Plus as others have mentioned, this will probably just push kids to websites that don't require a login instead, which is arguably worse.
it doesn't fix the root cause either, which is how capitalists leech our mental fortitude in their relentless march of death for the last slithers of extractable profit.
I can imagine kids paying some 19 year old, or poor guy, to do the age verification checks for a bunch of child accounts.
Just like what kids often do to get their hands on weed, beer, and cigarettes.
This is pretty much what's done rn so kids can get access to online casinos advertised by popular streamers.
Happening just as the school holidays in the summer begins, the perfect time to deprive kids of their primary source of information and entertainment. The best time to piss people off is right before they have a ton of free time on their hands. I predict record high levels of youth vandalism over the next few months, as bored kids resort to throwing rocks through windows and smashing up cars for fun (and to vent their frustration).
So...the kids will lie about their age then? Or get a VPN? I don't see how this can be enforced.
My doomer guess: everyone uploads a picture/live video call of their face so their proprietary aislop bullshit can phrenology you and determine if you are over 18/21 in order to make an account. Anonymous accounts won't exist anymore ig?
If I VPN to a different country, that's all not gonna apply unless they decide to enforce Aussie law. I know getting a VPN isn't exactly easy as a kid but there's decent free options if you look around enough and these kids now have nothing but time.
Source: I have to do it as a EU citizen to see smut on twitter, cuz Elon is not getting my biometrics.