King_Simp

(Source:Han Suyin's The Crippled Tree)

So, this era (the one between the early 1400s to early 1800s) has always intrigued me and I've always found it interesting, but unfortunately as an America, all of my pre-college education basically had a singular chapter on tbe period (granted I never took ap history but I'm an engineering major so :p) so honestly it's probably the era I know least about. But I feel like the transition from Feudal society to early capitalist society, early deism, the French revolution obviously, etc. Are all very important and at least very interesting (which is probably why I'm so interested in Modern Chinese history given that they essentially went through this change at massive speed comparatively).

Anyway, they don't have to be marxist (although class analysis would be helpful. I wouldn't be surprised if the USSR had something on the topic but I wouldn't know where to start looking something like that [if I can even read it]) Any source is fine as long as it's somewhat sane and not like, Guns Germs and Steel levels of bad)

So recently with the reports of Israel running low on AD missiles, I've been thinking. Why is it that during the "war on terror," equipment stocks never seemed to be as much of an issue. From my memory in Iraq and Afganistan and such it was more of a logistics issue vs literally not being able to produce enough. Idk, maybe my memory is just wrong here. But I wanted to ask

So I've been thinking about this for the past few days and now that the US has actually struck Iran...I have to ask what is the US's and Israel's plans here?

Israel is obvious, strike Iran until the US gets involved because Israel has to escalate the conflict to survive. But the US plan is going to be...what? There's the obvious boots on the ground answer, which might be the case, but...why do it like this? With Iraq for instance, the US didn't go in Milquetoast (from my memory at least). Obviously Iraq was a different beast but the point still stands. Why waffle about with these feigned feigns and then just say you struck the nuclear sites. Is it to goad a response from Iran?

There's another option, which is to stick with bombing and use insurgent groups, a la Syria and Libya. But again, Iran is a different beast, and the elephant in the room here is that Iran isn't going through a rebellion of any sort.

The last option is to just start Carpet bombing Iran until they can't fight back anymore. Honestly I see this as the most likely option but...its just a really dumb plan. I mean sure it would complete the goal of (maybe) knocking Iran out of the middle eastern conflict, but it'd really be the least effective. You risk planes that are already getting shot down, strategic bombing doesn't really work anyway, and when you're done you don't gain anything while also wasting a bunch of resources you're rapidly running out of.

So looking at all of these i really can't figure out which direction this is going to go

I'm on episode 11 currently (if anyone posts spoilers I will send you to a Gulag) and it's good. I did think it was going to be a procedural but I forgot thats more of an American thing (no I don't want to discuss the cultural and historical reasons why America was the birthplace and is the home of the procedural TV show). I will say it was a little hard to keep track of who is who and what their positions were, both because I'm bad at remembering names and also because intially you're jumping between Beijing and Handong, but I'm getting the hang of it.

Interestingly, I only two gunshots (as a dispersal method which im pretty sure is portrayed as a bad thing by the show) has been fired (not including the flashback to the 2nd sino japanese war). As an American I had to remember that not everything ends in massive gun violence (/s). I will say I'm not...very versed with how the chinese government works so how promotion and transfers and certain other specifics relating to laws and such (i.e, I assumed incorrectly that the Procuratorate would have automatic jurisdiction over people suspected of corruption that municipal police couldn't just block, since in the USA usually the federal law enforcement like the FBI trumps local law fairly easily)

I do like it so far and do really appreciate that most characters do have a decent amount of depth to them, even the antagonists. I'll have an update once I'm further in but I did want to see if anyone else has opinions on the show. It's definitely nice that i can get my cop/detective show fix with no guilt as compared to watching American shows.

Obviously I am not saying I'm smart generally, or that some people are inherently mentally deficient. But i will say that to a certain extent I'm smarter than the people who I interact with and whom make up the government that governs me. Obviously not in all feilds (I trust I am a worse chef than those who are chefs and a worse physicist than those who are physicists and such), but in broader more systematic ways probably. And of course ideologically.

I mean, when you hear that Henry Ford couldn't remember basic American history, or you see tech entrepreneurs make stupid, stupid decisions, or when I hear Justice Scalie cite fictional character Jack Bauer to justify torture, or when you hear Richard Feymann say you shouldn't brush your teeth or that he would fool people into thinking he was speaking a "regional dialect" of their native tongue by speaking gibberish, or when you simply listen to George Bush or Ronald Reagan or Rishi Sunak or any number of officials speak. It makes me think "wow I am smarter than these people. I am ergo very smart and can teach others with decisive authority"

Azure Scapegoat (who is a fairly decent youtube channel [which is high praise from me]) talks about the exact feeling when you realize you aren't smart, it's just that society is stupid. That CPC youth league members are more intelligent than you, even in matters of ideology (Seen here:https://youtu.be/GoHxcRxX4L8).

Of course learning never ends but the absolute depth of the unknown is very demoralizing. I was thinking of making a substack and writing but I realized that all I would be doing would be just saying "listen to these people." That's not helpful, no? Especially when I lack the investigative ability to find new sources or to evaluate the efficacy of said sources. I am not like others who will proudly dictate knowledge while not having it, but humility does not create usefulness. I can say "oh no no I do not know that much." But that is not solving problems, it is preventing harm. Of course I do strive to learn and to improve myself, this is not me giving up, but simultaneously I do wish to discuss these emotions and thoughts i have.

Occasionally I'll read about pre-luther/pre-catholic/orthodox split and...idk, it feels like people actually cared? I mean i dont want to say modern Christians don't care about Christianity, but genuine theological debate about the fundamentals of Christianity is a lot more interesting than "noooo the pope has too much power" (I know its more than that but compared to some of the more interesting stuff like splits between mainline Christianity and nestorianism and gnostic sects etc. It's a lot less interesting).

I know I'm oversimplifing it but I wanted to say something since I dont see people really mention it anywhere

Idk. Is this depression? I'm not very good at figuring out what's wrong with me.

On the one hand I really like certain things about life. And I like having one. And I know I only get one. And I dont know what death feels like.

But at the same time, I'm so goddamn lonely all the time. I'm so useless and I really can't feel like I can change that before everything goes to shit. I'm a shit person. I dont deserve to live more than so many other people who have died. And it just feels like no matter what I do that it's all going to end up the same way. So I just don't feel like there's any point in doing anything.

I'm trying where I can. I really am. But I feel so trapped and so alone. Sometimes I feel like it'd be better to stop wasting my time and everyone else's time and just skip to the conclusion. But no, I'm too much of a coward to do that either

I'm being hyperbolic, but after watching videos like this one (https://youtu.be/kya_LXa_y1E) or this one (https://youtu.be/6HlCfwEduqA) I really felt the frustration of having people who don't know what they're talking about come up with garbage theories or horrible explanations or complete misinterpretations and then having to do triple to work to reexplain everything because of that. Cause that really is the marxist educator experience where it's like "no, the labor theory of value doesn't mean that if you take two hours to make the same thing as the guy who made it in one hour yours is more valuable. No, trading with others is not capitalism. No, marx/lenin/stalin/Mao etc. Didnt say that. Etc."

So every once in a while an article will float around or someone at a talk will say something along the lines of "hey, turns out that the communist leaders actually believe in communism."

(I wouldn't reccomend reading/watching the first two links here. The last one is fine)

There's this article by Jacobin:https://jacobin.com/2025/02/xi-jinping-ideology-china-rivalry/

"Importantly, Rudd argues that CPC ideology is not an elite parlor game, a rhetorical weapon, a pragmatic means of control, or an analytical framework. Or rather, it isn’t just all those things. It is also, Rudd argues, genuinely believed."

There's this bit from Sarah Paine:https://youtu.be/KSCH6svGRFM

"Don't ever kid yourself that the communist party of china [hey look she said the name correctly] doesn't believe in communism"

And part of this lecture by Stephan Kotkin: https://youtu.be/sXutg47BwEU

"It turns out the communists, were communists" (this is at the very end of the video)

I find it funny that either the vast majority who claim to know so much about china/ussr etc. Who claim that the communists weren't communists show themselves to have no investigative capabilities, or that in the liberal world it's just expected that people will constantly betray their ideology for personal gain

(Shoutout to my physics nerds)

I'm not really serious since this is very specialized and hyperspecifuc, but I found the topic interesting after reading Kit Chapman's Superheavy (it's decent, and probably better than just reading the wikipedia articles, but nothing groundbreaking). But if there is anyone who actually has a wider opinion/experience on the subject then I wouldn't mind hearing it.