SoyViking [he/him]

I guess this is one of those YMMW situations. I’m sure Halloween can be fun and cool in America but outside of America it really sucks.

Where I’m from Halloween was not a thing until ten or fifteen years ago when toy stores decided they wanted to use the opportunity to market ugly plastic decorations and shitty costumes. There’s none of the cultural background that gives celebrations like this meaning and it all feels fake, like people are pretending to be Americans rather than taking part in a genuine celebration.

Celebrating Halloween as a non-American also has a tiresome aspect of cultural imperialism in it. Adopting stuff from other cultures is fine but why does it have to be stuff from burgerland every single time? Why can’t we do Dias de los muertos or Chinese New year instead?

My total income tax is around 38%. I reckon that to be less than what burgerlanders pay in income tax, insurance premiums and co-pays.

If you look up the statistics, the US has one of the highest public healthcare expenditures by capita, in addition to also having one of the highest private per capita expenditures.

Americans are being scammed.

In Denmark visits to GP’s, specialists and hospitals are free. Prescription drugs are subsidised on a sliding scale meaning that adults will pay a maximum of USD 640 a year for their prescriptions.

Dental care is not covered though, leading to a huge disparity in dental health between the rich and the poor.

Racism against children must be one of these “western values” I’ve been hearing so much about.

Fascist terrorists are rounding up “undesirables” and your immediate reaction is to get mad at the victims for not doing the proper paperwork?

Self-defence doesn’t count as murder.

Russia has been trying to eradicate the Ukrainian language since Catherine the Great

Even if that was true and not some harebrained ahistorical overgeneralisation what does that have to do with how the Ukrainian state treats it’s Russian-speaking population? We are talking about an Ukrainian law, imposed by the Ukrainian state on Ukrainian citizens living on Ukrainian-controlled territory. How is trying to eradicate the Russian language in Ukraine preventing the alleged Russian policy of eradicating the Ukrainian language in Russia? How does one wrong justify another?

Ukrainian has been an official minority language of the Russian Federation since the breakup of the USSR and schools in Russia’s new territories are teaching an Ukrainian-language curriculum to students whose families so desires. There’s probably plenty of bad things to say about the Russian education system but giving a language you are hellbent on eradicating official status and teaching it at schools seems like an odd thing to do.

There are countless of well-documented examples of the American empire sponsoring terrorist attacks, sabotage and assassinations against Cuba. To this day the American empire upholds an illegal an unprovoked blockade of the island as well as occupying the land on which the Guantanamo naval base and torture black site is placed.

Before the revolution, America ran Cuba as a colony, leeching off the hard work of Cubans. If anything, the history of American relations with Cuba has been one of profound violence.

But okay, most of the times they made sure to put in a middle-man to do the actual dirty work which absolves them of all sin I guess.

Given the substantial losses of men and equipment and the meagre gains I do think it is safe to assume that the counteroffensive does not go as well as Kiev has hoped for.

I made a comment on a Hexbear post and somebody from Hexbear replied back and now I’m angry.

Et moderne reboot af Olsenbanden ville have en masse materiale at arbejde med. Det moderne erhvervslivs opblæste disruption-hype og finansielle fiksfakserier vil sagtens kunne skabe en ny version af Hallandsen. Den moderne Jensen vil passe perfekt ind i new public management. Og så vil der kunne være meget sjov i at lade de moderne Kjeld og Yvonne have mellemøstlig baggrund. De skal i hvert fald ikke bo i Valby længere, for det er blevet for dyrt. Måske skal den røde kuffert indeholde en harddisk med bitcoins?

A different version of the same rant can be translated to:

It’s the same thing every time! You have a plan, a brilliant plan! And then your surrounded by dogheads and deadbeats, lousy amateurs, miserable hacks, ridiculous shitkickers. Incompetent assholes, impotent mush peasants and social democrats!

Another great quote is made by Jensen, the burnt-out detective tasked with catching Egon and his gang. His younger and more naive colleague remarks that “crime doesn’t pay” which prompts Jensen to give the following answer:

Oh God! My dear, dear young friend, you are terribly mistaken. Believe me, I’ve been on the force for more than 25 years, and I know what I’m talking about. Duty carries its own reward, but it’s modest. Integrity is beautiful, but meager. Justice is proud, but one-eyed. Love is sweet, but costly. Friendship and camaraderie, those are good to look back on in your old age. But the only thing that pays, that’s crime!

Jensen makes a lot of remarks such as “when the really big criminals arrives the only thing the police can do is to offer them protection”.

There is a healthy and honest way to appreciate communism, Russia, the CCP and even DPRK.

Please tell us more about those healthy and honest “anti-authoritarian” non-tankie communists. Who are they and what political results have they made?

Millions might have died but a few arms dealers made a lot of money so who can really say if the wars were good or bad?

There’s a reason why they’re kidnapping men off the streets and press-ganging them to fight for the Kiev regime. The slava ukraini epic marvel stuff is not making enough people volunteer to go die in a minefield.

Ukraine good, Russia bad. It follows that these Ukrainians doing bad stuff are in fact Russians.

It’s a non-falsifiable orthodoxy that turns evidence on its head until it fits the pre-conceived narrative.

For what it’s worth, most of the Ukraine flags that people put up in my city when the war started has been taken down months ago.

Ukraine under his leadership has been acting up to the highest ethical ideals of the EU.

I agree with this sentence but I think we have very different ideas of what the “ethical ideals of the EU” are.