Present an increased risk

Wtf, there's no way this is a real attempt at understanding lol.

I am going to make a claim that I can't back up but am 99% sure of anyways. This many arrows can only be distinguished by idealism rampant. Any materialist analysis cannot have this many arrows

The lead slugs felt super obvious but I was still super surprised they were just still in there lol. I feel like I had to have missed some previous references.

Just finish BOTLS, and I'm confused as fucking ever lol. Idk what happened with Severian and mainframe, and then the snowy scenes were so confusing because I was still looking for hints as to wtf happened before hahahaha. Still don't understand who was who among the duplicates. But it's whatever, I get the general shape of the ending and enjoyed it. I definitely do not get why Pas would've chosen this method of being a god. Seemed like the explanation of "keep us from fighting too much but just a little" was pretty weak imo. But I'm sure the next books will tell a bit more!

I'm liking the beginning of the Blue Waters already!

I get the feeling this is valuable somehow, based on the effort and the connections, but I think you could make this much more readable by connecting some of the dots in a comment lol. I've tried to follow and I'm kind of lost

I am once again asking hexbear to use a more rigorous definition of fascism: https://redsails.org/really-existing-fascism/

What this means for an equivalent in feudalism is interesting, but an odd question once the definition is more rigorous

Roderic Day once again having a perfect piece for the moment: https://redsails.org/on-chomsky/

Booking: an erudite version of stoning

Caleb was the first I thought of with this too.

oops, i fixed it. I'm listening to the audiobook so I just wrote how i assumed it was spelled based on how the reader pronounced it. Looked it up and I guess it's spellen Sciathan. It's the flier who was captured

I have not had a chance in the last week to read much more, unfortunately. Just got to hear from Sciathan and Severian, so excited to see where that goes! Still worried that things will feel contrived at the end. Like the air shafts thing feels like a kinda crappy reference to climate change lol. But we will see if Gene manages to convince me that it wasn't contrived!

For sure , and I just see some options forming (not yet concrete, also I'll not be the one to figure it out from the other side of the world lol). I think south America could do some radical move to actually separate more from China in exports (keep importing Chinese non-strategic stuff) and convince the USA to invest in them heavily, but doing this while maintaining some sovereignty. Deng was able to do this by using the USSR as the counter weight. I think China will survive such a thing easily (unlike the USSR which was materially weak relatively), and then Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico will be able to build up some needed production means without the US bombing them. Right now, I think we are underestimating how major the lacking production means is playing a role in subservience to the US.

There are tons of problems with this Idea, but I would like to work through more of the contradictions and see what's possible.

Was trying to have this convo in the news mega. Seems most here are taking the defeatist position on what South America countries can do

Yeah honestly it has changed my analysis to some extent. I think I overestimated the influence of these relationships between wealthy and diplomats/politicians. Turns out, the material force behind both was the strongest once again lol

Tbh I can't. I have trouble estimating anything above like 10 lol.

'How many people are in the room with you?'. If it's above 10, I'm gonna say like 'uhhhh between 5 and 30'

Yeah this is the sort of comment I was hoping to get, thanks. I don't have time at the moment but will reply soon. But a teaser: I think you're limiting the possibilities by keeping as static the imperialized relationship between the US and Venezuela without accounting for ways that other geopolitical movements can be used to shift that. I only have vague notions still, but it seems those possibilities aren't being very widely discussed and I want to know how they could be leveraged.

Yes, but again, not about Dengism as a set of specific actions. And also I never said Dengism is the only option. I just think that the person who replies to "what can Venezuela do to make this strategy work?" with "can't work, America too bad" is being defeatist and useless.

You are not understanding me at all, or are not very imaginative. You are stuck on the specific operations and correctly (re)explaining why Venezuela can't do the exact thing China did. I also did that in the original comment (though shortly, because it seems obvious). I am asking what Venezuela could do to make the US "sell them rope." At a strategic level, that's what Deng sought and found. If Delcy is Pulling a 'Deng', can she find a way to do that?

Might be easier if you just ignore all operational decisions of Deng and understand the question as such: how can Delcy make Venezuela safe and bait the US into assisting its development utilizing their current material conditions?

I didn't say Dengism was the only option. An article claimed that Delcy was trying to and I wanted to explore that option.

Well I at least recognize the phrasing from that discussion. Could be wrong, though.

Vague-posting lol. I am one of the people who said you were irresponsible, but that was you using 2 data points of likes (or maybe it was views? I can't remember) on Pahlavi propaganda on social media from somewhere before and after the blackout to argue that he was popular with an huge amount of Iran. It was shit methodology. You post very good stuff often, but you're not immune to mistakes and that was one. Calling it irresponsible was an adult way to engage with it, and it was not a way to call you inherently evil or unintelligent or something. Just something that you posted without the care and knowledge that you often have.