Republicans complained whenever they received delayed federal aid but when they’re in power the opposition receives no aid.
The safest place you can be right now is in a red state, in the eye of the hurricane, blending in.
While this is the first I’m hearing about this. Again. What does this have to do with work reform?
Same priorities as they’ve ever been.
I don’t believe it was intentional but adding on “a low-income Black city” feels unnecessary.
Like, sure, that is likely the reason the administration is utterly uninterested in helping. But its addition will just fuel diversions by racist, e.g. “well, why are they ‘low-income’? Maybe those blacks should just get to work instead of waiting for handouts.”
Just saying a US city is without power for 2 weeks should be damning enough.
Yeah why point out that it’s because of racism, we already know they’re Nazis /s
The whole city? What happened?
A derecho, flooding, and tornadoes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2026_Gary_power_outage
America! We’re number ONCE!!!
from Aug 24, 2026.
https://x.com/SenSanders/status/2091970263856394274The US is oddly very similar to a third world country in how it works sometimes
I wish people knew what “Third World” meant, from a historical context. Quite a few historical “Third World” nations were as advanced as their NATO and Soviet peers, at the time the term was coined. But the most advanced nations were then subjected to decades of sanction and espionage and outright bombing, until the term became synonymous with war-torn hellhole.
The US doesn’t have this excuse. We’re de-industrializing due to a combination of cheapass degeneracy and vindictive bigotry.
Particularly towards its minority populations. The US is full of colonized peoples and regions that it has, if not an extractive relationship with, than a relationship that’s passively exterminationist.
In much the same way that the US shoved its indigenous peoples only reservations, expecting them to die off or otherwise exit the stage of history, black people were redlined into inner cities for the same purpose. Now Gary, IN is without power, Flint, MI goes without water, etc.
Of course, this also becomes an active process as well, like when the FBI murdered Fred Hampton, or propped up a tinpot dictator on the Lakota reservation in South Dakota in the 70s.
But that internal Colonial relationship is at the core of all of it
The government is no longer serving everyone. It’s not even serving the red states that voted for the current regime. It’s serving the ultra wealthy. It’s even openly pay to play: You get access to Trump by bribing him.
Also the regime is incompetent and despises expertise, so not only can they not negotiate with Iran, but they can’t operate the US armed forces to engage Iran with military force. The administration serves as an adverse force multiplier. And is wrecking the lives and integrity of the units.
The US is no longer a nation. It’s a pile of debt and assets that are being financialized, picked apart like buzzards would a carcass.
‘The US is no longer a nation. It’s a pile of debt and assets that are being financialized, picked apart like buzzards would a carcass.’
In a trench coat!
The government is no longer serving everyone.
When did it ever?
The US is no longer a nation.
Most nations have historically operated like this. Hell, it’s the foundation of feudal societies. Oversized robber-baronies which violently extract wealth from their residents, for the aggrandizement of the aristocracy. If you go back to the old school 19th century Anarchist literature, it’s this view of government that underpins their belief in the abolition of state systems.
But to claim the US has stopped being a nation because it has shit domestic policy? I just don’t know what kind of definition of “nation” you’re working with.
There’s a propagandized version of a “nation” as “a country with functional and supportive social systems,” which I think most people subscribe to. Whether or not their country every really qualified as a “nation” by that metric is debatable.
There’s a propagandized version of a “nation” as “a country with functional and supportive social systems,”
Or, more generically, a set of borders that define the reach of a national bureaucracy, sure. I don’t think anyone can argue that the US has borders. And I certainly don’t think it can be argued that we lack a bureaucracy.
A lot of the argument boils down to whether or not you like what the current bureaucracy is doing within and around those borders. Which, hey, don’t get me wrong. Death to America. But it’s one thing to say the country should die and quite another to suggest it’s already dead.
As soon as the election churns some of our legislative and state-exec bureaucrats, you’re going to see a liberal renaissance in patriotic nationalism coming up against a sudden Neo-Confederate fervor in the Usual Suspect territories. Expect the streets to be full of parading chuds screaming “We want our country back!” the week after the polls close. This happens damned near every election cycle. But it’s little more than a social release valve. Half the people screaming about succession and civil war and Revolution 2: Electric Boogaloo are going to be penthouse neocons in bright blue cities and Silicon Valley soar sports.
It feels like the worst parts of Las Vegas and “Big Box Retail.” Everything is being parted out to private equity, and it’s not for us people (or even U.S people) anymore.
I use Vegas as an example because all of the fun family-ish attractions and locals’ incentives have all but been eradicated, replaced with celebrity-DJ’d highrise night/day clubs and luxury shopping that seem to pander to the most egregious ends of wealthy foreign money. (Probably where a lot of shady deals go down, too.)
The other end is conventions, of course. If you wanna woo a guy who knows a guy to give
youyour boss’s boss’s boss a government contract for kill-drones, it probably happens here.The majority of residents’ place in this new structure is as servants, hawking luxury goods and experiences they themselves couldn’t possibly hope to attain because they’re actively shut out.
A little tangent here, but my point was: Feels like the entire country is following this ruinous pattern.
The rich are their own country, and if they have it their way, we are but their footstools across the globe.
Most advanced in what? The US is not even the top dog in military tech anymore.
I know it’s fashionable to claim that the US sucks at everything here on lemmy, but is this really a serious question? The US dominates in academia and scientific research and it’s not even close. https://e.vnexpress.net/news/news/education/us-universities-dominate-global-academic-rankings-as-china-leads-in-representation-5111182.html
I have to admit I did not expect the US to still perform so well after losing thousands of academics this and last year.
However, reading the article you linked, it strikes me as a pointless victory. A statistic that won’t lead to anything meaningful.
Sure, it’s cool that academics and scientists publish a lot of articles, but does it really matter if nobody reads them because access is paywalled? And does it really matter if government institutions, as well as private companies, will just go against the research, because they could not care less?
Personally, I’d be much more interested in something that tracks public access to academia, and its impact on society, especially government’s decision making. Because to me, this just feels like GDP. Good for bragging about being top 1, and nothing else.
Still, I have to give the empire at least a little credit for its universities’ performance.
The rankings are determined using six objective indicators of academic and research excellence. Key metrics include the number of alumni and staff winning Nobel Prizes and Fields Medals, alongside a university’s per capita academic performance.
Publication records also play a critical role in the evaluation. The agency tracks the number of articles published in Nature and Science, the volume of articles indexed in the Web of Science’s Science Citation Index-Expanded and Social Sciences Citation Index, and the number of Highly Cited Researchers identified by Clarivate.
That criteria is weighed at 40% of the ranking.
The number of US universities that switched to “research university” and the pressure on all academic staff to publish publish publish probably has something to do with the rankings…
Is the ranking rigged? No, it’s published by a Chinese university. I’m saying US universities are gaming it.
Is doesn’t judge quality of published work, just quantity of published works and number citations. GIGO? It’s hard to tell on a short term.
From Wikipedia: “The ranking has been criticised for “relying too much on award factors” thus undermining the importance of quality of instruction and humanities.”
In a report from April 2009, J-C. Billaut, D. Bouyssou and Ph. Vincke analyse how the ARWU works, using their insights as specialists of Multiple Criteria Decision Making (MCDM). Their main conclusions are that the criteria used are not relevant; that the aggregation methodology has a number of major problems; and that insufficient attention has been paid to fundamental choices of criteria.[27]
The ARWU researchers themselves, N.C. Liu and Y. Cheng, think that the quality of universities cannot be precisely measured by mere numbers and any ranking must be controversial. They suggest that university and college rankings should be used with caution and their methodologies must be understood clearly before reporting or using the results. ARWU has been criticised by the European Commission as well as some EU member states for “favour[ing] Anglo-Saxon higher education institutions”. For instance, ARWU is repeatedly criticised in France, where it triggers an annual controversy, focusing on its ill-adapted character to the French academic system[28][29] and the unreasonable weight given to research often performed decades ago.[30] It is also criticised in France for its use as a motivation for merging universities into larger ones.[31]
There’s more criticism. Take the ranking with a cup of salt.
Shanghai rankings account for the number of Nobel Prize / Fields Medal winners, meaning they look at how good the institution was historically, rather than purely how good it is now. If you rank universities by current research output, such as the Leiden Ranking, it’s a very different picture.
Unfortunately while there are many alternative approaches of equal or greater value than the Shanghai rankings, approaches using straight citation analysis really aren’t among them. It’s one of the most criticized methodologies for some very good reasons and, while Leiden does better than most at controlling for things like citation mills, their methodology has some really glaring flaws (their criteria for designating “core journals,” for example). This is one of the most interesting topics in meta-academics right now, and as is shown in this somewhat infamous paper from fudan university the reason is that impact is a great deal more complicated than any simple metric can represent.
Expensive and mediocre garbage
If we kill Blackrock, we solve so many issues.
Uh… No? BlackRock is a fairly passive company. They “own” so much because people buy they ETFs and mutual funds which buy stock in everything. You’re basically saying get rid of pension funds, 401ks and retail investors because those are largely the people using BlackRock and Vanguard funds.
You get rid of those, now you’re left with rich people as the only shareholders for everything.
Looking at your down votes here I don’t think you are correct.
It’s kind of a problem that they own the stock. It’s not the people that own the ETFs or mutual funds that get to vote with the shares. Instead, a company gets to amass that power using other people’s money.
I don’t know what a good solution is, but it’s very much a problem.
A 401(k) is a magical process wherein one person invests money in the stock market, but another person controls their stockholder voting privileges.
The insidious part is that this type of fund manager doesn’t care anything about what each company actually does or even their long-term future, they’re driven entirely by what will get them their bonuses for this year. It’s why we get enshittification. CEOs who don’t deliver YoY growth get voted out in favour of ones who will.
I don’t know how it all works, but I did see on Vanguard there’s an option to change how vanguard votes on your behalf. There’s the default of “maximum profit”, but there’s also “long term stability” and “ethical” (not the exact names). I don’t think every company has options like that, but they probably should, if we’re going to keep this kind of thing around at all.
If you use vanguard, go see what your options are.
Edit: think I found it https://corporate.vanguard.com/content/corporatesite/us/en/corp/about-our-funds/proxy-voting-across-funds/investor-choice.html#policy-options
Egan-Jones Wealth-Focused Policy […] This policy by rule rejects proposals based on environmental, social, or political considerations unless they directly contribute to revenue generation at the company receiving the proposal.
None of them look super good though
This policy by rule rejects proposals based on environmental, social, or political considerations unless they directly contribute to revenue generation at the company receiving the proposal.
The fact that it exists and they’re making a whole thing of letting you opt out of doing that, tells you a lot about what the standard practice in the industry is.
None of them look super good though
Yeah there’s no option for genuine environmental or social activism, just one that follows some other investment company’s ostensibly ethical voting strategy. Again, this speaks TONS about the Epstein class running these funds, that they’re scared that giving such an option might result in people actually taking it.
This might be the most evil thing I’ve learned about this year.
FYI, this post has been reported as “off topic”, along with the declaration that posts of this nature make this board indistinguishable from Lemmy Politics.
As the sole Mod, I’m going to allow it because this sort of issue is a direct consequence of our civilization’s corporate-centric approach to governing, and highlights the urgent need for Work Reform; the implementation of a system that is not 100% profit-driven or based around profit outcomes. Indeed; Work Reform is a political concept at its core since the entrenched powers never reform from within, but only change due to outside pressure.
Please let me know if you agree or disagree with this approach. All opinions are valid.
My complaint is that it’s from a serial Reddit reposter. If I wanted a reddit feed, I’d go to reddit. Last I looked, they posted 10x the amount they comment, drowning out communities
Oh, its Sanitation again, I didn’t notice that.
I understand and appreciate your point. But as long as they’re abiding by the rules of the sub, I’m going to let the community upvotes & downvotes be greater determinants of the worthiness of their posts. And as long as they’re not being a bad actor, I won’t ban this or any other user.
I’m just glad to see posts that are mostly-applicable to the topic rather than those spammy fake jobs or that one guy obsessed with the end of the world.
It would be nice if you could at least ask him to make less reposts, I noticed that the first ~10 posts are almost only from him and that by scrolling further down, every other post made by someone else had way less comment and activity which is concerning, people will get tired to post in a community where they get drowned by reposts; i am concerned that the community will slowly drown
Right, it’s a complaint I tend to keep to myself, sometimes letting people know that they aren’t going to get a reply or more details, as that’s frustrating as a user
I’m inclined to say off topic, but i’m not angry about it if it stays. I really appreciate your mod style. Thank you for asking for opinions from the community.
Hey, it sucks to hear this place only has one mod. I have free time and I strongly believe in the mission of decentralized social media. If you want any help I would be more than happy to volunteer my time.
I’ll keep that in mind, thanks! Fortunately this is Lemmy, so I only have one or two reports each day to deal with (for now). And most users actually seem pretty mature and reasonable!
I have a hope that the sort of people to be on Lemmy at all aren’t the sort to be too toxic or unreasonable; and mostly that’s been wonderfully true in my (limited) experience!
Technically I think it is off-topic since it has nothing directly to do with work reform. Note, I said directly, so no need to point ouf correlations between work reform and racism or bad government in general.
I know what you mean, and your logic is 100% sound.
By the time I saw this it was 8hrs old with +250 upvotes though, so I didn’t want to purge it against the will of the people.
That’s how I feel about moderation. I’ve followed reddit posts that had hundreds of comments and suddenly got removed because technically they didn’t belong where they were. Always annoying.
Exactly my experience!
If it was languishing with a dozen upvotes and no comments, that’d be one thing; but it’s generating discussion and interaction, so I’m not going to be the spoil-sport on this one.
Great job on moderation. A reasoned and practical approach.
Thank you!
It’s not especially on-topic but it’s not completely unrelated either. I think it’s fine as an edge case but that doesn’t mean a ton more like it should also be allowed.
All opinions are valid.
Wrong.
That’s my opinion, therefore it is valid. ;-)
LOL that’s valid
I thought about editing that since unconstructive replies are less valid, but figured whatevs. I’d rather hear all feedback than discourage poor feedback. :p
I wanted to write up a bunch of silly opinions, but I’m exhausted from dialysis, so you just got that joke. heh. I also wanted to say something about the moderation style - I always preferred community feedback like that as well, so just know that I have high praise for it :)
Awwwws, thanks! Best wishes for your dialysis, that’s rough. Hope things work out as well as possible
Richest, most advanced 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
North Korea tells the same story
Except they actually had a beet crop year that beat expectations this year, so at least some of their propaganda turned out to be true
According to who
According to North Korea.
Show me
Yeah right, everyone knows you’re a shill account. I’m not going to waste my time arguing with a sealion.
Let me clarify something for you: this isn’t me starting an argument with you. You’re not that important to me. This is just a mark-and-bypass.
Good day.
Anything’s possible when you make shit up
You would know that, wouldn’t you. 🥱
According to reality
According to what fucking evidence? Just because you clowns will swallow any story about NK without questioning doesn’t mean I’m obligated to also be that fucking stupid
Refusing to play the game a troll wants you to play is, as can be seen here in this very comment thread, actually quite effective.
Refusing to substantiate a specific claim and attacking people who accurately criticize you for that makes you the troll, dumbass
Ah, putting “accurately” in there is an excellent example of why this is the best approach; continuing to dismiss their claims can be cast as implying tacit agreement, rising to address it directly lends credibility to the troll. Removing oneself from the artificial context, (i.e. “refusing to play the game”) entirely is therefore the clear winner in terms of technique.
.ml moment
Expecting people to prove shit? Yeah I guess
Womp womp:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propaganda_in_North_Korea
Propaganda is widely used and produced by the government of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea). Most propaganda is based on the Juche ideology, veneration of the ruling Kim family, the promotion of the Workers’ Party of Korea, and hostilities against both the Republic of Korea and the United States.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09512748.2020.1844281#abstract
More than any other country in the world today, North Korea inspires observers to puzzle over how to communicate with it. Its domestic media and internet remain sealed off from the outside world; its ruling Party still invests massive efforts to control what its people see, read and hear.
https://asiatimes.com/2025/11/decoding-n-koreas-messaging-at-home-abroad-and-to-the-us/
Domestic propaganda in the Rodong Sinmun and allied outlets performs the familiar authoritarian function of normalizing state behavior, consolidating loyalty to the Kim family and molding public consent for hardship and sacrifice.
https://www.asiapress.org/rimjin-gang/2025/06/politics/digitization-2/
Reading sessions" (dokbo) are a uniquely North Korean propaganda method where members of schools or workplaces gather each morning before starting their daily activities to listen to readings from the Rodong Sinmun newspaper or current party policies, typically led by cell secretaries or propaganda officials assigned to each unit.
…
It appears that once any document is printed, it must be recovered and disposed of by the respective printing house after use. The reporting partner noted that control intensity is particularly high in border areas, explaining that “access to publications is limited to designated people, and unlike before, it’s now impossible to go to propaganda department officials’ homes to get discarded documents as scrap paper due to strict management.”North Korea remains one of the most secretive and repressive regimes in the world. The government, led by the Kim dynasty, exercises an iron grip over its citizens: domestic media and internet remain sealed off from the outside world, while the ruling Party invests economic resources and massive control over what citizens see, read and hear. The contrast between the carefully curated image of North Korea presented to its people and the actual conditions they endure, slightly known from the outside world, is stark. Understanding this dual approach offers insight into how the regime maintains its power despite widespread hardship.
North Korea’s public line matters because closed regimes exercise complete control over their media to shape and manage public opinion both at home and abroad. Even small changes in terminology or media behavior can shed light on leadership intentions. As such, Pyongyang is extremely calibrated in its public messaging: what information it releases and how it frames that information, at what level, to whom, and when. By tracking patterns and discerning shifts in trends in the media, one can gain insight into the North Korean leadership’s current thinking and future intentions.
https://www.harvard-yenching.org/research/a-collection-of-500-north-korean-posters/
For example, in Figure 1, a classic communist red background frames a star representing the nation’s supreme commander – a position exclusively held by the Kim family. The poster bears the text, “The Great Compatriot Kim Jong Un,” at the top. Four figures, each symbolizing different sectors of North Korean “people workers (inmin)” – a blue-collar worker, a soldier, a laborer, and a woman in some kind of uniform – raise their fists in solidarity. The accompanying tagline reads, “We will forever be loyal to you!” This poster, likely produced after Kim Jong Il’s death in 2011, symbolizes Kim Jong Un’s rise to power and underscores the merging of the Party and ideology with the Kim family itself.
Oh, but I already know what you’re gonna say: “None of those are North Korean sources, so none of it counts as valid evidence!1!1!1!”
Yes, you really are that predictable.
Specific claim, dumbass. Because you’re too goddamn stupid to scroll up and read here it is
So the claim here is that North Korea claims itself to be the richest or most advanced country, or anything close to it, and yeah actually now that you mention it you’ve completely failed to provide a single source showing that. Jesus fucking Christ you’re dumb.
dumbass
Jesus fucking Christ you’re dumb
You know you’re losing the argument so you’re resorting to insults. What a loser. I knew you’d be sealioning as soon as I tried to engage with you rationally, and that’s precisely why I didn’t bother. You’re only proving my point further.
It really makes you so upset to learn that these strangers on the internet don’t unquestioningly worship your intellect, doesn’t it? Are you a member of the Kim family by any chance?
We do have the richest and most advanced billionaires.
which is proof that, as a Nation, it is neither
It certainly doesn’t seem that way, but I think when people say this they are referring to GDP, which does show the US as the highest.
does ai companies passing money to each other get counted in the gpd?
Two economists are walking in a forest when they come across a pile of shit.
The first economist says to the other “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The second economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.
They continue walking until they come across a second pile of shit. The second economist turns to the first and says “I’ll pay you $100 to eat that pile of shit.” The first economist takes the $100 and eats the pile of shit.
Walking a little more, the first economist looks at the second and says, “You know, I gave you $100 to eat shit, then you gave me back the same $100 to eat shit. I can’t help but feel like we both just ate shit for nothing.”
“That’s not true”, responded the second economist. “We increased the GDP by $200!”
So advanced it doesn’t need universal health care or 60% of the population lives from paycheck to paycheck and have no savings in case of emergency. Not to mention definitely no rampant drug issues.
Sad that even Bernie is buying into the propanda.
Yeah, that’s something Trump would tweet. Just the first sentence, without any context at 3 in the morning.
All the sheep spouted,
“The best country in the world”,
And they believed it
It’s corrupt as hell, but the world still folds back to the US dollar when their own currency goes to shit for a reason.
in the wealthiest neighborhoods.
Wait til you hear about Puerto Rico after Maria. I was there 2 years after and there were whole parts of the island that had no power or running water. It took me almost 2 months to get my gear shipped in as they had an active triage on what was shipped by need. It was one pallet, thats how tight it was even after 2 years.
The less touristy parts of New Orleans were still fucked (though not without power, afaik) in 2012 from Katrina in 2005.
2012? Those scars still won’t smooth out for another two generations.
Absolutely believable, I just haven’t been back since 2012
remember Flint, pepperidge farm remembers, it took them a long time to fix it.
Yes, I do remember Flint. 12 years after the issue, they finally have lead-free pipes…
There were places in the US that didn’t have power for over a month after hurricane Laura. I know because I experienced it firsthand.
I’m telling you, that was my thought too. But my second thought was that hurricanes are way more destructive, over a much bigger area. If I can get power in two weeks after hundreds of miles of 150mph wind and 20’ floods, why aren’t they fixed yet?
This shit in Gary is extra fucked up.
Hurricanes get more exposure and bring storm chasers out. Also, areas used to major events like hurricanes have better planning.
They shot at the repairmen. Gary was once the most dangerous place in the US. There’s more to the story
Oh damn, are there not enough Democrats that lord diapers can send in the national guard and just murder people in the street?
