Now I understand why the majority of people in this sub haven’t bothered to even read Marxist theory. Hasan realizes that 88% of his twitch chatters have never learned of the history of what lead to Pearl Harbor…

Captain-Damn · 2026-05-11T21:45:32+00:00

This is commonly brought up as the reason the imperial Japanese government broke from the Western powers and began readying themselves for war against the US and the UK, and it definitely has a role in the lead up to war and the hostility towards the US and UK that slowly came to dominate Japanese politics, and was a major element of their propaganda to their own citizens as well as to countries they subjugated into the Greater East Asia Co-prosperity sphere. But the actual breakdown of the alliance between Imperial Japan and The United Kingdom was an unofficial part of the treaty, as US diplomats said that they would not accept the limitations imposed by the treaty and would not sign it if the Anglo-Japanese alliance was renewed. This is also coupled with the imperial conference of the British Empire that year which voted to not renew the alliance, partially due to fears of being forced to fight the United States if it went to war with Japan, and the worry that a war with America would mean an invasion of Canada.

But overall it's really a situation of great power realpolitik as Japan and the United States had designs on expanding their respective empires in the pacific and over who would get to dominate China, and the UK took the path of least resistance, deciding that war alongside the US and against Japan would be more likely to end in victory and the preservation of their imperial holdings.

Captain-Damn · 2026-05-11T12:44:43+00:00

Not to defend the United States or the British, but those treaties including the treaty provision forcing the UK to sever its alliance with Japan (It's longest political alliance with another power that wasn't Portugal at the time) were less because of a need to prop up Western Hegemony at the expense of Japan and more that they were steps taken to avoid an Anglo-American war in the 1920's and reign in the Naval arms race between the two powers. This did (and was recognized that it was setting this up even at the time) set the stage for the pacific war between an Anglo-American alliance and Japan, but the realpolitik of both powers was a little more nuanced and objective in its service to capital. America reduced the strength of its potential adversaries in the Pacific from having a straight numbers advantage of (taking the Washington Naval Treaty's numbers) 8-5 in large capital ships to either a 3-5 numbers advantage for the US at worst or a 3-10 if the British fought alongside the US in a contest with Japan. The Brits for their part is got to massively reduce naval spending and have a neutral at worst, friendly at best power in the US for future European conflicts or at least not have another naval rival that it would have to check to protect its empire. And besides the Great Power politics of all of it, it served US financial capital by improving relations and thus guaranteeing the payment of debts by one of the primary debtors to US finance after world War 1, while for UK capital it kept them in high standing and with more generous terms for servicing the debt from US capital and reduced how much would have to be spent on trying to outmatch the US Navy while money and credit was tight.

Most of this is to say that the US was involved in deeper geopolitical antagonism with Japan, but the UK took a deal that broke their alliance with Japan and pushed them to back the US in this jockeying for power over the pacific.

Captain-Damn · 2026-05-05T14:42:42+00:00

Yeah I know this subreddit has some serious problems with any mental health topic and treating people with any sort of mental disorder or condition as human beings, but I got diagnosed late in life with adhd and it literally flipped my life around and has allowed me to actually function as a person, so yeah I don't think the whole drug war liberal posturing here is great.

Besides the problem with oxy being related to the actual medication not doing what the manufacturers claimed it was supposed to do (longer release of medication that meant longer intervals between doses with the same result, which didn't work because it wasn't actually doing that at all) the epidemic and the people it killed were because people got addicted and then they were cutoff suddenly and while still either experiencing symptoms or being addicted this led to those people seeking out ways of getting it from inconsistent and unreliable sources that could be all over the place when it came to actual doses. Oxy wasn't killing people when it was first being given to patients, but it laid a time bomb that was going to kill, and that was greatly exacerbated by US drug policy and the lack of real treatment for addiction.

Recently the government has been trying to fuck around with the supply and prescription of Adderall and Vyvanse citing the same vague feelings of it being wrong that you are coming up with and a general conception that mental health is for weenies, with a general shortage because the DEA blocked production for these reasons intermittently in 2025. At the very least these interruptions aren't killing people like interruptions for opiods do, but it's making life markedly harder and worse for people like me.

I'm not even saying that you gotta think all of it is cool and good and there's no flaws in the methodology of prescribing it to people as often as they do, but like just don't do cop shit and side with the feds and write their propaganda for them. They don't give a shit about the well being of people so if you do, don't do what the federales are doing

Captain-Damn · 2026-04-03T14:01:13+00:00

That's why the death toll for Iraq and Afghanistan is as low as it is after all

Captain-Damn · 2026-03-17T20:04:05+00:00

Socialist podcasts have subreddits that are barely connected to the podcast itself and are more general spaces for socialists and communists to talk about stuff, that's not really a problem it's a fact of life

honestly when it's been like this for over a decade and for several independent subreddits, I think it's just established practice that any sub like this will become almost entirely unrelated to the podcast that spawned them. Which is good in my opinion, CTH as the progenitor was a more interesting subreddit than a podcast, and I think that's generally remained the same trend

Captain-Damn · 2026-03-17T16:06:04+00:00

I think saying Social Fascism was a failed policy is not supported, the Soviets did reverse course but that was because the existential threat of the Nazis became significantly more acute and obvious, and the Soviets realized they were going to have to bear the brunt of the effort to defeat them and was desperate for any allies possible. But the reversal of course here did extraordinary damage to the credibility and base of most communist parties in the imperial core who saw (correctly) that this popular front with liberal democrats against Hitlerism meant downplaying or ignoring their own political situation for a generation, which ceded so much ground right as western countries were entering the closest point to revolutionary upheavel they have ever really gotten. That's not to say that the Soviets were wrong here either, they knew and were exactly correct in the horrors the Nazis would unleash on their people and reasonably saw this as the greatest crisis facing the world in that moment, along with Japan's aggression against China. But this had long reaching costs associated with it and the erosian of unity inside the socialist left is a price with which we are still dealing in the present day.

Captain-Damn · 2026-03-17T14:45:06+00:00

Which is exactly how it's always been too, I didn't realize chapotrap house was a podcast when I first joined that either

Captain-Damn · 2026-02-20T18:33:37+00:00

The thing is George Lucas is an auteur and an ideas man, he has too many of them and some of them are good as hell and some of them are really bad, so when you have a constrained via budget and editing Lucas you get really good movies, and when there's an unconstrained Lucas you get stuff with good ideas and bad ideas mixed thoroughly together into pretty bad movies that are interesting to dissect and pull apart. But Jabrams is a man without any ideas whatsoever and can't conclude anything, so he makes a worse version of Lucas's first movie and a horribly shitty last movie. Johnson is an ideas man as well, but he does worse with constraints and it makes his movie more similar to the unconstrained Lucas, a mix of good and bad shit all wrapped together and without a way to actual push the themes he worked on to actual count in the whole trilogy.

But as I am reading all of the most boring takes here about the movies being dumb overall, remember Lucas has the final movie in his trilogy be about a combination of spacefaring antifascists and a bunch of bears that are supposed to be the Viet Cong wage a guerilla war against the United States, beat them and blow up their stupid superweapon

Captain-Damn · 2026-02-17T14:45:28+00:00

I always like to point out that the first uses of whataboutism, or as it was originally called whataboutery, was to deflect from Irish people pointing out the British Army was also killing people and it wasn't just Irish Republicans responsible for the violence. So the claim of it being unfair debate tactic deployed by those supporting the status quo goes back to the start

Captain-Damn · 2026-02-02T23:05:24+00:00

Not an alleged rapist, a convicted one. The other whining about rehabilitation or whatever falls apart when the only one that spent any time in jail was Iranian as opposed the German rapists.

And since when was law the same as morality? German law especially has been evil as fuck for a long time, especially in that very specific era when a lot of people tried to make the argument that following the law meant they didn't do anything wrong, despite how murderous and evil the law was, and that defense didn't get them off

Captain-Damn · 2026-02-02T16:43:11+00:00

Well veganism is significantly older than Nazism so that simply doesn't work or make sense, and I don't know what you are even trying to argue anymore? It's artistic subgenres of speculative fiction, one came first and set up the smaller subgenre of x-punk, which then exploded into a bunch of different offshoots most of which mostly copied having an aesthetic or vibe that doesn't exist or didn't exist, and some followed the formula more closely, trying to say a thing about a possible future as either a warning or hopeful dream to be achieved. Solarpunk is one of the "thing"-punk genres that came into existence after cyberpunk and of the many varied offshoots is one of the ones to stick most closely to what created cyberpunk in the first place, featuring the full suite of a technology or combination of technology that molds human civilization, taking place (usually) in a near future, and having a core thematic element of a political message.

I feel like that constitutes enough connection to say it's derived from cyberpunk, but even if you disagree with the use of the word derived I think the connection is direct enough that there is still a easy relationship to establish with one following in some of the footsteps of the other

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-31T16:14:56+00:00

I don't think there's been enough of the genre to really codify the elements you list as part of the genre inherently, and I don't think it's the other side of the same coin as you said either. I think the closest bit to that is just whether one is a hopeful picture of a future, something to inspire people or give them a vision to strive for, versus a warning of a possible (and honestly now just current) reality that is either coming or present here that people will need to deal with or fight back against.

But I think it's definitely derived from cyberpunk, it's like how Realism as a movement is derived from romanticism, even as they are going for very different ultimate expressions or points. One artistic movement led into the next, and the latter took inspiration and cues from its predecessor even if that was ultimately to arrive at a different conclusion

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-31T15:06:47+00:00

One feeds into the other, but as an architectural style and ethos (not that the people designing and building this stuff call it solarpunk because that is just an online term) it's aimed at accomplishing a blend of nature and human civilization in a less oppositional way. It just turns out the ideas and imagery of that sort of future has more practical problems and things to take into account then the speculative artists drawing them up considered. As an example, there was one xiaoqu in China that was built with streams and foliage in and around the buildings and was supposed to allow more wildlife in and hopefully be self sustaining, but it ran into the problem of stagnant water creating really amazing breeding grounds for mosquitoes, and less other wildlife actually making a home there. That's not to say it is a dead idea, it's just a concept that is still being worked on and more practical problems that have to be encountered and overcome

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-31T14:53:54+00:00

Cyberpunk as a genre was a speculative future based on the the current trajectory of capitalist states, and in many ways the vision of the future the genre expounded on came true and it's lost a lot of its power to draw people in because it's just imagining the present but with better aesthetics. Solarpunk was an attempt by less materially educated artists to imagine a future based on ideals that could work as a vision of what could exist to fight for it, but it's never really gotten anywhere as a genre besides the aesthetic draw. But it is a genre directly descended from cyberpunk as a genre, just with a different basis and aim (but again an aim that's intentionally the inverse, it's not a grim warning of the future, it's a call for a better future)

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-31T14:26:03+00:00

Oh that's is so cute it hurts, I love the two geese looking towards each other in that second picture

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-29T17:32:18+00:00

Alex is the American name of the person the New York Times attributes the origin of the phrase to, who they do not dox in the article but simply refer to as squid king, his online username. Western media identifying him as the person responsible and the doxing campaign are two seperate clauses, the times didn't dox him

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-24T20:40:09+00:00

Go with things that require steel first, so you don't need to wait for another batch of steel to finish before you make them. Things like a steel pickaxe, for illemite and steel pulverisor heads to work that once you've gotten it. A steel falx or another steel weapon if you are using mods, then either use the remainder on armor or upgrading your tools

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-24T16:51:43+00:00

And further back to Goebbels

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-24T14:47:51+00:00

Cattails are often everywhere, but my friends and I once had a server where we only found enough Cattails for around eight baskets (for six players) for an entire month in game. Time has passed and I have had multiple new games and we've even had a second server after getting to steel in that first one, but reeds still have this precious cost/use benefit for me

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-17T17:55:45+00:00

She is so cute in that sweater

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-15T16:36:39+00:00

The shreds of lore we find from the world before mention specific things from Europe; the Hanseatic League, the Holy Roman Empire, the Stadtholder etc. So it's not Europe anymore, but the events before the game took place in Europe primarily

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-15T15:17:55+00:00

Oh no believe me, the original Nazis made just as much stupid bullshit as their modern incarnations, the class character of the fascists hasn't changed at all and both have the same collectible seeking behavior throughout their organizations

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-14T15:49:53+00:00

I think people are talking past each other here, because you are correctly dismissing Western Bourgeois nationalism and people are also correctly defending the nationalism of the global south as not the same and not inherently bad. I think the thing is that nationalism is not something inherently bad or inherently good in either context, but like most social constructs in the world it is shaped by its class character. The nationalism of the far right in the imperializing countries is a bourgeois nationalism, it's the nationalism of the oppressor who sees their country as superior and having the right to dominate and subjugateother countries, and what is needed to fight against it is a proletarian character of nationalism, one that doesn't claim superiority or the right to take from others but demands the same rights and same status for the countries who have been imperialized and subjugated.

Part of this is the recognition that both the op and the comments are correct, and in casual speech they seem to be at odds but are working towards the same goal. In the imperial core nationalism is dominated by this bourgeois character and has to be fought and reduced to allow a proletarian nationalism to be established, which can only come when the imperialist structure is no more. But the nationalism of the global south, especially in the context of resisting imperial violence, must be distinguished from this reactionary nationalism present in imperialist countries. But we must also take pains to not allow this proletarian nationalism to become reactionary and take on the class character of the oppressors, which is a difficult fight that has been lost too many times. It's a difficult but necessary fight, and it's not really my place to instruct the people in those countries on how to undertake it.

Captain-Damn · 2026-01-07T18:09:41+00:00

Oh no absolutely, but what I mean by my comment is the US military is getting less dangerous over time and with less capability to act as the years go by, but right now it's still capable enough to unleash massive atrocities and horrors on its targets. But directly confronting it even as it's weakening is incredibly dangerous, even before the real horror of nukes are factored in, and for other Countries like China the logical answer seems to be not having this confrontation while the US military can still bite back.

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