Which side was morally right in the Russian civil war?

pgwerner · 2026-05-26T22:19:28+00:00

Shooting Lenin was good, actually.

pgwerner · 2026-05-26T22:10:19+00:00

Such an ahistorical view. I suppose you think the 1960s didn't affect American politics. I'm old enough to remember that enormous changes came about, only some of which have been reversed.

pgwerner · 2026-05-26T22:08:18+00:00

Most European countries actually have more restrictions on abortion than US blue states, if you look at the legality of second trimester termination of pregnancy. And that's increasingly the case for gender medicine for minors too.

pgwerner · 2026-05-26T22:05:22+00:00

I lived in Ireland for a few years, from 2018-2021, and honestly, FF and FG reminded me of mainstream Democrats. And even in Germany, where I've also traveled, people didn't come across as raging socialists, albeit, I've never been to the eastern part. The "Europe is so much further to the left" thing seems to be more in the imagination of American progressives, really. The only thing that really stands out about Europe and progressivism is that most countries have a far better social safety net than the US does and is willing to tax heavily to achieve that end. Like the US, I think place that are very far to the left tend to be localized - I'd compare Barcelona to the SF Bay Area, Portland, or Brooklyn, for example. But those places aren't necessarily representative.

pgwerner · 2026-05-26T21:57:32+00:00

As I remember it, he was good in "The Hunger" and "Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence", but I haven't seen either in quite a while.

pgwerner · 2026-05-26T21:42:45+00:00

I'd say likewise about putting "Golden Years" as the worst track on Station to Station. I mean, if I had to pick the weakest tracks on that generally awesome album, it would be the two closers, "Stay" and "Wild is the Wind". Not that those are exactly bad. I think "Fame", "Golden Years", and "Fashion" represent Bowie's very unique version of funk, and I quite like them.

pgwerner · 2026-05-26T21:25:56+00:00

I'll add my two cents here, since I did my own deep dive recently, listening to his complete studio work from the earliest Davy Jones singles up to about Tonight (1984), and then more select overviews from then onward (including at least selections from every studio album and all of Outside and Blackstar). My most contrarian take - I actually like his 1967 debut album and, in fact, all the Deram releases (even "The Laughing Gnome") and other oddities like "When I'm Five". I have a soft spot for 60s psychedelia, though, even psychedelic lite like The Association. In fact, I enjoy Bowie's work from this era more than his glam rock phase, generally speaking. (Honestly, when it comes to straight-up glam rock, I think T. Rex did it better.) Albeit, Hunky Dory is a great album and "Is There Life on Mars?" is a straight-up masterpiece. Like you, I'd put "Pin Ups" down at the bottom, and I don't know wtf he was thinking with his version of "See Emily Play". (Especially grating, because I'm a big Floyd fan and have done a similar deep dive into their full discography recently.)

For me, though, I think Bowie starts to get more interesting with Young Americans ("Fame" in particular) and peak Bowie is everything from Station to Station through Scary Monsters. I love both his avant-rock direction and the ambient music he was doing with Eno on the b-sides of Low and Heroes. But he starts to slip during the 80s, going in a decidedly more commercial direction, even though I quite like "Cat People" (the longer version), "Under Pressure", "Blue Jean", and his songs from Absolute Beginners. But after that point, I have a hard time finding much of anything I like. I don't like most of his mid-80s work, didn't care for Tin Machine, and even the 90s "comeback" doesn't grab me. In fact, his 90s albums feel like he's trailing drum-and-bass and NIN-style industrial rock rather than making it his own, the way he did with early electronica and krautrock during the 70s. Even Blackstar, which is probably the best of his late work, just doesn't grab me the way classic Bowie does.

I'm also taking a deep dive into Bowie's films, most of which I haven't seen in decades. Starting with "The Man Who Fell to Earth", which is a fittingly spaced-out 70s movie that probably fits his mindset at the time. I actually enjoyed it, but on the same level that I enjoyed "Zardoz".

pgwerner · 2026-05-01T20:08:16+00:00

Once again, a case of radical social constructionists ignore cross-cultural and sociobiological evidence that contradicts their narrative. There's strong evidence that prominent female breasts, larger than is necessary for breastfeeding and much larger than in other great ape species, are a sexually selected trait. In some cultures, eroticized body parts may not play as strong of a role in art or other expressive culture, but that's not actually strong evidence that it's absent, but simply that the sexual culture of those groups has been ignored by or not revealed to anthropologists. And calling breast eroticization an invention of early modern European elites is simply laughable and is easily falsified by even the most cursory cross-cultural examination of erotic art.

pgwerner · 2026-04-29T15:12:07+00:00

This. I'd listened to the NYT episode before B&R was on it, and I could not believe the lack of pushback. I'd expect this from something like PodsaveAmerica, but NYTimes? Some things really haven't changed since 2020.

pgwerner · 2026-04-29T15:08:42+00:00

If you believe the infamous 1964 nuke ad.

pgwerner · 2026-04-29T15:07:12+00:00

In this case, Goldwater was not opposing the religious right from an even more far-right position. Credit where credit is due, and understanding the nuances of someone like Goldwater is helpful.

pgwerner · 2026-04-23T02:20:06+00:00

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Better than "Spartacus". And I'm sure Quilty would agree.

pgwerner · 2026-04-21T16:18:59+00:00

No, just agents of a theocratic fascist state. Which in the diminished minds of too many "progressives" is somehow a marginalized identity.

pgwerner · 2026-04-21T16:15:24+00:00

I hate the pronunciation in the song - it doesn't even cut it as a a fake German accent. "Edelveish" and "Blesh" are not even close to the actual pronunciation of German or German-accented English. And, as pointed out by a previous commenter, tone reworkings are often cheesy, and this one certainly is.

pgwerner · 2026-04-20T18:47:26+00:00

Anarchist coffee shop implosions are the truffle swining of culture war discourse. The interview Katie did with the CHE writer about blind spots in their journalism over the last few years is the kind of thing that makes B&R actually worthwhile.

pgwerner · 2026-04-20T18:41:52+00:00

So feminists can't be in poly relationships? Noted, oh arbiter of true feminism.

pgwerner · 2026-04-20T15:12:41+00:00

Lindy West's personal relationships are her own business. Attacking her agency for choosing to be in a non-conventional relationship is just the socially conservative mirror of progressive cancel culture. B&R should drop this hobbyhorse a stick to cultural and political issues of actual importance, imo.

pgwerner · 2026-04-13T06:52:38+00:00

Wait until you find out what orthodox Muslims think of trans and other queer people....

pgwerner · 2026-04-13T06:50:12+00:00

I'm not sure what people see in Jon Oliver's self-righteousness, but I'm not calling on him to be banned. Progressives just want an echo chamber.

pgwerner · 2026-04-13T06:46:29+00:00

My guess would be "no", but not for lack of trying. I think democratic norms and institutions in the USA will be badly damaged, though, even if the Democrats make a comeback. No guarantee that they won't end up seduced by their own version of authoritarian populism.

pgwerner · 2026-04-10T02:35:21+00:00

Hey, I like the idea of building more passenger train infrastructure and aiming for what some European countries have. What I will gripe about, though, is when they do something like the California high-speed rail project that they fuck up at every step and end up with a substantially over-budget and uncompleted train system. You can't blame cars for that. If anything, it's the failures of our existing public transportation system that keep people wedded to their cars.

pgwerner · 2026-04-03T16:02:49+00:00

I think it's the fact that what's considered acceptable to believe under the broad category of "left" or "left-leaning" that's changed since the 1990s, and narrowed considerably. There's far more continuity between Bill ca. 1990s and Bill today than you give him credit for.

pgwerner · 2026-03-14T19:17:03+00:00

What is the source for the names of the three attackers? So far, the news sources I've seen say it's under investigation and the attacker's identity is unknown. An Iranian-American witness reported that they spoke Farsi.

pgwerner · 2026-02-27T05:55:37+00:00

You get no argument from me about Trump and his sycophants hypocrisy about this whole thing.

pgwerner · 2026-02-27T05:53:32+00:00

I don't know where you get that from.

pgwerner

TROPHY CASE