muddi [he/him]

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  • 85 Comments
Joined 5 years ago
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Cake day: July 29th, 2020

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  • I’m glad India owns the islands. Not that India is some champion of indigenous peoples, in fact they are an imperial power in their own right. But it would have been worse if some Western nation owned it (like they still do other islands in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans, wtf)

    The Sentinelese make obvious that lustful chauvinistic gaze of the West that I haven’t seen in other countries, except maybe imperial Japan, which was copying the West anyhow. The whole idea that the world is there is be “studied” and that places like the Sentinel islands are some final frontier is fucked up.

    I understand the linguistic and anthropological curiosity a little, though I think researchers should be more humble. Most are humble actually, it’s the general public that still has chauvinism.

    The missionaries bother me the most. Christianization has killed off many local cultures, claiming to liberate them but not saying the quiet part about control and whatever prophecy about the end days where everyone needs to be Christian I think. In India, the lower castes and pariahs mostly are Christian, with the promise of equality, but in reality they still have the caste system within their communities and are just pariahs in different ways at large now. So not much has changed. I am also brown and live in the US, so I have felt the lustful gaze of missionaries throughout my life here. I get missionaries banging on my door every week now. It’s kinda scary, considering the KKK were around only a while ago here.

    Also interesting fact, the Andaman and Nicobar island were home to British jails for political prisoners. Indian rebels and revolutionaries met in jail there and even founded parties for independence and socialism. In a way, the islands are a birthplace of Indian revolutionary spirit









  • Earth and the Federation was communism. Admittedly an idealist version of it, came about because it was voted in by enlightened voters. But even then the Bell Riots showed that it was capitalism that caused conditions to arise in which the oppressed rose up against the failures of capitalism, and finally end it.

    Not sure if you specifically meant something about Mao, but at least be aware of this. It’s the most basic theory of communism that capitalism fails, turns into barbarism, and the working class have no option but to revolt to resolve the crisis.


  • I think of it in terms of levels building on top of each other, or circles enveloping each other; also how I evaluate interviewees and new hires:

    1. Finishes the task, but needs handholding
    2. Finishes the task, figuring it out from docs, guides, and internet
    3. Finishes the task, proactively trying to make sure it doesn’t return again as a bug or failing QA
    4. Finishes the task, designing things in a way so that devs don’t need to put in extra effort in the future

    In short, learning how to do something right, but also alternative strategies, how to pick the best option, and finally make sure you always end up with the right choice, or automatically do so, by design.

    It’s at core a matter of experience, but taking on new opportunities and reading up helps to accelerate that.






  • Honestly I see it in actual historians too. Texts always have something along the lines of “yes, the [insert non-European civilization] had _, but only Europeans went far enough to _”

    Shit like how ancient civilizations had invented calculus, calculated pi to several digits, observed the cosmos, etc. but it’s only the ancient Greeks who contributed to history apparently. Seems unprofessional as hell. It’s not that dissimilar to white supremacists who say " everyone practiced slavery, but only Europeans abolished it"

    It’s often linked to some geographic or cultural uniqueness of Europe, like how they didn’t have famines or shit and so they were able to be creative about nature that wasn’t chaotic and devastating.


  • No, their metaphor was not ignorant at all.

    I was half-joking, but yes it was ignorant? Lesbians don’t choose their sexuality, but people do choose to be vegan. There is an ignorance of sexuality and diet there. Also, people do try going vegan, eat some fake meat and cheese, and eventually go back to eating meat because they still crave meat in itself. This does happen. This is also related to those people who sneak in or revert to eating meat because of some cultural or family tradition, or peer pressure from friends. One vegan I knew who was going on for 25 years ate a steak to impress his business friends instead of speaking up to say he didn’t want to eat at a meat-only restaurant. Take a look at my other comments here, I am speaking about this topic at the social level, not how individuals like the taste of meat or fake meat.

    there is nothing wrong with it at all

    Yeah I know, I have been saying that. This is not a moral argument. This is a rational one, and one perhaps from a medical or public health perspective: the cultural desire to obtain “meat” as a thing in itself is the cause for the demand of meat or meat alternatives. It’s great that under capitalism that solutions can be provided via the market and supply-and-demand, whatever, but it doesn’t address the reason why there is a demand in the first place.

    How I know it’s a cultivated desire: it doesn’t exist across cultures. Hell it doesn’t exist within the western fake meat market itself: how much fake seafood do you see engineered out there? Or exotic meats ie objects perfectly engineered to mimic dog, cat, or even human meat? I’m sure human taste buds can enjoy long pork, real or fake. Yet basically no one is asking for this right?