lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 13/09/2026can i say something controversial? there is massive potential here for anthropic/openAI gijinka toxic romance content. people need to invest in this. 001
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 12/09/2026no no no i promise the oasis is real this time its not a mirage it's nooot i promise cmon. stop being a scaredy cat and march headlong towards the desert horizon with me!! 010
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 31/07/2026The acquisition of Ceuta & Gibraltar by Spain & Britain can basically be understood as part and parcel with the other wars & territorial changes that took place across Europe in the run-up to modernity. They stick out as enclaves that have survived to the present day, but have pretty banal origins. 110
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 28/07/2026like not dooming and i can see from the national environment that there's grounded reason for optimism! but i remember watching the insane statements and campaign moves from trump-vance and feeling optimistic then, too. 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 28/07/2026long time listener first time caller. always do appreciate your thoughts and i don't mean to totally throw cold water on you - but your posts keep making me hope, and then i remember that your posts gave me hope in 2024, too. how much does the data back up this time being different? 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 27/06/2026and ofc a scenario where a large romance language family just gets called Latin fits pretty well. and the concept of 'being civilised' getting eventually transmuted into a more 'modern' national/ethnic identity is great fun. even debates over the name of the nation could fit as a parallel! 030
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 27/06/2026like again, you'll never find a perfect fit (and it's probably more interesting to parallel broader themes than to figure out like 'hey which bit of rome would be the equivalent of fujian province') but like; northern european plain sorta fits for a large latinate 'mandarin' equivalent. 110
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 27/06/2026equivalent in chinese history for like, the greek portion of the roman empire. plus european/mediterranean geography just naturally makes for some big differences. still, you can take the idea a long way!! 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 27/06/2026yeah like!!! 'what if rome was a china analogue' is a minor alt hist staple that tons of people have tried their hand at, but aside from the obvious problems you'll face trying to get 1 to 1 parallels with any 'what if x was like y' scenario, like, there isnt really any great 110
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 17/06/2026i'm sure it must be weird to have all these eyes on you from the pov of I'm Literally Some Person With Thoughts but in truth you are a very cool person who shares consistently interesting thoughts. i'm legit very cheered to say: welcome back!!! 000
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026talking in really theoretical or derived or idiosyncratic ways and/or just eliding the questions of how to actually apply and achieve those political and ideological aims. Or like maybe you have a more niche and specific ideological framework that deals with those questions. 010
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026I don't think that holding that at all has to contradict pretty much any political positions. Like, you can even go right up to calling for the total dissolution of governance and social orders deriving from that settler colonial heritage - though in practice at that point you're either like, 110
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026And I would suggest on that basis that there is no way that an expulsion of the descendants of european settler colonists from the two or three continents near-in-whole forcibly expropriated and settled by their ancestors could be anything other than genocidal in nature. 110
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026home they've ever known, marched or fleeing with their worldly possessions tossed on a cart or the back of a truck - these things feel remarkably similar regardless of the political & social position and history of the demographic group that child was born into. 120
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026ask how utterly incomparable the national communities and political aspirations of populations deriving from settler-colonial projects & the national communities and aspirations of the indigenous peoples who suffered at their hands might be. At the end of the day, a child forced to flee the only 120
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026The national independence struggle of Algeria was justified and righteous. But while I don't imagine you spare sympathy for the Pied Noirs, I would suggest that the fact Algerian independence lead to the departure of the entire, unambiguously indigenous, Jewish population is a good starting point to 130
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026I feel that you can support parts of this to varying degrees, but where you lose your grounding entirely is in treating national identities as things that can be inherently and fundamentally Colonial or Anticolonial and that this represents a limit of imagination & sanitizes anticolonial nationalism 130
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026- but that the entire conceptual area of Israeli identity as a national community is not just poisoned and unsalvageable but that it is fundamentally illegitimate in a way entirely and utterly incomparable to the kind of national identities of indigenous peoples. 160
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026All nation-states are imagined communities intermeshed with state institutions. Your position as far as I understand it is not just that the state institutions of Israel are bent on the destruction of Palestine or that its population is generally in favour of the same - 140
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026Most Israeli Jews are of sole or partial Mizrahi descent (it is notable that the proportion of Israeli Jews with mixed Jewish heritages has grown and continues to grow at a fair clip), with still a notable portion themselves having been born in Morocco, Iraq et al. 041
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026Even if you take it as granted that they were all the descendants of recent migrants - or for that matter, recent migrants themselves - why should we accept the idea that that in any way justifies or lessens the moral wrong of ethnic cleaning, dispossession, occupation or second-class citizenship? 030
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026grant legitimacy to the logic underlying their claim - that if Palestinians were just recent migrants that they would hold no legitimate right to live there & that there would be no legitimacy to their identity or aspirations for self determination. We should fundamentally reject that premise. 120
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026You can argue that that's factually incorrect, that we have clear historical record that whatever historic churn and migration there has been that the population of Palestine in 1000 and 500 are the direct ancestors of its population in 1900. And you'd be right! But in doing so, you would implicitly 110
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026There is a fairly common position in Israel that the Palestinians are in whole or in part descended from recent immigrants from the rest of the levant or Egypt in particular - the suggestion being that their claims of peoplehood & indigeneity are illegitimate. I don't doubt you've seen the claim. 120
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 14/06/2026The unstated premise behind this is that the ethnic cleansing of indigenous peoples is not wrong because ethnic cleaning is wrong, but that it is wrong because they are indigenous. 130
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 09/06/2026hello people in samanthas comment section!!! (green m&m bambi post voice). pretty killer video delving into exactly this dropped like two weeks ago so just dropping that here. hour long but nick does a great job at making the topic comprehensible www.youtube.com/watch?v=wQ7r...youtube.comThe Other Sapiens— what happened to the primitive humans who lived alongside us?YouTube video by Nick Longrich Evolution and Paleontology 030
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 04/05/2026hold on... taps earpiece... ooh... oh gosh... oh dear... 000
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 04/05/2026You and I may not like it, but this is probably the message to go with if the Greens want any chance of winning Ohio in the midterms 110
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 01/05/2026more and more people are saying that there is but one human race and all within it are united in spirit. people are saying this a lot!! 010
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026is that an Argentine govt tried to integrate the islands by force within living memory, w/ the islanders remembering the period very poorly. The fact that the Argentine govt of the time then created a wholly new name (Puerto Argentino) for the main settlement is pretty indicative of that experience. 000
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026But the flipside to that is that the reason why the locals are sanguine about being an autonomous dependency of the UK and not one of Argentina (though strictly speaking, the general Argentine position isn't an autonomous dependency but integration into an existing province) 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026I mean presumably an independent F/M would decide to associate with the UK so additionally there is the question as to whether the situation for an independent Falklands/Malvinas would really be all that meaningfully different for Argentina compared to the present situation. And I mean, that's fair. 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026the question of why that couldn't be addressed by the Falklands/Malvinas becoming officially sovereign in their own right & in turn the UK withdrawing its military presence - but the latter particularly would only really be viable if Argentina dropped its claim to the islands 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026Sure, but why would that apply for Argentina claims in the islands but not with, say, similar claims that existed over Uruguay, Eastern Missiones, Tarija, or the rest of Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego? I mean, if it's specifically about the islands being associated w/ the UK that raises 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026But also I don't think that it's inherently morally wrong that the islands are an autonomous dependency of the UK rather than a constituent part of the Argentine province of Tierra del Fuego. 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026I agree that Milei is awful, that he's sycopthantic/defers to the US govt in particular & that the US and European nations where they interact w/ Argentina economically or diplomatically are concerned with their own benefit regardless of the impact on the wider population of Argentina. 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026- and I don't regard eastern Patagonia & Tierra Del Fuego being part of Argentina as illegitimate. We can and should acknowledge the crimes of the past and wrongdoing done in living memory while not dismissing the descendents of settlers in Patagonia, TdF or the Malvinas/Falklands. 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026I wouldn't suggest that the sheer sum of historic atrocities & exploitation are in any way equal - but talking about the conquest of the desert & Selk'nam genocide is relevant when asking whether the expansion of Argentina was/is anticolonial. I'm not suggesting that these are exceptional in nature 110
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026wanted to stay & were expelled, or were asked to stay but left for (mainland) Argentina. 000
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026both Argentina and the British empire grew through conquest & colonialism - the main distinguishing feature of settler-colonial settlement in the islands being no indigenous population predating the falklander settlers & the closest thing to it being whether some of the people at Port Louis 210
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026I'm sympathetic to it being a fundamentally silly situation, & really an alternate history in which it peacefully became an autonomous dependency of Argentina w/ links to the UK rather than a UK autonomous dependency without links to Argentina would be a healthier scenario for all involved. But - 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026Guess I have to wonder who the most high-profile figures to go 4 thatll be. Plenty of REF councillors r a given & I imagine Farage'll stick to more tried & true dogwhistling, but between that? Sky's the limit Id, mayb it'll prompt some conservatives to stand up for minorities 4 a sec. Thatd be nice 000
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026I'm pretty sure that whenever the next general election rolls around & the country at large properly remembers/realises that Badenoch exists we're just going to see so much of people insisting on calling her Olukemi, maybe throwing the maiden name in there. 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026but in both cases, the populations living today in both regions have longstanding roots, regard those places as their homes, continue to govern themselves under constitutional arrangements they've been involved with & continue to consent to, and clearly want to continue their present status. 010
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 25/04/2026Genuine q: why would British/Falklander governance of the islands be less legitimate than Argentine governance of their portion of Terra Del Fuego or the rest of Patagonia? you could point at the genocide of the Selk'nam for the former & the armed seizure of Port Louis for the latter - 110
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 02/04/2026"there are rights inherent to human persons and human dignity, political rights are a mean to protect those rights" basically reads to me as the literal dictionary definition of the liberal view on political rights? 120
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 02/04/2026what makes those circumstances exceptional and why should the populations being small matter? and like i'll give you kudos for saying no to repressive measures, but ultimately if you won't allow for self determination enforcing as much _means_ repressive measures. 000
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 02/04/2026but not in guyana essequibo, the falklands/malvinas or (i assume) belize? 100
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 02/04/2026ok - so here's my question; why not? like, i'm posing that self determination, political rights and democracy are all intertwined to the point of being the same thing and that if you erode one you erode the others. so why not value that itself? and why is that prudence enough in timor leste 200
lowtuff.bsky.social @lowtuff.bsky.social · 02/04/2026being entirely frank, this doesn't conflict in any way either with small or large l liberalism or with self determination. 150
