Vladivostok is barely the closest populated Russian area.

Its a major base of operations for the Russian Pacific fleet.

Russia has the technologies and infrastructure for efficient resource extraction under extreme conditions

Now, sure. And France has the technology and infrastructure to extract resources from the Mississippi delta region now. But the Alaska purchase was in 1867. Russians were still trying to secure territory on their own continent during this time. Repeated wars with Japan, the Ottomans, and with domestic insurgencies plagued the country through the 19th century.

And Alaska was already being filibustered by western colonialists as far back as the early 1800s, necessitating a Treaty (the Russo-American Treaty of 1824) to settle an ongoing dispute over territory (The Oregon Boundary Dispute) that Russians had little capacity or real interest in prosecuting. Much like with the Louisiana Purchase, this was a token transfer intended to get some kind of compensation to relinquish a claim the Russians were poised to lose one way or another.

But, it was a media event. It wasn’t “rigged”

You could gamble on it, which means there was money to be made courting suckers.

I’m sure the lion’s share of “rigged” proclamations were coming from folks who got baited into bad bets.

Once Twitter has been (hopefully) de-platformed we can talk about Mastedon and the Fediverse and the idea of a non-corpo platform.

BlueSky is as prone to enshittification as Twitter. If you’re waiting for BlueSky to take off, you’re just setting yourself up for the next rug pull.

I mean, go to BS and enjoy it while it lasts. But don’t think this is the future.

Earth’s surface is 2/3rds water and that’s not changing.

But intense heat means more storms with stronger winds and heavier rain. Imagine a Cat 5 hitting the coast every year.

For the price of the bundle? Sure.

There’s about 60km between modern day Russia and Alaska

There’s over 5000km between Vladivostok and Anchorage. Virtually nobody lives in the interior.

Alaska was seen as nothing but barren piece of cold land

It still is. The mineral wealth is extremely difficult to access due to the weather.

But Russia also has enormous fossil fuel reserves. They just sold off a colony that was more expensive to guard than it was lucrative to exploit.

This but unironically. I’ve got a coworker who took vacation days to help build a temple up in Pennsylvania. He was incredibly proud of his contribution and happy to participate.

With the electoral college and FPTP, even opting in is of dubious benefit.

If Nato fails and Russia attacks

That already happened back in 2022 (arguably all the way back to '08). NATO didn’t do shit because it’s just the US military wearing a dozen different European baseball caps. And after the US finished scrubbing out of both Iraq and Afghanistan, it didn’t have the logistics to launch another Asiatic land war (while keeping China at gunpoint in the Pacific and Iran in check in the Middle East).

American slippage is already apparent across Latin America, Africa, and the South Pacific. Things are only going to get worse for DC going forward.

You would have to be suicidal to stick your neck into that mess, at this stage of the game.

The idea that medieval peasants somehow had more free time than the average modern american still is absolute bullshit

Paleontologists will tell you otherwise. One reason you had all those giant cathedrals going up in the Medieval Era stemmed from the enormous excess labor just wasting around in between harvest seasons.

Agricultural surplus creates free time. It’s the whole reason why people opt for farming over hunter gathering.

Dems have to deliver on those policies when given the opportunity. If all they can deliver are excuses, they won’t have a base that trusts them.

Go down to Mexico and see how this is done. AMLO and Sheinbaum have been on a historic electoral tear, in large part because they’ve been so effective at delivering their reforms. They’re crazy popular right now.

There’s a staunch libertarian view on Lemmy, wherein people will advocate for personal liberty ahead of technological progress. The Country Mouse has it better than the City Mouse, because he can own a gun and drive a big truck and smoke weed without the neighbors ratting him out to the cops. The lack of basic amenities - subways and school systems and high speed internet and big medical centers - is worth the increased personal autonomy.

The “Serfs had it better” trope takes this to its logical conclusion. Rolling back the technological frontier 500 years is worth it, because the surveillance/police state and the corporate oligopoly even on the fringe of society is seriously that bad.

I don’t agree. But I can’t really argue against it. This is just a personal preference. Its not any kind of objective truth.

So you’re not really a serf if you’ve got plumbing? The labor relationship with your employers isn’t the issue?

The dark cowboy rides again.

If you can buy a ten and one works, you’ve saved money. Two work and you’re making money. The only question is whether the tenth card really will work or not.

I’ve been hearing about the imminent crash for the last two years. New money keeps getting injected into the system. The bubble can’t deflate while both the public and private sector have an unlimited lung capacity to keep puffing into it. FFS, bitcoin is on a tear right now, just because Trump won the election.

This bullshit isn’t going away. Its only going to get forced down our throats harder and harder, until we swallow or choke on it.

My real point is that if they had been more subtle Lincoln would absolutely have let them keep slavery.

Lincoln wouldn’t have enjoyed the majorities necessary to rewrite the Constitution without the Civil War. He’d have been in the same position as Quincy Adams or Filmore, two outspoken abolitionists who lacked the tools to functionally end the practice.

The war, the voluntary dissolution of opposition in Congress, and the massive depopulation that neutered immediate blowback left the door wide open for revolutionary change. And Lincoln - unlike his successor Johnson or even more distant successor Truman - walked through that doorway. That’s what makes Lincoln significant - he was presented with a serious opportunity to affect change and he took it, when less lucky presidents never had the opportunity and less moral presidents never had the conviction.

A lesson the modern South seems to understand well if the last few decades of the Republican party are any example.

What makes guys like Trump and Bush Jr so horrifying is the fact that they did pounce on their opportunities to affect radical change. The Republican Party is seizing their moment and reinventing the country while the Dems dither, trying to extract as much personal profit from the decaying system.

The modern South is a consequence of bold Republicans capitalizing on a wellspring of white nationalism that’s been bubbling up since the Civil Rights Era, while Democrats seek to apologize for FDR/Kennedy/LBJ and sell off a generation of progressive reform to the highest bidder. When you look at the Dem strategy in states like Texas and Florida, you see this in spades. Candidates falling over themselves to prove they hate student protesters and brown foreigners and union advocates as much as any Republican.

The lesson we’re all learning is that you might as well try to reign in hell, cause heaven is a lost cause.

It doesn’t need to be effective, because the pendulum of politics always swings back in the end. Trump will become the next scapegoat of American politics just like he was back in 2018 and then 2020. If the economy tops itself (as is increasingly likely), they’ll be facing even bigger headwinds. Even if it doesn’t, inflation and sky high rents aren’t going away. Consumer debt isn’t getting any lighter. The Trump Admin isn’t going to be nice to people.

That’s the electoral strategy at the end of the day. Just to keep being the Other Option and wait for people to come around. Wait as long as it takes. Maybe it’ll take twenty years, like in Arizona. Maybe forty years, like in Georgia. Maybe it’ll be over 60, like in Utah. Doesn’t matter. Just keep squatting on the Other Option until the day comes.

Or drinking from the same well of propaganda.

The idea that men can be duped by a wall of Murdoch press but women can’t seems dubious.