Putin famously claimed that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the 20th century. He could not be more wrong.
The fall of the USSR was actually the greatest geopolitical miracle of modern history, freeing tens of millions of people from a brutal, blood-soaked empire.
The Soviet Union was a human disaster, a totalitarian crime against humanity, and a system that put war and imperialism ahead of feeding its own people.
For decades, the world was forced to endure the myth of the USSR as a superpower dedicated to human progress. In reality, it was nothing more than an advanced, totalitarian iteration of the Russian Empire.
It was an illegitimate project built on lies, paranoia, and catastrophic human suffering. It was a war-hungry, paranoid mistake of a country that sacrificed tens of millions of lives across its republics.
The Soviet ideology was fundamentally flawed because it placed a rigid, totalizing dogma above human dignity and basic freedom. It substituted human enterprise with central planning, creating an unsustainable economy that could build nuclear missiles but failed to put bread on the tables of its citizens.
From a historical perspective, the USSR was an aggressive, imperialistic state. It helped unleash the horrors of World War II by signing a pact with Nazi Germany in 1939, agreeing to carve up Eastern Europe. The alliance only ended because Hitler turned on Stalin in 1941.
Throughout its existence, Moscow treated member republics as colonies, extracting their wealth and enforcing cultural dominance while silencing any form of dissent through the Gulag system and police state surveillance.
When the Soviet Union finally imploded, tens of millions of colonized people were freed from Moscow's grip. Look at the Baltic states today. Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania transformed into flourishing European democracies with living standards that far exceed anything Russia has ever produced. They stand as living proof that Russian control was the single greatest obstacle to human flourishing in the region.
Modern Russia's brutal attempt to eradicate Ukraine is proof that Moscow never accepted the death of its empire. Driven by corrupt, paranoid leadership, Russia is committing genocide because it has no ideology or attractive model left to sell. It can only sell imperialism and death.
Defeating this imperial machine in Ukraine is a global imperative. If the Russian empire is not shattered in Ukraine, it will remain a permanent threat to peace and force us to confront it elsewhere later
Genuinely can someone explain to me how what a woman was wearing is at all relevant to cases where women were passed out in the back seats of cars and an Uber driver decided to rape them? Truly what is the potential exculpatory value there?
I've now added Wispr, Notion, Granola, Fireflies, Zoom, Gemini, Cluely, Otter, Fathom, Read AI, and Wingrep to every meeting.
Each produces slightly different meeting notes.
I send all of them to Claude and ChatGPT, which push the summaries into Slackbot and Salesforce AI. Linear agents automatically create tickets while Notion agents create follow-ups in Notion. A Zapier workflow then uses 500k tokens to draft a follow up email in Superhuman.
None of it works and all of it is wrong but man, is it beautiful.
AGI is here.
@MarinKatusa Rise of Canada? Physical AI looks to be the next melt up. BlackBerry $BB with its QNX real time operating system looks like it could be the winner in the "picks & shovels" category.
@ProfSteveKeen The title of the vid is 'The New Fed Chair's Plan to Cancel $39T Debt Crisis: Top Economist' yet there was no mention of this plan at all. So it's bogus, click bait vid.
A US Senate panel on June 18 advanced a pair of bills that would allow television cameras in SCOTUS and other federal courtrooms https://t.co/jaQKgv6WCR
@AGlavkoverkh @TransportDems It ain't nationalized at all. It subsidized by the populations of Puerto Rico, Alaska, and Hawaii. Move to one of those places and see how you feel about the Jones act.
@calvinfroedge Off the cuff: $BKB is listed in Australia, $BKBMF is US OTC. For your chart did you use US or Aussie prices? Same for AU and AG prices? If you are buying on ASX, are you hedging your AUS/USD risk?
@harari_yuval Meanwhile, here in my little island state of Hawaii, we are the first state to pass legislation that limits a corporation's rights, specifically in regards to campaign donations. SCOTUS, here we come.
Anyone know if BlackBerry $BB or Ideal Power $IPWR are on or were considered for @citrini robot stock lists? If they were considered, why didn't they make the cut?
@Mayhem4Markets I switched to🐧 15 years ago. Yesterday, helped a 95 yr old with his MS laptop, what a shitshow. Album art jpg's are classified as critical OS operating files, thus hidden from default view in File Explorer. 😂 Also recently learned Azure runs on 🐧🤣🤣🤣