I know the article is a threadbare simile, but it more than misses the whole point of Galadriel’s character in the books/movie. For even someone like Galadriel who meets this beyond-human ideal of beauty, purity and “goodness”, the power of the One Ring to dominate life is so corrupting that it would simply turn her into a new Sauron. Which is why after failing to resist temptation, Galadriel leaves Middle Earth and goes into the West. If there’s one point that is hammered in repeatedly throughout the Lord of the Rings, it’s that such absolute power cannot be used for good, despite anyone’s best intentions, and the only recourse is for it to be destroyed.

The uncommitted movement said they weren’t endorsing her, but they also said that people should vote, but not vote for anyone other than Kamala. So, they effectively endorsed her.

The intrusion of capitalism into sleep is a final frontier of absolute exploitation. Why work 8 hours a day when you can work 24 hours a day? Why use vast banks of computer servers to run AI models when you can capture the most efficient and powerful ‘computer’ to ever exist: the human brain. Why provide for housing and recreation when you can lock people in permanent dream states, where they can provide intellectual labor and live in dreamworlds while their physical brain is kept alive through an IV drip.

I am skeptical that any technology trying to directly interface with the slumbering subconscious could work, but I have no doubt that such attempts would be damaging to human health, and would be used to push material imiseration to impossible heights.

Looking at this International Crisis Group’s list of donors:

BP

Chevron

ENI

Open Society Foundation

Rockerfeller Brothers Trust

As well as various Western European & gulf state governments, billionaires and billionaire-founded NGOs. Of course they’re coping: their backers were hoping to get a piece of PDVSA.

A third of working time for a bank executive? If you discount business meals and “golf course deals,” that’s like 4 hours a day total? ( so 1/3 of that = 1 hour a day)

No, annexation is illegal under the UN charter, of which Russia is a signatory, and wars of aggression are criminal in and of themselves. I’ll condemn the illegal annexations performed by Israel and other states, and Russia’s annexations fall under the same boat.

To be even more clear, I do think that Russia would have won fair referendums in Donetsk, Luhansk and certainly Crimea. I doubt that would have been the case for the other two oblasts. Still, all of those annexations were illegal. Just because the neo-cons have flouted the UN charter in favor of the ad hoc “rules-based order” doesn’t mean others should.

The annexations in Ukraine are illegal, but Russia annexing 5 oblasts and Ukraine being locked into a status as a neutral buffer state is not exactly a Hitlerian take-over of Europe.

OOOH. A link to wikipedia. The forbidden knowledge!

It’s so scarey.

But on the other hand, the tanks didn’t even run over that guy (CW): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L6F2AqzdXuI&pp=ygUhdXMgcG9saWNlIHJ1bm5pbmcgb3ZlciBwcm90ZXN0b3Jz https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-W-7WPWfE4&t=18s https://www.youtube.com/shorts/L-pJTOzyEkI