Bulletins and News Discussion from September 2nd to September 8th, 2024 - We Love Our Trans Comrades - Chemicals of the Week: Estrogen and Testosterone
We need to kill the Mega Posting Wars meme. It wasn't very funny to start with and now I get the feeling some people are taking it way too seriously. Clogging up the news thread with bullshit just to try to out post the trans mega is just dumb and annoying.
The News Megathread is now under trans martial law:
Loving trans people on this site and elsewhere is strictly mandatory.
Posting about the "comment wars" between the trans and news megathreads is now strongly discouraged inside the news megathread. No shame in it - I also recently made jokes about it - but though they were almost always just jokes, it was unrelated to current events and was beginning to feel more like padding the comment count instead of trying to improve the quality of the thread. If you want to boost comments and engagement here, then post articles and analysis!
The COTW (Chemical of the Week) label is designed to spur discussion and debate about a specific chemical every week in order to help the community gain greater understanding of the domestic situation of often-understudied chemicals. If you've wanted to talk about the chemical or share your experiences, but have never found a relevant place to do so, now is your chance! However, don't worry - this is still a general news megathread where you can post about ongoing events from any country.
The Chemicals of the Week are Estrogen and Testosterone! Feel free to chime in with books, essays, longform articles, even stories and anecdotes or rants.
Defense Politics Asia's youtube channel and their map. Their youtube channel has substantially diminished in quality but the map is still useful.
Moon of Alabama, which tends to have interesting analysis. Avoid the comment section. Understanding War and the Saker: reactionary sources that have occasional insights on the war. Alexander Mercouris, who does daily videos on the conflict. While he is a reactionary and surrounds himself with likeminded people, his daily update videos are relatively brainworm-free and good if you don't want to follow Russian telegram channels to get news. He also co-hosts The Duran, which is more explicitly conservative, racist, sexist, transphobic, anti-communist, etc when guests are invited on, but is just about tolerable when it's just the two of them if you want a little more analysis.
On the ground: Patrick Lancaster, an independent and very good journalist reporting in the warzone on the separatists' side.
Unedited videos of Russian/Ukrainian press conferences and speeches.
Pro-Russian Telegram Channels:
Again, CW for anti-LGBT and racist, sexist, etc speech, as well as combat footage.
https://t.me/aleksandr_skif ~ DPR's former Defense Minister and Colonel in the DPR's forces. Russian language. https://t.me/Slavyangrad ~ A few different pro-Russian people gather frequent content for this channel (~100 posts per day), some socialist, but all socially reactionary. If you can only tolerate using one Russian telegram channel, I would recommend this one. https://t.me/s/levigodman ~ Does daily update posts. https://t.me/patricklancasternewstoday ~ Patrick Lancaster's telegram channel. https://t.me/gonzowarr ~ A big Russian commentator. https://t.me/rybar ~ One of, if not the, biggest Russian telegram channels focussing on the war out there. Actually quite balanced, maybe even pessimistic about Russia. Produces interesting and useful maps. https://t.me/epoddubny ~ Russian language. https://t.me/boris_rozhin ~ Russian language. https://t.me/mod_russia_en ~ Russian Ministry of Defense. Does daily, if rather bland updates on the number of Ukrainians killed, etc. The figures appear to be approximately accurate; if you want, reduce all numbers by 25% as a 'propaganda tax', if you don't believe them. Does not cover everything, for obvious reasons, and virtually never details Russian losses. https://t.me/UkraineHumanRightsAbuses ~ Pro-Russian, documents abuses that Ukraine commits.
Javier Milei has declared himself to be one of the two most important politicians in the world today, naming the other as former US president Donald Trump.
Javier Milei has declared himself to be one of the two most important politicians in the world today, naming the other as former US president Donald Trump. Argentina’s head of state made the remarks in the television interview, during which he lashed out at his critics, describing them as “Lilliputians.”
“It hurts them that I am today one of the two most relevant politicians on planet Earth. One is Trump and the other is me,” Milei boasted in an interview with the LN+ television news channel on Sunday night.
Milei, 53, declared that is considered to be “maximum exponent and defender of the ideas of freedom in the world’, highlighting his meetings with top Silicon Valley minds like Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos.
Slamming his critics as “inconsequential,” he argued that they were simply jealous of his success.
Milei mocked the “the Lilliputian agenda of inconsequential Argentine politicians, invisible rats, who will never be able to aspire” to his level of importance.
Painting himself a modern Gulliver freeing himself from the shackles of his adversaries, he asked of the opposition: ”What vision can a rat have of a giant? Nothing.”
Milei has repeatedly expressed his administration for Trump, who he met for the first at conservative summit in Washington back in February.
Visibly delighted at meeting the US Republican leader, the Argentine leader broke with diplomatic tradition to state that he hoped Trump is re-elected in November’s US election.
"President! How nice to meet you. It's a great pleasure to meet you, President. It is a great honour for me. Thank you for your words to me. I am very happy, it is very generous. Thank you very much, thank you very much, I mean it. You are a great president and I hope you win. I hope to see you again. Next time, as president,” said Milei as he shook Trump’s hand.
Trump, in turn, has praised Milei, not quite as vociferously. In August, during a public conversation with X owner Elon Musk on the social network, the US leader said that he was doing “a great job.”
Milei is in the process of beefing up his public image. Last week, he published a teaser trailer from a new six-part documentary series that will tell the tale of his rise to the Presidency. The doc will be published on Musk’s X network and – in the words of its promoters – will draw back the curtain on “the phenomenon that’s captivating the world.”
“I am not famous as an economist, but like a rockstar,” Milei says in one piece of footage released to promote the documentary about “the most epic campaign in history.”