He is only really interesting to a UK audience in that his austerity was very much anti-old rather than anti-young, which is unusual here, I am led to understand.

Probably not. It's not that interesting a story anyway. He governed during the GFC, cut everything to the bone, especially pensions, country still debates years later if that was necessary or the best approach etc etc etc

Andrius Kubilius, as DEFENCE COMMISSIONER, regarding inflation as a bigger problem than whether we have guns is such a fitting epitaph to the career of Lithuania's foremost austerity addict.

To answer the question, the sticking point for Labour candidates seems to be Pledge 4.

Given Sarwar's overtures to Offord, it seems clear that Labour want to get into bed with Reform in Scotland, and are happy to throw refugees under the bus to do it.

Holyrood election candidates urged to back five pledges in support of Ukraine Holyrood election candidates are being urged to publicly commit to a series of five pledges backing Ukraine ahead of May 7.

Would any Labour candidates like to explain why none of them have signed?

"Well well well, not so easy to have a democratic collapse that 'makes logical sense' and 'does not require everyone to be their stupidest possible self to even happen' after all, is it?" -George Lucas, somewhere

aye fair enough

i'm going to put this in the most me way possible: mandos versus aulë

I'm not fully certain about this one because in my mind the underworld is kind of a separate thing from just being underground

the phantom menace... is better than the empire strikes back...

“Fascist governments are condemned to lose wars because they are constitutionally incapable of objectively evaluating the force of the enemy.”
Umberto Eco, 1995

If irl we got a Luke Skywalker I would also encourage him to do some meditating before facing Putin instead of risking his life on the Ukrainian frontline.

Also worth saying that what Lucas thinks can defeat the Sith in-universe may well have nothing whatsoever to do with what he would say would defeat a more prosaic evil in real life, considering that in-universe, magic exists and is dependent on the aforementioned spiritual growth.

Besides for which, it's not like the inner spiritual strength could have done anything without the Rebel Fleet, innit.

I dunno, I think that's mostly an accident.

“Image of an icon of an early master unearthed during excavations at the Jedi Library ruins on Ossus”

some of the best political allegories are boring truisms

yes but i'm saying that if manichaeanism is canon then the ban has a point

I don't know if you're really supposed to look at it as Humphrey and Nixon so much as one ranch-dweller's quite-misremembered version of the fall of the Roman Republic.

Tbth I don't know if that's true, I think the Ultimate Message of the prequels is a bit more confused than that.

@brid.bsky.social next pet idea

don't blame george blame mani

this does also mean that canonically having sex is in fact bad though probably sorry

Zoroastrianism is pro-physicality in a way the Manichaeans (and the Jedi) aren't though

it's way more manichaean than it is buddhist or christian

> a division of the physical and moral universe into two halves, the evil sensual, material side and the good spiritual, formless side
> upon death we, for LUMINOUS BEINGS ARE WE, rejoin the cosmic Light, as long as we worked hard enough to detach ourselves from the works of the Dark

it's sorta fun how george lucas basically reinvented manichaeanism from first principles

somehow, even now, even after EVERYTHING, i think to some of you the concept of Russian imperialism is basically theoretical

but at the end of the day what does it even mean when there is a world power breathing down our neck going "it's not only not a genocide, it wasn't even a crime, and we will do it again :))))"

look i get it. for the absolute longest time i have had an unbelievably rich stake in a similar visceral debate, "was what the Soviets did to the Baltics a genocide." i still do. there are contexts in which making a cautious and thoughtful judgment on that point is important.