Yeah, Cambodia is a weird case. The Khmer Rouge developed a weird anti-Vietnamese ethno nationalism, and then when the Vietnamese kicked them out of power, they installed an actually Socialist government, The People’s Republic of Kampuchea, but it was ultimately unable to survive the collapse of the Comecon, the Socialist trade bloc, and the continual Khmer Rouge insurgency.

The UN had to step in at one point to administer things, and it ultimately ended in the re-establishment of the Cambodian monarchy

It’s literally right fucking there???

It’s a beautiful country, and one of the easiest places I’ve ever been, to get around in. Signage is ample, and if a sign isn’t in English (which they often are), it’s usually going to be in Romanji (Japanese in Latin alphabet). So brush up on your Japanese phonics.

If you’re in Tokyo, the main train line you’ll be riding is going to be the Yamanote line, which is just a big loop around the city. If you can orient yourself relative to where you are on that big circle, that’ll help a lot.

We could even call it something like… New Amsterdam 🤔

Take the Estradiol, 5th avenue!!

There kind of are though? Most signs are in multiple languages (Japanese, English, Korean, and Chinese), and for the ones that aren’t, they usually have Romanji appended.

Plus, train stations, etc. Are very ample signage, and important information over the train intercom are in both Japanese and English (ie. “Now arriving at Ueno”). Also, train stations all have their own little jingles. So you can know where you are based on the song, when the train starts moving.

I know only a smattering of Japanese, but it was an incredibly easy country to get around in…

And that’s fair, I think. I’ve considered keeping some money in Monero wallets in case I need to buy grey market HRT.

What gets me, is people dumping their entire savings into exchanges and essentially speculating on a highly volatile thing like cryptocurrency.

Good for them tbh

Anyone still into crypto in 2026 deserves it ¯\(ツ)/¯

North Korea is actually going through an economic boom right now, interestingly. And that new money flowing into the country is being put, in large part to the 20×10 policy, meant to develop regions outside Pyongyang over the next 10 years.

So, while North Korea has a litany of problems, Kim Jong Un sitting on all that money like Smaug isn’t necessarily one of them. They are doing stuff with it.

So, I think the people doing that job should be making standard working class wages, and they should, for example, be elected by their respective interest group organisations to a formal legislative body that consults on and can propose legislation, but not pass it.

Like the house of Lords, but instead of being full of rich people named Baroness Killthepoor, it’s an actually useful body.

Lobbyists are an informal adhoc means of essentially legalizing bribery, that has been codified over time. While legitimate good might come from that system, as you’ve pointed out, some kind of formal democratic system by which formalise and democratize that consultative role should be enacted.

But there are lobbyists for non-profits, unions, and advocacy groups, too.

Correct, but those interest groups should be allowed some kind of formal consultative role in the political process, rather than being forced to throw money around

A rubber duck doesn’t lie to you and stroke your ego off

Pretty sure I saw some Brony porn in 2012 that looked a bit like that…

Mongolia, and a few other things, yeah

To some extent… But in the USA until recently people never had reason to fear speaking out against their government.

Which people? The FBI killed Black Panther organizer Fred Hampton in his bed, back in the 60s.

The Red Scare was a decade before that.

And the back in the 1930s, The Bonus Army, a movement of World War 1 veterans demanding payment for their service from the government, was violently crushed by the united States military.

.ml is mostly fine. I picked it, because it gives me a good view of both Hexbear and Lemmygrad, because I like seeing what the lefty-side of Lemmy is up to (turns out its a lot more posts about Beans than you might expect), while also letting me see most of the mainstream of Lemmy, which has more of a traditional old-Reddit style culture, which is nice.

I enjoy politics posting, and discussion. But it’s nice seeing other kinds of stuff too, and .ml let’s me do both.

What annoys me, and this is a Lemmy-wide problem, is people making assumptions about other’s beliefs based soley on their instance of choice. It’s not helpful, it’s not generative, and it’s a waste of everyone’s time.

Like, I don’t think you should be getting hate, just because you’re a .world user. As long as you’re asking a question in good faith, and not being a shithead, I see no reason why you posing this here should be an issue ¯_(ツ)_/¯

Karl Marx was alive during the civil war. We know what he and his fellow communists thought about it. In fact, some of his fellow Communists were Forty-Eighters: German Radicals who were exiled after the failed revolutions of 1848, many of whom fought in the civil war.

One of them was August Willich, an ardent Communist who thought Marx of all people was too conservative. A “Tankie” of his day.

The German Communists, like Willich, who fought in the American Civil War believed that the war against slavery, and in the side of the Union, was a Social Revolution against the reactionary landed gentry of the south.

Many Forty-Eighters settled in Southwest, Ohio. If you go to the rapidly gentrifying Cincinnati neighborhood of Over The Rhine, it’s called that because it was originally made up of forty-eighter German immigrants, who became active participants in the underground railroad, and helped set up social programs to educate freed slaves, and provide them with housing and such.

So the only person lacking critical thinking here is you OP. You’ve made up a guy in your head, to get mad at.