Thick thighs save lives 🥰 ATM meets in southern VA WV this week. Coming to the Hatfield and McCoy trails and trying to get away for a minute? Want humiliated in front of your friends? I set the limit and you pay up dirty boy.

Saudi Arabia Poised To End US Dollar Hegemony With China, BRICS | US De-Dollarization Nightmare" on YouTube

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Prison Break- Final Season

I need to study but I keep getting hit with oc visions. Crimson we are really in it now

Man im just... so fucking sad. Fuck Netflix

im just going to believe that everyone in the show is having passionate gay sex and thats why they cant show it on screen

want to prove me wrong, netflix? bring the show back

It’s insane tht my office neighbor clips her nails and the sound of the nail clipper rings through the whole office. Sweet melody of resistance

i'm thinking of moving to taiwan after college, how has it been treating you? a lot of people i know who did move to taiwan only talk about how hard the language is (even if they're taiwanese 🥲) but i wanna now how like, your everyday life is!

oooo, that sounds so exciting, wherever you end up i hope you enjoy it! But yea, so I live just outside of Taipei in New Taipei but New Taipei is actually huge and there are many parts of New taipei that are like super far from Taipei proper and are pretty hard to live in without a having a scooter or car. I'm assuming you've been to taiwan before if you think you want to move there but ya never know! I tbh knew very little abt taiwan before coming here but yea. Just giving you an idea of where I live and that i can't speak for all of Taiwan, just my area thats just outside of taipei but still served by their metro system (which is honestly super dope, shout out to the MRT).

So like I overall love living here sm, I'd love to live here someday for work or smth and not just studying abroad. The transportation is amazing, the nature is. so lovely. Like tbh no matter where I am in the city I am no more than 10 km away from the river or the mountains and everything is so green and nice. However in order to be so green all the time, taipei is very rainy and very humid. Legit my hair was such a nightmare when i got here, if you are from a dry climate, you will notice so many changes. Like my skin is rlly nice bc of the moisture, but my hair was unmanageable so i chopped it off. But I also have was less allergies now. If youre originally from a humid climate it should be nbd.

My daily life is honestly pretty easy. I live in a dorm so I didn't have to deal with things like speaking to a landlord or finding someone who would rent to me, or having to deal with utility bills, or dealing with the semi confusing garbage disposal system. But, I do know ppl that did have to do these things and speak way less chinese than I do and were just fine. Honestly, ppl say that you can live in the Taipei area without speaking chinese and be just fine bc most ppl speak english. Tbh idk how anyone does that, I rarely speak to anyone in english here but I think thats bc I always try speaking chinese first. Most people can speak a decent amount but unless you speak to them in english first theyll speak in chinese. I feel like most things you can learn just by living your daily life and learning high frequency words and when all else fails use google translate. But honestly, my life is very easy and pleasant. If I'm hungry I can easily go to a food stall or grocery store or convenience store near where I live. If I really don't want to leave the house, I can order food with a reasonable delivery fee (well reasonable to me, ik food prices are going up here).

Personally, I find that making friends here is pretty hard, but I'm not a very social person and find it hard to start conversations with ppl idk, and most taiwanese people don't talk to you if you don't talk to them, so this might be hard. But I feel like everyone is very friendly for the most part its just kinda finding the chances to make friends is rare if you aren't working or going to classes or know someone here already.

But overall yea no taiwan is a great place to live, there's a lot of things I'm gonna miss abt taiwan when i go home but somethings in my home country are hard to find here. Some of the traditional taiwanese food isn't bad, but not like my cup of tea, but you can find a lot here. It's just that most like foreign cuisine is more expensive or geared towards the locals so its not very authentic. I def miss hispanic food and some foods are hard to recreate here bc of lack of ingredients but taiwanese food is also very nice. Some dishes may look boring but are actually very good. I hope you like living in taiwan if you end up living here!

Ruined for me.

Forever.

hghghhh i did a bunch of shit today i’m tired. art stores are fun to look around in though

i've said it before and i'll say it again but i wish more girlies (gn) wore baggy clothes at my gym. everyone looks so put together in bright colored matching sets. need more slobs who prefer to cover up.

every day i go to work and i am reminded by how much i love children...

Right now Israel's bombing Rafah, the last refuge for a million Palestinians, where they were previously ORDERED to evacuate to and are now trapped in while the US news cycle is dominated by Big Football Game And Celebrities In Attendance (at which Israel also aired a million dollar propaganda video). I wish I could say this is unbelievable.

Crypto Clash: China and USA Compete for Global Dominance | ICODesk

Crypto Clash: China and USA Compete for Supremacy in the Global Blockchain Arena

In the rapidly developing cryptocurrency landscape, two global superpowers, China and the United States, are engaged in a fierce rivalry for supremacy and this struggle goes beyond and extends beyond the traditional financial and technology sectors into the realm of blockchain and digital currencies. In this study, we examine the mechanisms, policies, and innovations that explain the crypto struggle between China and the United States. 

Digital Yuan vs Digital Dollar: The Battle of Central Bank Digital Currencies (CBDCs)

China has made great strides in developing its digital currency, the digital yuan. Standing as the central bank’s digital currency (CBDC), the digital yuan aims to reshape the global financial landscape. Meanwhile, the U.S. is considering creating a digital dollar, and discussions revolve around the potential benefits and challenges of such a move. The race to establish the first widely accepted CBDC is one of the most important elements of the crypto struggle.

Legislative strategies: Striking a balance

China and the United States are leading the way in tighter cryptocurrency regulation. China has taken a tough instance, banning cryptocurrency exchanges and initial coin offerings (ICOs) and actively exploring blockchain technology. In contrast, the U.S. takes a nuanced approach, striving to balance innovation with investor protection. 

Technological Innovation: Blockchain and Beyond

The crypto struggle also extends to technological innovation. China has emerged as a leader in blockchain development, with infrastructure such as blockchain-based service network (BSN). Meanwhile, the USA is fostering innovation through a combination of public and private sector initiatives, with a focus on blockchain applications beyond digital currencies. 

Global Impact: Economic and Geopolitical Implications

As China and the United States jostle for crypto supremacy, global economics and geopolitics hang in the balance. CBDC approval, and developments in blockchain, could affect international trade, monetary policy, and the distribution of economic power. The winner of the crypto scramble stands to shape the future of global finance and technology.

Investor Sentiment: Navigating uncertainty in crypto markets

The crypto scramble instills some uncertainty in the minds of investors worldwide. Fluctuating regulations, technological developments, and the adoption of digital currencies create a dynamic environment for crypto investors. To understand what China and the US are doing, the crypto struggle translates into a need for investors looking to navigate this ever-changing landscape.

For more updates 

I'm asking this genuinely, as a 19 yo with no education in economics and a pretty surface level understanding of socialism: can you explain the whole Bananas discourse in a way someone like me might understand? In my understanding it's just "This is just a product we can give up to create better worker conditions and that's fine" but apparently that's not the full picture?

alright so some pretty important background to all this is that we're all talking about the fact that bananas, grown in the global south, are available year-round at extremely low prices all around europe and the USA. it's not really about bananas per so--the banana in this discourse is a synechdoche for all the economic benefits of imperialism.

so how are cheap bananas a result of imperialism? first of all i want to tackle a common and v. silly counterargument: 'oh, these ridiculous communists think it's imperialist for produce to be shipped internationally'. nah. believing that this is the communist objection requires believing in a deeply naive view of international traide. this view goes something like 'well, if honduras has lots of bananas, and people in the usa want bananas and are willing to pay for them, surely everyone wins when the usa buys bananas!'.

there are of course two key errors here and they are both packed into 'honduras has lots of bananas'. for a start, although the bananas are grown in honduras, honduras doesn't really 'have' them, because the plantations are mostly owned by chiquita (formerly known as united fruit) dole, del monte, and other multinationals--when they're not, those multinationals will usually purchase the bananas from honduran growers and conduct the export themselves. and wouldn't you know it, it's those intervening middleman steps--export, import, and retail, where the vast majority of money is made off bananas! so in the process of a banana making its way from honduras to a 7/11, usamerican multinationals make money selling the bananas to usamerican importers who make money selling them to usamerican retailers who make money selling them to usamerican customers.

when chiquita sells a banana to be sold in walmart, a magic trick is being performed: a banana is disappearing from honduras, and yet somehow an american company is paying a second american company for it! this is economic imperialism, the usamerican multinational extracting resources from a nation while simultaneously pocketing the value of those resources.

why does the honduran government allow this? if selling bananas is such a bad deal for the nation, why do they continue to export millions of dollars of banans a year? well, obviously, there's the fact that if they didn't, they would face a coup. the united states is more than willing to intervene and cause mass death and war to protect the profits of its multinationals. but the second, more subtle thing keeping honduras bound to this ridiculously unbalanced relationship is the need for dollars. because the US dollar is the global reserve currency, and the de facto currency of international trade, exporting to the USA is a basic necessity for nations like honduras, guatemala, &c. why is the dollar the global reserve currency? because of usamerican military and economic hegemony, of course. imperialism built upon imperialism!

this is unequal exchange, the neoimperialist terms of international trade that make the 'global economy' a tool of siphoning value and resources from the global south to the imperial core. & this is the second flaw to unravel in 'honduras has a lot of bananas' -- honduras only 'has a lot of bananas' because this global economic hegemony has led to vast unsustainable monoculture banana plantations to dominate the agriculture of honduras. it's long-attested how monoculture growth is unsustainable because it destroys soil and leads to easily-wiped-out-by-infection plants.

so, bananas in the USA are cheap because:

the workers that grow them are barely paid, mistreated, prevented from unionizing, and sometimes murdered

the nations in which the bananas are grown accept brutally unfair trade and tariff terms with the USA because they desperately need a supply of US dollars and so have little position to negotiate

shipping is also much cheaper than it should be because sailors are chronically underpaid and often not paid at all or forced to pay to work (!)

bananas are cheap, in conclusion, because they're produced by underpaid and brutalized workers and then imported on extortionate and unfair terms.

so what, should we all give up bananas? no, and it's a sign of total lack of understanding of socialism as a global movement that all the pearl-clutching usamericans have latched onto the scary communists telling them to stop buying bananas. communism does not care about you as a consumer. individual consumptive choices are not a meaningful arena of political action. the socialist position is not "if there was a socialist reovlution in the usa, we would all stop eating bananas like good little boys", but rather, "if there's a socialist revolution in the countries where bananas are grown, then the availability of bananas in the usa is going to drop, and if you want to be an anti-imperialist in the imperial core you have to accept that".

(this is where the second argument i see about this, 'oh what are you catholic you want me to eat dirt like a monk?' reveals itself as a silly fucking solipsistic misunderstanding)

and again, let's note that the case of the banana can very easily be generalised out to coffee, chocolate, sugar, etc, and that it's not about individual consumptive habits, but about global economic systems. if you are donkey fucking kong and you eat 100 bananas a day i don't care and neither does anyone else. it's about trying to illustrate just one tiny mundane way in which economic imperialism makes the lives of people in the global north more convenient and simpler and so of course there is enormous pushback from people who attach moral value to this and therefore feel like the mean commies are personally calling them evil for eating a nutella or whatever which is frankly pretty tiring. Sad!

tldr: it is not imperialism when produce go on boat but it is imperialism when produce grown for dirt cheap by underpaid workers in a country with a devalued currency is then bought and exported and sold by usamerican companies creating huge amounts of economic value of which the nation in which the banana was grown, let alone the people who actually fucking grew it, don't see a cent -- and this is the engine behind the cheap, available-every-day-all-year-everywhere presence of bananas in the usa (and other places!)