In 2024 Puerto Rico held a referendum on precisely this question, and the majority (58%) chose statehood while only 11% chose independence. It’s not a perfect measure (retaining the current status quo wasn’t an option, only 63% of voters turned out) but it shows a pretty clear preference IMO.

What’s nuts to me is that neither major American party has gone for it. The House passed a bill in 2022 which would have admitted PR as a state but it went nowhere - but damn that’s two whole Senate seats that could go to either party if they came out as strongly pro-PR. Same thing for DC.

Play carnival game

Guess the box!

Only one box isn’t empty

Open it

Tissue paper

“Better luck next time!”

What you gotta do is carry a small object and hold it in front of you, and then teleport forward and back so that the object goes into and out of the lock, breaking it.

3 for sure. Depending on how teleporting into other objects works, and how fast you can spam it, you could get some serious work done with a power like that.

I think people got mad at something she said about Avatar on twitter (the cartoon not the movie), and her anti-fandom reached a critical mass spreading around every single thing she’d ever said that could be interpreted uncharitably, and with her book out and her presence on Nebula secured she decided that being on YouTube was more trouble than its worth.

It was but they had to change it for Shrek and the G-rated version became the canonical one.

I genuinely couldn’t even tell you the last time I saw somebody in real life with wired headphones.

You haven’t seen me walking my dog daily then /shrug

If it were Kamala she would be doing exactly what Trump is doing. The Democrats have been thouroughly demonstrated by this point to be fascists, their fascist program just rolls a little bit slower and more competently than the Republican one.

The two-party system is a myth. A sham democracy. More fake that Putin’s election numbers. America is ruled by a single political party which has two factions, and every ounce of energy that is spent trying to prop up one faction or the other is energy wasted.

I was talking about these extremely cringe anti-tankie memes. There’s no equivalent from tankie spaces.

just saying, lemm.ee is federated with .ml and even hexbear and i only see this stuff coming from .world.

Treantmonk is a guy who does in-depth D&D math, I’ve been playing that game using his ideas for like two decades now and his channel is called Treantmonk’s Temple

Look at pictures of people in their 30s back in the 70s, and compare them to people in their 30s today. It’s a massive difference, I hypothesize that it’s the leaded gasoline and secondhand smoke that makes it although I’m not aware of any science to back that up.

China continuing to claim the same seas that it has been claiming since the 19th century is imperialism, not the country from the other side of the world using legal warfare and gunboat diplomacy to deny them that claim

whatever you say bud

Brother 90% of the world’s labor is done by 50% of the countries, and it aint fukken Europe that’s doing the hard work to keep the global economy running.

And please point to any example of Chinese imperialism that has occurred in the last forty years. No, offering loans with better terms than what the IMF offers to African countries does not count.

You could say the same about every developed nation

“Developed nation” is a propaganda term designed to make you think that the overexploited nations of the world are on some mythical path that will lead them to a first world quality of life.

every western European country has already eliminated the worst kind of poverty and on average European citizens are better off than Chinese citizens

This is an apples-to-oranges comparison. Europe is the beneficiary of hundreds of years of imperialism and accumulation and the ongoing system of global unequal exchange, whereas China is a former victim of said imperialism that has pulled themselves out of the muck with their own workers’ labor. China is better off compared to India, which achieved independence not long afterward but has fallen far behind in every single development index because of their failure to overthrow capital.

It also wasn’t a peaceful democratic movement. My point is merely that a lot of people who don’t know anything write extremely confidently on this and every other topic related to communist history.

What makes you think Xi is a dictator? If your answer is “because that’s the vibe I get from American Government propaganda”, then you should reassess the things you think you know about the world. The truth is that China has a very vibrant and active democracy that is much more responsive to the demands of its people than that of most other nations, and Xi is merely the one currently at the top of that democratic system.

Do you take the Chinese citizens at theirs?

We find that first, since the start of the survey in 2003, Chinese citizen satisfaction with government has increased virtually across the board. From the impact of broad national policies to the conduct of local town officials, Chinese citizens rate the government as more capable and effective than ever before. Interestingly, more marginalized groups in poorer, inland regions are actually comparatively more likely to report increases in satisfaction. Second, the attitudes of Chinese citizens appear to respond (both positively and negatively) to real changes in their material well-being, which suggests that support could be undermined by the twin challenges of declining economic growth and a deteriorating natural environment.

Very few governments on this planet have approval numbers this good, and even fewer have numbers this good when it’s a neutral third party conducting the surveys.

I think China would have to do a lot more for the avg person before they could be considered socialist or communist again

Within the last five years China completely eliminated the worst category of poverty in their borders. I’d say they are currently actively engaged in doing a lot more for the average person than most countries.

more recently expressed complete authority over such as Taiwan

What complete authority does the PRC have over Taiwan? Their position now is the same as its been for seventy years - they consider it part of their country but exercise no actual control over it.