There have always, and I mean ever since people began to settle down in the Neolithic, polities with a strong tendency to conquer, subjugate and centralize larges tracts of territories, cities, rural areas and people. That is, centralization of power over resources.
We call them "empires" when we talk about the Ancient historical period, although in the Middle Ages there were empires too, archetypically, France. But medieval feudal kingdoms and other sovereign entities were pretty much the exact same thing, just smaller and perhaps sometimes nominally subject to an Empire. The Hanseatic League, the German and Italian mosaic of cities and principalities and other similar entities had to coexist and survive against these aggregating, centralizing polities all along their existence, until they finally were annexed too.
And we're just talking about Europe. If you look at the Indian world, in the subcontinent and in SE Asia, or the Chinese sphere of influence in NE Asia, it was as centralized or more.
The conventional definition of "nation-state" is extremely weak and I have never bought it. Most often, it's something along the lines of "and unlike in the medieval era, now the people identified with the 'country' instead of their village", which is simply false as a universal claim.
The myth that "nations" appear only by magic when a bunch of monarchs put their signature on the treaties that concluded the Peace of Westphalia in the 17th century, and that those "nations" are identical to the States that happen to exist as a consequence, has no substance to it. And saying that it was an even later development, from the 19th century or even the aftermath of WW1 with the Wilsonian "principle of self-determination", even less.
More than 2000 years ago we already had Romans, and civil wars were fought over the right to receive full Roman citizenship by all its inhabitants. The English before Hastings were already fully aware of their national struggle to unify the territory, in opposition to both the different Celtic nations and the Norse. The Dutch, Portuguese and Catalan revolts against the Castilian-led Spanish Habsburg Empire were transparently national in nature.
The "modern nation-state" myth is simply a justification that the most recent existing states, extremely centralized due to modern technology and development, have constructed for themselves and the status quo they want to uphold. That's all. There is no objective difference with the "previous" order.
The greatness of open source software is the ability to fork.
I'm obviously against allowing these fringe groups to take over in the first place, but once it has happened, well, move on, fork the project and leave the freaks behind.
By the way, the idea of "representation" is ludicrous in itself. But when we're talking about cutting edge activities like designing new software, which are necessarily driven by a small minority, it's even more absurd, stupid and counterproductive.
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A propos of the relationship between "altruism", psychological trauma and disorders, and thievery, that chap TIK on Youtube just published a video.
I think when he veers from pure history he sometime is a little bit out there, sometimes a bit shallow, so to speak, but he makes intriguing points at the very least.
That can also make it easier, because you will have more stuff to recommend depending on the circumstances.
Love the country, studied there, lived there, married one, worked for and with Japanese since forever, Japanese is our home language and I am culturally immersed in it... and this shit they do of not using replies or mentions pisses me off big time.
I learnt long ago that things like this, that piss me off, are part of the package and the things I love wouldn't probably exist without them, so I stopped bitching a very long time ago.
But since we're talking...
The thief's mindset. Always "for the greater good" of course.
Good morning 'Muricah.
With the amount of coffee grounds I produce weekly that simply go to the garbage bin, this is definitely something I want to to try!
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Coracle on Firefox mainly, but it happens with any Nostr app. The Alby extension will take one minute and even longer sometimes just to pop up to sign in.
By the way, in Taiwan, let's be polite and if you want to be there long term, try to learn at least Min-nan/Hokkien or who knows, maybe even Hakka. Still goes a long way in Malaysia, Singapore and the Philippines nowadays (and obviously in Fujian in China).
I first visited Taiwan 20 years ago when I was studying in Tokyo. Went with my Japanese flatmate, landed in Taipei, rented bikes, and ended up in Kenting. After that I learnt Mandarin and lived and worked in China for a while, then five years in Singapore. Been to Taiwan many times since, and it's still one of my favorites places in Asia second only to Japan. The shit they have to put with, including the catastrophe that the landing of the KMT with one million mainlanders in the Taipei metro area, is phenomenal. I probably wouldn't.
Letting individuals make them. The amount of collective decision making required to live in peace, harmony and order is a lot smaller that your brain has been trained to believe since you were a little child.
Yes, actually it's true. I work in international trade and right there already no recourse in case of need for formal conflict resolution methods, so we all just operate under the principle of caution and, if you someone fucks you over, perhaps peer pressure mechanisms (denouncing them on public forums and shaming them).
That's until an entrepreneurial Nostr app dev gives each onboarding user a few thousand sats to get them started, and finds a way to seamlessly onramp fiat directly to the user's completely integrated LN wallet. People should not have to deal with a separate signer, LN wallet, Nostr app, fiat onramp...
There is a strong argument from the most anarchist positions within libertarianism that nation state as we see it today is not necessary for law and order. People in this camp argue that all societies ancient and new have developed such systems, before and after the current encroachment.
I tend to agree, thinking about a community's immediate daily needs, but I have trouble scaling it up to the level of our current global, intercontinental trade and social relationships.
Communist flags, Palestinian flags and Allahu akhbar chants in Paris to protest against the results of the election. Zero surprises here. Anyone with half a brain knows they are all funded by the same people and have the same objectives.