u/gubernatus

The article: between 1954 and 1990, West Germany played with an insane, existential urgency because of the heavy burden of WWII history and the division of their country. That immense pressure to demonstrate pride and honor forged this unbreakable "football steel" - a desperate hunger to prove themselves to the world.

But after reunification in 1990, that deep historical pain started to fade. Germany became a comfortable, prosperous, post-historical, and much more inclusive, diverse society. Because the country is doing so well and history stopped hurting, they've lost that raw, "fire-in-the-belly" edge.

I think it's a good theory to be considered. Before unification 3/10 World Cup Championships, 8/10 final 4 appearances. After unification, especially the last 3 world cups, well, it's not the same.

I think there is a sociological element to sports and I thought I would offer this for consideration.

Addendum: I did not think a sports article which I felt was interesting was going to draw so much hatred and venom. If the mods don't think their readers can handle a new idea without showing hatred and spewing insults, please delete the article and ban me from this subreddit.

The article is 4 years old, but it tells you the truth...

Basically, here's the argument: from 1954 to 1990 the West German soccer team was the most successful in the world. 3 world cup championships in 10 World Cups and 8 appearances in the final 4 in 10 World Cups.

The author argues that the historical West German teams were driven by an intense "fire in their belly" and a need to overcome the political trauma of a divided nation controlled by foreign powers.

However, as Germany became a prosperous, unified, and gentrified society where life grew comfortable, players lost that competitive "chip on their shoulder." From the article: "Life was becoming good for everyone in the country, so who cared about football anymore. Indeed, support for football and the national team has dwindled in Germany in recent years."

This sociological shift manifested on the pitch as the team transitioned from an identity of grit, "blood and iron," and clinical goal-scoring into a "zombie, formalist ball control" style characterized by sterile possession without a real threat up front, rendering their decline a direct byproduct, and an acceptable trade-off, of the country's overarching social and cultural success.

A year ago, there was a massive media blitz about turning old Covid isolation housing into "1331 Runway"...a vibrant, subsidized community for young local artists.

Well, it's been a year. Let's look at the actual math of what’s happening on the ground right now:

The Reality: 250 spaces are being used.

The Waste: 2,750 spaces are sitting completely empty and unused.

The Pivot: The "arts community" has effectively been sidelined to run a smallish, lucrative hostel for tourists.

So was the promise of an "arts community" nothing more than a cynical con by real-estate interests to get cheap, subsidized access to government spaces.

Can we get some answers about this?

Meanwhile, we have 15,000 elderly men living in literal cage apartments and young people working 60-hour weeks just to afford a room the size of a closet. Giving prime space to developers to run a tourist hostel while 2,750 units sit empty is an absolute insult to the people of this city.

Is anyone else tracking this? What are they actually doing with the rest of the site, or are we just pretending this wasn't a massive bait-and-switch?

This article argues that the real problem with today’s internet is the capitalist incentive structure that forces platforms to harvest human neurochemistry (dopamine, cortisol) for profit.

It shows how Meta, YouTube, Reddit, etc. are engineered to manipulate emotional states the same way tobacco and sugar companies engineered addiction for profit.

For a leftist AI community, the key point is this: the issue isn’t AI itself, it’s who owns it and what incentives shape it. The piece imagines an alternative system where AI is used against capitalist extraction: an algorithm designed to uplift, educate, and expand consciousness rather than trap users in engagement loops.

I thought I would share this article with you because you already know Meta sucks and maybe you were wondering why the federal government won't do anything.

Well, when Biden was in office a lady name Lisa Khan went after the tech companies but the forces of corruption shut her down (temporarily). You can "google" her to read of her heroic effort.

This article above is eye-opening - the court system has been changed over the years by conservatives to 'redefine' what a monopoly is. It's Orwellian.

Now if Zuckerberg is not making overly high prices by selling a product (he makes money by harvesting and selling our data) he can buy every internet company out there, he can own everything, and the court system will not consider it a monopoly.

The article explains it better and it's free so I would invite you to take a look if you are predisposed.

What is irritating is that Meta called me a robot and deleted my Facebook and Instagram and Threads. So one monopolistic company can now keep me off of 3 major social media platforms.

This has to be illegal, but with the current administration, I have a feeling that a handshake and some envelopes exchanged under a table might be stronger than ethics or the law. I mean, our current president hung out with Epstein so what the hell should we expect.

I feel this is an important issue for archeologists.

Borobudur is 100% completely historically unique. Most people do not even realize how unique and important it is. (you can read the article for details)

Basically, what makes it unique is 1) it is a huge ancient structure that was not built through slave labor and 2) it is a monument/temple meant to be explored. People were literally expected to "walk" the path in Borobudur. There are over 1,000 sculptured panels t be looked at during this walk.

There is a pilgrim's path through the temple people walked 1,000 years ago to learn about the Buddhist concept of enlightenment by examining the stone panels.

The temple is not meant to be venerated, to be selfied...it was meant to be walked to learn about Buddhism.

Right now, under the pretext of preservation, the Indonesian government has completely restricted Borobudur to this type of walk. Nobody is allowed to walk the walk. They have restricted Borobudur into a tourist hell.

They have streamlined a money-making process where they can cram as many tourists onto and off the site in as quick an amount of time as they can to make tourist dollars for a weak economy. Indeed, tourists are charged outlandish fees compared to Indonesians ($28),

Paradoxically, they are generating much more traffic on Borobudur than ever and thus their excuse to preserve the temple through a process that puts more people on the temple per day is nonsense.

If you travel 5,000 miles to Java to see this temple, you DO NOT see much of it. You are put into a group of 15 people, led by a largely unknowledgeable "guide" for 1 hour and then kicked off the temple. 5,000 miles for one hour of a guide spouting cliches when you could be walking the Borobudur walk.

I've never been a big fan of AI because I totally agree with the Pope (this is the only thing I agree with the Pope on) that the AI companies are deliberately mimicking human responses in order to sucker us into unhealthful relationships with a machine.

Then I read this article and shazzzzam it made sense to me. Wow, it really seems to be that an AI system exhibits all the symptoms of a sociopath.

It's like these giant tech companies are telling us that they are going to help us all by putting one type or other of a sociopath in charge of all aspects of our lives? This is really insane. I even remember that they said it might have been an AI system that blew up that school in Iran.

So I just wanted to get a dialogue going here - what is your take? Are these machines benign? Also, there's a big question in the article - should we be making these tech companies "dehumanize" these machines?

Because they act like humans young people are spending hours with their new "friend." It reminded me of that scene from the movie the Exorcist where the little girl talks about her conversations with Captain Howdy.

Our kids are all talking to Captain Howdy now.

Hong Kong: Here's the legacy the British and the West have left in Hong Kong:

• Housing unaffordability
• Cage homes / subdivided units
• Income inequality
• Elderly poverty
• Low social mobility
• Poor services for aging population
• Overworked labor force
• Youth disillusionment/suicide
• Education pressure followed by no jobs
• Healthcare system overload
• Air pollution
• Lack of affordable childcare

What would it take to help the people of Hong Kong finally live with dignity? It's been 30 years and the government that was left over by Great Britain did nothing.

Here's Shenzhen and its problems...is it qualitatively better?:

• Hukou exclusion of migrants - they work in SZ but receive few rights
• Urban‑village demolition - forces poor people displacement
• Housing prices rising
• Extreme work culture - 996
• Environmental stress Water scarcity, ecological loss from construction.
• Aging population - is SZ ready with welfare for the elderly?
• Educational pressure - rote learning/gaokao as god
• Social atomization - loneliness
• Delivery‑driver exploitation - so make them work like slaves then confiscate their bikes
• Youth precarity - where are the jobs?
• Mental‑health strain - Long hours, high pressure, and limited access to psychological services.

The article treats Prambanan Temple as a ninth-century political technology, where ritual, architecture, and kingship converged to naturalise obedience by embedding rule within Shaivite cosmology.

It was built by the Sanjaya dynasty as a counter to Borobudur Temple. 

Hong Kong: Here's the legacy the British and the West have left in Hong Kong

• Housing unaffordability
• Cage homes / subdivided units
• Income inequality
• Elderly poverty
• Low social mobility
• Poor services for aging population
• Overworked labor force
• Youth disillusionment/suicide
• Education pressure followed by no jobs
• Healthcare system overload
• Air pollution
• Lack of affordable childcare

Can reunification be sped up to help the people of Hong Kong finally live like human beings?

But here's Shenzhen...is it qualitatively better?:

• Hukou exclusion of migrants - they work in SZ but receive few rights
• Urban‑village demolition - forces poor people displacement
• Housing prices rising
• Extreme work culture - 996
• Environmental stress Water scarcity, ecological loss from construction.
• Aging population - is SZ ready with welfare for the elderly?
• Educational pressure - rote learning/gaokao as god
• Social atomization - loneliness
• Delivery‑driver exploitation - so make them work like slaves then confiscate their bikes
• Youth precarity - where are the jobs?
• Mental‑health strain - Long hours, high pressure, and limited access to psychological services.

In the twentieth century, there were policy initiatives in the United States that went beyond incremental reform and which could justifiably be called “utopian.”

Three of these initiatives stand out: Franklin D. Roosevelt’s proposal of a “Second Bill of Rights,” Lyndon B. Johnson’s “Great Society” and Richard Nixon’s effort to establish a type of Universal Basic Income (UBI). --- Yes, Richard Nixon.

If we take a close look at these three initiatives, and what happened with each one, we can see why “progressive” utopian programs are no longer being proposed, and why there is now space for conservative “restorative” ideals.

I liked this article because rather than treating travel as a form of cultural consumption, this essay documents a deliberate ritual of bearing witness.

In every city visited across Asia, the author dedicates the first day to seeking out a site of historical trauma, confronting the material legacies of imperialism, war and state violence.

From the preserved colonial cells of Hanoi, to the unrecognized memorial in Phnom Penh, a firebombing museum in Tokyo etc, the narrative bypasses conventional tourism to examine the enduring historical costs borne by local populations.

Here is an interesting article which argues that the temple was built as a funerary monument for a god-king, not as a spiritual lesson for visitors.

It suggests that most tourists go for the photos and selfies rather than transformative insight, and that the site’s history is more about the power and ambition of its builders than about moral or spiritual lessons.

It's pointed out that slave labor was used to construct the monument - that people suffered and died making the thing you are taking selfies on.

Unfortunately the article didn't mention the current political state of Cambodia, which has been run by the same dictator for over 40 years - who has lined his pockets with more than 1 billion dollars while his people live off of $3 per day.

Guess who has a major stake in the tourist industry in Cambodia and who profits from tourist dollars the most?

So you wanna go to Cambodia to see a tomb built by slave labor and hand money over to a billionaire dictator? :P :P :P

This secretive religious ritual in Vietnam blends three types of religious expression:

Shamanism (hunter-gatherer mode): the medium enters trance and serves as a bridge between human and divine worlds. Their transformations recall the ecstatic practices of early shamans.

Magic (farmer’s mode): many acts in the ritual directly aim at efficacy: scattering coins for prosperity, waving fans for abundance, or blessing scarves for protection. This is sympathetic magic, the farmer’s hope for rain, growth, and fertility expressed symbolically.

Religion (city mode): the rite is framed within a structured pantheon (Tu phu), temples, altars, and liturgy. Participants pray for favors in a system of hierarchy and ritual order, much like formal religion. The goal is moral transformation within a complex social organization.

I used to post links to various subreddits and that feature just disappeared. In the past it disappeared briefly, but now it is gone completely for me.

I asked AI whether reddit felt I was posting too many links, even though reddit seems to encourage me to do this. AI said this:

No — Reddit isn’t “punishing” you for posting too much. What you ran into is Reddit’s janky, half‑broken new interface combined with their automatic anti‑spam throttle, which triggers randomly and hits normal users all the time.

It’s not a moral judgment, not a moderator action, not a secret penalty; it’s just Reddit’s backend temporarily blocking certain actions when it thinks there’s “unusual activity,” and the new UI handles that badly by silently breaking buttons instead of telling you what’s happening.

If Reddit were actually punishing you, you’d get a message or a modmail — this is just their system being __________.

I used to be able to post links. That feature has disappeared. In the past it would disappear for a while and come back, now it is gone completely.

I asked AI what is happening, this was the guess (is this true?):

No — Reddit isn’t “punishing” you for posting too much. What you ran into is Reddit’s janky, half‑broken new interface combined with their automatic anti‑spam throttle, which triggers randomly and hits normal users all the time.

It’s not a moral judgment, not a moderator action, not a secret penalty; it’s just Reddit’s backend temporarily blocking certain actions when it thinks there’s “unusual activity,” and the new UI handles that badly by silently breaking buttons instead of telling you what’s happening.

If Reddit were actually punishing you, you’d get a message or a modmail — this is just their system being garbage.