In 1914, Russia was ruled by an authoritarian Monarchist regime that was led by a tyrant who had a ego and was out of touch. This leader, Tsar Nicholas II, feared the power of his crown was weakening and so he decided to have Russia join WWI thinking that it would be easy victory that would lead to him entrenching his power and realizing his imperial ambitions. For 3 long years, Russia suffered extremely heavy losses for very mediocre results. These losses set the stage for revolutions to take place in 1918 that led to the end of the monarchy and the Russian Empire.

In 1979 the Soviet Union was ruled by an authoritarian Marxist regime led by a tyrant who had a big ego and was out of touch. This leader, Leonid Brezhnev, feared that Soviet grip on the islamic republics in central Asia was weakening and so he decided to have the Soviet Union invade invade Afghanistan thinking it would be an easy victory that would lead him to entrench the CCCP's power in central Asia and realize his imperial ambitions. For 9 long years, the Soviet Union suffered extremely heavy losses for very mediocre results. These losses set the stage for revolutions to take place in 1991 that led to the end of Communism and the Soviet Union.

In 2022, the Russian Federation was ruled by an authoritarian oligarchic regime led by a tyrant who had a big ego and was out of touch. This leader, Vladimir Putin, feared that his grip on power was weakening and so he decided to invade Ukraine thinking it would be an easy victory that would lead him to entrench his power and realize his imperial ambitions of restoring the Soviet borders. For 4 long years and counting, Russia suffered extremely heavy losses for very mediocre results. We are now witnessing these losses set the stage for a new revolution to take place that will lead to the fall of the Russian Federation.

History doesn't repeat, but it sure does rhyme, doesn't it?

I firmly believe that we are currently witnessing the Russian Federation fall into collapse in real time. They are making the same exact mistakes that led the country to collapse twice in the last century. In both of the previous collapses, Russia was seen as a great world power that was strong, but had some major flaws. Mainly that the Russian economy was not doing well and the population was going through demographic turmoil. In both cases, the wars that the country dragged themselves into exasperated these issues leaving the people desperate and angry. We're currently seeing the same thing happen now.

Russia's fumble in Ukraine is one of the biggest, if not the biggest, humiliation stories of this century. Russia went from being a well respected military power that's widely considered the second strongest in the world, to now being a joke of a military that's the second best in Ukraine. They all their political legitmacy, diplomatic power, their economy, the strength of their currency, their military strength, and over half a million young men... and for what? less than 20% of Ukraine's territory. That's less than half of the territory they originally captured in the first few weeks, and that percentage is slowly decreasing. They're losing a war they started against a much smaller and weaker neighbor.

How can Putin and his regime ever salvage this situation? How can Russia recover from this? The answer is that they can't. The days of the current regime are numbered, and the Russian Federation will collapse within the decade as the demographic collapse and hollow economy start to bite the population. Mark my words, we will see a revolution in Russia start to take place in a few years, and we will have a new Russian state within the decade.

Here's the verse in English (Sahih International translation):

"Men are in charge of women by [right of] what Allah has given one over the other and what they spend [for maintenance] from their wealth. So righteous women are devoutly obedient, guarding in [the husband's] absence what Allah would have them guard. But those [wives] from whom you fear arrogance - [first] advise them; [then if they persist], forsake them in bed; and [finally], strike them. But if they obey you [once more], seek no means against them. Indeed, Allah is ever Exalted and Grand."

Link (You can also read the Arabic version here): https://quran.com/4/34

This verse is fairly self-explanatory. It instructs muslims on how women should be treated. The verse states that men are in charge of women and how they spend their wealth, good women are those who obey, and if a woman disobeys then her husband can warn her, forsake her, and finally, beat her.

Don't believe I have the right interpretation? Fine, here's an islamic website that the echos the same meaning (I'll get to the justifications they use later).

But first, let me explain why this verse just reeks of misogyny. This verse clearly demonstrates that women are inferiors in multiple ways. The first is that men are in charge of them and their wealth, this sets a hierarchy among the genders where men are placed above women. The verse reinforces this hierarchy by going on to say that women are to be subservient to their husbands. The verse portrays this obedience as being virtuous, however the verse contradicts itself by having the obedience be forced. Virtue is achieved through choice. If I choose to feed the homeless, than that is me taking action on my own behalf to demonstrate moral excellence. However, if I was forced to feed the homeless against my will, then how can it still be a virtue? You're forced to do something, therefore you're longer performing a certain action out of choice, but out of fear. In this case, it is the fear of being punished, specifically, getting beat by your husband. When someone is forced to do something against their will and is forced to obey, then it stops being about virtue and simply becomes slavery. This verse instructs the oppression of women.

This verse is repulsive and vile, and doesn't receive nearly as much criticism as it should.

In my experience, there are generally three common non-islamic defenses for this verse, and all are weak since they are disingenuous and rely on logical fallacies:

1 - The first defense has to do with the word "اضربوهن" (adrabohen). It is translated as "strike them" in the translation. People who try to use this defense state that the word has multiple meanings, and the meaning cannot be accurately translated into other languages or that you misunderstood the actual meaning. However, this defense is very fallacious because it sets up a No True Scotsman.

If you concede even a little (especially if you don't speak Arabic), then no matter what you say you will always will be met something like "but that's not the REAL meaning". However, the very premise of this argument stems disingenuous misinformation. Now, it is true that the word has multiple meanings (I'm an Arabic speaker), the word can both mean to hit/beat or to multiply. However, the context is crystal clear that it's not talking about multiplication, but about wives. The word can literally be translated to "to hit/beat them (females)", it's important to note that Arabic is a gendered language and the "هن" is the plural feminine version of the "them". Therefore, the word, when the context is taken into account, does in fact mean to hit/beat wives.

2 - The second defense tries to justify the wife beating by saying it doesn't mean to beat your wives, but to "lightly" discipline them. They say that islam has a rules about how to beat your wife, and that it doesn't allow super hard wife beatings.... This argument is clearly trying to downplay the wife beating, and it fails at it because you can never ever justify wife beating.

Another common version of this defense tries to justify wife beating by saying it's only allowed "in the most extreme cases". However, that's simply not true. By just using this very verse, you can easily figure out what the necessary conditions are to permit beating your wife. All that is required is for the wife to simply disobey you more than two times.

Considering a woman daring to disobey her husband to be an "extreme" case that warrants wife beating is simply anti-women. No matter how disobedient the wife is or how many times she disobeys, that doesn't give anyone the right to beat her, or anyone really. Domestic violence can never be tolerated, yet both of these examples are used in the website that I used earlier to justify it.

3 - Finally, the third common defense is the good ol' Tu Quoque fallacy, also known as, whataboutism. It is when they try to appeal to hypocrisy by bringing up other religions (especially Christianity) and saying "why are criticizing islam when these other religions have it too". However, just because wife beating is present in other religions doesn't mean that it's justified in islam. This defense is just a poor attempt at derailing the conversation, and doesn't negate anything.

At the the end of the day, this verse is indefensible. You can't justify oppression and wife beating. This verse is sexist and misogynistic, and it could very well be argued that this verse is a direct influence on the misogyny present in islamic culture to this very day.

Note: I'm thinking of doing a series on islam where I create posts like this where I go through various verses, hadiths, and religious traditions and critique them directly on their own merits to the best of my abilities. However, I'll only do it if there's interest from the community so please let me know if you would like to see more.

The GOP is currently a zombie. It is functionally dead. Trump during his first term has purged the party of its intellectual diversity, its institutional power, its safeguards, and its established factions. He removed everyone and everything that opposed him in anyway. This left the GOP as a shell of itself where the only Republicans left were either blind loyalists or slimy opportunists.

Because of this, the GOP currently stands for absolutely nothing. It has no platform, no leadership, no morals, no structure, no institutional power, nothing. Everything starts and stops with Trump. The party is so gutted that Trump can do the most criminal, most insane, and most damaging things and nobody in the party would even oppose him, let alone stop him.

This works now because he's still there, but what happens when he dies? I firmly believe that when Trump dies, MAGA will die with him because a cult cannot survive without the spell of its leader. If MAGA is out, where does that leave the GOP? The answer is a clean slate.

A lot of people think the GOP will collapse and disappear without MAGA, but I disagree with this notion. Political parties are entities that always evolve to ensure their survival. The GOP will be around as long as there is a desire for conservatism in society, and there will always be such a desire in any society.

The Republican party will evolve to match the political appetite of the current American public. The polls have consistently shown that the American public is increasingly becoming more socially conservative and more economically liberal. In other words, the inverse of the previous era's status quo, which was being socially liberal but fiscally conservative.

The new GOP could look similar to what it is like now on social issues where its mostly culture war driven, but perhaps a bit more principled and coherent. I do think they'll compromise on issues like drugs and abortion, but they'll still be against things like multiculturalism, DEI, and trans rights while also being nationalist. Economically, I do think they'll abandon Reagan era positions like free trade, deregulation, and corporate tax cuts and adopt a more populist position like being pro universal healthcare, worker rights, better public transport, and government intervention in the economy.

If the GOP does end up going through this kind of change, I am fully confident that they will unlock a huge and dormant section of the voting population that will turn out for them in droves, thus keeping them relevant for decades to come.

I come on here every so often to see what's going on, and every time I leave disappointed. This is my top 3 grievances at the moment:

1. This place feels dead. It's usually quite, but lately it really feels like a ghost town. Idk what the actual stats say, but I feel like the amount of comments, posts, and variety seem to have gone down quite a bit over the past few months.

2. The amount of genuinely hateful content has gone up. I feel like Lemmy as a whole used to have better moderation even just last year compared to now. Every time I get on here, I'm seeing more and more gross content that's either racist or bigoted or just downright gross. This content doesn't get taken down even when reported. As horrid as Reddit's moderation is, it's still not this bad.

3. Outside of the tech communities, there's no information hygiene anywhere in sight. The news subs publish the most questionable of sources, sometimes outright misinformation... and nobody cares? People don't criticize weak sources or call out false claims or even value accuracy. I've seen multiple instances of users saying something false and getting upvoted for it and a person correcting them getting downvoted for it. Like, what's even happening?

I don't know, I feel like when I joined a couple of years ago Lemmy was so much better. It felt more active, the community felt more down to earth, kind, and friendly, and the content was higher in quality. There was much optimism surrounding the Fediverse that's not there anymore. Now it feels like a more left wing version of Voat than a genuine Reddit alternative. Am I the only one feeling this way or do other people feel the same?

In yet another effort to boost text posts on Lemmy, I have created new community for complaints. Have something that's been bothering you? Some event in the world is leaving a bad taste in your mouth? Have some grievance you want to vent? This is the place to share it.

![email protected] lemmy.world/c/complaints/

If you're reading this, check out this new community and maybe drop a complaint that's been on your mind. It will help you feel better.

A few months ago I created the MarkMyWords community here on Lemmy. Similar to the original subreddit, this is a community where users can come and share their predictions about the future with everyone so they can have proof that they’ve called it before it happened.

I made this community to boost text based posts on Lemmy because I think that's where the best and most engaging discussions happen. Please take a minute to check out the community and maybe even leave a prediction of your own if you feel like it!

[email protected]

https://lemmy.world/c/MarkMyWords

Before I start, I just want to say that this opinion is based on what I think will actually happen rather than what I think should or wish will happen. Anyways, there are two parts to this prediction.

Part 1: The ICJ will find Israel not guilty of genocide.

I firmly believe that the International Court of Justice (ICJ), is going to rule against South Africa's claims because Israel has a very good defense case. There are few reasons why I think this is the case:

1. The ICJ exists to resolve disputes between nations. In this case, there's no dispute between South Africa and Israel, therefore, Israel could, and probably will, argue that the ICJ has no jurisdiction over the Gaza war.

2. They could argue that South Africa cannot prove intent, since that's a very big part of what makes a genocide, well, a genocide. In order for something to be a genocide, there needs to be clear policy that shows there's an intent to exterminate. Like the Turks wanted to do with the Armenians or ISIS with the Yezidis or the Nazis with the Jews. There's no such policy in Israel. Unless, South Africa somehow managed to get hold of some secret Israeli documents unknown to the public, then they probably have nothing more than random statements of random fringe politicians who don't make decisions on the war. South Africa could, and probably will, provide proof of the Israeli government's negligence, but not genocidal intent. If there's no intent, then there's no genocide case.

3. They could acknowledge the high death toll, but also argue that it is the result of Hamas using civilians infrastructure to launch attacks. They don't need to prove it to be the case every single time, but if they could prove it to be a systematic pattern, then it could offer grounds to disprove the claims of genocidal intent while at the same time explain why the death toll is high.

4. Israel could make a strong case that it is complaint with international law, at least within the context of Gaza. Since Israel was attacked first, Israel could point out that it is fighting a war of self defense in according with the UN charter (chapter 7, article 51), and therefore is not actually breaking international law. Not only that, but Israel could also argue that it has been complying with the provisional measures asked for by the ICJ by allowing for humanitarian aid to go in, launching vaccine campaigns to prevent disease, sending them reports, and so on. If they can show that they are largely complaint, even if the results are questionable, then it'll take a lot of air out of South Africa's case.

5. The ICJ preliminary report had a small, but potentially powerful clause, that demanded that Hamas and other armed groups to immediately and unconditionally release all the hostages... which they have not done until very recently, and they still haven't been able to return the bodies of some of the dead hostages. Israel could use this clause to demonstrate how Hamas and the other Palestinian groups in Gaza hold contempt for the law and their agreements which led Israel to conduct more military operations and therefore prolong the war.

Whether you agree or disagree with any of this is irrelevant, the point is that this case isn't as lopsided against Israel as people think it is. Just as a reminder, Israel usually doesn't participate in international tribunals. If they knew that they were in the wrong, then they simply wouldn't participate... like Russia. Russia knows what it's doing in Ukraine is wrong, and therefore they straight up refused to show up to the proceedings against them. Israel agreeing to break their norms and participate should signal that they're confident in their chances of getting a favorable outcome. Therefore, I'm betting that there's a very good chance that ICJ will favor Israel. Which brings me to...

Part 2: There is going to be a big meltdown from the ruling.

For whatever reason, everybody who's anti-Israel and/or pro-Palestine thinks that the ICJ will rule exactly the way they want it to, which is that the ICJ will rule in favor of South Africa and find Israel guilty of committing genocide. They're all eagerly waiting for this outcome as if it was inevitable... but what if it never comes?

Now this is going to be controversial on Lemmy, but I see the anti-Israel/pro-Palestine crowd as being very MAGA like... which is ironic because MAGA tends to be pro-Israel but I digress. The similarity that I see is in how they both react to seeing results they don't like. MAGA has a fun philosophy to dealing with losing. Whenever they win a court case or an election or whatever, then they will accept the results and their prior proceedings as legitimate, fair, and accurate. However, whenever they lose a court case, election, whatever then they'll reject the results and cry that the prior proceedings were unfair, corrupt, and rigged against them. I expect a similar reaction from the anti-Israel/pro-Palestine crowd.

If the ruling comes out as I expect it to then we're going to witness a 180 from the anti-Israel/pro-Palestine crowd. They're currently very pro ICJ and argue in favor of its authority and legitimacy because they think it'll provide them with the outcome they seek. When that doesn't happen, they'll immediately going to reject the results and call the ICJ corrupt, rigged, incompetent, and compromised by Zionists. I cannot imagine ANY scenario where these people will actually accept the results of the ICJ ruling if it comes out in favor of Israel regardless of validity. You can be sure that they'll meltdowns of cataclysmic proportions on the internet, you'll see frequent acts of vandalism on the court itself in the Hague, the judges who served over the case being attacked, and so on.

Now you could argue that the same could happen the pro-Israel/anti-Palestine crowd if the ICJ rules against Israel, and you would probably be right. I expect similar reactions either way, however, I just doubt that the actual ruling will be in favor of South Africa.

This is something that I have been saying for a long time now. I, from the very bottom of my heart, believe that the moment Trump dies, MAGA will die with him.

Why? It's simple really, movements generally need to be practical, coherent, and flexible to last a long time. MAGA has none of these traits. MAGA currently stands for nothing. As a movement it has no values, no platform, no morals, and no leadership outside of Trump. Everything in the movement starts and stops with Trump. Whatever he says goes no matter how insane, nonsensical, or contradictory. Trump is the movement.

It wasn't always this way, back during his first term, MAGA did have some ideological diversity that forced the movement to have internal discourse which kept it somewhat balanced. There were evangelists, libertarians, fiscal conservatives, moderate Republicans, and so on. However, Trump has purged them all. In fact, he has purged everything and anything capable of independent thought leaving only blind loyalists and slimy opportunists.

Without Trump acting as their de facto prophet, these yes men will immediately leech on to the first self proclaimed successor they see. MAGA will fracture and split, and the different factions will spend most of their time fighting each other. This will lead MAGA to become ineffective, and because of this, it will fade into irrelevancy with time.

In an effort to boost text posts on Lemmy, I have created https://lemmy.world/c/MarkMyWords. Similar to the original subreddit with the same name, this is a community where users can come and share their bold predictions with everyone so they can have proof that they've called it before it happened.

I have created a couple of sampler posts in hopes of garnering engagement to get this community to start growing. I hope everybody reading this checks it out!

I think this is pretty self evident given how only 34% of Americans have a favorable view of the Democrats at the moment (source). Considering how the Democrats over the past decade have a history so dysfunctional, incompetent, and corrupt that they always somehow manage to under perform, even in the best case scenarios. The 2026 midterms are not going to be any different.

Think about it, the Democrats have completely imploded after the 2024 election. Trump was and is so evil, stupid, incompetent, and corrupt that he's a basically cartoon villain. That should have been the easiest cakewalk of an election in this history of this country, a landslide victory so crushing it would collapse the GOP, but instead the opposite happened, and they fucking botched it... again.

Since this election, they've done nothing and they will continue to do nothing. The party is in shambles. They currently have no platform, no principles, no values, no leadership, no policies, no vision for the country, nothing. The old Democrats won't step aside and let new blood rise, the establishment and the progressives are going at each other's throats rather than working together, and there's barely any attempt at even pretending to act like opposition. They're just letting Trump do literally whatever he wants with zero consequences.

In anything, they'll actually go out of their way to screw themselves by infighting, doubling down on bullshit, and ignoring what matters. They'll also think highly of themselves where they think it's inevitable that they'll win only to end up either under performing or straight up losing. We saw this every single election cycle starting in 2016, a decade later, the same thing is going to happen in the 2026 midterms. They will fail to retake congress in a meaningful way, if at all, and Trump's grip on power will be further solidified.

Oh it's coming, and it will happen even if nobody wants it. The movie industry has already gone downhill the past decade or so where most of the industry has sacrificed good storytelling, originality, and art for formulaic storytelling, overproduced effects, and oversaturation. Why? Because the former produces culture while the latter produces profits, and guess what the shareholders who own and control the industry want?

Just like how we went from having creative, original, and culture defining movies being produced on the regular to having nothing but endless sequels and remakes now, there will be another step in this process that further ensures profits, and that's automation.

Not only will AI cut corners and ensure mass production, but it could be a new revenue stream for some big company. I guarantee that over the next few years, we're going to have one of the tech giants like Amazon develop a powerful AI model that can generate full blown movies on its own. It'll generate the scripts, visuals, and audio, and the end product will only require review and maybe some minor tweaks.

They'll put out an experimental AI movie in theaters, and they'll pay all the major media outlets to hype it up and talk about it nonstop for months. The movie, regardless of quality, will generate profit because people will be curious, and these companies are going to use this success to start selling their AI models to movie production companies for rates much lower than it would cost to hire writing staff, production staff, actors, animators, and HR departments... and they'll all flock to it because all they'll see is $$$. It'll be the new standard for the medium whether people like it or not, kind of like microtransactions in video games.

There's no good reason for them to be on the road. Consider the following:

• They're extremely loud and cause noise pollution

• They're very dangerous on the road and have high accident rates

• They're bad for the environment and cause air pollution

• They're extremely inefficient as they can only carry 1-2 people max

• They can't carry cargo

• They're dangerous for pedestrians

• They're very demanding to operate

• They're virtually useless in the winter when there's snow, ice, and hail

• The people who tend to drive them tend to be assholes who don't respect road laws

People complain about cars all the time, and while our car dependency is definitely a big issue that we need to address, cars still have a lot utility. Motorcycles on the other hand? Not really. I think getting rid of them once and for all is good way to immediately make our roads safer, simplify traffic, and open up a pathway to move away from cars.