>>35551
this reminds me I've heard Disco Elysium described as a Slavoj Zizek simulator and I don't get the joke
The thing to keep in mind isn't even human nature's greed but something far worse which I think is tacit about Capitalism yet literally never discussed: the desire to control or have power over other people.

Actually now that I think about it the deliberate reason why this is never discussed is probably because it completely blows apart the one greatest myth about Capitalism which is that somehow a) any person get get rich if they're driven enough, and b) that being rich doesn't automatically make you have political power because Capitalism has been tried in Western democracies. Of course if you outright state that the real reason for the driving force of Capitalism is having enormous power over others then you're basically admitting that our representational democracy is a total fraud itself as well as admitting the free market ain't free. Both of which are probably true sadly.

Like my mentality is greed over one dollar is too many, because a billion is never enough. I was thinking about it last night and figured out that if I could just work a bydlo job and make $20,000 a year and have affordable housing that would be plenty enough for me. Almost the entirety of the driving force behind getting rich isn't about having things, but about having social status directly, which in America is tied directly to money probably unlike any other society. You can be the most boorish, horrible person and so long as you're richer American society says you're "better" than others.

Nobody who decides to get rich--and I don't mean a pissy little well off 200k/year income I mean actually rich--does it just because they want nice things. People solely want to get rich because it's a shortcut to power. I personally wouldn't ever be satisfied until I had approximately $16.7 trillion, give or take.

>Eat corn
>Get shot

>>34698
>>34640
Sugar will fuck you, man. It doesn't really matter so much on the type but here we've just had decades of diet foods containing truckloads of sugar.

You might enjoy this article:

>So began the war on fat, in which Atwater’s calorie calculations were an unwitting ally. Because counting calories was seen as an objective arbiter of the health qualities of a foodstuff, it seemed logical that the most calorie-laden part of any food item – fat – must be bad for you. By this measure, dishes low in calories, but rich in sugar and carbohydrates, seemed healthier. People were increasingly willing to blame fat for many of the health ills of modern life, helped along by the sugar lobby: in 2016, a researcher at the University of California uncovered documents from 1967 showing that sugar companies secretly funded studies at Harvard University designed to blame fat for the growing obesity epidemic. That the dietary “fat” found in olive oil, bacon and butter is branded with the same word as the unwanted flesh around our middles made it all the easier to demonise.

>A US Senate committee report in 1977 recommended a low-fat, low-cholesterol diet for all, and other governments followed suit. The food industry responded with enthusiasm, removing fat, the most calorie-dense of macronutrients, from food items and replacing it with sugar, starch and salt. As a bonus, the thousands of new cheap and tasty “low-cal” and “low-fat” products which Camacho used to diet tended to have longer shelf lives and higher profit margins.

https://www.1843magazine.com/features/death-of-the-calorie

>>34746

>When I make bread I have no use for rice but dinkel wheat does just fine.

LIES. The first Japanese buns used rice and rice flour is taking on:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i1o692aw94s

t. watcher of hotel-tier documentaries

>>34749
Unprocessed corn is shit. The best you can do with it is cornbread, which only tastes good if you load it up with sugar and honey (and what doesn't taste good with tons of sugar and honey in it?).

But in the place where people developed corn, and had to rely on it as their only staple crop, virtually all corn was consumed after being boiled in an alkaline solution. It transforms the flavor, texture, and nutrient value of the corn into something completely different. The taste is deeper and subtler, and you can form a proper dough out of it.

The traditional primary forms of consumption are the tamale and tortilla. The tamale is a dumpling of wet corn dough steamed in a corn husk or banana leaf. It's usually filled with some sort of spiced and stewed meat, but it can also be filled with cheese, chilis, or even sugary desert fillings. You can make them without any filling though, and back in ye olde Aztec times this was more common. Tortillas are more common as a staple food today, with tamales being more of a main dish in their own right, but it's likely that tamales were actually the primary source of calories during the height of Mayan civilization, as the archaeological record shows scant evidence of the large griddles used to prepare tortillas.

I'm sure you have a general idea of what a tortilla is, due to the inexorable force of American cultural imperialism, but the wheat flour tortillas that Americans focus on are very different from the humble corn tortilla. This is the indigenous Mexican equivalent of bread or rice, or Indian chapathi. The corn dough is pressed into a flat circle, and cooked on a griddle. They taste absolutely divine when they're fresh, but the quality degrades rapidly with storage.

Other uses for proper corn are pupusas (essentially a thick tortilla, stuffed with meat, beans, and/or cheese) and atole, which is a gruel or beverage, depending on thickness, optionally flavored and sweetened, or made with toasted corn flour. This was probably as important as tortillas and tamales as staple food for the actual Aztecs, but today it's mostly a breakfast food equivalent to oat or wheat porridge, or a hot cinnamon-y desert beverage.

Wait a minute how did I miss this thread

I've always been interested in currency speculation but the markets right now make me think it would be either a really bad time to invest or a pretty good time if you like to gamble. Who would you invest in and diversify your currency holdings with? Me personally I think that yen could in theory be a good investment longterm, but well it's China and they prop themselves up with massive amounts of currency manipulation.

The British pound is lol. I wouldnt invest in that trash until after Brexit and even then I doubt I'd invest a cent into British currency instead of anyone else. Even Canadian dollars would be a far, far wider investment.

US dollars are a terrible investment longterm. I have every confidence in our currency collapsing into nothingness in the medium to longterm future with massive inflation. Thanks to current politics the US is going to become completely isolated with an okayish local industry no matter what happens but frankly I see buying US dollars which I unfortunately still have as being about as wise as "investing" in a new car or computer: it's only certain to depreciate in value. I should note that currency speculation is a short term thing though and not really dependent on the same factors as diversifying your currency holdings. Even still, I would not speculate on anything good about the US dollar but I guess it isn't anywhere near the pure toilet paper that is the British pound right now.

Indian rupees? Nah. I doubt India will get its shit together any time soon enough for that.

Brazilian Real? I think that the BRICS idea is stupid in general and only ignores the actual reality of a situation in favor of its potential. You can say this guy is a massively talented genius with a native potential to be like a famous musician or cancer researcher or whatever, but if he's currently an unemployed heroin addict I wouldn't bet on him right now.

Canadian dollars funnily enough I think is a potentially great investment in the longer term as climate change increasingly fucks our planet as they're going to be relatively insulated from climate refugees and minus the forest fires are going to end up being a great place with probably a great local economy. I would unironically say invest in CAD if you want a longish term investment.

If you're hoping to flip some currency soon I would say Euros. I think that regardless of whatever American or Russian propaganda says and a bunch of dumb memes about refugees that Europe has its shit together more than most, a great economy, and an easy ability to weather both Brexit and any of the impending market shocks. The US can also weather market shocks but just barely and that's mostly the super rich who end up unaffected and even they get massive investments wiped out in a recession, which is coming soon. So I would way, make a safety blanket stitched out of Euros.

Really complex microtransactions would be cool but I don't know enough about that or how you could flip liquid assets between really obscure countries and like take advantage of some Saudi recession to buy Riyals, then flip it into Bolivian Bolivianos after Morales gets deposed to take advantage of the Western investment into their lithium industry, then flip it back into your dollars or Euros or whatever.

Oh. And I also would unironically buy Rubles. I think that no matter how much Russia suffers now that this is a great country to diversify your currency into starting next year.

>>33696
This is a popular explanation with people who have no knowledge of Bolivia, and general suspicion of American foreign policy - which is justified, but America is not the sole explanatory factor in every crisis around the globe.

You can't simplify it to just lithium. The deposits are not being actively exploited, and doing so would be incredibly difficult and costly. A more nuanced explanation:

I was halfway to writing a proper essay, but I'm just going to tl;dr it. Indigenous Andean highlanders loved Evo because he massively reduced the crushing poverty that they lived under, and made them feel like they were in charge of their country for the first time since the Incas fell. White people and mestizos from the lowland eastern half of the country are butthurt that uppity Indios were nationalizing natural resources and redistributing land, and not just eating their shit like they've been accustomed to for the last 500 years. There's also a weirdo Christian fascist element to part of the opposition, inspired by American evangelical protestantism and possible Ustasha runaways. They've made a big deal about how Bolivia is a Christian country, probably because Andeans were only ever partially Christianized, and Evo openly invoked Pachamama throughout his terms.

Election formalism is just the excuse to launch the takeover. The conflict is primarily one between the two fundamentally opposed halves of Bolivia, and the lowlanders will happily trample all over democracy if it means that the Indians don't get to take over again - which they would, because they're the majority, and after Evo they're not going to want to give it up again.

>>34050
Very much this. It is actually NOT in USA's interest because the US has become an imperial state and has been that way since the late 19th century. It has never changed or shifted gears from that, only expanded.

A stable, functional, peaceful democratic nation will want things like fair terms of trade, non-interference in their personal affairs, ability to pick and choose their allies and partners. I mean just look at the recent chimpout the US has had over trade even with Germany.

This is what the US does to peaceful, stable, democratic and secular nations
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1953_Iranian_coup_d%27%C3%A9tat

Instead most governments whose creation was supported by the USA across the world are horrible, brutally repressive dictatorships and nutjob theocracies. These include
Qatar, UAE, Saudi Arabia, various central Asian dictators and shitty theocratic states like Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, formerly Iran after overthrowing their government and when the people of Iran overthrew the US puppet dictator the US switched to aiding a dictator to fight them even knowing that Saddam was using chemical weapons, the Mujahideen and Taliban, various shitty South American dictatorships including Pinochet's Chile and so on and so forth.

If you look at it the actual track record of the United States has been to overthrow whole governments and destabilize entire regions into violence as national policy. Right now Libya, while a dictatorship before, is now an even worse hellhole filled with violent Islamists. The same happened to Iraq and the only reason why Syria didn't 100% collapse into this is because Russia stopped it. The same goes for Venezuela where the only reason they still have a country is because once again, Russia stopped it. Afghanistan is what you get when Russia failed to stop it.

The United States couldn't give two shits less about anyone having a democracy and going by track record clearly prefers that they do not. The only thing the United States cares about is market liberalization and privatization. No matter where you are in the world, if you look at it with clear and open eyes the only driving agenda of the US is that and any time market liberalization and privatization or lopsided trade terms for US companies is opposed the US reacts violently.