𝙲𝚑𝚊𝚒𝚛𝚖𝚊𝚗 𝙼𝚎𝚘𝚠

I made it up.

“Turns out all we needed to travel forwards in time is to burn homophobes!”

This is a very typically American point of view, which tends to lump a lot of people together as “liberal” despite this internationally not being the norm at all.

Here’s a definition of liberalism:

Liberalism is a political philosophy and ideology that emphasizes individual rights, liberties, and limited government. It promotes ideas like free markets, free trade, and social equality, while often advocating for a strong emphasis on individual autonomy and civil liberties.

Note specifically how it says individual rights. The idea with liberalism is that if everyone is similarly unrestrained by the government, and has the same civil liberties, there is an even playing field in which individuals can personally grow and excel. This neatly links together with the liberal belief in a free market, free trade, etc…

A strict liberal idealogy will also adopt several progressive policies w.r.t. civil liberties, like gay rights (as this causes social equality -> level playing field for competition). But liberalism is still a strictly capitalist idealogy, with a strong emphasis on the free market and free trade.

Generally, this individualistic approach to rights is considered socially progressive and economically right-wing. And we see that this is the case in most countries around the world, e.g. Australia’s liberal party or the Dutch VVD. The Dutch VVD is a good example to look at here, they are considered very firmly right-wing, but their party platform most closely matches to that of the DNC. In the US, the two major parties are both righg-wing, one is a moderately progressive right-wing party (with some left-wingers in there, but they aren’t very influential w.r.t. party policy because it’s such a small minority) and the other is a conservative/authoritarian right-wing party.

Because both parties sit firmly on the right of the spectrum, they’ve come to distinguish themselves on social policy rather than economic policy. They’ve remapped the progressive-conservative axis on the left-right axis and called it a day. But in most countries, these axes are very much distinct. Here’s the “political compass” for the Netherlands for example:

Note how there are only two fairly fringe parties to the right of the VVD. Also it’s interesting to note here that the PVV (the “far-right” party with the bird symbol near the bottom) isn’t even all that far right. Their economic policies aren’t actually all that focused on free market dynamics, and they do promote certain social policies. But their hardline immigration stance pushes them very firmly in the conservative camp. And although there’s certainly a correlation between left-progressive and right-conservative, there are still major differences between the parties along this diagonal axis.

Generally, actual left-wing people (be they progressive or conservative) don’t like being lumped in with liberals, because they don’t focus on as much on individual freedom but rather on collective freedom and on policies that benefit the collective. Hence their insistence on actually looking at the full political spectrum rather than the simplified/reducted version of it.

You’re not wrong that people in the US tend to call liberals “left-wing”, but it’s a very reductive, American perspective not shared by political scientists or the rest of the world.

Trump would send fighters to force the plane to return.

Valve didn’t decide to pull it, and the game is still downloadable if you purchased it before.

Yet there were still no findings that Iran indeed was working towards nuclear weapons. Just having the means to do it isn’t the same as actually doing it.

Yes, that is the big thing many people are missing. Valve takes a 0% cut from Steam keys sold outside of their platform. The 30% does not apply.

The only rule Valve sets out here is that you don’t sell those Steam keys for less on other storefronts. Which imo seems fair enough if Valve is doing the distribution and asking for nothing in return.

The big sticking point is whether the 30% cut isn’t too high in the first place.

What? That wording isn’t even relevant to the case. That’s just Valve saying they will do a review of the price changes on Steam. They set out no specific requirements (other than a minimum price of $0.99, but will try to catch errors based on their pricing recommendations). It’s similar to how Valve reviews new store pages and provides recommendations to devs on how to improve them. They do have rules against games set up for card farming scams, but that makes sense.

Wolfire’s case is about how Valve as an extremely large player is impossible to go around, so game devs have no choice but to accept their 30% fee if they want to reach most of the market out there. Valve then uses these fees to entrench this supposed monopoly position (Wolfire specifically cites the acquisition of WON back in the day, which Valve eventually shut down and merged with Steam).

Wolfire argues that a fair price is much lower than 30%, and that Valve should lower the fee and therefore have less funds to fight their competitors, creating a more competitive environment.

But that is what the policy is about. Steam doesn’t have a price parity policy regarding general game sales.

It is true. Valve does not enforce price parity for non Steam keys. Here is an example where the dev says that they are offering a better price on EGS because of the better cut:

https://twitter.com/HeardOfTheStory/status/1700066610302603405

https://store.epicgames.com/en-US/p/heard-of-the-story-ff3758

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1881940/Heard_of_the_Story/

Pretty clear example of the same game having a lower base price on Epic than on Steam.

Wolfire claiming Valve does this is something different from Valve actually doing it, and that’s where the dispute lies. According to Valve, Wolfire’s explanation of the price parity policy is incorrect.

Here’s the policy itself: https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/features/keys#3

You should use Steam Keys to sell your game on other stores in a similar way to how you sell your game on Steam. **It is important that you don’t give Steam customers a worse deal than Steam Key purchasers. **

The policy is pretty leanient regarding the “worse deal” aspect. You’re allowed to have a sale on one platform but not on Steam, as long as you offer “something similar” at a different moment to Steam users too.

It’s OK to run a discount for Steam Keys on different stores at different times as long as you plan to give a comparable offer to Steam customers within a reasonable amount of time.

Even if you violate this policy, Valve will still sell your game, they may just stop providing you with Steam keys to sell.

I don’t see Wolfire winning this tbh.

If you actually bothered to read the book at least a little bit, you’d have read he actually sources a fair bit.

He’s also providing an eyewitness account from his time there. I’m not sure how much more primary you want to get.

Tsarist Russia started with the russification process. The Soviets initially under Lenin reversed course, but this later changed under Stalin, Khrushchev and Brezhnev. They accelerated the process. None of this is contradictory to what I’ve said.

The pogroms in tsarist Russia are horrible acts of genocide, but they were fairly simply anti-Jewish in nature. They were not a part of the russification process and should be considered separate. Hence when I compare the russification between tsarist Russia and the Soviet Union, I’m obviously not taking any pogroms into consideration. It’s horrible, but unrelated to the subject at hand.

I’ve already provided a source.

Not everyone owns a dishwasher.

That’s likely just the overflow drain?

Perhaps also read https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Russification then, which is linked on that page. It explains how the Soviets:

• Forced other languages to use cyrillic if they didn’t before, aligning the spelling of words with Russian
• Made Russian a mandatory subject in schools
• In mostly urban areas made sure education was primarily provided in Russian
• Made indigenous people learn Russian, but Russian immigrants to those areas did not learn the indigenous language there

These were all policies aimed at “unifying” the various cultures in the Soviet Union and strengthening control.

Early Soviet Union is as you described, promoting various cultures and languages. Lenin saw that as a way to gain favour with the local populations. Later leaders however went down a different path.

If said Chinese ambassador wrote a book that was also sourced (like this British ambassador’s book is in a fair few places), their claims aren’t disputed by any factual evidence and is generally corroborated by historians, I’d be inclined to believe them yes.

I wouldn’t expect said ambassador to have a scientific study backing up every single sentence in the book. If he’s writing about his experiences, that can be a valuable perspective on things. I wouldn’t treat it as gospel necessarily but I can still apply critical thinking to ascertain whether or not they’re a credible source.

This is kind of interesting considering that you’ve claimed that the repression was most severe under his successors.

I claimed the russification process was more severe, not the executions. It’s well known that as a part of destalinization the executions largely stopped. That doesn’t mean the Union stopped promoting russification.

If you have a source that claims the opposite, feel free to share it.

I trust someone who was actually there more than a random user on the internet, yes. If you have a source that shows the opposite, feel free to share.

Page 151 has what you’re looking for:

The reality was, of course, that Russian and later Soviet imperial rule was at least as brutal as that of other imperial powers. In their campaigns of Russification the Tsars imprisoned and exiled Finns, Ukrainians, and others who dared to practise their national language and sustain a national culture. The Communists continued the practice even more brutally under the guise of eradicating ‘bourgeois nationalism’. Large numbers of intellectuals, especially in Ukraine and the Baltic States, were killed or exiled by Stalin. Under his successors the executions were fewer but the pressures continued. Communist Parties, with their own local First Secretaries, existed in all the fifteen constituent republics of the Union save for Russia itself. Russians saw this as discrimination. In fact it was a sign that the Russians did not need their own party, since they dominated the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and exercised effective central control over the republican parties. Throughout the Soviet period discontent flared up from time to time in one or other of the constituent republics, and was brutally suppressed.