I remember reading about Gorbachev for the first time and pissing myself laughing.
The guy’s an absolute buffoon who thought it would be sensible to do social democracy in the communist country. He fell for Yeltsin and the gang swearing allegiance, only for them to usurp him and do a bit of oligarchic rapid neoliberalism instead, leaving him the equivalent of a human pikachu meme.
The pizza hut ads and shit were his way of making money to continue his cause of ‘advancing social democracy’, which was now all but dismantled in the west now that the bulwark of communism was gone.

Yeltsin is a wild ride too, considering his family were kulaks and unlike basically every communist official, he didn’t join the party until he was like 30. It’s like, if anyone had paid any attention to him throughout his career, even a child could have said “this is the one, officer - this is the counter-revolutionary right here”

Every single time, without fail, they assume, as though more certain than they are of their own existence, that the person raising the (valid) point is a republican. Despite the blatantly transparent fact that the statement in question never invokes ‘the libs’, ‘triggered’, ‘maga’, or tags all of the alphabet security agencies, they always fucking rattrap themselves into thinking that anything other than facile patronisation is tantamount to fully supporting whatever it is they’re chastising.
How do they see something like “consequences of capitalism” and still think “Hurr, durr, REPUBLICAN! NEXT!”?

I don’t think it’s in their capacity to acknowledge that they can be outlefted. If you’re fully sold on the democrat-republican dichotomy, then there’s no room for left critique - you must be a republican.

the age of the ham sandwich race is waning

That ‘closest living relative’ joke got a good laugh out of me.
I think people are too harsh on TOW’s politics - if you were expecting an honest to god piece of revolutionary communist fiction, please invite me to whatever version of reality you inhabit.
At least it included some form of political radicals with good morals and nuanced issues rather than just portraying them as naïve misguided fools or mass murderers. Hell, it even has

violent/aggressive discourse? i thought sticks and stones could break your bones but words could never harm you

you’re simply not allowed to name vessels after culture vessels unless you are an übercommunist. damn billionaire cultural appropriation must cease

from Bank’s Culture novels - FALGSC society

as with any form of cardio - choose what suits you.
e.g., if you’re more explosive and prefer to get it over and done with asap, try doing a front crawl/freestyle as fast as you can for as long as you can, take a minute break and repeat a few times.
alternatively, if you’re more ‘low impact’, then more conventional swimming like breaststroke at a leisurely pace for 30+ lengths.

same thing applies to running - when I was in my early 20s I predominantly did high intensity sprints for like half an hour - 10 years later and I prefer hiking for an hour or two instead.

But I ain’t gonna live forever
I just want to live while I’m alive

Aha, a thinly-veiled threat, you see.