JarJarJedi
Streamlined derailments and counteridea reeducation
User ID: 1118
JarJarJedi
8d ago
After watching the series and reading all the books I can definitely tell the books are better. Some cliches are there for a reason, I guess.
JarJarJedi
8d ago
I feel like I am being gaslit.
You are. It's not a theory, conspiracy or otherwise. It's not a political argument. It's the reality. There's a war going on - an informational war. The one side is the governments, the deep state (of any nation), the "elites", the press, the academia, the entertainment complex, the "opinion makers", the "fact checkers", all that crowd. On the other side, there are people who want to take informed decisions by themselves, based on their own values, desired and goals. They former do not want to allow the latter to do that. For their own good, of course, because they consider themselves smarter, more educated, more moral, more progressive, more... everything good, so it's only natural that they would take the decision making power from the rubes. This is what you are witnessing. It's for your own good. If you disagree, well, welcome to the other side.
JarJarJedi
9d ago
No, the revenue was higher - around $40bn. Moderna also got a lot of public money for vaccine project. I am not sure what cash has to do with it. Profit and cash are completely different things - you can make a profit on X and then invest it in Y and have no cash at all or negative cash flow. In fact, a lot of R&D-heavy companies operate in exactly that manner. Or you could just distribute all the profits as dividends and have no cash on hand at all. I am not saying these things aren't related at all - if you have a lot of profits, you'd usually have some cash, but there's no direct relation between how much the company makes in profits on specific project and how much it has on hand in cash at any given moment.
As for market cap, it used to have 180bn market cap in 2021 at its peak. I'm sure there were some events happening in 2021 that are much less happening now that could explain that, but I am having hard time remembering what could it be...
I admit some of these figures may be inaccurate, there aren't official number of how much profit they made specifically from COVID, so I had to assemble the information from pieces lying around, and make some assumptions (like about what exactly generated their profits in 2020-2021 and doesn't in 2025 anymore) but I am pretty sure even if I was wrong it's not by an order of magnitude. So the original point still stands - they have enough money to do what they want to do. Of course, if they can get money of my pocket for free (with the taxman serving as the delivery boy) and then pocket all the profit, it's much more lucrative. But I don't see how comes I owe them that.
JarJarJedi
11d ago
Denigrating people who disagree with you
I am not denigrating you, but also you are not just "disagreeing" with me, in a matter of opinion. You claim widely known facts do not exist. How else am I supposed to describe it? And to be honest, it's not like your party haven't been habitually throwing this exact word at literally every person disagreeing on it on any matter, fact or opinion. So you can't really claim it's some particularly bad word that is taboo from being used. People have been called "denialists" for questioning dozens of things that are completely legitimate to question (and often these very people were found to be correct or at least not less correct than the opponent), so you have absolutely no leg to claim "denial" is some special insult that can't be used in a polite company and out of place in a political discussion. In this particular instance, its usage is entirely appropriate, as it concerns claiming that things that evidently happened did not.
subpoenaed his bank accounts and repeatedly found nothing of the sort
And the concept of a person holding money in an account under the name of different person or a corporation had not been invented yet. Seriously. I mean, surely the personal accounts needed to be checked, just in case Joe had been brazen and dumb enough to just put money right there in plain sight. But if he was not, that doesn't prove much. Most people are smart enough to do that, especially people that run a large corrupt enterprise for years.
Joe gave excessive leeway to his son Hunter
I'm sorry, "excessive leeway" is when you let the kid live in your basement rent free, poach on your beer in your fridge, drive you car and not fill it up, leave the pizza leftovers on the couch, smoke the weed indoors, that kind of thing. It's not when you allow him to sell access to you, President of the United States, to foreign powers, including China and Russia, and get millions of dollars in exchange for it. Biden may have been non compos mentis by 2025, but in 2015, when it all was at its peak, he surely was sane enough to know it. It's not "leeway", it's RICO. He didn't "close his eyes" or "put blinders" or any stuff like that. He knew everything, he couldn't miss it, his family knew everything, everybody knew everything and participated in it - that was the family business. There are witnesses and testimonies for it. And they got as brazen as invent those "Hunter artwork" scheme - which was selling nicely while his father was the President and turned out completely worthless the second he was out. Again, how naive can one be here?
That’s consistent with a father who keeps family and state separated on paper
Oh sure, on paper I am sure Biden never signed a contract with CCP saying "I will help you do stuff and you pay me through my son Hunter". Nobody is ever that dumb. Hunter just told them "I will be your conduit to my father, and to prove that, I will talk to you in his presence", and Joe knew exactly what is going on, and participated in it. Not once, not twice, but many times over many years. And he for sure knew millions of dollars are changing hands in connection to that. The fact that there's no paper saying "I, Joseph Robinette Biden Jr., got this sum of money from CCP as a bribe and confirm it with my notarized signature" is not a big clue you pretend it to be - there's never such paper, nobody is so dumb as to make it. People have been taking and given bribes for millenia by now, and there are many ways to give and take bribes while avoiding creating such papers, and I am sure Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. can name a few of them.
the most histrionic Dem attacks weren't true.
And by "most" you mean every single one of them. At least as it concerns the "Russian collusion". And nobody still admitted anything or suffered any consequences for brazenly lying about it. Moreover, they keep mentioning it as if it's somehow a counterexample to corruption coverups under Biden administration.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
if we really did have a deeply corrupt politician in office, how would I know?
That's the whole point - you're not supposed to. At least you're not supposed to decide it on your own. That's the whole point of journalism reorienting from informing to indoctrinating - they tell you who is corrupt and who is not, and you accept it. That's what they are trying to do. If you want to do something else, using the corporate media for it is not the right tool. It's like asking "how do I use a symphonic orchestra to build a sea-faring ship?" You're not supposed to use it for that. The corporate media is not there to help you become informed, they are there to establish control over you and manipulate you into arriving at certain conclusions which would be useful for them. You're feeling that they are manipulating you and you can't trust them because that's exactly what is happening.
So you'd ask "ok, what tools do I use instead?" - and that's much harder question. Right now I can't name any system or solution that completely covers this need. Journalism as the profession seems to be basically done for, except maybe on a local level reporting on potholes being fixed (or not fixed) and new burger joints being opened. There are certain people (some of them coming from journalism, though most of them now working outside corporate media) that I trust to some measure to keep me informed, but that's specific for me and I can't really recommend it to other people. It's a jungle out there.
Hunter was obviously corrupt, but there wasn't a link to Joe.
Right. Joe Biden knew his son is a corrupt degenerate who is selling access to him, and let his business partners, who Joe knew expect benefits from him and pay his son for this, to meet him, but he totally wasn't in on the deal. And this kept repeating for years on and he wasn't even curious about what's up with that. And for some reason Hunter, in private communications, felt the need to falsely complain about having to pay Joe off because he foresaw all of it being published one day and wanted to create a false impression in advance. And also he somehow convinced other people to lie about it, for absolutely no benefit to them. And the partners, getting absolutely no benefits from Joe and actually nothing at all as a return for their money, kept coming back to Hunter for years, and paying him enormous sums, because he was just that good. Because that's how bribes usually work - you give somebody a bribe, he does absolutely nothing for you, you give another one, same thing, and then more and more people come and give you millions of dollars, for nothing at all. Just how dumb do you think one should be to buy it? I'm afraid I can't.
but far worse was the pardon he gave his son
Dated from the date he started dealing with Burisma (and Romanians, and Kazakhs, and China, and Russians, and...). Come on, man. I mean, you can in as deep denial as you want but I feel very uncomfortable being expected to seriously address stuff like this. It's like trying to prove the Nigerian prince doesn't really want to share his wealth with you. By this point, if you want to believe he is, I really shouldn't.
For the Trump-Russia investigation, Paul Manafort, Rick Gates, and Roger Stone were all engaged in a bunch of shady stuff.
That's not what the claim was. The claim wasn't "certain people in Trump campaign did some ''shady stuff''". The claim was Trump personally is a Russian asset, who was in direct and active cooperation with Russia, or as members of Party of Civility and Decency pungently expressed it, "Putin's cock holster". And multiple prominent Democrat figures swore they personally saw ample proof of that, with their own eye. They all brazenly lied of course, there was no such proof in existence (and none of them by the way suffered any consequences for it). Manafort et all may have been a bunch of shady assholes, but the claim wasn't "Trump sometimes hires assholes". That claim would never fly because everybody in politics sometimes hires assholes. Democrat operatives ranks are full of ginormous assholes, as are Republican ones. But the claim was Trump campaign and he personally has been directly collaborating with Russian government - and that was a very specific claim, not some vague ill-defined "shady stuff". And that claim has been completely false, and literally every single person involved in its creation knew it was false from the very start - we now have evidence that describe how this idea to create this claim was originated and who and how produced the whole show. It wasn't some honest mistake that they thought Trump is bad but they got carried away. They created the whole thing on purpose. So please do not motte-and-bailey me here - it wasn't about Manafort's "shady stuff".
JarJarJedi
13d ago
Moderna profits from COVID vaccines alone is estimated to be over $20-30 Billion. If their research is as promising as they claim it to be, why they need governmental funding? They have more than enough cash to fund, and I am sure there would be a lot of banks willing to extend them a loan. Why everything in the world must be financed by the US taxpayers?
JarJarJedi
13d ago
and several people under the President were up to no good
Come on. Literally his son met with his business partners in his presence. He also complained privately about having to share with Joe. Sure, there's no fire. The whole family lived off this grift for years, and it's obvious to any non-partisan observer. I mean, why the heck did Burisma paid Hunter, for his artistic talents? What could he deliver to them but the link to his father? Please, live in denial as long as you want, this is really not the case I'm willing to spend any time on, it's just ridiculous by now.
analogous to the Trump-Russia investigation, i.e. there was plenty of smoke,
Nope, in that investigation there was no "smoke" beyond the infamous Steele dossier, which as we know now was wholly manufactured and paid for by Clinton campaign and promoted by the same campaign operatives, either official or de-facto. Trump has some dirt on him (like Trump University, or $TRUMP, or some of other deals which can reasonably raise some eyebrows) but the whole Russia thing is a pile of pure shit. And, as I said, these things eventually come out - we now know who invented this shit, who paid to whom for this shit, who promoted this shit and who operated the whole shit farm. We will, eventually, also know who operated the shit farm and who paid to whom and how much for the Biden RICO family too. Until then, feel free to deny it.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
I wasn't trying to bring new evidence. If the mass of evidence already widely available on the topic did not convince you, it's the matter of choice, not the quality of evidence. It's like O.J Simpson looking for the "real killer", or Jussie Smollett still claiming MAGA thugs assaulted him. It's not about quantity or quality of evidence by this point. More evidence will inevitably appear, as it always does, but nothing prevents people who do not want to believe it from rejecting it too. Frankly, I do not see any way available for me - or anyone - to convince anybody who has decided on not being convinced. There must be a voluntary act of opening oneself to this possibility.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
If the Dems had a responsibility to actually report Biden's decline (and they absolutely did, IMO), then
There's no "if-then". The responsibility for corruption doesn't come from other guys being perfect, and a presence of other corrupt guys, true or imagined, can not excuse your own corruption. Dems lied voluminously about just every aspect of Biden's presidency, bar none, and they are responsible for this, and will be responsible forever and ever, and for all harm that it has done to the country, absolutely regardless of what Republicans ever did or will do.
P.S. And yes, Joe was totally and undoubtedly pocketing bribes from (or through, however you want to present it) Hunter. Stop living in denial, it happened. And there's really no reason to pretend otherwise anymore, Joe Biden is spent goods for the party. Relieve you conscience and accept the facts, at least in this small matter. Believing the truth is always easier than compounding lies. No lie can survive forever anyway, especially not in our age.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
You just knew the postman would come, rain or shine, and deliver the mail. You didn’t have to believe in him. He was just there.
Yeah, until the Postal Service goes on strike. There are a lot of things we believe in without critically analyzing them, just because our beliefs are never challenged. But that doesn't mean they can't be.
And if you didn’t believe in something, then it couldn’t help you.
I love Pratchett, but he is making an exact opposite of the correct point here (which is fine because guess what, he's writing fantasy). The sky works the same whether you believe in it or not. You can believe the sky is totally fake, but it won't change any practical result - you can still fly an airplane, enjoy sunbathing and get wetted by the rain. However, I am not sure the concept of "evolution" is the same way. If you're a biologist and you accept it, would your actions and results be different than if you did not? The sky is the territory. The evolution is a map. It may be argued it is a great map - so be it, but it's still a map. You can choose to reject a certain map and use another one - with better results or worse, but you can. You can't "reject" a territory - you can ignore it, but that'd be still just a change of a map (to a much worse one).
JarJarJedi
13d ago
Vibes? Papers? Essays?
Diversity, inclusion and equity, of course. That's what they were promised when they signed up, and they reasonably expected nothing more is going to be demanded from them.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
You can not reinforce all soft targets. You can reinforce a few military installations, but if your enemy is OK with terrorizing civilians, this is a perfect weapon of terror. Blowing up a truck can destroy a building, maybe a block if it's really big. But releasing a truckload of explosive drones can paralyze a whole multi-million city.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
Great job for Ukrainians pioneering a completely new war tactics - and actually putting it on the radar of people that are supposed to think about such things. I mean there was a talk about this for a long time, but we all know talking theory and having a practical example differs a lot. Now I hope the US starts addressing the scenario of "50 Chinese container ships loaded with drones" as a real thing not as Sci-Fi scenario like "what if Martians attack D.C.". And of course, the less weapons Russia has, the better the world is, though this particular thing is of more symbolic than strategic meaning - God still sides with large battalions on the battlefield.
JarJarJedi
13d ago
Nobody can "get" you a job as a doctor or a lawyer or a CEO (well, unless it's a CEO of a scam) without walking a long way there (I omit politicians because it's not a job like any others). You can't just "become" a doctor without studying hard for years, and if you're already capable of that, the wokes would just slow you down. The only thing the wokes can offer you is to pressure the system into devaluing your work by lowering the criteria. They still won't be able to make you a doctor overnight, but they will make people wonder whether your training had been as rigorous as the other folks'.
And I don't really see any way to get into the job market but beginner-level jobs (unless you win the birth lottery and your family is rich, at which cases again you don't need the wokes already). Maybe the message of "if you want to succeed, try working hard" is "pathetic" compared to "scream victimhood hard with me and get all the stuff for free" but the latter - unless you become a con artist and join the grifter class, which is not for everyone - is a lie.
JarJarJedi
15d ago
Tea (green/black or dozens of other varieties that exist), coffee, water (including flavored ones if you're into that), juices if you can find a good fresh one. If you want something more fun, beer. In a restaurant, I usually drink water or iced tea (unsweetened) unless it's a social event where I'd get some beer or wine if it's fancy. Sometimes carbonated water (in Europe they love it, I occasionally get some though not a huge fan).
JarJarJedi
18d ago
the world has demonstrably failed to end for a while now
Experience shows this doesn't work on cultists. They just move the world end date further in the future without updating anything else. Can be done unlimited number of times. Also the public has very limited memory - all the failed world end predictions over the last 50 or so years are available, and make absolutely zero impression and present zero problem for anybody predicting world to end again. Same btw about hundreds of thousands of Gazans starving - no matter how many times those things turn out to be lies, every next time it is claimed people believe it instantly and uncritically.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
two terrible optics choices of either force feeding them or letting them starve to death
This only works if the prison guards are the good guys or at least try very hard to pretend to be ones. Otherwise neither of those options are a big problem for them. Case in point: Putin murdered Navalny in prison (not by hunger but same point stands) and what happened? Absolutely nothing.
JarJarJedi
18d ago
Out of all suicidal actions in furtherance of Hamas cause, this is one of the least harmful I think. Should be encouraged.
JarJarJedi
19d ago
Yep, why bother with creating complex tastes if you could just hammer the basic receptors and sell 100x? The problem is once it starts, all other manufacturers have to do the same or die (or survive on meager earnings from rare freaks like myself, while their competitors are making billions).
JarJarJedi
19d ago
This is so real. When I got off added sugar drinks, after a while I discovered there are more tastes than "MOAR SUGAR!". And in fact, a lot of things have their own tastes which don't benefit from MOAR SUGAR. Which also unfortunately made about 90% of US sweets completely un-consumable for me because it's a gustatory equivalent of being tied up to a biggest meanest loudspeaker at a heavy metal concert. You can't do subtle tastes if people are addicted to MOAR SUGAR.
JarJarJedi
19d ago
It tastes like alien cat piss, it has a bunch of spooky chemicals and there's absolutely no reason to drink it when there are many better alternatives.
JarJarJedi
20d ago
Trump can yell at GOP congressmen, but that's pretty much all he can do. He can't rain fire and brimstone on them or flood them out. And the congressmen, while being very pious in appearance, are right now very reluctant to actually follow Trump's commandments (where have I seen this kind of thing before?) and actually do things. All Trump can threaten them with is to primary them (sometime in the future) and even that may be not that much of a threat for those who has a strong local base, and given there's 220 of them, nobody gets more than 1/220 of the fault if nothing happens, which isn't a lot of fault. He can't implement the legislation alone, and there's not a lot he can do beyond yelling if GOP congressmen are dragging their feet. He can't executive order them into action.
JarJarJedi
21d ago
Yeah being "white" and openly supporting terrorists puts one in a very convenient spot to serve as a token prosecution target. "You see, we're not ignoring it, we're doing something!". Given the same guys also called for British MPs to be assassinated, it makes them even easier target to make an example of. Now when next 1000 people are arrested for tweeting about immigration policies, the police can say they are completely even-handed and fight extremism on both sides.
I got to the middle of Use of Weapons and I am kinda doubting if I'm going to finish it. I've pretty much guessed the main reveal already (it became so painfully obvious at some point that I broke down and checked it and yes, it was exactly what I thought) and the story is somehow not that engaging for me, and in general the Culture kinda looks pretty assholish to me at this point, not sure if it was the intention of the author or my biases. I know a lot of people like The Culture series, would you advise me to persevere or try another book or just look elsewhere entirely? I read Player of Games before, and it was kinda obvious how it's going to end (I mean you don't set up the whole thing to lose at the end, right?) and there also were a reveal which I thought was kinda meh but overall it was ok, not super-excellent but also I didn't feel like I need to force myself to go on. With this one, I am kinda struggling.
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