PokerPirate
3mo ago
In your post, you just define "exploitation" to be what the standard capitalist thinks exploitation should mean. The fact that you have a different intuition than Marx does not mean deception is the point. The Marxists could (and did/do!) accuse capitalists of all the same critiques you are leveling at Marxists and their critiques are equally valid.
For example:
If both parties are profiting and are glad for the presence of the other party, then neither is being exploited.
The obvious counterexample to this claim would be the Roman practice of molesting young boys. Both parties here profited from the exchange (the elder statesman receiving sexual gratification and the young boy receiving political tutelage), both entered into the practice willingly, but up-to-lizardman's-constant, every modern American considers this to be exploitation.
So it seems to me you are redefining the term exploitation away from its common-sense meaning into a technical one to perform the exact same motte-and-bailey you accuse the Marxists of.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
I mean it in both ways.
You will find plenty of people who have operated US/allied military equipment and so you will have much more credible discussions about that equipment because the posters are have 1st hand knowledge. There are not posters with first hand knowledge of operating Russian drones, or first hand knowledge of Iranian procurement procedures, or first hand knowledge of how Chinese politicians order around the military establishment, or first hand knowledge of what it takes to get promoted in the IRGC. And so there's lots of unfounded speculation about these topics and any post about these topics needs to be taken with a very large grain of salt.
You will also find people celebrating when the Russian infantry gets thrown into the meat grinder and lamenting when the Ukrainian infantry gets thrown into the meat grinder.
Both of these biases is likely to lead to over-estimating US-aligned forces' capabilities.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
I'll second /r/CredibleDefense, but also note that you get a very pro-US establishment bias from there. You're not going to find anyone who sympathizes with the Russians/Chinese/Venezuelans/Iranians.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
After all the temporary ranks he goes back to the "normal" rank. These read like wartime field promotions to me where they need someone to fill the spot and he's the only one available. I just never heard of anyone getting demoted after those. Going from colonel to captain, or general to major is mind blowing.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
The US, via politics and bad strategy (read up on William Westmoreland if you're interested)
That wikipedia article was an interesting read, thanks. The most fascinating thing to me is how he jumped around in rank. He went from O2 -> O4, O6 -> O3, O4->O7->O5->O8. I can't fathom a military career like that these days.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
Overall I agree with everything you said. But I'd love to see a source for the following claim:
this is based on studies done during IIRC the Vietnam War that found that carrier landings caused more stress than taking enemy fire
I really doubt this is true. I've been around naval aviators a bunch and never heard anyone say this. But there's a huge range of carrier landings (night, storm, low fuel) and a huge range of enemy fire (small arms, dog fight machine gun, SAM). I'm certain that an F8 landing on a carrier in a storm would be more stressful than the same pilot being shot at by an AK47 while on mission.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
You have cited these international building codes in a lot of discussions. It's never been clear to me, however, how they relate to real world construction. What countries actually follow these regulations? Are they effectively law in the US? Would a general contractor in Southern California know/care about these changes? Would my city's building inspector? An architect?
PokerPirate
3mo ago
Does Latin content count?
I got my kids into watching minecraftium and magister craft. Both channels use minecraft to teach kids latin. It's not a full-blown course, but it's rather fun.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
This is a truely excellent take.
Up next is China and the US jointly implementing Yud's plan to prevent AI takeover.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
My guess is that a well-placed if statement/flag should be able to make the light only affect living sprites instead of dead ones. I think that'd be a cool looking effect.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
I like the banhammer flair that got added to the offending post. Is that feature new?
PokerPirate
3mo ago
I haven't been following along, but I just watched the video. I like the light cone effect. I haven't seen that before in an asteroids clone (maybe I just haven't played enough). The one thing that strikes me though is that there's no easy at-a-glance visual cue of if a bug is dead or not; maybe the light cone should only highlight the living bugs instead of the dead ones?
PokerPirate
3mo ago
Oh, I see. You're asking about the bottom link there without the +7. I don't have a way to see if I've previously visited a link or not, but I've never not remembered if I haven't visited.
This is an easy 1-line CSS change to fix, but most users these days don't like the distinction of visited/unvisited links looking different and so webdevs turn it off.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
I'm on a laptop, so different UI than mobile.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
Umm... mine shows me how many unread comments I have...
PokerPirate
3mo ago
I did swing/salsa/ballroom/etc dance classes off and on at a UC school from 2011-2014. Every single class session had more men than women :(
PokerPirate
3mo ago
I'll eat my hat if 10% of Americans could define sedition. The reason people call it treason is because modern Americans have lost the vocabulary to communicate subtlety.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
I love the phrase "good morning".
As a young sailor in the navy, I loved going around ordering the nearby captains and admirals to "have a good morning" and dare them to either:
- obey me and internally admit my superiority
- call me out for disobedience and look like an asshole, or
- disobey me and have a genuinely bad day.
Done with the right attitude and the right other people in attendance, this is quite the power play.
Edit: Just read the post @HereAndGone2 and I do believe I found a meaning of good morning that Tolkien missed!
PokerPirate
3mo ago
Yes, but not in the way the phrase "good luck" is used in English. You would never say "mazel tov" to someone before a sports game to wish them good luck; you say it afterwards to acknowledge they've had good luck (i.e. congratulate them).
PokerPirate
3mo ago
Mazel Tov!
This means roughly "congratulations!" It's kind of weird to congratulate someone for lurking for 2 years.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
This seems like a decent question in the context of a 20 question quiz. But if you're going to pick only 1 question there's lots of better ones. Off the top of my head: Who deposed the Shah? How many casualties in the Iran-Iraq war?
PokerPirate
3mo ago
Thank you for the reference! I concede that there were people who said that the JCPOA "front loaded" the benefits. I do think, however, that it is disingenuous of this group (and you) to call lifting sanctions a "front loaded" benefit.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
I don't think this is true. (But would very much appreciate a correction if I am wrong.)
I recall following these negotiations closely when they were occurring and don't remember anyone citing upfront concessions as a reason not to do JCPOA. Everyone of the negotiators was familiar with the failure of KEDO in North Korea (for promising nuclear reactors now in exchange for disarmament later), and a lot of effort was spent to avoid this failure mode. Skimming the Congressional Actions section of the wikipedia article on JCPOA, I don't see any mention of legislators saying they won't vote for JCPOA because of upfront concessions, and this wapo article from the time about reasons people won't vote for it does not mention upfront concessions.
There are of course other reasons that Republicans did not vote for and eventually withdrew from the treaty, but again I do not think time-based concessions was one of them.
PokerPirate
3mo ago
No, I'm observing that many governments think that the US acted in bad faith with previous inspections. This naturally results in these governments being skeptical of granting the US "anywhere/anytime" inspections even if they would be otherwise warranted.
These "other governments" don't include just Iran, but most of the UN.
This sounds entirely post-hoc justified to me. Every primeape understood the exchange of sex for favors long before homo sapiens invented money.
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