RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
No bio...
User ID: 317
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Sure - but then we go back to the original question you were responding to.
Who is the occupying power again? Not Egypt, Israel. Even the US state department admits this.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
1yr ago
Same law that protects blacks against discrimination also protects whites and Asians.
Only de jure, as you say. It was devised not to protect Whites or Asians but to advance blacks, women and so on, so there's a logical consistency there. Intention and use were aligned. The court would not just be implementing what the words say, they're changing the fundamental meaning of the law even as everyone pretends it stays the same. I guess if we looked around we could find some case where whites were protected by the law (was there some case in Hawaii) but by and large that's not the function or goal.
This is on a different level to ruling that fish are bees or whatever for the purposes of some biodiversity preservation law, even though that's a huge change of factual content (and logically bizarre). They really need commitment from the other branches of govt to make such a meaningful change and get it to stick.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
The European half of NATO has a lot of weapons, a lot of troops, a lot of everything except tactical nukes. They spend far more than Russia on their military. There is no reason to feel threatened when you are very well armed at all levels short of nuclear war.
Someone can not be a threat in normal circumstances, yet be dangerous if antagonized. This is not a contradiction.
Ukraine is a dry run for the west’s response in case of such an emergency, and continuing support signalizes nato’s commitment to defend its members
Ukraine is not a member of NATO, it signals that the West is ready to support any anti-Russian country next to Russia. If you're worried about little green men in Estonia, why not base troops in Estonia? Or maybe you could encourage the Baltics to be more tolerant to its Russian-speaking minority? I would've thought expelling people who didn't have sufficient grasp of Latvian is a rather odd approach for an EU embracing multiculturalism and 3rd world immigration: https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/russians-take-language-test-avoid-expulsion-latvia-2023-05-08/
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
Explain it? It just is.
Why do positive and negative charges attract? They just do. There's nothing to understand or explain, it just is. I don't need to explain qualia because it's nonsense with zero value, except to philosophers who need some make-work.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
Meanwhile, the other one was just way off. Like 30 percent off the ratios. The problem is there's no good reason humans have for altering the isotope ratios of a simple metal like magnesium. There's no different properties of the different isotopes, that anybody, at least in any of the literature that is public of the hundreds of thousands of papers published, that says this is why you would do that. Now you can do it. It's a little expensive to do, but you'd have no reason for doing it.
Why would anyone irradiate magnesium to make these weird isotopes and drop it off for people to find? Surely this could only happen artificially. Are we proposing that some freak natural occurrence leaves behind some irradiated magnesium right next to a 'UAP', which in your mind is a completely separate bizarre natural occurrence?
It's like the theory that Epstein managed to kill himself in an anti-suicide room AND that the camera failed just when he did so. Two connected simultaneous unexplained events? Surely it is more plausible that there's an orchestrating party involved.
Furthermore, 25 people are dead! Either Havana Syndrome was real or there's another kind of energy that's killing people, or the professor is lying.
People with credentials are wrong all the time, and 95% of other people with credentials would dispute UFOs generally
Well they weren't with him in the lab, measuring the isotopes or examining the brains. I'm confident that 95% of people with credentials would opt out of disputing people who had seen the evidence, when they themselves have not.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
How can it be a mystery? It's like Scott's example of the Russian periodic table with room-temperature superconductors and antigravity. There are some healthy diets in the world. There's the upper middle-class pious diet with home-cooking, multigrain bread, fruit, fish and so on. There's the Japanese diet with fish and rice - there's zero problem with obesity in Japan. The Mediterrenean diet isn't bad either. Only as countries westernize, only as McDonalds and Coca Cola expand into new markets does obesity emerge.
The most obese countries are Pacific Islanders, which is genetics-related, followed by oil-rich Arab countries who are ultra-Westernized and then the US.
According to wikipedia, Ethiopia has a higher proportion of obese people than Japan! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_obesity_rate
I'm confident that if the US government shifted its vast agricultural subsidies program towards pumping out sushi rather than corn and beef, there would be quick improvement. I agree that raising awareness does nothing, what's needed is serious movement on the ground. Dissolve Coca-Cola, retrain fast food cooks to produce sushi, ban HFCS and things will turn around quickly.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
I'm not against pizza or burgers in principle. If you make them from good ingredients than that's fine. I was more thinking of the aisles in the grocery store full of plasticky sweets. There'll be a row of soft drink next to a row of chips with flavors unknown to nature. Stuff like gummy bears.
Furthermore, it is true that poor, lower-class people are fatter than rich people, generally speaking. In this case, my classism and disdain is based upon fact. I won't say that the diet I describe above is ideal - these are also people who buy and unironically eat kale and non-alchoholic kombucha which is just repulsive. Nevertheless, it is possible to buy high-quality ingredients that taste good and don't cause significant obesity. Sugary Starbucks drinks aren't healthy either, despite being middle-class as opposed to lower class.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
Iraq’s road to democracy is still long, and while this election could be seen as a step forward, it has also underlined the fragilities and setbacks that might result in further disillusionment
The article says that Iraq is not a liberal democracy. If it's on the road to democracy, it's not a democracy, let alone a liberal democracy! If a doctor gives a report about the state of someone's health, it doesn't mean that they're healthy.
Sure we didn’t transform Afghanistan but we didn’t make it worse. There population grew on trend the entire time. No excess deaths.
No excess deaths is not the sole standard for how benign a military operation is. Imagine if the US raped and impregnated all the women there. Population grows on trend! But that's still a bad thing.
We also signed treaties with Ukraine that we would protect their sovereignty.
No, you didn't promise to do anything.
https://www.whsv.com/2022/02/25/does-us-have-an-obligation-protect-ukraine/
Baltics would be very hard to defend if Russia controlled Ukraine.
Look at a map. Ukraine doesn't even border the Baltics. The Baltics are already hard to defend because of geography and Kaliningrad in conventional terms.
Lol it’s harrassment that when a country invaded your friend you limit trade with them.
Yes. They froze hundreds of millions of dollars in Russian banks, preventing them spending their own money. It's also harassment when a country organizes a coup in your friend as in 2014, or manipulates your elections, as in 1996.
Dude if you haven’t been paying attention F-18 are when not if.
There's no evidence for this. F-18s are much more advanced and expensive than F-16s and would be too hard for Ukraine to supply. That's why they asked for F-16s. That's why everyone is talking about F-16s, not F-18s.
Nukes I wouldn’t give them. Russia literally has zero chance to win the war. Even if they get a breakthrough there would be a NATO counter probably polish boots. Again I pay taxes for military weapons. I want to use them to kill Russians.
Great, then we get a nuclear war. That would kill a lot of Russians!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
Iraq is not a liberal democracy, as I said. Even the Atlantic Council agrees with me. It's a massive fragile mess of Iran-backed Shia militias, ex-ISIS militias and Kurdish militias.
https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/blogs/menasource/the-truth-about-iraq-s-democracy/
The US went into Afghanistan, got hundreds of thousands of people killed in the war, expanded Afghan drug production with their incompetence, subsidized bacha-bazi in the Afghan Army (also known as the rape of boys), squandered trillions of dollars in corruption. Then they left and obstructed famine relief, confiscating $7 billion from their national bank. The US really is not interested in the welfare of Afghans, otherwise this wouldn't have happened. It was a complete clusterfuck.
There’s no evidence we turned Ukraine west.
The Nuland phone call has a recording of them plotting out who will be in the new Ukrainian government. US-based NGOs like Open Society and government backed organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy have spent billions in Ukraine, funding NGOs and protest groups. This is well documented. That buys loyalty and influence.
Nuclear weapons aren’t protecting Estonia (part of nato in your view) if we aren’t willing to fight in Ukraine. Then we aren’t dropping a nuke on Moscow if they invade the Baltics.
Do you understand what an alliance is? Azerbaijan invaded Armenia - the US is not obliged to do anything because they're not allied. If China invades Nepal, the US is not obliged to do anything. But if Russia invades Estonia, they are obliged to fight because they are allied. It was a foolish idea to bring these small countries into the alliance, they contribute very little while creating risks. But now they're there we have to stick with them.
Not sure what you are accusing us of doing in 2014 - didn’t Russia invade a neighbor that year? Russia declaring war is suddenly something bad the US did? Makes no sense.
US and EU imposed sanctions on Russia that year because the Russians took Crimea. That's harassment. They didn't declare war, they still haven't declared war. Nobody has declared war.
Sometime next year their getting f-18.
There are discussions over sending F-16s to Ukraine, not F-18s.
The Russian threat is overrated? Haven’t they obliterated a few countries and some of Ukraine with artillery? Keyboard warriors can say that but not when Russian artillery is outside their town.
You don't understand what I'm saying. The conventional threat to the West is overrated, the nuclear threat is underrated. The US has wrecked a few countries in the last 20 years but that doesn't mean Belgium is threatened by the US in the same way Iran or Syria is. Threat is relative.
If the west got the guns then why not use them and kill some Russians? Fuck I pay a ton in taxes for the military and like Ukranians [sic] so we better give them whatever they need to kill Russians.
This is a really unsophisticated argument. Have you thought about what you're saying for more than 10 seconds? If the Ukrainians ask for your whole army, navy and airforce would you hand it over? Your nuclear arsenal? Foreign policy has consequences. These can include fuel shortages, inflation, making enemies, getting into wars, starting nuclear wars. It should be approached carefully.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
We're already getting the wrong guy once in a while, it's rather similar to the 'collateral damage' in Afghanistan. There's collateral damage, yet no chance of victory. We're already reaping the rewards of drug addiction, organized crime, policing costs, second order impacts. There are enormous numbers of youths leaving society via overdose. More and more new and exciting drugs are coming online - fentanyl and similar. There's no obvious sign that this trend will change.
If we turn the 'war' into a war, we would be able to win as opposed to spinning our wheels in the mud, wrecking a great many people's lives without even achieving our ostensible goals.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
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If the US wanted to gain favor with the Arabs, they could simply not support Israel, their number one enemy.
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Syria and Egypt started cozying up to the Soviets precisely because the US was extremely reluctant to provide them weapons that might be used against Israel. The region was going red because of US support for Israel.
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Tensions between the US and Israel were hardly strained through the 60s and 70s. They were improving, despite Israel's best efforts. Israel nuclearized, making the NPT into an even bigger joke and successfully got massive US miiltary aid in the '67 and '73 wars, bringing down the Arab oil embargo that cost the US hundreds of billions.
This put the US in the awkward position of supporting both Egypt and Israel even while Egypt and Israel were at war with each other
The US might have wanted Egypt onside but clearly not at the cost of dumping Israel, otherwise they would have. There's nothing messy about it, the situation is quite clear. The US clearly weighs Israeli security very highly, they were and are willing to sacrifice relations with the Arabs, oil security (quite literally when it comes to the deal where Israel gets a guaranteed US-supplied oil reserve), nuclear-nonproliferation and considerable amounts of money for this goal.
If the US was so concerned with Egyptian security, why not provide them military aid? Why not fly in billions worth of armaments if they look like they're losing a war? Because the US did not want them to defeat Israel, Israel was valued higher.
And there's US aid for Jordan too, as I keep mentioning.
The countries that are now Syria and Iraq
??? You are surely aware that Syria got its independence from France in 1946, that the shortlived United Arab Republic was between Syria and Egypt, not Syria and Iraq?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
Well no the US isn't supporting Islam. But he was saying it's 'not supporting the establishment of religion' generally. I'm saying US support for Israel is motivated by the Israel lobby in the US, who is primarily motivated by religious feeling.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
Are you saying it wasn't a scam on the 30th of September but it was before and after? Or are you saying they just took Tether's word for it?
From the end of page 1, halfway down through page 2 it lists all the things they did. They checked over the blockchain records, they got confirmation letters from banks, looked for the collateral in the loans... Not what I'd call 'confirming that Tether claimed things'.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
Israel acquired nuclear weapons, instruments that actually do secure their defense. They are at least realistic in their paranoia.
If Poland is skeptical that their allies will defend them from Russia, why should they hope that Russia will refrain from nuking them? What good are tanks when one faces complete destruction?
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
Burning your own boats is one thing, burning someone else's boats is another. That's what the Trojans tried to do to the Greeks when they were sallying out!
If your crazy girlfriend convinces you to stop driving and you reluctantly accept, that's one thing. If she blows up your car, that's another.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
The US literally had mine warfare forces training in the exact part of the Baltic Sea where the explosions happened, 3 months later! Polish officials thanked America, Biden threatened to make the pipeline stop regardless of German opinions, they have all the means and motive to do it. There's no question about this, it's an open and shut case.
I'm not sure what you mean by 'true in a technical sentence' or 'no military could get away with literally burning their boats'. What I mean to say is that the US literally and physically blew up $30 billion worth of pipeline that supplied about 58% of Germany's gas. Even if some genuine liberal democrat (as opposed to the megalomaniacal Russian liberal democratic party) somehow got into power, the pipeline is still destroyed. No matter the context it's done, not just for this winter but for years to come. Whilst politicians often don't follow through on their rhetorical commitments, the Germans will now be forced to.
I'm no undersea pipeline engineer but it seems pretty permanently wrecked. The gash is apparently hundreds of metres wide, the whole thing has been filling with water.
This is possibly the least covert attack on an ally since Operation Barbarossa.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
Budapest Memorandum on Security Assurances
Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they "should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used".
Has the US promised to defend Ukraine under its nuclear umbrella? No. They promised that they would attempt to provide some kind of assistance in the Security Council, dominated by veto-holding nuclear powers!
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
2yr ago
Have you checked all the art before saying its uniformly awful?
I rather liked this one: https://opensea.io/assets/matic/0x2953399124f0cbb46d2cbacd8a89cf0599974963/48388610335180253795576366386312396261162674450341463428664179782889647374436
It captures the mocking grin of our effeminate, malign overlords. There's political commentary. There's a pun in the title. The creator gets 10% of each transaction. We consumers can view the image whenever we want. What's not to like?
You're just bringing this exponential out of nowhere, how does it add anything to what I'm saying?
"In the big picture, everything we do on Earth doesn't matter" is true but it's a pointless thing to say. Things on Earth matter to us.
"Nazi Germany didn't conquer all the way to Ceres, so they're not a threat"
"Climate change isn't going to boil the oceans, so who cares"
"Covid isn't going to turn you into a rage monster from Resident Evil so it's a nothingburger"
Statements by the utterly deranged! But if you complicate it out so that 'biology is really complicated, the immune system is pretty good, epidemics often fizzle out and it's orders of magnitude from causing a zombie apocalypse' it suddenly sounds reasonable even when the realistic stance of the problem looks completely different.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
5mo ago
A good 2% of world GDP goes into negative sum, 'socially useless' military spending. Just because something is socially useless it doesn't follow that it's wise or practical to do away with it.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
6mo ago
I see but it processes raw data?
No, it sees. Put in a picture and ask about it, it can answer questions for you. It sees. Not as well as we do, it struggles with some relationships in 2d or 3d space but nevertheless, it sees.
A camera records an image, it doesn't perceive what's in the image. Simple algorithms on your phone might find that there are faces in the picture, so the camera should probably be focused in a certain direction. Simple algorithms can tell you that there is a bird in the image. They're not just recording, they're also starting to interpret and perceive at a very low level.
But strong modern models see. They can see spots on leaves and given context, diagnose the insect causing them. They can interpret memes. They can do art criticism! Not perfectly but close enough to the human level that there's a clear qualitative distinction between 'seeing' like they do and 'processing'. If you want to define seeing to preclude AIs doing it, at least give some kind of reasoning why machinery that can do the vast majority of things humans can do when given an image isn't 'seeing' and belongs in the same category as non-seeing things like security cameras or non-thinking things like calculators.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7mo ago
But the logic does hold. If you're an atheist materialist, why don't you believe that we are in a simulation? That's a perfectly materialist conclusion based on principles we can observe. Bostrom's a pretty smart guy.
Deep down Christians know that their prayers aren't being answered, they can tell that prayer alone won't get them what they want and produce all this cope about how you should be praying to be a better person rather than any concrete outcome. Nor are they using telescopes to look for heaven, somehow they know they won't find it. Still they find some reassurance in the rehashed schizo-prophecies surrounding a 2000-year dead Jew and hope that some day, their prophecies might be resolved and good things will happen. After they die good things they hope good things will happen. And singing hymns is fun.
Well, simulationists can also hope that good things might happen. We might die and wake up from this dream as transcendent, posthuman beings. It's not a hard kind of knowledge, we could be NPCs and be deleted. But there is more weight behind this abstract hope than in theirs, for a certain kind of rational person.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
7mo ago
I believe that most American food, even seemingly normal food, is full of weird chemicals.
Brown bread with seeds that goes stale in a few days is better than the kind of cheaper, longer-lasting white bread. Why is white bread so much cheaper and longer-lasting? Because it's full of strange ingredients. I don't know what kind of bread you're getting of course but just look at what Walmart puts in theirs. This was the first American bread that came up in my search: https://www.walmart.com/ip/Great-Value-White-Round-Top-Bread-20-oz/10315355?classType=REGULAR&athbdg=L1200
Enriched Wheat Flour (Wheat Flour, Niacin, Reduced Iron, Thiamine Mononitrate, Riboflavin, Folic Acid), Water, Sugar, Yeast, Soybean Oil, Salt, Vital Wheat Gluten, Dough Conditioners (Mono- & Diglycerides, Sodium Stearoyl Lactylate, Ascorbic Acid), Calcium Propionate (to Retain Freshness), Soy Flour, Encapsulated Sorbic Acid (Sorbic Acid, Hydrogenated Vegetable Oil, Mono- and Diglycerides) (to Retain Freshness), Yeast Nutrients (Calcium Sulfate, Ammonium Sulfate, Calcium Carbonate, Monocalcium Phosphate), Soy Lecithin.
Likewise, there's cheese and there's cheese. Cheese can be minimally processed or intensively processed.
Some common ultra-processed products are carbonated soft drinks; sweet, fatty or salty packaged snacks; candies (confectionery); mass produced packaged breads and buns, cookies (biscuits), pastries, cakes and cake mixes; margarine and other spreads; sweetened breakfast ‘cereals’ and fruit yoghurt and ‘energy’ drinks; pre-prepared meat, cheese, pasta and pizza dishes; poultry and fish ‘nuggets’ and ‘sticks’; sausages, burgers, hot dogs and other reconstituted meat products; powdered and packaged ‘instant’ soups, noodles and desserts; baby formula; and many other types of product. See table 1, below
Industrial breads made only from wheat flour, water, salt and yeast are processed foods, while those whose lists of ingredients also include emulsifiers or colours are ultra-processed. Plain steel-cut oats, plain corn flakes and shredded wheat are minimally processed foods, while the same foods are processed when they also contain sugar, and ultra-processed if they also contain flavours or colours.
It all depends in what's in those corn tortilla chips. I reckon it would be processed, even ultra-processed depending on ingredients.
Based on the search results, here are the ingredients commonly used to make corn tortillas in the USA:
Masa Harina: A type of corn flour made from nixtamalized corn, which is dried and ground into a fine powder. Brands like Masienda, Maseca, and Bob’s Red Mill are popular choices. Water: Warm water is used to rehydrate the masa harina and “bloom” its flavor. Salt (optional): Some recipes include salt to bring out the flavor of the corn. Some store-bought corn tortilla brands in the USA may also include additional ingredients, such as:
Cellulose Gum: A thickening agent used to improve texture and shelf life. Guar Gum: A thickening agent used to enhance texture and prevent drying out. Amylase: An enzyme used to break down starches and improve texture. Propionic Acid: A preservative used to extend shelf life. Benzoic Acid: A preservative used to prevent spoilage. Phosphoric Acid: A preservative used to maintain freshness.
RandomRanger
Just build nuclear plants!
10mo ago
You're reducing your risk of death and lowering stress. You're saving a little time.
I don't drive, I take public transport and walk, neither of which require much attention.
Fair enough, I just thought de Boer was in the aggravating kind of mental illness camp, as opposed to the 'fun or amusing' camp. From the tone of your post, you didn't seem interested or happy to read his content.
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