campfireSmoresEaten
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User ID: 2560
campfireSmoresEaten
24d ago
I don't think it's fair to say that Ukraine antagonized Russia. They insisted upon their sovereignty. They refused to be bullied. They refused to be conquered. That's not antagonizing, that's sticking up for oneself.
campfireSmoresEaten
24d ago
It's bad when criminals steal priceless things. If you can't prevent them from doing so, you can at least make them pay a high price, and deal them a grievous wound which will make it harder to do the same thing again.
campfireSmoresEaten
24d ago
Russian aggression has a lot to do with why Ukraine's economy is doing so badly, I should think.
campfireSmoresEaten
24d ago
But then there would be a huge retaliation from NATO that would make NATO's support for Ukraine look rather restrained by comparison (and maybe it kinda was).
campfireSmoresEaten
24d ago
The difference is that Russia is still doing it. And to a lesser extent so is China.
so what will they do?
How hard do you think it would be to decapitate or disfigure the regime without nukes? Like a heart attack gun, but for a country. Drones, lasers, hacking, etcetera. There are many ways to escalate, NATO only has to convince itself that just one of them doesn't require that much courage to pursue. The plans probably already exist, just as a framework, created as practice in the art of developing tactical plans rather than out of expectation that they would ever be used, but they do exist. I'm not saying this will happen, but if Russia does push NATO too far then these options will be seriously considered.
campfireSmoresEaten
24d ago
My experience is that most people don't have a good enough understanding of how housing costs work to point blame at anything other investment funds for high prices.
campfireSmoresEaten
25d ago
There are many British WWII movies. I assure you. Many many.
campfireSmoresEaten
26d ago
What's more embarrassing, watching Blackeddotcom or watching Hollywood movies and commercials?
That's a joke. But here's my point: I have an adblock, and I don't watch movies unless I expect to like them. And I don't watch many movies in theaters. It's not that I avoid movies with interracial couples or whatever, it's just that I haven't been watching many movies lately. As such, I am to a large extent not exposed to the phenomenon you're describing.
The downsides of eschewing pop culture exist but aren't enormous the way that the downsides of eschewing/being shunned from other stuff are. Pop culture is a pretty small part of culture. The more people read non-pop culture the more powerful it will be and the less powerful corporate dreck will be. That's something I think the right and the left can agree on.
campfireSmoresEaten
26d ago
I think the vast majority of Americans of all stripes don't care about Brits playing Americans. If they care they care only very slightly and it's mixed with acceptance that Brits are just really good at acting.
campfireSmoresEaten
26d ago
Wasn't TF2 super buggy on its initial release, or do I have that wrong?
campfireSmoresEaten
26d ago
I wonder if that was actually good economic policy, or if it was one of those things that sounded good but actually made things worse for everyone, like price controls.
campfireSmoresEaten
27d ago
This is something like the third time someone has said something on this site that has made me want to link a sketch from That Mitchell and Webb Sound only to find it's not on youtube...
They did a sketch called Switzerland During the War Years or something and it's a faux-documentary about the hardships experienced by Switzerland during the war. Someone complaining about the horror of running out of space in the attic for looted treasure received from trading with Germany. You get the idea.
Not sure how fair an assessment that is, but that's comedy for you.
campfireSmoresEaten
28d ago
"the propensity to delude naive and mentally ill people into joining unironically"
In retrospect, the Matrix movies did a lot of damage to society. Or maybe all the mentally ill people would have just believed something else instead.
campfireSmoresEaten
28d ago
I'd want it to be twice a year. If one has sympathy for detrans people, one should want to make it easy for them to detransition (as an upside to be weighed against whatever downsides the policy might have).
campfireSmoresEaten
29d ago
Oh right. Kind of a stupid question on my part, in retrospect.
campfireSmoresEaten
29d ago
What do you mean that ChatGPT doesn't possess understanding? How would you even determine that?
campfireSmoresEaten
29d ago
The human brain is a "chinese room". Also AI has done many agentic things. Any definition of agentic that would exclude everything an AI has done would be so strict as to be obviously fragile and not that meaningful.
campfireSmoresEaten
29d ago
I feel like a movie where flat earth is real and there really is a conspiracy dedicated to protecting it would be great. That's what the Wachowski's should have done instead of Matrix 2.
campfireSmoresEaten
29d ago
Are Pakistani girls noticeably genetically distinct with regards to looks? Or is it just like saying white Canadian women are hotter than white British women?
campfireSmoresEaten
1mo ago
If existing scientific methods aren't enough to analyze this issue, imagine how awesome it would be if the transgender community and their vanguard managed to push for prediction markets to study this subject.
(I like prediction markets)
campfireSmoresEaten
1mo ago
Well if it's a question worth asking then it might be worth the weirdness.
campfireSmoresEaten
1mo ago
I do think that there are perhaps missing outlets for anger in our society. But I don't really know.
The fact that dissent is suppressed is a piece of evidence, but not a conclusive one.
Edit to elaborate:
The question "why is saying this unpopular thing illegal when saying all those other unpopular things isn't illegal?" has more than one possible answer.
It's the difference between living a block away from a vicious criminal with one leg and living a block away from a vicious criminal with no legs. Every bit of extra disability is nice.
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