functor
3mo ago
I have a metal water bottle which got squashed. I filled it with water and put it in the freezer and it popped back out.
functor
3mo ago
Libertarianism as the only right wing ideology is a flawed view of the left/right spectrum. Most right wing governments have historically been involved in the economy and securing essential resources for the nation. Mercantilism, fascism, monarchy etc are completely compatible with a nationalistic economic policy. If anything the liberal factions have often been aligned with leftist groups against nationalists and traditionalists.
functor
3mo ago
The true benchmark is GDP. If LLMs truely can boost productivity in most tasks except for pure manual labour we would see GDP roaring. If we saw a 10-40% increase in productivity among the majority of the labour force it would be like an industrial revolution on steroids. We are seeing lackluster economic growth, clearly production isn't booming.
Some how tech has the ability to radically change how people work and provide people with amazing tools without boosting productivity much. We went from type writers to Word to cloud services that allow us to share documents instantly across continents. We really haven't seen a matching boom in productivity. The amount of office workers wasn't slashed with the propagation of Email, excel, google search or CRM-systems.
functor
4mo ago
So there are no cases of the local DEI people discriminating against whites and especially typical Trump voting whites? Instead he just happens to chose a small minority that is vastly overrepresented among his donors and his administration. Imagine if a president had recieved a large portion of his funding from China and had a sizeable portion of his administration consist of Chinese people and they were all about owning the libs by taking out DEI efforts specifically hurting Chinese people.
Israel doesn't do work for the US, the US does work for Israel. China doesn't really have a military presence in the region and is the biggest trading partner with most of MENA. Israel wrecks the relationship with middle eastern countries and drags the US into forever wars.
functor
4mo ago
Or they have a claim that they have actually lived there for centuries and have strong family ties to the place. Unlike 1.5 million Israelis who showed up from Eastern Europe in the 90s claiming to live there because of penis skin. Not to mention that many Palestinians are Christian, especially before Israel wrecked the Christian population.
functor
4mo ago
The lives of peaceful Israeli Arabs are on average some of the best in the region.
They have denied most people living their citizenship. People are banned from living on the land the family has lived on for generations.
Why should they sign a peace deal with a country that wants 70+ of the land and with a country that is attacking all its neighbours? It is a concession with nothing to gain.
functor
4mo ago
Has it? Have the Palestinians acted in any way that is significantly different from any other group? They are not really doing anything to different from any other insurgency.
functor
4mo ago
Israel has engaged in acts of aggression against six countries in the past coupleof months. Note that many of the conflicts cited above are related to Israel or the fallout of Isreali caused issues, for example Lebanon. Iraq has had wars caused by AIPAC funded politicians.
functor
4mo ago
Because having a jewish ethnostate built in a densely populated area close to Europe is a bad idea and something that will lead to constant headache for the rest of us. Israel in the middle east has been 80 years of trouble and is set up to be another 80 years of trouble. AIPAC and the Zionist lobby has pushed for a multitude of disastrous wars both for the region and for Europe as well as for American tax payers. Israel is a permanent welfare queen due to its placement.
Israel was not placed there for some rational reason but because of a belief in that the land could be bought for mutilated baby penises. Either Israel can learn to coexist with its neighbours in peace or it should relocate.
functor
4mo ago
Israel has engaged in military action against Palestine, Lebanon, Syria, Iran, Yemen and Iraq. Who else comes close to that much war?
functor
4mo ago
The fact that they achieved peace and created a functioning society in which many protestants live. Subjegating Palestinians is never going to work as the conflict isn't going to end if there is no deal for the Palestinians to accept. You can't have a large portion of the country that fundamentally doesn't accept the current order and have no reason to do so.
They could find some plot of land in Africa or Latin America with a far lower population to resettle to. Their claim to Israel is that they bought the land in exchange for half the skin on their babies pensises which is a rediculus premise for a country.
functor
4mo ago
So in other words Israel's only strategy would be creating a giant refugee crisis 300 km from Europe. Nobody wants that. Israel is a small state that is going to be in constant conflict with everyone and everything around them.
Rhodesia and French Algeria existed longer than Israel and had people who had lived there for generations. Jews are rootless cosmopolitans and should find a new home.
functor
4mo ago
Creating a jewish state by genociding all the people living there including a large portion of Christians is abhorrent. Palestine's best asset is jews posting content in English and showing the world what Talmudic logic is like.
functor
4mo ago
The differential between Palestine and Israel in terms of military capacity is greater than ever:
Far from it. Missile tech and drone tech is more dispersed than ever. Israel can't even occupy an area smaller than a municipality in almost two years even with exceptional brutality. Israel is a small country stuck in the same quagmire as South Vietnam, French Algeria or Rhodesia. They are never going to be a functioning country and permanently stuck in a state of emergency.
It is chutzpah of the highest order to rely on the charity and good will of your enemy to feed your people.
Expecting an enemy not to commit war crimes is normal. Israels behaviour has taught a sizeable portion of goyim what jewish mindset is and that the jewish view on this is fundamentally incompatible with a western mindset. The winning Palestinian strategy is to show the world what a bunch of religious fundamentalists on the west bank are actually like. There is a reason why western civilization despised these people for 2000 years and having them quoting biblical genocides while massacring starving Christians is an excellent way to bring back the west to our historical view of them.
Millions of Afghans died in the 80s. Millions of Vietnamese died, France was brutal against the Algerians. Being brutal against the locals is not an effective way to win. The British counter insurgency in Northern Ireland was far more effective.
functor
4mo ago
I have never understood why green parties are woke. Their ideology is naturally anti woke.
Remove fossil fuels from society and you are going to have a society that reflects that material basis. A society without fossil fuels doing most of the work is reliant on male physical strength. If agriculture is going to be entirely organic and sustainable people are going to be skinny. Much of feminism builds on people leaning on the state or insurance companies for their old age and care instead of family. Social structures are seen as oppressive by the left if people can recieve a pension and be cared for by the state. A large state that takes care of people requires industrial civilization. Without a huge state people need families, children, and social structures for support.
functor
4mo ago
Duties are owed to those higher up; parents, church, community. Even those things owed to another person of similar rank or lower down are not owed to them per se, but owed to them because it is ones duty to society to provide it.
The flip side is that the higher in the hierarchy you go, the higher the demands. A king has far, far more virtues to live up to and a far heavier burden to carry than a peasant. Being a priest puts far higher demands and far higher responsibilities on a person than being a layman.
functor
4mo ago
China is likely trying to achieve world domination, and Europeans would much prefer the US as a hegemon,
Would we? How many refugee waves have China pushed into Europe? How many sanctions does China impose on the world compared to the US? China is on the other side of Eurasia and has little interest in countries outside of itself except for transactional trade deals. There is no historical animosity toward China as Europeans historically have had limited interactions with China.
Neocon elites pushed by the US to hate China are different from Europeans. Ursula von der Leyen would have been fanatically pro invading Iraq if she was around in 2003 and if the US was invading Fiji she would be ranting and raving about how it needs to be utterly destroyed. Americans start talking trans issues and the EU elite will be fanatically trans. If the washington establishment says grass is blue than grass is blue.
functor
4mo ago
Beards being leftists are hardly a universal rule. European nobility and royalty have historically often been bearded. Beards are masculine.
What is dying is the 80s Reagan conservatism/enterprise institute style conservatism. The strange mix of trying to cosplay southern baptist and business elite at the same time isn't working anymore. The conservative INC aesthetic won't work forever and will have to change. Mitt Romney and JD Vance have a larger age gap than most men have between them and their fathers. Most guys aren't looking and dressing like their dad.
The left transformed in less than 50 years from Russian revolution to hippy movement. It shouldn't be shocking that the right can morph in a similar timespan.
functor
4mo ago
Question:
How do you have so many photos of yourself? I have three photos a year taken of me. Are you taking loads of photos? Did you take a weekend photo shoot?
functor
5mo ago
Have you really missed naval remote-controlled boats that resulted in Russia losing naval war to navy that has no active traditional surface vessels?
The Starlink ones developed by the US for the defence of Taiwan that are sent to targets located by US surveillance? The Ukrainian naval projects also have a strong British component.
Ukraine's main arms production is assembling Chinese drone components. This is mainly a cottage industry of building parts made to fit together into a small plastic drone. That is fairly far from large scale industry.
functor
5mo ago
Not unlikely. People are going to be more focused on looks if they are choosing a partner for themselves rather than trying to find a partner for someone else.
functor
5mo ago
Pope Leo XIV has been pope for two months now. How has his first two months been and has your view of him shifted since he became pope?
functor
5mo ago
Effectively there are too many people that have to be pleased by the budget for it to pass. Congress, senate and a bunch of other influential people have to agree to it. These people aren't fully autonomous but are being pulled in various directions by people around them. The result is not much can actually be done to cut spending as each cut will be fought by someone. Musk was probably right from an idealist perspective that the bill increased the debt. However, his view is too based on the corporate world in which he doesn't need to get hundreds of people to agree in order to set policy.
The bill highlights one of America's greatest issues, the inability for someone to ram something through and get it done.
20% still isn't that bad. Opening a hair dressing shop in order to launder money is a lot more work.
The biggest issue with OF money laundering is that there is no cash payment.
More options
Context Copy link