functor
15hr ago
Israel killed as many civilians in two months as Russians killed in 3.5 years of fighting against a far more competent opponent.
functor
10d ago
The difference being Israels exceptional brutality, their politicians using references to biblical genocides and the high civilian death toll.
functor
1d ago
NATO will inherit the rump state of what is left of Ukraine which is the part without the mines and the good agricultural land.
functor
17d ago
Depending on your age you already need to show ID. Just make passports the only valid ID if it is latin american.
functor
3d ago
Mainstream leftism is just more power to the elites.
Populist leftism isn't. Opposition to the military industrial complex and the surveillance state would increase our freedom.
functor
6d ago
functor
9d ago
So these Hamas rockets that have barely been able to kill anyone leveled an entire hospital during Israeli bombing. Seems like something AIPAC cooked up.
As for October 7 Israel was engaging in military operations against Gaza, they had murdered hundreds of civilians and taken thousands of hostages.
There war a roughly 50% civilian death rate on the Israeli side. Is 1 civilian death for every military death acceptable or not? Why isn't it terror when Israel kills more than one civilian for each military casualty?
functor
11d ago
Invading their neighbours three times, attacking Iran, backing all sorts of terrorist groups in Iran and then bombing for over a week seems to be the best way to convince them to get nukes. The best way to convince a country not to get nukes is to not be hyper aggressive towards them.
functor
1d ago
A regime change operation in Ukraine with the goal of pushing the US sphere of influence right into Russia's back yard even though they repeatedly warned against it. The US was doing everything it could to get a war and the war has gone a lot worse than reported.
The cost will be in the multiple trillions as interest rates have gone up sharply since the start of the war and the equipment that is replacing the stuff sent to Ukraine costs multiples of the equipment sent to Ukraine. Not to mention that NATO is inheriting a basket case nation that makes nation building in Afghanistan look like a cake walk. NATO now has to finance a military a quarter the size of the US military that is supposed to be capable of fighting a high intensity war in a country that has no arms production and now tax base to support it. Ukraine is going to be an endless foreign aid black hole
Iraq was definitely different. It was a completely unprovoked land grab on the other side of the planet. It wasn't really any different then the Belgians grabbing the Congo. The goal was to occupy and control Iraq while giving them zero legal status within the empire.
functor
20d ago
The fact of the matter is Israels interest is a destablized middle east with weak neighbors. This has caused the to get in conflict with everyone around them and flooded Europe with migrants. It is a problematic country founded on an insane religious doctrine that is heretical to christianity and that is nothing but a headache to us. There is no reason to support them what so ever.
functor
22d ago
As others have stated the bad behavior by ill behaving cyclists is just so so bad.
Funny how this mainly seems to be the case in cities that are extremely poorly designed for bicycles.
Brainless degenerates seem to be a minority of people behind the wheel of a car,
I see speeding cars and wrongly parked cars all the time.
functor
20d ago
Who claimed they were pragmatic? They have an ideology that is completely opposed to the western view of war and ruthlessly commit war crimes.
functor
16d ago
There is absolutely no reason to do a direct assault of a small hilly island. The only sensible way to take Taiwan is a siege which the Chinese could even conduct from their homeland with anti ship missiles launched from the shores. Taiwan isn't going to last that long without international trade.
functor
20d ago
The US and Israel no longer want to do nation building and building friendly regimes. They are going for destruction. The new model is turning countries into Libya or Syria. Wrecked countries controlled by various competing militias. A disaster for the country, an eradication of the local Christians and a refugee crisis or Europe.
functor
20d ago
Iran has no reason to hate China. The US and Israel has been warmongering in the region for decades and created completely unnecessary conflicts. The US could very will have had amicable relations with Iran. Instead they had warmongering and aggressive policies that have made the relation hard to fix.
Iran negotiated a deal with the US that the US then broke. The US invaded Iraq twice and Afghanistan. The US has a long history of bombing the middle east, assassinating people and destroying countries. The Iranians have every reason to be skeptical.
functor
24d ago
One of the most interesting things about google's AI is their vertex studio. It allows you to use datasets, finetune models build services such as chatbots, supply chain services, industrial planning and medical services. The amazing thing is how easy these services are to use. No code is required and adanced services can be built by a noob in hours.
A lot of startups with inflated valuations have products that can be built in an afternoon with the right dataset. Instead of having an AI team, companies will be able to pay 300 dollars to someone on fiver to configure the same thing on vertex AI.
As for LLMs there fundamental flaw is that they don't store recent information and context well. A human mind is more of a flow of information and new informantion is consitently stored within the brain. LLMs don't really do memory and are poor at learning. They require millions of hours of training. A human can pick up new facts and skills much quicker and carry those facts and skills with him. LLMs are like a high skilled person who suffers from extreme short term memory damage.
For AGI/ASI to become real the neural networks will have to learn much faster and be able to learn on the fly.
functor
17d ago
Mass third world immigration. When the US invaded Iraq and opened the flood gates to Europe with migrants Iran helped the Iraqis defend themselves. Iran played a key roll in defeating ISIS. These two wars have been immensely helpful for Europe.
functor
20d ago
The desire for another Iraq war fiasco is extremely low. More war mongering in the middle east, more refugees to Europe, surging oil prices and another forever war was not what Trump campaigned on for a reason. All these wars have been disasters and there is no reason to think the next war won't be as bad as Libya, Iraq, Syria or Yemen.
It is unpopular now and it will be as unpopular as Iraq war 2.0 was once this fiasco has ended.
functor
20d ago
The perception of Israel across the world has been in steady decline for the past 1.5 years. More Israeli warmongering and bombing just makes people dislike them more.
functor
20d ago
Iran's ongoing support for a global Islamic revolution
On the flip side they fought against the Jihadists in Syria and helped Syria defend itself. We should be thankful for that. When Iraq was invaded they helped Iraqis fight for their independence. They have not sponsored the type of muslims that attack European Christmas markets. Those types of jihadists are backed by Israel.
Who even cares what Iran thinks of the west? They are in their part of the world and are willing to trade with the other parts of the world. The US and Israel has smashed other countries and supported jihadism. The US and Israel are against stable and reasonable states and wants to turn the middle east into a giant Afghanistan.
functor
13d ago
It is the ISIS ideology of building a caliphate and invoking the return of Jesus. The idea of commanding god and ordering Jesus back to Earth is an antithesis to what pretty much 99% of Christians throughout history have believed. It is a big part of the rift between Al Qaeda and ISIS in which Al Qaeda considered ISIS to be completely out of control.
functor
10d ago
A private system could work as well. Holland, Switzerland and Japan also have private systems. The difference is that their prices aren't abhorrent. Regardless of who pays the US medical system has a cost problem. This problem will not get solved because the vested interests want delivering a baby to cost 40000 dollars.
functor
1d ago
What amazes me is the number of people who understand that the Iraq war, Vietnam war and Afghanistan war were spectacular fiascos and the whole establishment lied. But the next time the media sells a war they get all hyped up for it! This time there is a new supervillan who for absolutely no reason and with absolutely no historical context just behaves like a cartoon villian and we have to take him out now!
During Iraq there was at least some critical media and Baghdad bob was at least allowed on CNN. In Ukraine there are now dissenting opinions allowed. The people who spent 120 000 000 000 dollars building a 300 000 man army in Afghanistan and then told us the troops didn't exist yet the spending did, are supposed to be trusted blindly.
One of the main reasons why politicians are so freaked out about Ukraine is that they lied as much about Ukraine as they lied about every other war and they are afraid of the piles of lies being exposed. One day would could have a Ukrainian Ed Snowden or Bradley Manning.
They have effectively beaten NATO in a conventional land war. They are fighting an enemy in which every operation is run by NATO, the equptment is NATO, thousands of NATO mercs are running things on the ground.
While Israel and the US can't take an area the size of a municipality in Gaza against enemies with no resources Russia took the area the size of Denmark in a week against an enemy with 3x larger force.
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