I think we’re gonna have to agree to disagree as I see a fundamental difference between a multi national joint military operation targeting international terrorists and a unilateral military operation aimed at reconstituting the USSR.
Updated
What on earth are you talking about occupying Syria?
Edit: they’re misconstruing the 32-country military coalition that’s been trying to degrade Da’esh since 2014 as the US military by itself occupying sovereign territory.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_against_the_Islamic_State
Some may remember the breathless daily & weekly map updates on the news showing areas controlled by Da’esh changing. Might remember the coalition partnering with various groups of differing militancy & reliability. I think including us (the coalition) fucking over Iraqi Kurds…? I believe because Syria hated them? Or loved them?
So, y’know, absolutely nothing like Russia’s completely unprovoked, unilateral decision to invade Ukraine because Putin was afraid of Ukraine getting too chummy with NATO countries, possibility even considering joining NATO.
If the point of supporting Ukraine is to support the international order of respecting borders, then an absolutist interpretation would mean you stop at your border when repelling invaders.
On the other hand, that would certainly result in invaders loading up on personnel and materiel on their side of the border until they reached some critical mass for a re invasion.
A lot of people might not remember the first Gulf War where the international community defending Kuwait stopped at the Iraq border. I think it could be argued that was a mistake on multiple levels, even ignoring everything we know that came after.
Well “conservative” (i.e. “Republican”) has shifted to such a weird place that people who aren’t weird probably feel compelled to call themselves “liberal” (probably meaning they’ll vote for Democrats).
I’m a liberal dude who earned enough that my wife could stay at home and raise our kids until corporate greed gave me a one two punch of rapacious price increases (because they could get away with it) and stagnant wages (because they expect me to put up with it). She was doing a lot of work on the household all the time.
Luckily she went back to work after our kids became much more self sufficient and could participate in taking care of the house.
Never thought of myself as king of the house.
(She the Queen, though)
This is Zuck’s characterisation. No direct quotes. No attachments (that I’ve seen). He calls it pressure. He says they wanted to censor “satire & humor.” In fact this BS letter is what the original article quoted.
I love how he just uncritically and with absolute credulity accepts excerpts from a letter written by Zuck with no supporting evidence, no examples of what “pressure” looked like, etc.
I can’t believe these people are still so butt hurt about the perfectly reasonable actions taken by the US and State governments and governments worldwide in response to a once in a century global respiratory DEADLY pandemic that killed millions and millions of humans.
And as far as FB (and other social media) goes, fuck em. And fuck the users. Types of speech can be illegal. Defamation (lying about someone) and false advertising (lying about a product or service) can be illegal even though it’s definitely speech. These have “lying” in common, which to me implies there must be something about lying (specifically misrepresenting reality) that weakens typical 1st Amendment protections.
But it’s clear what this guy is most sad about is the traffic he got while his article about Woodstock going on during a lull in the comparatively mild pandemic that was “active” at the time (no meaningful H3N2 activity in the US at the time) went away when FB rightly changed the algorithm to not boost his stupid irrelevant “analysis.”
But people like the writer of this article are either too addled by conspiracy galaxy brain or too committed to lying for money to care that they could really hurt people with their bullshit.
This guy needs to go to something less harmful like selling homeopathic tinctures or lying about the moon landing or flat earth or something.
Слава Україні!
Ok sure but if Person U from a large city comes to the city council meeting and asks for help because their neighbor, Person R, is building a new garage on Person U’s property, it’s understandable that people from around the city - no matter how far afield - might express support for Person U.
At the same time, if Person T or Person I or Person M from far across the city don’t express support, so what? What does it matter? Maybe they’re afraid of Person R. Maybe they truly don’t care. Maybe they hate person U.
Saudi Arabia, India, South Africa, Thailand, Indonesia, Mexico and the United Arab Emirates,
None of these “attenders” are in the same region as Ukraine.
At least they didn’t ignore the terrain alarm.
I read somewhere but can’t find it now about a time where a plane crashed or nearly crashed because the older pilot was sure the “terrain” alarm was a mistake and ignored the directive to pull up. I believe they were flying on instruments (common these days at night or poor visibility).
I read a pretty convincing article title and subheading implying that the best use for so called “AI” would be to replace all corporate CEOs with it.
I didn’t read the article but given how I’ve seen most CEOs behave it would probably be trivial to automate their behavior. Pursue short term profit boosts with no eye to the long term, cut workers and/or pay and/or benefits at every opportunity, attempt to deny unionization to the employees, tell the board and shareholders that everything is great, tell the employees that everything sucks, …
I wonder if this is the harbinger of a bunch of companies breaking up after decades of consolidation.
It would definitely be good to have a big round of breakups to get competition going again. Then we just have to fight against the consolidation that will start up in 20-30 years.
Now do the banks and grocery stores and airlines and car companies and farming and…
Someone should tell this guy that hot dogs exist.
I’ll let others address the “enshittification” angle but I thought I’d point out that “shareholder value uber allies” is a relatively recent … “innovation” … in economic theory, brought about by failed Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork and Milton Friedman in the last half of last century:
https://www.chicagobooth.edu/review/what-made-chicago-school-so-influential-antitrust-policy
The rethinking of what the boards of companies are supposed to do (from maximize stakeholder value to maximize shareholder value) and how they can operate (from requiring justification to approve mergers to requiring justification to block mergers) really took off with them, and exploded when former union boss Ronald Reagan found “religion” (because Nancy’s pussy was just that good) and ruined the economy for workers.
Lots of other people contributed, including Clinton after he “won” the 1992 election with 40% of the vote due to Perot splitting the Republican vote. His campaign of fiscal conservatism but without less bigotry became the model for the Democratic Party for the next two decades.
Anyway, Biden’s FTC is finally working to help workers again, which might even release the death grip of the Chicago School from our economy. We’ll see after November I guess.
This genie is probably impossible to get back in the bottle.
People are going to just direct the imitative so called AI program to make the face just different enough to have plausible deniability that it’s a fake of this person or that person. Or use existing tech to age them to 18+ (or 30+ or whatever). Or darken or lighten their skin or change their eye or hair color. Or add tattoos or piercings or scars…
I’m not saying we should be happy about it, but it is here and I don’t think it’s going anywhere. Like, if you tell your so called AI to give you a completely fictional nude image or animation of someone that looks similar to Taylor Swift but isn’t Taylor Swift, what’s the privacy (or other) violation, exactly?
Does Taylor Swift own every likeness that looks somewhat like hers?
Well just for one example, Joe Biden has been aggressively using the powers he has via the department of education to cancel outstanding student loan balances that were completely legal and very profitable for usurious loan servicing companies.
No Republican would do that.
He and the Democrats leveraged their control of Congress in 2021 and 2022 to pass legislation that is going to do more to reduce our contribution to climate change than ever before. Not enough, but way more than any Republican would do.
I feel like that means our democracy is sort of working.
In so called “blue” states, they’re expanding voting access.
I agree that campaign contributions are a serious challenge, but for example Bernie and Elizabeth Warren have done great things without contributions from billionaires.
We can do this, but we need to stand up in the face of fear and push as hard as we can. The only thing to fear is fear itself!
Vote Save America can help leverage donations to the most effective campaigns possible for progressive causes.
So your contention is that Nation A considering joining an alliance that Nation B doesn’t like - not actually joining, just considering - is a provocation worthy of military invasion?
Jesus what a world that would be.