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There's a saying:
"When you're a hammer, everything looks like a nail."
You don't want that kind of society.
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@Greyparrot
Ukraine has lost around 300,000+ men fighting for control over the ethnically Russian Donbas.
If this source is to be believed, then as of last August Ukraine had almost 70,000 fatalities total, and 100,000-120,000 wounded. This is a figure by the US government, which was more pessimistic than some others cited, but also lower than Russia's ridiculous claim.
Assuming that none of those men could go back to war after a stint in a hospital (which probably isn't true), that's less than 200,000 permanently taken out of the war. It took them about 18 months to arrive at that number, so probably less than another 100,000 have been killed/wounded since then, or less than 300,000 total.
But okay. Sure. 300,000 men lost. Ukraine hasn't drafted a single woman, men under age 25 are still exempt, and men ages 25-27 are currently in the process of being drafted after a previous exemption. I'm confident that they could muster up another 300,000 reasonably able-bodied people to fight, if their society was willing to make some harder sacrifices.
They now barely have enough men to man the trenches now to keep Russia from rolling into Kiev.
In the absence of American aid, Russia has been making gains...measured in hundreds, if not tens, of square miles total. That aid has now been approved, so within a month or two the rate of further Russian gains should slow to a crawl. Chasiv Yar, Russia's next big target, is almost 450 miles from Kyiv.
The dreams of Ukraine retaking the Donbas are just that...dreams... no amount of weaponry or additional devastation is going to change the current reality.
In 1968, after the Tet Offensive, it was "just a dream" that the Viet Cong would ever win. The Americans had every advantage. Except that, of course, Vietnam was somebody else's homeland and they had the option of giving up and going home, whereas those who had to live in Vietnam did not.
It's impossible to predict when Russia might get tired of its citizens dying in a foreign country. The Ukrainians will never tire. Most of them would prefer the bloody status quo continue another 2 years to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren living their entire lives under the heel of a fascist state that denies their culture and human rights.
But if, indeed, it's fated that Ukraine will lose, then we have the power to undo that fate by handing them tactical nuclear weapons, which was my original point.
or USA can permit Ukraine to sign an armistice and start rebuilding from the ashes we helped to create
If Russia wins, why wouldn't it just invade again for more territory in another 4 years? They'd know the Ukrainians will eventually roll over and surrender, so why not? Why would future Ukrainians fight to defend their country if they're 100% sure their government will surrender down the road?
In short, how is armistice any different from Ukraine ceasing to exist?
It's time to adapt to the new world. Good fences make good neighbors, and it's time to start respecting those fences instead of tearing every single one down and demanding NATO hegemony.
Russia didn't respect Ukraine's "fences". What reason do we have to think Russia and China will respect ours? Isn't America most secure from encroachment when our fences are pushed back all the way to Eastern Europe and the Western Pacific?
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Premise A: All societies have an elite class. This can be hereditary or meritocratic, or a combination of both.
Premise B: The US is a society.
Premise C: Therefore, the US has an elite class.
Premise D: All human individuals are mortal, and will die. All groups consist of many individuals, all of whom will die. Groups with long-running continuity can be divided into generations, each of which dies when all of its member individuals die.
Premise E: The US elite class is a group of human individuals.
Premise F: Therefore, the current generation of US elites will die out, upon which, to continue existing, they'll have to find replacement members.
I think everything I've stated above is pretty uncontroversial. You'll likely agree with all of it. But what I'd like to focus on here is the "replacement" bit.
US elites have a lower than average birth rate, because per Statista families that make over $200,000 have the lowest birth rate of any demographic cohort.
This is likely an understatement, since people with extremely successful careers are less likely to prioritize the life goal of having a family. For example, musicians and actors, journalists and political pundits, heads of government departments, etc.
Furthermore, white liberals have the lowest birth rate in the US of any demographic. This is the group from which most elites hail.
The recipe for future elites is threefold: [1]. Access to networks of existing power, influence, and expertise; [2]. A fair amount of personal discipline, from which talent can be cultivated and damning mistakes can be avoided. Yes, that's two things, but one has to be divided into two qualifiers. You need geographic proximity to these networks AND your personality must mesh well with theirs.
[1]. excludes right-wingers from a small Alabama town who'll never move to the big city in search of better job prospects. Excluded also are most blacks, who have similar politics but usually inherit major behavioral problems from their disfavorable cultural backgrounds. Likewise, your average black man is disinterested in frequenting cafes or, say, attending bohemian poetry events; thus, while he makes a suitable political ally to white liberals, he's unlikely to join their inner circles.
So what's the point of all this? Well...
White liberals have poor birth rates, and the process of becoming an elite is sufficiently competitive that merely being a number on a census won't cut it. They can fill some, but not all the elite slots by themselves. For the rest they must look outwards. But to where?
Conservative Christian households. There are, of course, a lot of poor white people who have pro-NRA bumper stickers and vote Republican, but they're not what I mean by "conservative Christian". I mean middle class whites, typically from red states, who gave their children a Christian upbringing. There's a somewhat weaker correlation in their case between income and fertility, as I can attest from personal experience.
Of the three elite factors I mentioned, the conservative Christian demographic leans toward one: a fair amount of personal discipline. However, they're hampered by staying in their low-opportunity local areas and not meshing with white liberals.
But, there is an exception: those raised in conservative Christian households who reject the values of their upbringing in favor of liberal irreligion, or at least liberalism with religious apathy. They will tend to move to big blue cities, bringing with them the hardcore zeal of a convert to liberalism. This, combined with the discipline their upbringings instilled, give them good prospects of breaking into the elite class.
Paradoxically, then, in the future Republican families will increasingly supply America's elites without those elites being Republican.
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@RaymondSheen
Christianity in general became apostate in 325 CE with the political influence of Constantine the Great and his blasphemous Nicaean Creed
The Nicene Creed simply reiterated the positions on theology that mainstream Christians took for granted. To this day, there's not much disagreement with it, save perhaps the "Harrowing of Hell" part which had no scriptural basis.
It is true that Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire, and that Roman armies would march under the banner of this creed against non-Christian foreign enemies.
No religion has ever remained true to itself.
Doubtful. Christians have the exact same religious texts today as 2,000 years ago. Most apply a plain language reading to the New Testament, which is most likely to be the accurate interpretation. Unless you're suggesting that an esoteric "true meaning" was at some point lost.
Nationalism, which, of course, is of no use to a true follower of Christ.
Nationalism is a secular political ideal, sure. But you can't prove it's unchristian except so far as politics in general are unchristian. Paul teaches that one ought to associate with Christians and not be "unequally yoked" with non-Christians, which suggests a Christian ingroup and a non-Christian outgroup.
Racial/ethnic nationalism might be unchristian, but if there's a correlation between race and religion then that correlation would naturally lend itself to a mild expression of racial bias. Likewise, if some countries have governmental policies better in line with Christian values than others, then this fact would lend itself to an expression of national bias.
Christianity is used by conservatives for their fake sociopolitical ideology.
An extreme, inflammatory take, but sure. Whatever you say.
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It's no secret that of all Western countries, the US has retained the highest level of religiosity in modern times. Today I figured out why. It has surprisingly little to do with Americans being inherently more receptive to religious messages, and more to do with the manner in which America changes religion.
In Europe, before Martin Luther, there were Catholic Churches. And then there was the Protestant Reformation. Or should I say, the Magisterial Reformation, because in practice the big Protestant sects merely replaced Catholicism as the state religion. With that came a high degree of uniformity. Lutheran churches looked alike, worshiped alike, prayed alike, and sermonized alike. There was no "religious marketplace", because these conditions made for a monopoly.
Since religion, outside of compulsory attendance, is an optional good that one might choose not to engage with, one might compare it to eating out. If the only option you have for eating out is one mediocre hamburger joint, odds are you'll cook for yourself more and eat out less, if at all. But if you're surrounded by tasty restaurants? Well, that's a different story.
Since the 19th century, religion in the US has been less of a monopoly and more like a marketplace. Does your town have a single church whose pastor bores you to tears? Well, one day a traveling Methodist tent preacher shows up in your area. His style of religion is different. His message hits home different. You happen to find it more compelling. So you have a conversion experience.
With time, of course, the range of options expanded dramatically. At least if you live in the Bible Belt, one can "church shop" with unprecedented ease. This fosters a very competitive environment between churches. Anyone can call themselves a pastor, which means anyone can try to one-up the neighboring church by offering a product that draws in the most people. If you're dull and nobody likes your church, you'll go belly up and somebody else will take your place.
America, in short, is a laboratory that produces excellent churches, or at least if we measure it by mass appeal. And it's not "just" conventional churches either. There are parachurch organizations; for example, religious radio or publishing houses which put out religious literature with lucrative sales in mind. A pastor named Rick Warren, taking a page from the self-help industry, wrote a book titled The Purpose Driven Life, which to date has sold more than 50 million copies.
The most competitive churches skew Evangelical (loosely speaking, "non-denominational"). That's because, not being tied to a well-defined church model, they are comparably freestyle and you see a lot more variation between them as opposed to, say, a random two Methodist churches.
In 1990, a Pizza Hut opened in the Soviet Union, and this was a big frigging deal within the country. Everyone wanted to eat there when it first opened. Decades of competition in the fast food industry produced one of the greatest American restaurant chains. When it arrived on the shores of a country where everyone was eating government-issued cans of borscht, slices of pizza sold like hot cakes.
By now I think you can guess where I'm going with this. American churches aren't limited to America; instead, they routinely try to proselytize overseas and plant churches in their own image in foreign countries. Assuming that local regimes don't curtail their freedom to operate (e.g. in Russia), American churches fine-tuned to efficiently draw crowds will brush up against longstanding local monopolies that've never had to earn their keep, or so to say. And it's just like taking candy from a baby.
Whereas the old Protestant churches struggled to penetrate the Catholic landscape of Latin America, about 31 percent of all Brazilians were Evangelical in 2020. One source projects that the number of Evangelicals will be nearly on par with the number of Catholics in 2032, and after that they may become the largest religious group in the country. Brazil, of course, is not the only Latin American state undergoing this demographic shift.
In the Philippines, Evangelicals went from 2.8% of the population in 2000 to 14% in 2017. In Ethiopia, an Oriental Orthodox country (the most historically insular of all Christian branches), nearly 23% of the population is P'ent'ay (lit. "Pentecostal", but now a catch-all term for Evangelicals).
In Europe, it was reported c. 2022 that a new church is planted in France every 10 days. Assuming the average congregation has 200 members, that corresponds to about 7,200 new converts every year. This pace has been ongoing since at least 2017, and presumably continues today.
What I'm describing is a seismic shift in global Christianity. It is evangelical-izing, which is a cultural export of the United States. Forget Coca-Cola and Hollywood; America is enough of a soft superpower that in another 20 years the world's largest religion will have comprehensively and irreversibly changed. The new church is less traditional, less doctrinally focused, more experiential, aesthetically modern, more media-driven, and more organizationally fragmented, with each being an island unto itself.
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If Trump is, in fact, "brought to justice", then that'll mean his full acquittal for all the politically motivated lawsuits filed against him by the oligarchs and their lackies. It'll mean that all the illegitimate court-imposed fines he has had to pay in the last 12 months are thrown out and he's recouped for every penny. It'll mean the end of the careers of every judge, prosecutor, and attorney involved in these recent mockeries of justice.
And finally, it'll mean that Trump is rewarded for this ordeal with the support of the American public and gets re-elected.
It'd be nice if we lived in a just world.
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Well, March was nice while it lasted.
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Well, I thank the doctor for responding. His answers were both well-reasoned and easy for a layperson to understand.
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I had one terrible run-in with the police. My only "crime" was trying to cross a street on foot, though he thought I was suspicious. This happened about 5-6 years ago, but ever since then I have an instinctive fear response every time there's a police car behind me.
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@Savant
"Hi, Dr. Huemer. How do asymmetric regimes affect the immigration issue? For example, the WTO makes free trade largely reciprocal and limits the scope of trade wars between member states. But there's no agreement of this kind for immigration. If Country A restricts the flow of migrants from Country B, is it acceptable for Country B to have an equivalent policy toward citizens of Country A?"
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Israel, in prosecuting its war in Gaza, has relied on an AI system named "Lavender".
Lavender uses data on known Hamas affiliates to direct strikes on them. At its peak, the system identified 37,000 men as being such, though it was so overly broad as to include police officers and people involved in civil defense. It was eventually scaled back to entail a narrower set which only includes Hamas fighters, leaders, etc.
Imagine you're a low-ranking Hamas fighter. Lavender tells the Israeli air force where your home is, and they decide to drop a bomb on it. You have family members living with you; the system determines that no more than 10-15 people would be killed in this strike to kill you, so it approves the operation. Of course, if you were high-ranking, a much higher death toll could be justified. Ironically the opposite often turns out to be true, since imprecise but cheap "dumb bombs" are used on low-priority targets, whereas more expensive "smart bombs" are used to fry bigger fish. Imprecise bombs run a higher risk of collateral damage.
Hamas-controlled organizations in Gaza estimate that over 33,000 Gazans have been killed thus far. Hypothetically, 30,000 civilians could've been killed in the process of neutralizing 3,000 average Joes who are fighting for the group.
It's true, then, that Israel is killing the families of terrorists as part of its official policies.
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It's funny, because I was indoors and completely missed the last one (which Trump infamously stared right at with the naked eye). But today I'll see for myself whether it looks like a scene out of the Book of Revelation or it's a big nothing burger, since I live outside of the ideal viewing zone.
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Gee whiz, what a visionary this guy sounds like. It must've been because of the cultural degeneracy and LGBT of the country he was attacking. Surely this guy's a savior of Western civilization. The West should stop stirring the pot by sending weapons and logistical aid to the defenders, since they're only prolonging an unwinnable war, causing death for no reason, and bringing us closer to a world war. Okay, maybe this is a war of one-sided aggression but hey, Stalin once said something mean about Germany. He should've known better than to say mean things about Germany so this is his fault.
We can totally trust this guy as an ally in the future. He definitely won't turn out to be a genocidal maniac down the road. There definitely aren't signs already of him having genocidal intentions and implementing policies to this effect.
If this guy had the 1940s equivalent to an OnlyFans account, I would simp to it, because I'm an antiwar republican.
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Assuming this isn't a shitpost:
Seek medical help. I say this as someone who had an experience a few months ago where my brother exhibited what might or might not have been paranoid delusions. It's scary what a slight chemical imbalance in one's brain can make one believe to be true.
Sometimes a simple dietary supplement can make you feel better. Contrary to pop culture, it doesn't always equate to "meds that'll make you depressed all the time and you don't want to take them". Sometimes there really is a simple fix. It's worth looking into, in any case.
If you don't want us prying into your personal life, then you don't have to follow up to this post. Just know that 90% of people who believe they're being gangstalked or whatever are imagining it, and the odds are good you are as well.
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@Greyparrot
Maybe. If Kiev killing hundreds of thousands of people in the Donbas for daring to ask for independence didn't outrage people in 2014
There were like 15,000 dead total from the combined pre-2022 war and these were overwhelmingly soldiers/militiamen.
As a Republican, it pains me to say that my party has totally screwed the West by blocking further military aid. It's unclear if Ukraine can still win without nuclear weapons, which means they probably need us to give them some. This wouldn't have been necessary had we not dropped the ball.
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Your average child molester victimizes what, more than a hundred kids? What if, to prevent them from testifying 5-10 years down the road, he killed all of them and dumped their bodies in the woods?
Now instead of a hundred traumatized kids, you have a hundred dead kids. Now consider how many child molesters there are in total.
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YYW once did a post on this topic. He put it like this:
Imagine if you're the kind of person who's immoral enough to commit a rape but not a random, indiscriminate murder. Suppose that, despite knowing what'll happen, you succumb to temptation and commit a rape. Now you can't let your victim go, since any testimony they give could end your life. So what do you do? You resort to murder, and in your mind you justify it as halfway self-defense, so you're able to bring yourself to do it.
Hence, a person who would've "just" been raped is now dead as well.
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I wouldn't be opposed to Biden handing them a few tactical nukes, restricted to use on the battlefields of Ukraine unless the Russians happened to retaliate with nukes of their own.
It wouldn't be the provocation that some people imagine. Ukrainian soldiers are already killing Russian ones every day (at least 83,000 total), with Western weapons, and this hasn't caused WW3. If anything it would give Putin an off-ramp by allowing him to say "Hey look, we're withdrawing for the sake of world peace" and "We didn't lose the war conventionally".
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@Best.Korea
1. New users who are men hate being on this site because its full of men2. Women run away from this site because its full of men who come after them, and they have no other women to talk to.
I don't believe either of these assumptions. Joining debateart is not an either/or. You can both frequent here as a "general discussion" space and, say, be active on a dating website or whatnot. Men aren't giving anything up by being here whatever the gender ratio.
As for #2, I've seen no evidence of that. The kind of guys who simp in DMs would likely leave some trace of their activities in the forums, but I've seen nothing like it. I think there's like one female user here and from little I've seen, she's treated no different from anyone else.
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@RationalMadman
If you gain enjoyment from Taylor Swift's music then good for you. My purpose here wasn't to take a dig at you if you aren't among the aforementioned toxic fans.
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@RationalMadman
Fair enough I guess. Though I wasn't professing my undying hatred for anyone who's ever enjoyed her music.
In my first post, I said that such people are "disproportionately represented" among her fan base. Even if there were proportionately as many fans of, say, Rihanna who happened to be jerks, Taylor Swift fans are notorious for being jerks while acting in the capacity of Taylor Swift fans.
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@WyIted
I don't think they are mean spirited misandrists . Where have you seen this?
There was a YouTuber named MeatCanyon who made a video parodying her and her fans. In doing so, he invited a mob of rabid Swifties who liberally hurled epithets like "Incel" at him, which at this point is a male-oriented insult roughly equivalent to labeling a woman a slut or bitch (ironically enough, IIRC he's married). Some were dumb enough to believe that they could magically cause him to die in a month just by predicting that he would.
And yes, the commentators in question were women. MeatCanyon got so much hate mail from Swifties that he made a follow-up video about it. He took the whole episode in stride, which I respect. As for hardcore Swifties, zero respect for them.
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She is indeed a white liberal. That in itself isn't enough to hold her in contempt. She hates Trump but I haven't read anything about her hating his supporters as well. Which, if she did, would of course justify hating her back, but whatever.
She does, unfortunately, have a fan base disproportionately represented by deranged fanatics who'll dogpile on anyone who even mildly criticizes her, proud misandrists, the weirdly superstitious about things like astrology, and the generally mean-spirited. But I don't believe this is her fault per se.
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MentisWave is a pretty good YouTuber. He backs up what he says with sources, but also knows how to think critically and refute a proposition just by pointing out logical flaws with it. A right-libertarian who's edgier than Matt Walsh but at the same time none of his takes come across as insane. I recommend paying his channel a visit.
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@RationalMadman
Rather than assume things about me
Don't take what I said as an insult. My point was that humans in generally are unwilling to make this sacrifice. You, of course, are 1 out of 8 billion humans.
the point is if the country fundamentally incentivises and drives forward the progression via tariffs and subsidisation, for corporations not consumers alone, to provide things that make electric cars, renewable energy and such things easier-access, that's part of it
My question is: why are subsidies necessary? Doesn't this imply that things like electric cars aren't otherwise favored by free markets?
If it's merely a question of catching up with the scale of established industries, then perhaps you have a point. But I don't believe that's all there is to it. This isn't 15 years ago, after all. If electric still isn't in a position to replace fossil fuel cars then that suggests practical constraints beyond mere lack of investment. If you try to fight against what the market wants with free-flowing subsidies then you could end up distorting it and wind up with a disaster on your hands.
In Norway, something like 1/8th of all cars are electric. That's a crazy high number for the EV industry. Same for Iceland to a lesser extent. In both countries electricity is cheap and renewably sourced for the reasons I already laid out. The country in third place, Sweden, has like 1/4th as many EVs per capita as Norway. When you get to densely populated countries with normal geography, such as the Netherlands, it's more like 1/8th. Then it continues to shrink from there.
In short, the idea that EV actually can replace fossil fuel cars to scale in a normal, densely populated country hasn't yet been put to the test. Since new vehicles are disproportionately electric, that could change another 10 years down the road.
When that day comes, it'll raise new questions. Such as: will the electric grid be able to keep up with the existing number of plants? Will enough new plants be built in time? Will those plants be renewable? Can renewable plants sustainably power the country given problems like scaling storage?
When that day comes, the answer to all of the above may well prove to be yes. But the fact that there's still credible doubt in 2024, much less 2014 or 2004, establishes that GP isn't speaking "idiocy".
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@RationalMadman
The issue won't be fixed until the technology's there that can fix it without major sustainability issues. Otherwise, it could probably be done and over with in a year or two. No need to take 15 years or whatnot.
Once the technology is there, and it's affordable, the US will make the transition. To act prematurely serves to pump marginally less CO2 into the atmosphere at outsized personal cost, since it can't be done to anywhere near full scale.
The only third option is for ordinary consumers to consume much, much less in the interim. I'm not willing to do that (at most I'll sometimes walk out of the grocery store without a plastic bag), and neither will you nor the people you know. Hence, the human race has collectively rejected this option.
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@RationalMadman
Scandinavia and most of western Europe just sit and laugh at the idiocy being posted.Get a grip on reality, is America seriously this behind in development?
Says the guy whose home country is powered by like 75% fossil fuels. All European countries either are fossil fuel-dependent, have a butt ton of nuclear plants, or have a favorable geography conducive to geothermal/hydroelectric generation combined with small populations. There isn't one to my knowledge which can power itself on wind and solar alone.
In essence, Europe's de facto energy policies tend to have far more in common with the GOP than they're willing to admit.
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On a related note, being vaguely sympathetic toward Russia because they're "not woke" is not objectively worse than being anti-Russia because they have laws perceived as homophobic or anti-feminist. Which was a serious factor in many Americans hating Russia well before the 2022 invasion of Ukraine.
"American national values" are largely subjective and up to individual interpretation. To some, the US is rightly a paradise of free love in a global sea of repressive societies. To others, the US is rooted in Christian moral values. To call one side less legitimately American than the other is mere opinion, and they have equal right to talk the same crap about you. All Americans are free to advocate for closer alignment with whichever countries are compatible with their own worldview, a worldview which they'll usually interpret as being what America fundamentally is.
My reason for disliking Russia is that it's an inwardly and outwardly aggressive dictatorship which is actively making the world a worse place and, if left unchecked, will do so on an even larger scale in the future. At the same time I don't dislike Viktor Orban, because so far as I can tell he's none of those things and has merely drawn the ire of western elites for being socially conservative.
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@TheUnderdog
As somebody who's staunchly pro-Ukraine, I say: screw this.
Europe is not, and never has been, a legal appendage of the US. Most of its countries are longstanding US allies but this fact wouldn't make it treasonous to America to hypothetically let them fall. It's not comparable to, say, ceding California to a foreign power. Likewise Russia is a longstanding rival but that's no guarantee about what relations between the two countries will look like in the future.
The US, while a constitutional republic with strong democratic elements, has been allies with undemocratic regimes in the past, such as the Kingdom of Morocco (the first country to grant us diplomatic recognition), and still is with some today, such as Saudi Arabia. It would not be literal treason to side with a bloc of dictatorships over Europe, even though it is true that our national values are, for the most part, more aligned with those of Europe.
One can validly be both pro-Putin and pro-America, even if this is an impractical and rather ill-advised way of thinking.
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Breaking up your text into an excessive number of paragraphs can be just as annoying as a run-on paragraph. I advise finding a middle ground between what you're doing and what you see others doing.
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@Double_R
Section 3 has been adjudicated in multiple legal levels in multiple states and many have in fact ruled that Trump committed insurrection and is therefore barred from holding public office, not one legal arbiter yet has sided with Trump on the basis that he did not commit insurrection.
Don't you think this had something to do with the political lean of the courts in which these cases were heard, as the people suing to take Trump off the ballot were smart enough to go jurisdiction shopping?
The supreme court's decision was essentially that this is Congress's decision, yet when this very question was put before Congress and their final answer was that it's the court's decision.
Congressional Dems know they don't have the numbers to disqualify Trump, so they haven't seriously tried. If they did then their efforts would fall short, because in practice anything impeachment-related hinges on how the public voted in the last election cycle. If it's up to Congress, then the fact that the public voted to give the GOP as many seats as they did in 2022 is a public decision to not disqualify Trump from the ballot in 2024, because it's nearly impossible without a national consensus.
Which is why judicial activists have tried for an easy shortcut by appealing to left-leaning courts. And now the Supreme Court has shut them down.
The fact that no one wants to make this decision as opposed to just saying "he did not commit insurrection" is amazing.
For what it's worth, the majority opinion did state that:
"Last September, about six months before the March 5, 2024, Colorado primary election, four Republican and two unaffiliated Colorado voters filed a petition against former President Trump and Colorado Secretary of State Jena Griswold in Colorado state court. These voters—whom we refer to as the respondents—contend that after former President Trump’s defeat in the 2020 Presidential election, he disrupted the peaceful transfer of power by intentionally organizing and inciting the crowd that breached the Capitol as Congress met to certify the election results on January 6, 2021."
This seems to assert that the allegation of insurrection by Trump has not been proven. The narrative that the Court was like "Well gosh darn, Trump did it but there's a legal technicality so we the courts can't try him" is bogus.
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@Sidewalker
Given the unceasing avalanche of institutional opposition he faces, there is no dishonor to be had in losing provided that his showing is decent enough. But if he wins, it will be the greatest political comeback story in 200+ years of American history.
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@Double_R
Obviously I was being a bit hyperbolic in the OP. It was something of a cathartic moment for me after many months of reading the headlines of articles describing aggressive legal attacks on Trump. So I went kind of overboard in writing what I did.
However, this much is true: not one of the 9 SCOTUS members ruled that Trump did commit insurrection and had to be removed from the ballot. Sure, that's not the precise question they were being asked to answer, but they have in the past issued landmark rulings from narrower questions offered up to them, such as in Dobbs v. Jackson.
The insurrection clause is an unambiguous constitutional question, which is within the uncontested purview of the Supreme Court, but none of them claimed for the SCOTUS the authority to bar Trump from office based on the facts. By handing it over to Congress they were in essence saying "Hey look, you guys try to impeach each other and whatnot for partisan reasons all the time. This is one such instance and it has nothing to do with us." Which, the way I see it, is a damning indictment of the supposedly slam-dunk case for Trump committing insurrection if I've ever seen one.
Again, while the liberal justices did partly dissent, none of them claimed Trump's 2024 candidacy should've died in their courtroom. 1 Biden and 2 Obama appointees sided with Thomas and Kavanaugh in clearing the way for Trump to run in Colorado and other states.
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@Double_R
This is satire, right?
Nope. Just the facts, ma'am.
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It is over. The "big lie"propagated by Dems since the 2020 election, which is that Trump committed or attempted insurrection, has been unanimously debunked by the most authoritative court in the United States. From this point onward, if social media does not label/censor as misinformation any further claims to the contrary, then it'll prove the glaring hypocrisy of the oligarchs who rule us.
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Aren't dwarfs/dwarves considered a similar but ultimately non-human species in most works of fantasy? Same underlying reason for why Caesar from Planet of the Apes was never paired with a human woman despite being sentient.
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Wikipedia defines The Singularity as "a hypothetical future point in time at which technological growth becomes uncontrollable and irreversible, resulting in unforeseen consequences for human civilization." Discourse on the topic often cites Artificial Intelligence (AI) as a probable cause of The Singularity. In this short-ish post, I aim to demonstrate why The Singularity won't happen anytime soon.
1. Energy Constraints
There is, ultimately, a hard entropic limit to the number of operations a computer can perform per second for a given amount of energy input. And that upper limit assumes conditions which cannot be realized by a normal, everyday computer, such as being stuffed into a black hole or existing in a constant low-Kelvin temperature state.
At this time, computer usage consumes 1 percent, or slightly over 1 percent, of the world's electricity consumption. A single ChatGPT-4 query will use between 1/1000th and 1/100th of a kilowatt hour of electricity, and at this time AI is still in an early phase of consumption, with systems like ChatGPT still being perceived largely as a novelty. But imagine, if you would, a world where such heavy data-crunching applications are used on a day-to-day basis by the average person around the world. Imagine, if you would, a 24/7 arms race between criminals and state hackers who use AI to crack cryptographic digital security layers and their would-be targets who add more and more layers to protect their property. To brute force AES-256 would take enough power to supply 50 million American households for billion of years; even assuming resourceful programmers managed to find shortcuts that trimmed this time down drastically, hacking would still be a quite expensive affair. In real life the most efficient operation to mine one Bitcoin will expend 155,000 kilowatt hours; at its peak Bitcoin mining took up more than 7% of Kazakhstan's electricity usage, despite being a fairly rich country of almost 20,000,000 people.
In short, imagine a world with exponential growth in demand for computing intensity, while electricity supply is growing at a far slower rate. After all, it takes years to commission one gas-fired power plant and even longer to bypass the hurdles to build a nuclear plant. Wind and solar entail buying up large properties in certain locations, and have their own issues, such as scaling up battery capacity. Something will eventually have to give.
The average voter, of course, won't tolerate 60% of local power consumption being siphoned away from their homes and toward such enterprises. So the human factor will further restrict the combined processing power of all computers, which makes the unlimited growth of The Singularity impossible.
2. Water Constraints
Related to the above, computers guzzle water. A lot of water. Cooling is used to raise computing efficiency and keep physical components from frying. Every 5-50 ChatGPT queries will use half a liter of water, and one Bitcoin transaction uses 16,000 liters of water. Water supply is arguably harder to amp up than electricity, as groundwater is finite and a desalination plant would take years to build. And again, the average person wouldn't tolerate half their municipal water supply being diverted from their homes to giant computing plants.
3. Other Constraints
Imagine a future where AI can churn out useful inventions by aggregating patented schematics. Beyond-human-control technological progress is a big part of the whole "Singularity" concept. Assuming that world governments didn't crack down on this in the name of intellectual property rights, there are still problems. An invention that's never built is useless, and to do so entails building physical supply chains and infrastructure. 3D printers are limited to working with certain materials and can only produce a certain range of results. Assuming human owners of these enterprises, it would remain within human control. Assuming that governments recognized the property rights of AI, it still wouldn't be outside human control unless all the work was automated as well.
The rate of advancement here would be slowed by physical constraints. It takes so much time to build a factory and build/install the prerequisite equipment. It takes so much money as a startup, and needs to turn a profit that might not materialize. A factory needs to bring in supplies through vehicles that cannot move faster than roadway speed limits. And so on.
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Can a married couple claim 50 embryos as tax deductions, for example?
Under current law, probably not. But ideally? If they're paying bills to keep those embryos intact, then yes, proportionate to said expense (non-refundable).
Can you use the HOV lane if you're pregnant?
Ideally the rules should be applied the same as when a woman is driving with one baby in her car. Provided, of course, that she can give some valid proof of pregnancy.
If someone who has a child successfully through this method then leaves 40 embryos behind, are they legally responsible for paying for the cryogenic storage of same?
Ideally they ought to be, yes. If they didn't want to assume this risk, they should've went with adoption instead.
If they refuse to pay for this, are they now criminally liable as negligent parents for lack of care?
If their refusal leads to avoidable embryo death then yes, ideally they should be charged the same as any parent whose baby died from neglect.
Do the embryos become wards of the state, supported by tax dollars, if abandoned by parents, or if the parents die, knowing they will be stored indefinitely?
Ideally yes, they would be, with the state paying women to become surrogates. And ideally this expense would lead the state to ban IVF or only permit advanced techniques which don't create excess embryos.
What's the current thinking?
My thoughts are above. If you're trying to pull off a "gotcha" that the laws of the land haven't caught up to the practical implications of embryos being legal persons, then it's only a matter of time, assuming that good faith pro-life legislators eventually triumph. But for the time being, the tax status of embryos is pretty low on the list of issues we care to focus our attention and efforts on.
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Navalny never stepped foot in the US, did he? How much could he have known besides what the ultra-biased press told him? A tragedy that he's dead, for sure, but being a political martyr doesn't mean every opinion you've ever held was objectively correct.
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Most people are hypocrites when they accuse someone else of bigotry. There are vast swaths of the US population who you hold in disdain and contempt, and I don't just mean pedophiles or felons. The only way you can, in your own mind, get away with this is because you believe some lofty rule exists justifying all of your conduct and attitudes while the same is withheld from "them".
There are no true heroes and no true villains at this stage. Just two angry tribes flinging poo at each other.
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Okay, fine. I'll bite.
American supporters of ISIS who aren't actively involved in crimes deserve the same free speech rights as Nick Fuentes or any other American. But since a known criminal would normally be imprisoned and their access to the internet restricted, I don't have a problem with curtailing the social media activity of violent fugitives from the law.
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Anyway, that was the first 50 minutes in a nutshell. I'm not sure if I'll watch the rest.
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Medieval and Early Modern History
Here he implies that Ukraine isn't a state because Ukraine spent much of its history under the Tartar Yoke + Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth. What this neglects is that, by Putin's own admission, Kyiv/Kiev is older than (or at least achieved prominence earlier than) Moscow. The modern Russian state isn't centered in Novgorod, whereas Ukraine's capital is still Kyiv. Likewise the modern Russian state wasn't founded by Novgorod but by Moscow, which conquered Novgorod in 1478.
I'll follow up that Jewish statehood had been interrupted longer than Ukraine was under foreign rule: almost 1,900 years vs. 700-800 years. Nonetheless, many of us accept the legitimacy of Israeli statehood on the basis that Israel did exist at some point in the past, and that the Jews have a right to a homeland somewhere. There's no reason to think Ukraine has less of said right, given said facts.
Finally, even if pre-modern Ukraine had never, ever been a state, this is a spurious reason for denying Ukrainian sovereignty today. Many long-marginalized peoples have successfully formed nation-states in the past 200 years; for example, Slovakia and Latvia. What matters is that Ukraine was recognized by Russia as an independent country in the Soviet and post-Soviet eras, and said independence cannot be whimsically revoked once granted (imagine if the UK suddenly tried that with the US). And Russia claims itself to be the legal successor to the Soviet Union, meaning they're in little position to claim the Soviet Union forced anything on Russia against its will.
NATO broke its promise not to expand
IIRC this was promised by a lone diplomat who didn't have the backing of his government, much less the governments of all NATO member states, to make this claim. By Putin's admission it was never an agreement on paper, whereas the 1994 Budapest Memorandum was on paper and Russia violated it after claiming for months in advance that they would do no such thing.
Even if we accept that continuing to expand NATO was a poor way to treat Russia, Ukraine is innocent of whatever we in the West did. They did not deserve to be invaded.
NATO wouldn't let Russia join and tried to hurt Yeltsin in the 1996 elections
After just a couple of years in power, Yeltsin proved not a liberal or pro-democracy reformer but a sort of proto-Putin. He literally shelled the Russian parliament in 1993 and laid the groundwork for how Putin rules over Russia today. The values which Russia were re-embracing were antithetical to the values NATO was built to defend, so rejecting them makes sense on this ground alone. So does supporting the opposition in 1996, since a government split between different factions and competing interests would be more democratic than one with uncontested strongman rule, which would also make Russia a more successful country in the long term.
Furthermore tensions remained high throughout the 90s, with a brief nuclear scare in 1996 when a Norwegian civilian rocket flew over Russian airspace. While Yeltsin handled this well and deescalated the situation, it's clear that the period wouldn't have been ripe for a military alliance with their ex-enemies even if Russia wasn't headed down an authoritarian path.
NATO supported the Chechen rebels
This resource shows there is no evidence to support the claim. While it's understandable that the West would be sympathetic to an anti-colonial movement in the Caucasus, given that Russia is the world's last classical empire, it doesn't appear to be true that America or its allies lent material aid to them.
The US shouldn't have invaded Iraq
Tu quoque fallacy. But sure, let's talk about this.
If nothing else, the circumstances in 2003 were morally ambiguous. The country's people were starving under global sanctions, and the international community feared that Saddam Hussein might rebuild his chemical WMD stockpile at some undetermined point in the future, hence the massive effort that went into stopping him from doing so.
Ukraine, on the other hand, did nothing wrong aside from having an internal revolution that replaced a pro-Russian government with a pro-Western government. A government which then won re-election over and over again, making it legitimate even if (for the sake of argument) it wasn't at first.
NATO's missile defense system
Russia was an ally of Iran, which posed said missile threat to the West. If they didn't want the system being built they could've pressured Iran to stop what they were doing. Same goes for the West Coast missile defense system, since that was in response to North Korea, also an ally of Russia.
As for NATO not cooperating with Russia, Putin was a strongman who had invaded free Georgia by 2008. Any "cooperation" that might've potentially compromised the system when it came to an attack by Russia, a country which was a credible threat to Europe, would've been foolhardy. Integration of NATO and Russian military tech poses opportunities for Russian espionage, which is why the US was very reluctant to sell F-16s to Turkey after they acquired the S-400.
We are now ahead of the US when it comes to hypersonic missile technology
I don't believe this, given that their defense budget is a fraction of ours and given that Ukraine has been able to shoot down Kinzhal missiles on at least one occasion.
The "door to" Nato membership was opened to Georgia and Ukraine in 2008
From my understanding, at the time NATO was between cold wars and in the middle of an identity crisis, with it being somewhat unclear why they should continue to exist without a clear enemy. They'd come to view it not just as a military alliance but as a sort of pan-Western civilizational project like the EU. Meaning it wasn't purely for military reasons that said invitation was extended. Likewise, the War on Terror was ongoing so if Ukraine joined it would've meant more bodies to throw at clearing booby-trapped houses in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Still, it's understandable why Russia didn't take this well. I'll grant Putin that. But I think it was a long shot in any event, given that frigging Sweden almost didn't make the cut.
Euromaidan was an illegal coup
No, it was a popular uprising (less than a civil war) because Yanukovych chose economic partnership with Russia over the EU. Given how much of a bigger market the EU is compared to Russia, and how much more lucrative that partnership would've been, it's easy to see why. Ukraine was dirt poor after centuries of being yoked to Russia and Yanukovych was squandering what might've been their best chance to rapidly develop.
This didn't involve the military overthrowing Yanukovych. The people brought the country to the point of unrest in order to pressure the parliament to impeach Yanukovych. Which the Ukrainian parliament did, legally. After this the pro-Russian party stupidly boycotted the next wave of elections, which only served to let a pro-Western government get voted in.
Aside from the fact of ordinary people rioting (which people do in all countries), there was nothing illegal about the whole process.
Euromaidan was orchestrated by the West
The West did not magically brainwash 45,000,000 Ukrainians, without which Euromaidan would've been impossible.
Euromaidan was unfavorable to Russia
True, but Russia's response was vastly disproportionate.
There was a threat to Crimea and Donbass
No there was not. Not until Russia brought in little green men and started a war.
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How is a 15 billion year old universe young?
And honestly the radio signal thing is just a small piece of the problem. The real question is this:
Maximizing the longevity of your species means maximizing available energy. That would mean hopping from star to star and either turning them into Dyson Spheres or "turning them off" so you can convert them to Dyson Spheres at some future point and their heat isn't jettisoned into the far reaches of space. This is the rational course of action to take for any species anywhere in the Universe, assuming they hold to the human value of surviving.
And so, why do we receive light purported to be from millions or billions of light years away, if there exist aliens both self-interested and sufficiently advanced?
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"Manhattan jury". That's all I need to hear. What a joke of a trial.
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Haber-Bosch Process, which enabled the mass production of fertilizer. This, combined with GMOs, pesticides, the tractor, etc., enabled the world to feed 8 billion humans.
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It can be comforting to know something that was there when you were younger is essentially unchanged today. And a little sad too; the same personalities who were having the same discussions ad nauseam on DDO are doing the same on DART ten years later, myself included sadly. It's like we're all stuck in limbo, and I understand why some people simply outgrew the need for this community and never came back.
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@Mps1213
Also there’s no such thing as a drug that is “so addictive.” All drugs have the same addiction potential.
I'm on one prescription for a miscellaneous health condition. I take about one dose (pill) every 24 hours. If I miss a day, then I might not even realize it. I recently went 3 or 4 days straight without access to it and was perfectly fine. At the end of those 3 or 4 days I didn't feel any worse than I normally do. I probably don't need it to live a normal life, but I take it just in case.
What I can positively attest to is that if I'd spent 6 months as a heroin user, I wouldn't be able to casually manage 3 or 4 days without it. I'd feel very unpleasant, and my thoughts would be preoccupied with obtaining another fix.
So no, all drugs are not equally addictive, so far as addiction=dependency.
Addiction isn’t caused by drugs. Addiction is an environmentally induced disorder not a molecularly induced disorder.
You're suggesting it isn't an addiction if society is set up so that said drug habit doesn't carry consequences? If society at large refused to change along with this proposed legalization of all drugs, wouldn't said legalization do harm? Isn't your proposal only viable if combined with dozens of other changes that are unlikely to happen?
However you need to consider that less than 20,000 people die from heroin overdoses every year. Compared to 75k plus of multiple opioids at once.
This is fair, but the consequences for heroin or meth addiction go beyond overdosing. It's a truly miserable way to live that makes the attainment of happiness virtually impossible for most users.
There's a bizarre assumption that every American citizen would exactly know where to find a drug dealer if they wanted to use. That isn't true; making hardcore drugs available at gas stations would certainly make it available to a lot more people, and double or triple the number of people who use, since there are vast multitudes who would fall into that temptation if they easily could. Furthermore it would lower the psychological barrier to getting started, as the whole enterprise would feel "less risky" despite hardcore drug use being inherently risky.
The question you should be asking yourself is: is preventing several tens of thousands of overdose deaths worth converting hundreds of thousands if not several million people into drug addicts who aren't currently addicts?
Where the supply is regulated less than 1% of people die from those drugs, including fentanyl, dilaudid, morphine, oxycodone, hydrocodone, etc.
Where the supply is regulated, the quantity you can get your hands on is limited. If anyone could get heroin but with this restriction in place, then a black market would continue to exist, making this a moot point.
I’m also not advocating for these drugs to be sold at a gas station (even though alcohol and tobacco and THC products are which you probably don’t complain about) I want them sold out of pharmacies as most of them already are.
Fair enough. But again, if only "those who need it" could buy heroin from the pharmacy, then street heroin would still exist for those who didn't get approved. If anyone could get it but their supply was rationed, then the same result, since few if any heroin users can bring themselves to stay at their original dosage/frequency of use without upping it.
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No it wouldn't. Legalization could potentially solve these problems:
1. People stealing or going broke/homeless because they can't afford super expensive street drugs.
2. People being reluctant to pursue treatment because they don't want to risk prosecution from admitting that they're using drugs.
3. Drugs being contaminated with adulterants (no guarantees, as even chocolate sold in mainstream retail stores contain heavy metals like lead.)
4. Needle sharing (also no guarantee if the needles are costly)
It would not stop people from:
1. Overdosing on heroin.
2. Not checking into rehab out of fear that a relapse after a month of detox could prove deadly, or because rehab is just unpleasant/expensive.
3. Overdosing on fentanyl because over time they've become so tolerant of heroin that it doesn't give them instant euphoria anymore and they want something stronger
4. Being fired because their drug habit makes them an unreliable employee
5. Going broke despite a job because they're just buying an excessive amount of a naturally expensive drug over an extended period.
6. Trying heroin at 14 because they got their 18 year old brother to go to the gas station and buy some for them.
7. Deadly car wrecks attributable to DUIs as these drugs are so addictive that users are seldom not high but still perceive the need to get in a car and drive somewhere.
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Turkey has ratified Sweden's NATO accession, leaving Hungary as the last holdout.
Should Sweden join the alliance, its control of the strategically important Gotland Island will give NATO control of the Baltic Sea, reversing the balance of power when it comes to a war in the Baltic States. Russia currently has "area denial" capabilities that would block NATO from reinforcing Estonia, Lithuania, and Latvia by sea, giving them the upper hand. But should NATO gain the ability to bring in maritime reinforcements then even the least defensible region under their vast security umbrella would suddenly become a lot easier to defend.
The EU has a liberal agenda while the Orban administration has a conservative agenda. This, combined with charges of authoritarianism in Hungary, have led to a growing rift between the two sides, with the EU attempting punitive measures to influence Hungarian national policies. As a countermove, Hungary has sought to leverage its position as an EU and NATO member to veto certain actions by these organizations, such as a $50 billion dollar aid package to Ukraine by the former and Sweden's accession to the latter.
Orban has paid lip service to not being opposed to Sweden's accession, and has pledged to ratify at some point, but in practice the ongoing dispute could prove an obstacle. There's a good chance the situation won't be resolved until Hungary is either cowed into submission or appeased with concessions.
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