“Yay! We’ve created artificial general intelligence!”

“…Fuck, it’s an asshole.”

I’m not up to speed on how US tax laws work. What does getting deemed a hobby entail?

One of my issues with accepting cars sold by Chinese manufacturers, tariff free, is that it’s not a level playing field. If China wants unimpeded access to European (and North American) markets, then they should allow foreign manufacturers unimpeded access to the Chinese market. Currently, foreign automotive manufacturers cannot access the Chinese market without forming a partnership with a Chinese company, and they cannot own more than a 49% share of said Chinese company.

They didn’t stand down because Russian troops on “vacation” kept getting lost. It was an invasion from the very start.

Libya had the highest HDI of Africa before NATO’s “peace keeping”

Dude, at least visit Wikipedia before you argue. Lybia was an example of NATO enforcing a no-fly zone, not peacekeeping. And Lybia’s HDI was back to pre-civil war levels three years ago (ie the 2021 data matches the 2013 data).

Are you going to pretend that Muammer Gaddafi was a benevolent and beloved dictator, and that there’s no way Lybians would want him to fuck off all of their own?

it’s hard to separate the blame of NATO and just America

No it fucking isn’t. NATO lists all actions they’ve taken part of on their website. If the action is there, it was NATO, if it isn’t, it was not a NATO action.

“every single war it’s faught”

So that would be Afghanistan.

The Balkans were just generally on fire in the 90s and NATO enforced a no fly zone and sent peacekeeper forces after the fact.

There’s a few more peacekeeping missions and no-fly zones (Lybia for example), then some training missions, some humanitarian missions (Pakistan for example), a few air campaigns against non-state entities (“terrorists” but realistically that’s often just a matter of perspective), and a bunch of anti-piracy actions.

So it’s “every single war” with heavy emphasis on single.

Russia can end this war tomorrow. Any and all deaths are on them. Hell, if Russia would just stay out of their neighbours business, there would have been no civil war in the first place.

If Russia would quit invading their neighbours, their neighbours wouldn’t have had the motivation to join NATO in the first place (see Sweden and Finland as the most current examples).

I’d be perfectly fine with banning Facebook too. In fact, let’s just make the behavior itself illegal, regardless which site engages in it.

While we’re at it, let’s do something really fun, like making corporate board members legally responsible for their companies actions.

This type of stuff will take forever to get into law, so in the meantime, TikTok can fuck off.

Normally, I can kind of get a feel for what the sovcit is misinterpreting and how they think things work. This one just makes zero sense. I can’t figure out what they are talking about.

I can’t even fathom how much water it would take to put out 8 sq km of fire.

The first “W” in “WWII” stands for “World”. It was used to describe the wars because there were multiple countries on both sides that were roughly at parity with each other when it comes to military power. In a NATO vs Russia scenario, there aren’t military peers on both sides. NATO has multiple members that could likely win a war against Russia on their own, and Russia has no one.

It wouldn’t be a “World War”. It would be Russia lashing out one final time before it ceased to exist.

A Russia - NATO war is extremely unlikely to become the type of global war that WWII was. There’s not anywhere near enough strength among Russia’s close allies, and China is extremely unlikely to go full out war with NATO. Their economy is too centered around being the manufacturing base for the rest of the developed world. They’re more likely to grab a chunk of eastern Russia while Russia is unable to do anything about it.

It’s important to note that for most of its existence, “fighting against Israeli oppression” explicitly meant Israel no longer existing. This is the first time I can remember them even implying that they would accept a two state solution.

The thing is, it can and will be abused either way

So you are in favour of banning cars, guns, alcohol, knives, hammers, axes, all the strong painkillers, rope, and all the other things I can think of that have been abused causing death?

I did a similar diagonal route across Canada. 84 hours it says.

23 hours is about as high as you are going to get while maintaining a (relatively) straight path. The north is not really accessible by road.

Edit: I take that back. I managed to get up to 27 hours driving from the Ambassador Bridge to Windigo Lake.

As much as I’d like that regime to disappear, I wouldn’t go so far as to invade Russia. Putin’s nuclear sabre rattling is obviously bullshit when it comes to Ukraine, but backing them that far into the corner with an invasion is probably one of the few things that brings a real nuclear risk. I’d be more for the “measured” response of hunting down and eliminating any Russian assets found outside Russian borders, perpetually until the Russian people chose a leader who is capable of living in civilized society.

No one is saying that complete change isn’t necessary. I’m just saying that we shouldn’t respond to our cancer diagnosis by shooting ourselves in the head.

It must be that I’m just more optimistic than you. In a world with the type of weapons we possess, “burn it down” is giving up. It’s the end. There will be no rebuilding. At least not until the tardigrades develop sentience.

They also needed to have some sort of coherent message. Most could barely articulate why they were there, and what they wanted.

I also wish that people would start actually presenting some actionable alternatives. And not high concept, “we should strive to do x” alternatives, but actual “we can start implementing this change tomorrow” type things. I’m getting tired of hearing from all sides that everything is fucked. I know everything is fucked. What is the plan to fix it? And no, “burn it all down and start over” isn’t a plan. That’s a tantrum.