Trump will destroy Ukraine’s ability to defend it’s self.
The options the US has for achieving this are severely limited. Any missile or bombing campaign would involve violating NATO airspace, and would likely result in loss of materiel/personell. Stay the fuck back.
If anything, I’m happy they forced us to train to fight with gas masks when I was in the army. It’s clear that russia won’t shy from anything…
They seem to miss the point that when the computer begins to lose information needed to navigate, it’s going to stop driving.
There’s also the point that, while AI has gotten quite far, the human brain is still fairly superior at accurately interpolating and interpreting limited information. This may have changed in the past year or two, but my impression is that humans are still far better than machines at handling new or “corrupted” information, like driving in poor visibility, or suddenly having road markings disappear, etc.
Would not having 30 dresses make you unhappier, if you have time to spend doing things you enjoy instead of consumption being the only thing you have to show for all the time you spend at work?
It feels like you’re attributing to me an opinion that a decrease in the availability of goods and services would be a universally bad thing. I never said that.
For my own part, I don’t own much excess stuff. I use whatever clothes I buy until they’re worn out, and the only furniture I own is a couch, a bed, a kitchen table and two chairs. However, I do enjoy climbing, hiking, and skiing, all of which require a bit of equipment to do. Lower productivity would likely imply that those things become less available/more expensive.
As for food: Saying that it “has the amazing ability to just grow without much human intervention” just makes you seem unaware of the fact that loads of people would literally starve if it weren’t for modern farming equipment, synthetic fertiliser, preservation methods, and transportation. For people to rely on “a small garden for some of their food” is not a practice that works at scale with the population density in the world today. There’s a reason the population on earth was relatively stable until the industrial revolution, and has grown exponentially since: Modern technology makes it possible for us to feed very many more people with a lot less land and resources.
IT services: Yes, I’m on a platform run by volunteers. I’m on it using hardware that was built by workers, with materials developed, extracted and refined by workers, on electricity produced and distributed by workers, over an internet that is possible because of workers. All these workers are reliant on their own corporate IT systems in order to be as efficient as they are today. You can’t just extract the last link in a huge web of dependencies, and act like it could work on its own.
Anyway, all these things are side-notes. My primary point (which I still believe stands) is that we cannot expect to reduce productivity across the board (i.e. everyone works significantly less), and expect that there will not be a price to pay. Whether that price is worth paying is an open discussion, which I haven’t really decided what I think about myself.
You seem to agree with my last point, which was that
the distribution of wealth in society, and how it’s shifted the past 20-50 years is more concerning
That is: The major problem we have today is that the increase in production we’ve seen the past 20-50 years has primarily benefited the wealthy. This needs to change. Once we have decent wealth distribution, we can make an informed decision on whether we want to reduce our total productivity in order to have more free time.
when the 5 day a week, 40 hour work week began there was a specific level of productivity. As technology increased the output increased.
Exactly, so following this argument, we can choose between living at our current (increased) productivity level (40 hour weeks), or trading off the technological advancements for more spare time at the cost of going back to the productivity level we had previously.
I won’t argue for which of these two is “correct”, I think the tradeoff between free time vs. more access to goods and services is considered very differently by different people. However, I do think that a major problem we’re facing today is that the increased productivity we’ve had the past 50 years due to technological advances has benefited the wealthy far too much, at the expense of everyone else.
I think it’s more fruitful to first try to take care of the wealth distribution, such that we can actually see the quality of life our current productivity level can give everyone. Then we can make an informed choice regarding whether we want to reduce the productivity in exchange for more free time.
Sure, I agree with that. However, we also need to consider what a “net decrease in productivity” actually means for the population as a whole, and whether it’s something we want to accept as a trade-off for more free time. Briefly, we can collectively choose to work four, three, or even two days a week, despite seeing a decrease in overall productivity. However, a decrease in productivity means that stuff like clothes, transport, food, IT services, and pretty much everything you can think of that someone has to produce becomes more scarce.
You basically need to answer the question of “would you prefer two days off per week with current access to goods and services, or have more days off with reduced access to goods and services”. Of course, there may come along technological innovations that change this in some ways, and there are studies showing that a lot of people can be sufficiently productive on a four-day work week. On a society level, I still think the point stands as an overall tradeoff we need to consider when talking about whether we should reduce the work-week.
My point is that it’s not just a “capitalists are bad, and we’re owed more free time” thing. If we produce less, then goods and services become scarcer for everyone. I would say the distribution of wealth in society, and how it’s shifted the past 20-50 years is more concerning than the fact that we’re working the same hours as we were 20-50 years ago.
Not only are there warnings: Around a month ago, a fund that has funded some students at top US universities quite literally evacuated several of the students they were funding.
We’re talking about Norwegian students in the US getting a call telling them to “get your passport, and get on the first possible flight home, don’t worry, we’re paying.” This was just around when people with certain skin colours, political opinions, or sexual preferences started getting snatched off the streets.
That’s when I realised how absolutely fucked shit has gotten over there. When Norwegian citizens on student visas were literally told to evacuate the country.
Fair enough, you’re entitled to your opinion. I’ll also agree that Iran definitely should not have nuclear weapons, especially when keeping in mind that they’ve openly stated that they want to wipe Israel off the map (implicitly saying it could or should be done in a violent way).
However, two wrongs don’t make a right, and these attacks remain blatant violations of international law and the UN charter. If “we” want to maintain any semblance of supporting a rule-based world order, as opposed to just “right of the strongest”, we can’t accept these kind of violations of international law.
This is where you’re dead wrong. A country amassing weapons is not a justification for preemptively attacking them. Much less so when there’s not even consensus that they’re amassing the weapons you say they are.
This is just absurd to claim. It’s like saying russia was justified in attacking Ukraine because Ukraine wanted to join NATO. It’s like saying that you’re justified in shooting someone because you think they are going to buy a gun. Just ask yourself: When was the last time Iran launched “preemptive” strikes on Israel, or conducted “preemptive” assassinations on Israeli soil?
If anything, these strikes prove to Iran that unless they acquire nuclear weapons, they will never be able to deter Israel and the US from conducting “preemptive” strikes and assassinations on their soil. I can completely understand the Iranian regime for reasoning that “Whelp, we had a deal, and the US withdrew from it. Then we were actively holding negotiations and they bombed us. It looks like the only way we can ensure they leave us alone is acquiring MAD capabilities.”
Latest news (Sorry its in Norwegian) says that several Iranian sources say they have agreed to a ceasefire. However, some of the top leaders in Iran have apparently said that there is no deal about a ceasefire, but that they “will not continue their response if Israel stops its illegal attacks on them”, which is essentially agreeing to a ceasefire by saying “we won’t shoot anymore as long as you don’t”.
However, it seems a bit unclear when this was supposed to go into effect. Some Iranian sources said 0400 (Iran time), while other sources have said 0200 and 0600 (unclear what time zone).
Iran was attacked here. No amount of “what about the WMD’s” makes the attacks on them by the US and Israel legal under international law.
Iran had a deal that allowed other countries to control their nuclear sector. The US left that deal. Iran was taking part in negotiations about a new deal. The US bombed them. What has been done to Iran here is a terrible violation of international law, and a terrible violation of their sovereignty.
I’ve read that the UN atomic energy commission has also said that they haven’t measured any increases in radiation, so it doesn’t look likely to me that Iran is hiding anything.
I also saw an article where they showed satellite images indicating that Iran may have evacuated a lot of materiel from Fordow shortly before the strikes.
If anything, Israel and the US have clearly showed Iran that they will never be safe unless they develop military capabilities strong enough to deter attacks.
Like… what kind of message do you think you’re sending when you attack a country trying to develop nukes because they see you as an existential threat? Iran has been shown that the only way they will ever be safe from Israel is by developing nukes such that Israel doesn’t dare attack them.
If you really don’t have anything better to do than try to get under some strangers skin I feel kind of bad for you. Wishing you the best of luck in working on that.
Why are you being mean? I made a pretty simple point, and you’re wilfully misinterpreting it, and I don’t understand why.
I quite simply said “death threats are not inherently terrorism”, and encouraged people to not misuse the word. You’re acting like I said something completely different. You’re trying to argue against something I’ve never said, and you’re doing it in a pretty unkind way when you’re starting with this “Having a bad day” stuff.
I never said it wasn’t. I see this comment section full of a very un-nuanced and frankly incorrect “death threats are terrorism” sentiment. That’s just wrong.
You say “don’t be thick”, but it seems you didn’t catch the opening sentence where I said that “this case may very well be terrorism”.
Stop diluting the word “terrorism” of its meaning. A death threat can be terrorism, and in this case it may very well be terrorism, but often it is not terrorism.
A gang member threatening to kill someone if they snitch isn’t terrorist. A guy threatening to kill someone if they don’t lay off his girl is not terrorist. Someone threatening to kill a person abusing their friend is not a terrorist.
Death threats are not inherently terrorist.
Edit: Are people misunderstanding something about what I’m saying here? I’m not condoning death threats in any way. Threatening someones life is categorically wrong and illegal. I’m just saying that something being wrong and illegal doesn’t make it terrorist. Terrorism involves instilling fear to achieve ideological or political goals, death threats don’t inherrently fulfill that criteria.
Killing someone out of hate is an ideological goal.
In most cases, no. All hate is not ideological hate, and most killings are not ideological either. Most of the violence we see in the world is due to people’s personal relationships with each other, or are the result of some spontaneous fight.
The problem with what you’re doing here is you’re diluting the meaning of the word “terrorism”. You wrote out the definition, but you don’t seem to understand it. The key element is that terrorism is not just instilling fear, but using that fear to obtain political or ideological goals.
If instilling fear is sufficient to make someone a terrorist, any violent criminal or anyone threatening others becomes a terrorist, and the word loses its meaning.
I’m just waiting for the point where essentially enough people have caught on to this tactic that the effect flips.
Now, when trump announces some policy that will harm a certain business, their stock tanks, a bunch of people buy the dip, the policy is called off, and the stock rebounds. There are probably already people that begin buying already once the policy is announced, in order to catch the dip.
If this continues, there could eventually be enough people trying to “buy the dip” that trump announcing a harmful policy causes a stock to jump, rather than dip. Which would be hilarious.