You can discount it if you like, but if we’re trying to analyze how Russia justifies its invasion and perceives its relationships with other nations, then considering the recent past of various NATO members is relevant.

Many NATO members contributed to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the international legal framework put in place to justify those wars was cited by Putin at the beginning of the invasion of Ukraine.

Please tell me you are younger than the TSA

Back when this kicked off, Putin even cited a bunch of laws the UN drafted to justify the Iraq invasion.

And every single liberal should be protesting this in all the ways they’ve been saying Russian civilians ought to.

How’s it work then?

I mean it’s someone’s job to approve and allocate the funds month to month. I doubt they’re getting payed right now, though…

That is how fiat currency works.

More than that, most of the old testament is stories about how you don’t debate God, you don’t test God, and you definitely don’t force God’s hand.

Honestly, this Intel guy is cute compared to the Christian Zionists, who somehow think God wants and will be happy with their attempts to manufacture prophecy.

Settling mars is a centuries long undertaking. You basically have to nurture a whole ecosystem from scratch… that would be a brutally difficult and lengthy process in the best of conditions. But of course, these aren’t the best conditions. We aren’t doing particularly well with the ecosystem we’ve already got.

If you want a historical project, then look to balancing modern industry within the planet’s biosphere. It’s a prerequisite to anything happening on mars.

the definition of fascism that struck me as the most useful is

Fascism is when an empire takes the policies it uses for colonial holdings and concurred territory, and begins applying those policies to its core.

In that sense, yankee fascism hasn’t even begun yet. We’re still at the preamble.

half the country cheering him on

Half seems like a vast overestimation. Most of the people around me are checked out and get uncomfortable when politics comes up. Go strike up a conversation with a stranger, ask them about current events and what they think is going wrong. More than any other thing happening, the price of groceries is what’s actually on their mind.

Perhaps. At the same time, we also had a better reputation then. A lot of countries were quick to jump on board when we decided who was gonna get invaded. Maybe they would have been just as eager to pull together and go green? Not that we’ll ever really know, of course.

Maybe… but… remember ten years ago when there were all those articles about how “China is building train stations to no-where!” and today those same train stations are now in the center of new bustling cities? Isn’t this what we’d expect to see, right at the start of a pivot to green energy?

my dad once said that if he was in Bush’s position, he would have used 9/11 to justify decoupling from Saudi oil and push for more solar and wind development

I still think about that. So many missed off-ramps to this…

don’t worry, you can start shutting down france’s nuclear generators once you run out of your own

I mean, it’ll mostly be accelerating a trend that was already there. Also, the initial scramble to use the legal grey area to cover as much shady shit as possible in a: Well shucks, how were we supposed to know the neural net would make illegal denials? After all, the guys who trained it don’t even know exactly why it does what it does kinda way

just wait till they start denying health insurance with it

I’m sorry ma’am I know you’re upset, but the AI said it’s not covered. The AI is numbers, and numbers don’t lie.

I have seen absolutely nobody refer to the chatbots as “clanker”. Notice how this so called ‘criticism’ of the AI future still accepts as true the same premise the AI fanatics are pushing, they just hold a flashlight under their chin and go, “and it’s evil!!!”

I don’t think statistical word generator is as useful as all the investor types seem to think it is, and they’re gearing us up for an unthinkably massive market correction in the near future. That’s a real criticism of AI.

The 80-year-old trial attorney

ah huh

big mystery here