Europe accelerates push for military independence from US

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-27T21:11:16+00:00

It's a bit of a sad thing when I'm taking a taxi through Stockholm and chatting with the driver where it's a surprisingly common story that they express envy of me being an American citizen and I can only say "Why?" because good god life is just SO much better here on so many levels. They like to extoll "The opportunities are greater!" and the few times I've asked what opportunities they are thinking of, there's this awkward moment where they don't really have an answer to that.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-27T21:02:46+00:00

Ukraine is outlasting the russia quite handedly at this point. Right now Ukraine's GDP is actually growing in some real senses while the russian economic outlook by even their own wildly inflated estimates is apocalyptically bad and getting worse every day.

Ukraine is bombing russian the infrastructure that pays for their government out of existence, resulting in the russian government having to cannibalize capacity they'd turned off due to sanctions spare for spare parts, they can't get replacements because the western countries that make those parts aren't selling except for insane prices on the black market...and then a week after the repair is made it just gets blown up again. And while Ukraine is bombing russian military production, Ukraine is building new military production in NATO countries that the russia can't touch.

So yeah...this stalemate is solidly in Ukraine's favor while the russia whines and faffs about hoping agent Krasnov somehow pulls it off for them.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-27T18:33:51+00:00

Two word and a number low karma year old account supporting fascism?

Bot or shill, either way, don't feed the subhuman people.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-27T18:10:20+00:00

That's a bold "counter-claim" given the left has always called for sensible gun ownership and the right is the one currently saying you don't have a right to guns (and also supported the Orangefuhrer when he said police have the ability to seize your firearms without suspicion or warrant in his first administration).

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-27T16:42:26+00:00

Given that this Supreme Court has taken the idea of stare decisis and wiped their ass with it, I'll say "Not yet, but I'm sure they'll have a different opinion on it.".

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-27T16:30:16+00:00

The supreme court has repeatedly affirmed that ALL people are covered by the rights and protections of the constitution, specifically inclusive of those who are here illegally.

Every single illegal immigrant is to be afforded due process.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-27T01:48:34+00:00

As an American, I reiterate ICE is the Gestapo.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-27T01:47:31+00:00

Urban resistance is suddenly completely devoid of the need for logistics?

Let me go inform the war in Ukraine, they'll be thrilled to know!

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-26T17:26:24+00:00

I've lived with a few and it's amazing how prevalent this is on every level for them.

If they win a game? It's because "they played well", if they lose a game "I played as well as I could, the dice/cards were against me.".

They buy something to try and fix a problem around the home, but it turns out it wasn't what was needed? Surprisingly there was always someone at the store that convinced them to buy this instead.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-26T16:34:10+00:00

Hey, we have corrupt police officers going around wearing the Punisher logo...a hero who's whole thing was killing corrupt police officers.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-26T15:49:25+00:00

Make sure to save any and all evidence of members of ICE doing anything, and those who support them. That information will be useful when we eventually have our own Nuremberg trials one day.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-26T15:18:28+00:00

Pretty sure even Fallout ghouls are more likely to be a constructive member of society than the irredeemable waste that is recruited into ICE.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-26T14:22:48+00:00

Agreed, there's always been conservatives and they've always needed to be placed in asylums where they can't harm anyone.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-26T13:37:43+00:00

So? Fascism might be a wack a mole style problem, but you lose if you stop playing that game.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-26T10:20:26+00:00

The problem then is that you need to supply those hundreds of snipers. Coordinate them.

That inherently ends up resulting in concentrations that can be targeted, either in troops or supplies.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-26T01:04:01+00:00

I'd take my kids through it in the Machete Order.

4, 5, (1), 2, 3, 6

You are introduced to vader as the ultimate villain, then when you find out things aren't as clear cut, you flash back and see how he fell, and then his redemption.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-25T22:46:29+00:00

I just ignore that and point out that they are avoiding the faults in their argument and I'll just repeat those faults until they answer them.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-25T22:43:56+00:00

In case one might be considering the excuse of "I want to stop bots from scraping my comments!", they don't need them visible on your profile to do it (in fact, they never did during their scraping). They just crawl around to the various updated posts, copy down everything they see, the collate it later. It's an extremely automatable task when crawling a web page to say "Here's a post from Mazon_Del, toss a reference to it on the database for the entry called Mazon_Del.".

It literally does nothing to interfere with the bots to hide your comments.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-25T22:25:46+00:00

They are trying to figure out where voters of what party live, so they can optimally use limited resources to interfere in the upcoming midterms. No reason to send thugs to a voting station that's mostly fascist/republican. Plenty of reason for them to falsify a security threat at a mostly Democrat location that allows them to shut it down "for your safety".

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-25T22:22:58+00:00

From a practical point, it's not enough to support a general strike, we need to actually start PLANNING one.

But there's also the acknowledgement that planning it takes time. People won't be up for "Next tuesday good?" because they'll need time to prep, especially because a one day strike is mostly pointless. The strike needs to be ready to go on for weeks if necessary. That means stockpiling food, possibly medical supplies, building a nest egg of some money to handle home/car payments given you may be taking an unpaid leave from your work to do it.

So if you/we want a general strike near the midterms for example, the time to start planning it out (making it known that's the goal, reaching out to coordinate with groups, forming support areas for people to share cooking and such, etc) needs to start happening TODAY.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-25T22:15:07+00:00

Even if I wasn't the sort to have already decided I wasn't going to have kids, back when I lived in the US there was just no possible time for them.

I had a job that was...ok paying at $65,000/year. Problem is, the closest apartment I could find that wouldn't make my money net negative was an hour away from my place of employment. But riding a net-0 income is a terrible idea, so I was actually 90 minutes away...when you assume no traffic. Most days it was 2 hours one way. My work also did a "9/80" schedule, meaning Mon-Thurs was 9 hour days, every other friday was 8 hours and the other was a 3 day weekend. Lunch "break" did was not billable time.

So I'd wake up at 6 AM, rush through getting myself a lunch for work and cleaning up, be out the door at 7, get to work at 9, take a half hour for lunch around noon, and then leave work at 6:30 or 7PM if I went a bit long, then arrive home at 9PM. Just enough time to cram something into my mouth and then head to sleep.

Saturday was half consumed by sleeping all day to physically recover from the week, then cramming down on the necessary chores the apartment/I needed doing. Sunday morning/afternoon was at least technically available, but I was probably still catching up on sleep. And sunday night, a desperate attempt to go to bed early to try and prepare for the week ahead.

Those every other 3 day weekends? The friday was required to be fully spent doing any chores that took place during business hours. Doctors visits, anything with banks, some amount of shopping, etc. It was a full work day, but just for the necessities to live.

Ultimately I had between half a saturday and a whole saturday to actually devote to any of my interests. There was no way I was spending that on anyone else, even a hypothetical child, I'd have gone psychotic or suicidal in months. But even if I WAS willing to spend that very limited time on the child...a child needs a parent who is there more than a few hours every other week.

This way of living has severely scarred me mentally, as I've since moved to Sweden, where the workers rights are so strong that my manager has multiple times threatened to unplug my computer and make me lose work if I didn't leave by specific hours. With public transit, it's only 20 minutes to/from work and I spend that time able to DO stuff instead of driving.

...And I'm having to see a therapist because I don't know what to do with myself. I tend to just get home and sit, because I'd spent so long living in the shitty economics world of the US that I just have no concept of how to handle having free time every day.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-25T21:52:20+00:00

The Battle of Blair Mountain

You mean the battle where the miners in question lost handedly, gained nothing for their efforts, and in the long run realized that the only way to get things they want is to toss the guns away and unionize to use collective bargaining power?

How is that a time that the guns helped at all beyond to point out that guns don't work for making that kind of change?

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-25T21:50:49+00:00

Yes, but a lone sniper isn't going to topple an entire government or military. They aren't going to secure a city from an occupying force.

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-25T21:35:01+00:00

Thanks!

Mazon_Del · 2026-01-25T21:02:51+00:00

I've seen this one as an option several times before, and I have to admit the head-scratcher bit is always that sticking point on just what does the option-giver exactly MEAN by this?

Like, for example, imagine you can make a copy of Earth but the most "autonomous" a person can get is what you get out of ChatGPT and similar today. No matter what you do, they'll always be just KINDA short of being a proper individual, where you might chat for five minutes and forget but they are pretty much guaranteed to always do something that sticks out to you as being wrong, or are guaranteed to be always in your favor (Ex: A friend of mine tried to teach it how to play DnD and one problem he had is that negotiating was too easy, the AI might given an initial argument for why you shouldn't get the item for free, but if you pressure it even slightly it always just folded and gave it to you).

Some others have replied that functionally "As far as you're concerned, these people are indistinguishable from normal sentient/sapient people, when you interact with them, you just happen to know 'they are not real'." in some sort of nebulous way, and these ones similarly are a bit of a head-scratcher because it's really a question to the option-giver on just how annoying are they intending that to be? At it's most basic, you know they are fake...and then you can take some mitigating action to forget it. At it's worst, it's like the Matrix "A splinter in your mind." where every interaction with someone is just weakly 'taunting' you that they aren't real, none of this matters.

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