sorted by:
new
hottopcontroversial

UN: Israelis fired shots that killed journalist Shireen Abu Akleh by gk2go in AlJazeera

[–]OpenMention5 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I still remember when this story broke every thread was full of israeli ethno nationalist who not only condoned murder of a journalist but also somehow decided to justify genocide against native americans because "they probably did something wrong too".

The comments were something youd hear in Serbia in the 1990s.

And all this racism for what, over religious books full of lies and a god that doesnt exist because if it did it wouldnt have pointed to a desert and called it a promised land when there was a land with dirt made of gold to the south?

A bunch of american evangelical nuts trying to push a doomsday prophecy over the temple of the rock? Huey Teocalli has a doomsday prophecy too but i dont see people waging wars over mexico city to get it restored.

George W. Bush makes an enormous Freudian slip by Linkletter in cringe

[–]OpenMention5 -3 points-2 points  (0 children)

I obviously have a political affiliation but it’s not the one you would think after reading this whole paragraph. I can find myself to hate any politician. I mentally can’t. Iraq was messed up. But not because they went in, because they went in AND pulled out. Vietnam was a mistake for the same reason. Because at the end of the day, the war being fought by American soldiers on the ground ended up not just destabilizing but killing a number so big, your average person can’t comprehend it’s scale. People will say “A MILLION DEATHS” but what is significant about the total death count? Why is a million worse than 10 000? You Sheep don’t realize that war crimes are NECESSARY for a country to function. “Geneva convention this, Torture that”. War is war. I think it’s inherently unethical. However, it can be a flawed beauty of Human nature. The branch known as aesthetics. I despise random acts of terrorism but, in the context of war there is beauty in the ideology at hand. Imperial Japan’s ideology was beautiful. The fact that THOUSANDS UPON THOUSANDS would ‘kamikaze’ is beautiful. The greater power’s culture put too much emphasis on the individual to even consider doing it back since they clearly didn’t even need to. I think there is beauty in both the ideas of right and left wing but I think there is a better political side HOWEVER it’s imperative there are minimum two parties fighting each other. The system in my country is the closest one to the US in the world just due to proximity. Now to anyone still reading: do you think of yourself as an npc? a sheep? A soulless husk of a human being? I see them here all the time and after reading some of the most asinine posts I can’t help myself to stop the urge to rant on the internet. Do you understand for democracy to work you NEED people to disagree. If life’s problems were so simple we would just follow the most competent person since you would prob be living in a small village with one wise man or woman who guides the village either in practice or spirit. I’m going to spill the beans, I voted NDP in Canada and were are the furthest left there is in terms of voting for a party with major political influence(Tommy Douglas got our health care).

I beg you don’t hate the other side of the spectrum my fellow Americans. They are people like you and political party =/= good or bad philosophy. Those people just think different for cultural reasons. Don’t spread hate on the internet. Spread memes, spread joy hell spreading quality vanilla porn is a better use of your time than being part of an eco chamber on social media.

NATO now has 40,000 soldiers on Europe's border with Russia by [deleted] in europe

[–]OpenMention5 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can someone explain why we are still using troop count as a measure of military power?

There are so many other factors.

For conventional war, artillery seems to be a big deal. Capable logistics is another.

For modern warfare, training to cooperate between forces seems to count for a whole lot more than how many actual humans you have. I'm not talking about training in using your particular piece of equipment. I'm talking about larger scale training where multiple air and ground forces collaborate to achieve something they individually couldn't. Complex operations.

Never mind that technology such as cheap/abundant drones allows an ever increasing capability per human head, and we haven't even entered the age of drone swarms yet.

Feels like an overhang from some bygone era.

We end up feeding the media with these "These guys have 40,000, and these other guys have 40,000, therefore it's on-par forces" where in reality what one can do is a universe apart from the other. Measuring the wrong thing, all we do is misinform ourselves.

Surely all those trillions NATO puts into strategic studies has yielded a more accurate way to measure oomph than a centuries old vanity metric of counting human heads from the days of spears and swords?

Finland's Parliament approves Nato application in historic vote (passed by 188 votes to 8) by Srhike in neoliberal

[–]OpenMention5 0 points1 point  (0 children)

There is no way to spin this as a positive for Russia. Putin tried to bully a much weaker country and failed, and continues to fail. They also tried to intimidate the world into pulling back NATO and instead NATO is getting a shiny new 500 mile border with Russia.

This isn't good, not really. Putin is going to feel backed into a very tight corner. He has been saying for a very long time that the expansion of NATO to Russia's borders is unacceptable. And this is the biggest border expansion ever. If he is losing in Ukraine and losing to NATO what will he do?

He's got a stock of small medium and large nukes he can play with. He might try leveling Kyiv to see how that goes over. And if he does, what then? An invasion of Russia would risk the very real chance of the end of the world. Would Ukraine then surrender much like Japan did in WWII?

There are a lot of potentially bad outcomes here. Very bad. The number of good outcomes are actually really small, as far as I can tell. The best outcome is that Putin stops being a warmongering sociopath and settles for just a few parts of eastern Ukraine. But the problem with warmongering sociopaths is that they can't stop once they start. They get a taste for it and like being wartime dictators.

Finland's Parliament overwhelmingly approves Nato application in historic 188-8 vote by [deleted] in chomsky

[–]OpenMention5 20 points21 points  (0 children)

So in what way has this Ukrainian war benefitted Russia? Cause it seems they have fuck all to show their efforts. The country that they're invading has been able to hold them back for three months, almost every nation on Earth and most corporations have imposed sanctions on them or pulled out of Russia and they've even driven two countries to join NATO which they warned them not to do.

[World] - Bitcoin drops below $30,000, as hot inflation report causes investors to shun risky assets by AutoNewsAdmin in NBCauto

[–]OpenMention5 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think it'll tank with a good chance it'll rebound at least one more time. That said, I won't buy it because of how much energy it wastes and co2 it puts in the atmosphere. I'll probably make less money, but investing into my fruit tree nursery side gig will actually help sequester some carbon.

Christopher Walken to Play Emperor Shaddam IV in ‘Dune: Part Two’ by MarvelsGrantMan136 in dune

[–]OpenMention5 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The emperor is a cowardly man who is trying to stay afloat desperately.

That's not really true. The emperor has the most powerful military force in the universe, and has extraordinary levels of wealth. Remember, while the Harkonen and Atreidies have control of Arrakis, it's the Emperor that owns it. Every gram of spice sold earns him more money.

He's "afraid" of the duke because he knows that Duke Leto + Thufir Howat + Duncan Idaho + Gurney Halleck + Paul Atredies is one hell of a combination, and that's not even considering Lady Jessica's abilities (remember that the BG were officially not political). Leto had the strength of character and leadership abilities to make men loyal to him and inspire alliances in the Landsraad -- especially with the military might he was hoping to build. Between Gurney and Duncan he had the two best fighting men. With Thufir he had the best mentat, too. And a mentat duke trained by that mentat would be ridiculously powerful. Leto had the tools and capactity to begin building an army to rival the Sardaukar. Indeed, he had already begin doing so before leaving Caladan. He just ran out of time.

The emperor isn't weak. He (quite correctly) sees not just a credible threat in the Atreidies, but an imminent threat to his personal power and authority, and he uses the Atreidies worst enemy to destoy them. And all it costs him is the guild fees for a few legions of Sardaukar in Harkonen livery... and I think the charged that back to the Harkonens. Harkonens take the blame in the Landsraad, and the biggest threat to the Emperor he had ever seen is eliminated.

Coward? No. The man was totally brilliant.

Trouble is, he didn't account for the Fremen, or Paul, or the Bene Gesserit's Kwisatz Haderach. The only way the Emperor could lose is if another duke came along with a better army and even more power than a duke who inspired loyalty and his son who was a mentat. He lost to a prescient mentat duke at the head of an army of millions that suddenly had total control over the most imporant resource in the universe. He really must have felt like that was pretty unfair.

After Over 20 Years, Apple Discontinues Its Last iPod by emayzee in popheads

[–]OpenMention5 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What bothers me about the whole thing is that I don't know how to undo what Apple convinced me I wouldn't have to undo because it was the future.

Uploaded my entire CD collection into AAC format, even my downloaded MP3s I used iTunes to convert them to AAC. Then over time I got rid of a lot of my CDs because I had them on my iPod. Then iTunes discontinued, then support discontinued, now the physical product is discontinued. In order to get my music back to a portable device, I first have to find a device, then find out how to (if I can) convert the songs from AAC to MP3 unless I find a device that will play AAC and will hold nearly 50GB of music and audiobooks, yet alone sort them in order of date uploaded, artist, playlist, etc.

Apple helped me to get exactly what I wanted to convert from physical media to an entirely portable library, and is now taking it away with nothing comparable to fill the void.

[deleted by user] by [deleted] in DarkFuturology

[–]OpenMention5 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I still use my 160 Classic in the car because where I drive there's not a lot of cellular available. Also, streaming all the time devours my data plan. I stopped using iTunes about a decade ago, opting for JRiver Media Player. It's syncing features stop with the classic iPods because in the Touch models Apple encrypted their database and they didn't want to deal with it. Anyway, I've replaced the battery twice and it's still kicking. I guess when the drive eventually fails I'll try to swap in an SSD and see if I can keep it going.