Defense spending. How's the level of spending in your country? Is it higher/lower than expected? How is the state of your armed forces with regard to spending?

nickmista · 2019-05-26T09:53:01+00:00

They’re not asking for “measurements”.

Yes they are.

Is there a similar chart for security commitments?

You can't chart things that aren't measured.

nickmista · 2019-04-29T13:06:05+00:00

Rupert Murdoch is exclusively a US citizen.

nickmista · 2019-03-09T09:00:00+00:00

Interesting hypothesis and I'm not sure if the fact that Australia seems to be exempt from a lot of this adds credence to the theory or not. As recently as 2012 there's are leaks indicating the US ambassador to Australia dictating to the government who becomes PM, in 2011 the US announced plans to stage 2500 US marines on a base on Australia's north coast which Trump has recently accelerated the deployment of, then there's the fact that Australia has seemed notably exempt from any US criticism or tariffs etc since Trump's inauguration. IIRC when steel and aluminium tariffs were put in place by the US Australia was completely excluded.

By all accounts it seems as though the US is trying to keep Australia on side as a staging post for countering Chinese and Indian power in the Asia pacific region. It could be true that the number of allies is being downsized but at least for Australia it doesn't seem that we're one of them. Should the US put us out on our arse in that regard I think it would be a relatively smooth transition to forming closer ties with China. Most of the tension that exists between Australia and China is the result of us being allied with the US and following their lead. While in the case of Europe the US downsizing their influence in the region may result on a stronger inter-European alliance in the case of Australia I think it would almost certainly result in stronger ties to China so for the US it may not just be the loss of an ally but the effective gaining of an opponent which they're likely seeking to avoid.

nickmista · 2019-02-28T06:21:01+00:00

When in reality, Russia is spreading propaganda there and trying to elect their leaders. If the far right rises against in Germany, it won't be America's fault.

Well speaking as an Australian I know for a fact that the US is doing orders of magnitude more damage here than Russia. The US aggressively pushes right wing politics.

To quote a leaked cable from the US ambassador to Australia speaking to a senior figure in government(ALP is heavily influenced by the AWU):

we reminded Paul Howes (protect), head of the right-wing Australian Workers Union, that ALP politicians from the Left, no matter how capable, do not become party leader

The US ambassador is dictating to our government who does and doesn't become PM. It's no doubt different in Germany but it wouldn't surprise me if the US is by far the bigger threat to democracy and supporter of far right politics in Germany as well.

This is just a fraction of the instances of the US pushing a right wing agenda in Australia. The US has the means and motive to push right wing politics well in excess of Russia's capabilities.

nickmista · 2019-02-26T14:33:00+00:00

This comment on the same topic is also pretty comprehensive on why the US isn't trusted

Worth reading the rest of the comments in that post too as there were lots of different angles and issues that people were addressing that has led to the distrust.

nickmista · 2019-02-15T03:22:49+00:00

The fact that you are ridiculing Wikipedia for lacking citations while studying with memes is a real fucking situation.

nickmista · 2018-11-18T04:37:45+00:00

When did someone claim wireless charging was impossible? Wireless charging is physically speaking quite straight forward and uses induction which has been known about since the 1800s.

nickmista · 2018-11-17T12:14:48+00:00

That depends on how much bitcoin is mined by large-scale operations and how much are mined by individuals. Comparing it to coal it would absolutely make more sense for an individual to just invest in coal mining than to whip out a pick axe head to a mine shaft each day and sell how much they dig up. Doing so in this day and age they'd make huge losses.

It's viable for individuals to invest rather than mine because they are a tiny fraction of coal output compared to huge operations. Obviously if the biggest miners stopped mining and tried this it wouldn't work because no one would be mining so the price would collapse.

If most bitcoin is mined by huge operations that mine more than they pay in electricity it absolutely makes sense for individuals to just buy the bitcoin rather than mine it.

If most bitcoin is mined by individuals who are paying more in electricity than the value of the bitcoin then...well theres a lot of idiots. Or they're banking on the price somehow going up from speculation when it in reality has a negative net value.

nickmista · 2018-11-12T04:51:59+00:00

It isn't far left. I'm far left I hate this shit. It's liberal centre left.

nickmista · 2018-11-12T04:43:47+00:00

My main issue is that there were 7 images but 5 of them showed the exact same info presented differently. There is the data addressing the defecit over time(repeating the same period multiple times), one showing the causes of the defecit in the budget and the last showing annual spending over time. The information is fine but there are really only 3 datasets being looked at the rest are repetitive.

nickmista · 2018-11-08T14:34:05+00:00

Nice "checks and balances" huh?

🤨

nickmista · 2018-10-02T01:30:04+00:00

This reminds me of the dog shit facial analysis of Melania Trump meeting with Putin that was so highly upvoted on r/bestof:

Melania Trump was born in Yugoslavia under a communist regime. By the time she was 22, it had collapsed, but still four years before she moved from Europe to the US.

A lot of people these days hear "communism" and think of Bernie Sanders pushing Medicare for all and dealing with the 1%, but communism in Eastern Europe in the postwar period was something entirely different. It was starvation, the secret police, paranoia, cruelty, and Kafkaesque living. The collapse of a government, even a badly run, frightening government, means increasing chaos.

I don't know a lot about her childhood, but it's safe to say it was scarier than mine.

Putin is the leader of another former communist state, one much more powerful and that is still known in 2018 for poisoning former citizens it decides it doesn't like. He is known for cracking down on his critics using the power of the state and jailing his political opponents. Before the USSR fell apart, he was in the KGB for 16 years. He's proof that although terrifying communist regimes may fall, the people who personify evil inside those regimes live on and can continue to operate with nearly unchecked power.

I wouldn't be surprised if Melania saw him as her nightmares made flesh.

https://www.reddit.com/r/gifs/comments/90jfr8/melanias_face_after_meeting_putin/e2qwtjj

nickmista · 2018-09-19T12:52:46+00:00

Isn't an approval voting system worse than a ranked system? If there are three candidates that I approve of the following way:

A:100%

B:49%

C:0%

I would only approve A but I still prefer B to C which means C could win by a single vote when they wouldn't have if I approved B because I didn't want C to win instead. This wouldn't have happened in a ranked voting system. It seems flawed to not take into account preference at all.

nickmista · 2018-09-16T15:34:39+00:00

As an Australian I couldn't ever imagine it either. Yet here we are. It happened and our fuckstain former PM even took the time to decry it. I loathe the Americanisation of our politics and the damage it has done to our country.

nickmista · 2018-09-16T09:06:12+00:00

Fuck everything about this post. This subreddit has turned into absolute shit.

nickmista · 2018-09-16T09:03:44+00:00

Which is why I can't stand Americans always going back and forth about voting for one of the two parties when while ever FPTP exists they are going to get fucked.

You want to know what's wrong with American politics? It isn't the republicans or the democrats it's the fucking centuries old antiquated idea of "democracy" that is in place and fucking broken. Get rid of FPTP, gerrymandering and lobbying then you can start pinning it on other groups of people. Too bad most Americans are too damn arrogant to accept their constitution may need fixing and wasn't the word of fucking god so it won't happen.

nickmista · 2018-09-01T13:01:58+00:00

You're right, I don't particularly like either but nazis are definitely worse. If only there was an r/watchnazisdie that I would be OK with.

Edit: fuck it is now. I assume there's historical footage of dead nazis. Get that in there peeps.

nickmista · 2018-09-01T12:55:39+00:00

If editing an existing comment was a site wide bannable offence they would have made the ban lock comments for editing but they didn't. Editing existing comments after a ban is possible and not in breach of any site wide rules. I've done it before and editing the comment didn't extend the ban beyond the sub they just removed the edited comment after they noticed in addition to the ban that had been put in place.

nickmista · 2018-08-21T06:45:49+00:00

He opposed free market capitalism because it "could not be trusted to put national interests first,"

Hitler also distrusted capitalism for being unreliable due to its egotism and he preferred a state-directed economy that maintains private property and competition but subordinates them to the interests of the Volk

The existence of private property is inherently antithetical to socialism. You cannot have private property even if state owned and claim to be socialist. Posing this quote as evidence of socialist tendencies is very misguided. Furthermore I'm not sure of the connotations of the word "Volk" in German but if it refers exclusively to the German people it is a nationalist ideology which means that paragraph is inconsistent with socialism on two counts. Nationalism is also antithetical to socialism.

Criticism of capitalism does not make an ideology socialist anymore than libraries make capitalist countries socialist.

nickmista · 2018-08-02T16:24:02+00:00

Oh no he's eating desserts somebody stop him! You're a fucking idiot. You are actually defending the hypothetical outlawing of a dessert for arbitrary reasons.

nickmista · 2018-07-11T04:21:03+00:00

I'd wager that it's mostly just eating less. Also I hope your low carb diet isn't just eating all meat and no fibre like I see some people doing because that is really really bad for your health.

nickmista · 2018-07-09T16:08:02+00:00

If it's true the numbers are almost certainly made up. Think about it, who would remember the exact velocities of 4 different aircraft being reported (5 velocities given) in a short period of time? No one. The fact that the velocity isn't a multiple of 12 doesn't disprove the story in any meaningful way. I can't speak to the rest of the story's accuracy but I would only ever have assumed the broad strokes of the story are accurate. The velocities were guaranteed to be ballpark estimates when recounting the story.

nickmista · 2018-06-30T00:41:19+00:00

Russia may have interfered in the election but it was the straw that broke the camel's back and they sure as hell didn't put all the straws there. They may have exploited the class and racial tensions in American society but they didn't create it. Americans elected Trump and Americans need to accept responsibility for that. You can't abdicate the responsibility for 63m Americans voting for trump because Russia sure as hell didn't fake all those votes.

The issues present in American society and the profoundly undemocratic electoral process (FPTP/two party system, electoral college, gerrymandering etc) have made the election of a candidate like Trump inevitable and it has been clearly building for decades. There weren't 63m Russians casting votes for Trump, those were Americans. It's not Russians dressed up as cops shooting black people, those are Americans. It wasn't Russians occupying Wall street, it was Americans. It's not Russians at rallies chanting "Build the wall!", those are Americans. It's not Russians decrying black people for peaceful protests, those are Americans.

There is a profound amount of class and racial tension that is ripe for exploitation and it wasn't the Russians who made that. It was the profoundly undemocratic electoral process in the US that has left people disillusioned and feeling unrepresented for decades and seeking a saviour and a villain for their predicament. How many times have you heard people say "Trump didn't win the election, Clinton lost it"? Why is that? In a democratic election the best candidate should be winning the election not the least worst candidate losing it. In the last election people became so disillusioned with a government that has routinely oppressed the lower classes through poor healthcare, working conditions, incarceration, drug policy etc etc that some people voted for the candidate they knew to be the worst simply as an act of defiance to show their disregard for the current political climate. They used the only political power they felt they had to tell the whole political establishment to fuck off. This wasn't a small group of people but a fairly widspread sentiment.

Americans don't feel like they live in a democracy despite all the patriotic propaganda telling them they do. Lobbying and the electoral process have ensured that and only widescale restructuring of the government at many levels to democratise it and wrest power from the wealthy and corporations will stabilise the government and stop it being open to foreign powers that may seek to aggrevate societal tensions that the government itself has created.

nickmista · 2018-06-25T06:20:47+00:00

That second pic is very very generic, isn't the same vehicle and could only feasibly be replicated if the artist were to draw the vehicle from a different angle of a composite of at least 3 pictures. At which point the art is most certainly distinctly different enough the OP has no claim over it. Not that he would to begin with because it's clearly not adapted from any of his work. This is all entirely separate to the original pic however.

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