BahRamYou
2d ago
Agrees with all of this as a felllow alcoholic barfly. Its getting to the point where i basically assume that any young attractive woman is going to have a shitty personality and be hopelessly addicted to her phone
BahRamYou
4d ago
Well yeah.. Puerto Rico and Guam also didn't exactly become territories in a "voluntary" way...
BahRamYou
5d ago
Seems like a terrible idea from a Republican standpoint: adding ~30 million new voters to your electorate, 80%+ of whom can be assumed to be reliable Democrat voters.
One solution might be to make a territory, not a state, so they wouldn't have the right to vote.
But I really don't think Trump is serious. At least, I don't think he's thought this through in detail, he just thinks it would look cool on the map and make him famous in history.
BahRamYou
5d ago
man, what? I'm in favor of allowing them to stay and chill at the library. It seems like you're just venting and want to yell at someone on the internet at this point.
BahRamYou
5d ago
You say "just enforce laws" but what you mean is prison. All the homeless people will be sent to prison, because that's what happens when you enforce laws and prosecute people every time they break laws. This would of course cost 10x more money than the current library system, and lead to horrific human rights abuse in prison but... oh well, out of sight out of mind, right? You call it a strawman to to talk of executions, but your proposed solution is really not much better, and I'm tired of people like you who sneer that there's some quick easy solution that could be implemented overnight if only the local government could stop being pussies or whatever.
BahRamYou
6d ago
Good point, it's much better to have them out committing crimes on the streets instead. Or were you suggesting that we simply execute all of them?
BahRamYou
6d ago
Does that really make them "unusable?" I used to live in a city with a bad homeless problem, and the libraries naturally attracted a lot of homeless like you describe. The bathrooms were a nightmare. But the library was still perfectly usable. I never felt unsafe going in there, just a bit gross and sad about the state of society.
On the other hand, I also saw homeless outside doing... much worse things. So I'd much rather have them in there as a "containment center" then just about anywhere else. Sure, in a perfect world, we'd get them housing, treatment, a job placement, etc... but that's not the world we live in.
BahRamYou
8d ago
Yeah. It's the same Malthusian logic- the population grows faster than the amount of available wealth. And even if the population is shrinking, the wealth is also getting concentrated into fewer and fewer hands unless the government steps in.
BahRamYou
8d ago
And I think the hard truth is just that everyone is TRYING to capture the top 20% performers across the board, so anyone not in the top 20% performance bracket for any given category is going to be left out, and very confused as to what their real options are.
I think @KulakRevolt had a good essay related to this. I can't find it right now, but he argued that in the past, most men were pretty happy to see increased military spending because it meant jobs. Relatively good jobs that an average man could get, no experience or credentials necessary. Nowadays we tend to think there's a tradeoff between "guns or butter" where increased military spending means less money available for all the nice stuff. But the more common pattern is the opposite- war opens up opportunities, while longtime peace creates a glut of men with no clear role in society. If some of them die in a war, that just creates even more demand for young men.
BahRamYou
9d ago
Aren't you mixing up two very different time periods? After the Berlin Wall fell and the USSR fell apart, sure, everyone was happy to let Germany disarm. But everyone disarmed then, including the US and Russia. It was a very happy time. God I miss the 90s.
In the 50s, when NATO first formed, West Germany was one of the first to join and one of its most important members. It had a national draft, high military spending, and most wargames assumed that an active WW3 would be fought mostly on West German land. It also included many ex-Naxis among its ranks, since... where else would you get people with military experience at that time? The US and everyone else was just fine with that in the name of expediency.
BahRamYou
10d ago
Are the Rubberbandits acceptable? https://youtube.com/watch?v=ljPFZrRD3J8
BahRamYou
14d ago
It's only 20% Chinese: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Metro_Vancouver#Ethnic_diversity
BahRamYou
14d ago
If Canada loses the West to the US, it’ll be the end of Canada, and it might be the end of the US as you know it as well.
Why would it be the end of either country? Let alone both.
BahRamYou
15d ago
My opinion as an American: it would make more sense to break Canada up into 3 pieces. Let Quebec go free or be a territory of France if it wants. Let Vancouver and the surrounding area be an autonomous city state. The rest should become part of the US, because "the rest" (so the prairie provinces and the maritimes) really has a lot in common with the US, and it's just an unnecessary hassle having a border.
BahRamYou
17d ago
Listened to about half of it and it just annoyed me. It's a classic Gish gallop, jumping from topic to topic with no time to actually consider each one. Some of them are well known- like, I remember reading about the shady hijinks of United Fruit Co in my highschool history textbook. It's not exactly shocking underground stuff. But then jumps from that to "so of course Ukraine was a coup by the deep state link to mob and shady corporations" or something like that and it's just infuraitingly specious reasoning.
BahRamYou
22d ago
That's true for shells, but bear in mind that "more shellls than the US" is a pretty low benchmark. Until this war broke out in Ukraine, the US had almost stopped making shells completely. It thought that mass artillery bombardments were a relic of the cold war and wouldn't be needed anymore. But recently the US has been increasing shell production much faster than Europe: https://www.defenseone.com/business/2023/11/race-make-artillery-shells-us-eu-see-different-results/392288/
BahRamYou
24d ago
You're right, they do use bows occasionally. But so what, everyone else has bows too.
BahRamYou
25d ago
Who is "they?" Most of the soldiers fighting in Ukraine weren't old enough to vote for the security agreements in the 90s. And Ukraine was famously corrupt so it's not like their vote would have counted anyway. They also don't have much choice about whether to fight since they're conscripted.
I've heard too many anecdotes of Ukrainian soldiers saying they no longer want to fight this war, they just want it to end even if they have to give up some territory. Of course anecodotes are not data, but that's all we have to go on. And realistically, the fastest way for this to end is for the US to endorse such a deal. Zelensky can't make that deal because he's built his image as this hardcore fight-to-the-end no-matter-what guy.
Well sure, I do get that Dothraki are based on the Mongols while Braavos is based on Venice. But the way its portrayed in the books and especially the show is... not great. ACOUP has a whole series about the Dothraki: https://acoup.blog/2020/12/04/collections-that-dothraki-horde-part-i-barbarian-couture/ saying that "The complex patterns of a war-shirt becomes a simple vest (which then becomes a collection of crude leather belly-straps that have more in common with bondage gear than with clothing." I can't recall a single scene from the shows of them using a bow. They certainly never use gunpowder or siege engines like the mongols did. mostly they use whips which just... LOL.
Venice seems cool but, like you said they were limited in their power. Braavos seems to have unlimited weath and mercenary manpower in addition to technology and actual magic.
BahRamYou
25d ago
I have a silly rant that's 10 years out of date...
You know how, in Game of Thrones, everyone is so scared of the Dothraki? Why? The Dothraki have no ships, no armor, no siege weapons, no ranged weapons except small bows, no heavy infantry... nothing. They can't stay organized, and they're economy consists entirely of horses. They live only in the dry empty plains where noone else wants to live. When they tried to attack one of the cities, they got wrecked by just a small group of Unsullied. They're basically just bandits who sprung up after the collapse of the Valyrians. Posers.
On the hand there's Braavos. Now there's something to be scared of! Supposedly just a city, but they were strong enough to defy the Valyrians at the peak of their power. They've got a bank with more money than all the seven kingdoms of Westeros, and enough manpower to send mercenaries that will easily (supposedly) overpower all of the seven kingdoms' armies. They cannot be attacked, because their island is protected by an invincible fleet of high technology. Man-for-man, they're also the best fighters, with Arya's Braavos"dancing teacher" easily taking down a large group of attackers with just a wooden sword. And their economy is so advanced that, unlike apparently everyone else in the world, they eschew slavery and won't touch it no matter how profitable it is.
Then of course there's the faceless men. This crazy magical death-cult who can kill anyone, anywhere. The only catch is that the fee is so high that noone in Westeros can afford it. But that won't stop the Braavosi, because they're so rich! Don't you dare get on the wrong side of a Braavosi, they have at least 5 different ways they can kill you.
In the end, the icewalkers were just stupid zombies, and the dragons weren't so tough- you can just shoot them down with a big ranged weapon. Even the Iron Islanders with their shitty economy of "we do not sew" managed to figure it out. The Braavosi definitely would have. But how the hell do you stop the Braavosi? The rest of the world should be working together, building a big coalition against them, much more afraid of them than some stupid slow zombies from beyond the wall.
BahRamYou
26d ago
Well, this is subjective, but i wouldn't call 2.5% "massive." Massive would be 6% like what Russia spends. Massive enough to build up huge stocks of new ammunition, instead of using up all the old stuff in Ukraine and hoping that the war ends before supplies run out.
And, i know that politicians occasionally endorse the idea of a Europian army. But it just doesn't seem that serious to me. I cant imagine Britain or france wanting to join now, anyway. Meanwhile Austria still won't even join NATO
BahRamYou
26d ago
I read an analysis once arguing that part of Russia's reason for this war actually is the declining birth rate. They're very concerned about their shrinking population, especially from people born in the 90s when the birth rate cratered. By taking the eastern part of Ukraine, they effectively gain a big chunk of new population, even when you account for all the dead bodies.
But yes, I agree with your larger point that people should stop comparing everything to WW2. The world has changed since then.
BahRamYou
26d ago
I think people forget that being president is a difficult job, so it takes some time to learn how to actually do things in office. There's no training program, and the executive branch has a huge number of federal workers who have to be trained or hired. Not to mention just forming connections with people. Most two-term presidents accomplish a lot more in their second term than in their first.
BahRamYou
26d ago
However, perhaps most of all, I think many Americans just don't realise how visceral and close and frightening the Ukraine war is for many people in Europe.
Is it? My impression is that, even for most Europeans, the Ukraine war just isn't all that important. The real hot button issue seems to be immigration, or maybe just the economy in general. No one in Europe is massively raising defense spending, activating the draft, getting nuclear weapons, or calling for a pan-Europian army. I'd expect to see all of those things if they felt they were seriously on the edge of a Russian invasion. The only countries who are really acting like they're at war are the former Warsaw Pact countries like Poland and Bulgaria.
I guess we'll see if the new German government wants to massively increase military aid to Ukraine. If they do then, I'll be proven wrong. But I think they'll basically keep it to the same level it's at now.
Same! I hate those apps and how theyve ruined dating for everyone. Even if yiu dont use them, everyone else is if there was a movement to ban them like how they almost banned tiktok, i'd be a fanatical supporter
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