The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
13hr ago
If you don't have the income you can't save yourself rich. Contrariwise, if you do, you don't need $75,000 or anything to not be poor -- though you CAN spend yourself poor at any income.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14hr ago
For example, a lot of San Fransisco 50 year olds made way too much money in a software boom, often being head button style changer for Google for 10 years. I don't see this as entitling them to the $1 million they probably saved from that career. Yes, it's how they made their money and got it to be legally recognized as theirs, but morally they did nothing to „deserve“ it.
Since this seems like the subthread for this sort of thing, I'll point out that if they only saved $1M from 10 years at Google, they were absolutely terrible with money.
But also, if you don't think people deserve the wages paid for their labor, you're basically at odds with almost everyone. Even Marx wouldn't say workers didn't deserve their wages.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
16hr ago
You could make money on Iran by selling oil futures when they spiked; I think there were several spikes which dropped within a day.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
My point is that including the "Biden boom times" in this makes it less likely to be true politically motivated gloating and more likely to be false politically motivated gloating.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Funny, my real net worth dropped during the "Biden boom times" and increased significantly during the first year of Trump's second term, enough that I retired in January.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
The previous Iran leadership at least played lip service to working relations with it's Arab neighbors.
The previous Iranian leadership apparently told the KSA and the other Gulf states that if they were attacked by anyone, they'd attack the Gulf states. This was supposed to get those states to discourage attacks by the US, but it apparently had the opposite effect, since the various princes and emirs are not France.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Enough Communism can hold any people down, though. Fortunately Vietnam (unlike North Korea) had insufficient communism.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
and then have the gall to get upset that people are thinking its some kind of NeoNazi thing.
Read the thread: He's not upset; he's trolling and winning at it.
I love shooting citizens for lawful reasons
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
· Edited 1d ago
The US used to be "we don't think of you at all" with respect to the EU -- they would do dumb stuff which harmed us but harmed them more (non-tariff barriers, messing with tech companies, buying Russian gas, etc) and the US really wouldn't react much. Under Trump II it's become a more openly adversarial relationship. Spain is almost an open enemy now (and has been since the Madrid bombings) and France is headed that direction.
ETA: Things are changing fast, France is now an open enemy if Bloomberg headlines are to believed.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
That Trump's trying to negotiate is certainly the way to bet. But the Euros totally walked into this, and the most basic Trumpology could have told them that.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Vietnam? Sure. Japan... not so much.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Yes, the conservative realizes this and wants to change it by changing incentives.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
How are Vietnam, Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya and all those other third world countries doing after your carpet bombing?
We never nuked any of them, carpet bombing doesn't work as well. Vietnam's doing pretty well. Iraq... well, better than under Saddam Hussein. Syria's on Putin's plate, and Libya on Europe's.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
An actor can probably get "country matters" across, perhaps by breaking accent and rhythm a bit so it's clearly "cunt-ry matters" (whether that's the derivation or not). As for "nothing" meaning "vagina" (or "pussy"), that's likely a recent fabrication.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
And certainly all the people complaining about hospice and daycare fraud aren't running their own fraudulent hospices and daycares.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
2d ago
Last time the US used nukes in anger, we bombed the target into the First World.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
I don't really subscribe to the word "right" in this case.
When you lose "right", you also lose "should" and also "responsibility".
Personally, I think the USA should have anticipated this, and either ensured it had a mitigation strategy or hold off until it could come up with one.
The US did; the Department of Defense is not, in fact, entirely made up of idiots. There is mitigation, in fact, happening, which is why there's not $200+ oil and lights out everywhere from London to Calcutta.
I actually think that when the protests were happening the American military should have scrambled whatever it had or could to get cooking immediately to help the protests with a decapitation strike.
It's pretty clear that wouldn't have worked. If the Iranian dissidents can't do anything with several layers of the leadership knocked off, they couldn't have done anything with whatever could be scrambled up at the time. The Iranian dissidents are utterly defanged and can be kept down by the Basij and their small arms alone.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Belligerent and water is pretty fungible
No, not at all. Kuwait, for instance, is not a belligerent.
I doubt military bases have dedicated desalination plants so it's just a normal one near a city but we can assume some goes to service members.
Which makes them dual-use infrastructure, which means they are not absolutely protected from attack but rather are subject to the usual rules of proportionality (military advantage vs. collateral civilian damage)
Especially given it will likely not reduce military effectiveness and will inflict a lot of suffering on the civilian population that Trump/the USA is claiming to be fighting to free from their (absolutely awful) government.
As far as I know, the only desalination plant to be hit (allegedly) is on Qeshm Island. Which Iran is currently (and predictably) using as part of their strategem to control the Strait. This makes it an arguably reasonable target on its face, though I do not know enough details to know if it's really a reasonable target. (I also don't know if it was actually hit or if it was, if it was itself collateral damage)
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
There's plenty who DO believe the drug boats are fishing boats. They're still going on about Andrés Fernando Tufiño Chila.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
Neutral or belligerent? Supplying military installations or not?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
I'm not truly sure if it is a good idea or not, probably not - but I have a strong suspicion that one of the things Trump is up to is to try and convince undecideds it is a great idea.
Definitely. He tested the Europeans and they failed massively. They've demonstrated not that they are either unable or unwilling to help enforce freedom of navigation (helping attack Iran is indeed not their responsibility, FON is that of all seafaring nations), but that they are both unable and unwilling to do so. Which leads directly to the question of "what good are you as an ally"? If the answer is "bases", well, they screwed that one up too.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
So the US and Israel attack Iran, Iran attacks many neutrals for "leverage", and it's right for the neutrals to act by putting pressure on the US and Israel to stop attacking Iran, thus giving them the leverage they were looking for?
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
The ship's flag says which sovereign is responsible for the ship. Iran hit ships with neutral flags AND neutral owners.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
3d ago
The one place where non-Americans have direct visibility of how Reds think is the public behaviour of the man they have chosen to represent them on the world stage since 2016. And from the outside a culture that can enthusiastically elect Donald Trump looks like a culture that considers sadism a virtue and honesty a vice.
It's min-maxing. Trump's a boor, but since Reagan, Bush Sr., and certainly Bush Jr. were all treated the same way, that's not a loss. If indeed the Red Tribe Europeans see a difference, it doesn't matter because Blue Tribe Europe has been firmly in charge the whole time.
No. First of all, the idea that those with the most "moral worth" should be the wealthiest is bizarre. You then connect moral worth to "need", which is also rather strange (I guess this borrows from Marx). Then the resulting system is incoherent; as long as you're working you should be wealthy, but if you dare to retire you should not be. You could certainly build a (totalitarian) system based on these ideas, but I don't think the thing would be called "wealth" -- it would be a form of status granted by the state, not an accumulation of value.
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