Amanda

It really is an annoying piece of shit

They usually get a slap on the wrist; cf instigating race riots gives longer sentences than blocking a highway.

A lot of Americans supported the equally illegal invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, I still don’t think they deserve even how shitty their non-occupation civil government is.

Given how war works I’m almost certain there will be war crimes against the civil population here. Not as bad as what the Russians are doing in their occupied territories I sure as fuck hope and expect, but worse than anyone deserves. I can see Ukrainians getting to be a bit vindictive etc about this, they’ve earned it, but as armchair commentators online at a safe distance we should fucking show some empathy for people in a shitty situation they have very little control over.

I can’t control my government and I live in a democracy. I don’t blame Russians for most of what their state does either.

It’s almost a by the book buy off. You don’t get a salary that can afford anything like good food and clothes because we want salaries to be cheap in the west while we increase the profits from rents, fees etc. However, we will pay you off by externalising all the costs of getting you cheap crap on other people that you don’t have to see (and the environment in general).

It’s of course not an actual conspiracy, just a confluence of terrible impulses and motivations.

I think I you heard the wrong argument here

Does this mean Germany is going to have a bad time and fuck up the power grid for all of Europe this winter again?

This is one of the hardest earned lessons I’ve ever learned, and I’ve had to learn it over and over again. I think it’s mostly stuck now but I still make the same mistake from time to time.

As in efficient per watt or some other metric?

It’s been zombie-ish for a while now!

Sure, but I assume there will have to be a regular Wikipedia page (or at least section) about the discussion of Wikipedia’s naming of the main article.

Wikipedia is now in the interesting position of having to write an encyclopaedia article about the discussions about their original page, in which I suspect they cannot cite themselves as a source.

I’m pretty sure he does, yeah. He needs a bloody conflict to go on to remain in power (and possibly out of prison). Scared people are easier to rule, and terrorism is scary.

Also I imagine they swallow far more water

…in winter, a famously amazing move that never goes wrong

There’s been a lot of cases where the opposition is a bunch of US plants or worse so a charitable interpretation is they’re worried about that. A less charitable one is the one everyone has already posted: they’re tankies, ie left-wing authoritarians and like the authoritarian government.

For the record I’m holding off on having an opinion until I’ve read an analysis of the situation I trust, and I haven’t found one or had the time to look seriously. My opinion doesn’t really matter in this case anyway so I don’t think I’m in a hurry to find a correct position.

Exposure doesn’t always help. Most people become less bigoted from exposure but a few double down on their bigotry and get worse. I guess it depends on where your bigotry comes from.

For example, I’m trans myself and don’t exactly pass. Despite this I’ve faced very little direct bigotry from people. The ones I’ve read as transphobic have all been very well-educated, including a woman with a Master’s degree in humanities who sounded a lot like mid-downfall JK Rowling. She’d clearly been exposed to trans people and the discourse in general, to her detriment.

Most reasonable people intuitively get respecting people’s wishes to live their own lives. It requires a certain amount of bad personality traits and/or indoctrination for them to believe the lives of others are a threat to them and want to intervene so I think there’s diminishing returns from educating people beyond basic explanations and a few quick etiquette rules of thumb.

Actually we do in most places

the post also attracted a steady stream of comments from climate denying-accounts subscribed to X’s premium service, many of which were abusive and misrepresented established climate science

My god

That’s capitalism for you: one company makes money creating the problem and another fixing it! It’s double-pumped!

Sure, but how did they end up selecting him and why can’t they recall him?