Is it even worth reading? It’s RT. They’re going to describe whatever Putin pitches as the greatest, kindest, most generous offer in all of history.
Edit:
The Russian president has shown he values peaceful coexistence
Holy shit. That might be one of the most brazen lies I’ve ever seen.
Are they trying to make me actually like Carney?
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That used to be true. Then the early 2000s happened and Congress effectively signed away that authority.
Accurate, but don’t ever let this fool you into thinking voting doesn’t matter.
Voting isn’t about picking who you like (or worse, who you imagine likes you); it’s about picking your opponent. Public pressure matters. We’ve seen that time and time again. If you think it doesn’t, you’re ignoring history. It’s just a question of how much public pressure is needed; a letter writing campaign, or a general strike.
What voting does is set the stage for how effective your public pressure will be. And how effective the public pressure of the people working against you will be.
You’re better off fighting a government that is reticent about your concerns than one that is actively hostile to them. And sometimes your best bet is simply the government that won’t actively make things too much worse while you work on building the movement that can make them better.
Voting is only one weapon in your arsenal, but you’d be a fool to go into a battle for your survival with anything less than every weapon you can get your hands on.
No, I get that, wasn’t trying to slap you down. I’m just adding emphasis to your (very good) argument by demonstrating just how far you were lowballing your estimate (ie, just how generous you were being).
40 at the same time
You’re lowballing it just a little there. Current estimates put the number of Russian nukes at about 5,500.
It’s actually so much worse than that, as the article explains.
Iron Dome was the inspiration, but with Golden Dome what they’re planning is space based interception. It’s Reagan’s Star Wars project back from the dead.
The problem with this is two fold; no known system in the world can reliably intercept ICBMs, and doing so from space is ludicrously expensive. It costs, in effect, about ten times as much to shoot down one ICBM as it does to build an launch one, meaning that a peer adversary can just build more missiles and flood the system. To stop even a Hundred ICBMs would cost hundreds of billions of dollars. China has six hundred.
Basically, like so much of what Trump spends money on, it will amount to a very expensive but completely useless toy.
Soaring demand for AI-related technology has fuelled Taiwan’s trade surplus with the United States – and put it in Trump’s crosshairs.
This is a perfect example of how unhinged their war on trade deficits really is.
Of course the US has a huge trade deficit with Taiwan. Everyone has a huge trade deficit with Taiwan, because they’re basically the only source of one of the most vital components in all of modern manufacturing.
You can’t solve that with tariffs. Reducing US reliance on Taiwanese semi-conductors requires long term investment in manufacturing. That’s what Biden was trying to do with CHIPS, and he actually made some real headway there. Getting Taiwan to agree to TSMC building a plant in the US was a huge get.
But just slapping tariffs on things just makes the semiconductors you import more expensive. Choosing not to import them isn’t an option. Importing them from somewhere else isn’t an option.
And on the flip side, you can’t increase Taiwanese imports from the US, because what the fuck are they going to import? What, you think they’re all going to start driving F-150s? Taiwan doesn’t give a fuck about most things the US makes, or if they do, they’re already buying it (like SaaS, which is a massive US export sector, but doesn’t get counted in Trump’s numbers because its not manufacturing so to his addled octogenarian brain it doesn’t exist). Taiwan’s population is barely more than a twentieth that of the US. They simply don’t have enough consumers to meaningfully import on the same scale that they export.
The fact that we’re all so dependent on a tiny country under constant threat of invasion for a vital resource is a huge problem, but this is not how you solve it.
Schumer: “OK, how about this… You get to murder half of all trans people, and we agree to fund the government.”
Trump: “I’ll think about it.”
Technically, the Wing Commander successor is Squadron 42. Star Citizen is a Freelancer successor.
I understand if this brings you little comfort.
“I mean, they can’t get any worse, right?”
Spoiler alert: They can.
Don’t buy anything from EA, ever again.
This isn’t just an event in Saudi Arabia, it’s an event run by the Saudi government, with the specific purpose of making them seem more normal and likeable, and less like the horrific autocratic tyrants that they are.
So no, your comparison between this and comedians working in the US does not apply. A more apt comparison would be between working this event and working Trump’s inauguration, something that a huge number of artists declined for exactly the same reasons that these comedians all should have declined to work this event.
This is, just to be clear, not remotely how copyright works.
By that logic, I could decide that movie studios have to opt out of me watching their movies for free, and if they don’t then it’s legal for me to pirate them. See how insane that sounds?
Copyright is automatic and presumptive, and takes effect without any action on the behalf of the holder (this is distinct from trademarks, which have to be actively defended). There is no such thing as “opt out” use of copyrighted works.
Happy to agree on that score. While I don’t think the decision to invade Ukraine was, in of itself, a stupid one, there’s absolutely a lot of bad choices that have been made at the operational level since then. The distinction matters because you have to remember that these decisions are made at different levels. The decision to invade was made by Putin and a handful of his closest advisors. The decisions about how to run the war… Well, a lot of those aren’t so much decisions as long-standing Russian / Soviet theories of warfare collapsing in the face of reality. The problems are doctrinal, and deeply embedded. But it’s also important to be aware that the Russians are, slowly, learning from these failures and contuing to adapt to their new reality.
I think these distinctions are important, because it would be foolish to treat Putin as an idiot. He’s not. He’s a terrifyingly intelligent and dangerous individual, and the fact that he’s running a country like Russia is a problem for everyone. It would also be foolish to assume that the Russian military will continue to make those kinds of operational mistakes going forward. A lot of what you’re seeing is less “stupidity” and more “big ships make slow turns.”
Can’t claim credit for that one, sadly.
I’d argue that attacking Ukraine was only stupid in hindsight. With the information they had at the time, it looked like a very good plan. Most outside observers figured Ukraine would last weeks at most. No one expected Russia’s military to prove so ineffective, and even with all the training and support they’d gotten from NATO since 2014, Ukraine’s military still seriously exceeded expectations. Russia didn’t act stupidly, but they did fail to correctly assess the relative military readiness of themselves and their opponents.
Which really only further reinforces your point that attacking NATO would be suicide, and Russia is painfully aware of that. They’re not stupid, and with everything they’ve learned since attacking Ukraine they now how a much more accurate picture of how their equipment and tactics would fare against those of NATO.
Russian morale is absolutely dogshit right now. Among other things, soldiers are being forced to bribe their commanders if they want to leave the front (when they’re scheduled to be rotated out). Those who refuse to pay up get detailed to under-equipped suicide attacks.
Oh, and soldiers who die are being marked AWOL so their families don’t get death benefits, because the government has barely any money left to pay them, and they’re being forced to offer huge signing bonuses just to get the manpower they need.
Gamers try not to be massive creeps in public 2025 challenge. Level: Impossible.