No one is making that argument here. Autocracy is on the rise globally. In fact, the article is effectively making the opposite argument in mentioning the US falling so far in the rankings, as that would mean the US is part of what is dragging down the press freedom average globally. The article even specifically names Trump as the cause of American press freedom dropping.

So like, seriously, wtf are you even talking about?

Yes, global. Autocratic movements are making a big push the world over, not just in America. Wtf are you even talking about?

Holy shit, 100% agreed, no notes. GenAI ain’t the problem, it is but a symptom of a fucked up system.

I was so ready to fight you with that first half, not gonna lie. I’m very much so in the camp that Charlie Kirk no longer being alive is a good thing, however, I do think the way he died may be a bad thing in that it kinda makes him a martyr. I think one huge mistake that people make with things like this is to not recognize that truly evil people were indeed still human. The most evil humans to ever live in Imperial Japan’s Unit 731 needed to die by any means necessary, but they were still human.

I think that the belief that all humans are good or that all humans are bad is something that fundamentally distorts how we think about others, especially in political spaces. Humans aren’t innately morally aligned, work is put in to align anyone one way or another. People change, and, again, work must be put in to do so. All that to say that someone deserving death for how evil they are isn’t something easily determined, neither is it so black and white, nor can you ignore the potential for change. I think Charlie Kirk is a good example as I’m not really convinced he was reasonably unlikely to change versus someone like Nick Fuentes. However, the damage he has done to political discourse would be something difficult to overcome and can’t be ignored due to the scale. While I agree that him being dead is a net positive for humanity, I can’t agree with anyone saying it’s an easy slam-dunk determination to make.

Okay, sorry to be that guy, but had you read the article, you would see that this is about SpaceX working with Ukraine to kick the Russians off the Starlink network. There’s plenty to criticize Elon about, but the Russian military using Starlink for drones isn’t one of them.

He sure does seem spooked by his name popping up in the Epstein files, though. Fucking lol.

I like how their entire argument is just “nuh-uh”.

Correct, not on the beta. And yes, it’s all images consistently. I can view them just fine, it’s just the downloads.

So I’ve been having an issue on and off between versions that seems to have been broken by this update again. When downloading images, the whole application stops responding for awhile and takes anywhere from 30 seconds to a couple of minutes. If I touch anything in between I keep getting a persistent android notification that the app stopped responding even after the hangup is over. Before updating to this version, it seemed to work just fine and downloaded immediately with no freezing. I’m not 100% sure what version I updated from, but it’s likely the last one pushed to the Google play store. Figured I’d finally say something now that it’s come up again.

lol

Ooo, ohhh, ooo, did y’all know that the False Equivalence fallacy is just a liberal saying? Has nothing to do with Philosophy or Logic. Also couldn’t help but notice you just said false equivalence without demonstrating how. Is it really that difficult to write one more sentence or were you more wanting your dishonesty to remain clear to everyone else to see?

I think I better understand what you’re saying now that I’ve read your comments, specifically in this thread. While I agree with some of your sentiments to an extent, I think you may be oversimplifying a few things and overestimating the importance of others. I don’t think I’m necessarily directly disagreeing with you, though.

I very seriously doubt an armed conflict at a significant scale in Venezuela is on the table right now. While definitely an outrageous international crisis, an invasion is completely unnecessary for the goals of the trump admin. While the US did bring in an aircraft carrier group to carry out the kidnapping, the amount of time, ordinance, and logistical expenditure would be equivalent to one of the many regular drills run by the US military annually. The cost in terms of American military capacity being tied down is effectively zero. The geopolitical cost, however, is more than likely going to be world changing. We have yet to even see the initial response, let alone the consequences, but what we’re hearing at the moment isn’t exactly looking great for the trump admin or the future of US soft power.

The US military isn’t really stretched all that thin right now, especially since pulling out of Afghanistan recently with a very small drawdown of forces after. America isn’t in a position of crumbling or even losing an inch of worldwide hegemony due to military adequacy. However, the geopolitical climate in addition to the impossibly stupid moves of the trump admin recently have certainly earned the US a great amount of distrust globally that would take a gargantuan effort to repair over many years by a different administration(s). It really does appear that the trump admin is running around poking anyone/everyone trying to start a fight.

Talk of an impending American Civil War are pretty silly. Tensions and polarization are high, sure, but the interdependence, geographic blurring, and lack of political will are too great to overcome for a full blown Civil War. While I won’t rule it out in our lifetime, it’s just not in the realm of possibility right now. Despite the political polarization, Americans remain strangely unified. Worst case scenario I could see in the near future is the equivalent of The Troubles in Ireland. Red and blue states are much more purple than the narrative would have us believe, and those in the ranks of the US military are gonna be pretty reluctant to turn their weapons on other Americans, again, despite the narrative. Domestically, the US is more in economic trouble with the ai bubble, volatility of the housing market, and the brittle state of employment, rather than military trouble with political instability. The coming economic downturn will for sure hurt, but it won’t destroy America. I could see the current admin being incompetent enough to fumble the economic downturn into another worldwide depression, but again, not enough to destroy America on its own.

So, to your point of American military power being eroded an uncomfortable amount, oh yeah, hard agree. In fact, the pentagon is working tirelessly to warn of further erosion and drafting up plans to rebuild infrastructure. But American military hegemony isn’t currently under threat. None of the current conflicts around the world have warranted direct military intervention under the goals of the current administration, despite said admin champing at the bit to do so. If China were to invade Taiwan tomorrow, they would get their shit kicked in almost immediately. If Russia were to invade a NATO country tomorrow, they would get their shit kicked in even harder. In a regular conventional war, America will absolutely fuck up anyone’s shit right now.

I think you may overestimate china’s economic influence worldwide as well. While I will acknowledge that the two main economic powers in the world are the US and China right now and no one else even comes close, China still doesn’t quite have the same reach as America. If the Chinese economy failed overnight, the world would feel it and not have a great time, but it would survive. If America’s economy failed overnight, the current state of civilization is over. The world would shuffle shit around for awhile, turning into something we wouldn’t recognize. China is certainly catching up, but China is extremely dependent on American buying power much like the rest of the world. The world economy is built on consumerism, and America is by far #1 in buying an unreasonably enormous amount of shit. China is certainly gaining their bearings in ruthless and barbaric economic warfare, but they still pale in comparison to the professionals in America.

So while I definitely disagree that America is on the brink because of a degraded military, I will agree that American political hegemony is in danger because the trump admin is unbelievably stupid and the major opposition party is largely disorganized and unable to expend any political capital to give meaningful resistance. I think you’re right to be concerned for the future stability of the world given the increased political turmoil and brick-shitting incompetence of global leadership.

Yeah, spot on. Even in the event of the US vs the rest of the world combined, the US navy is so disproportionately overpowered as to be able to keep the war off American soil. I think that’s a good demonstration of the egregious irresponsible mismanagement of priorities over a sustained amount of time by the malicious sociopaths making decisions in the American government.

Hey, thanks for the legitimate engagement. These are some pretty important things to consider for a larger context in how we move forward as a species in anticipation of potential gigantic shifts in international power dynamics. While definitely unjust in it’s unequal distribution, American hegemony has brought pretty unprecedented stability for the world as a whole. That unprecedented stability appears to be in jeopardy with the rise of fascism in the world, imperialist invasions of Ukraine and Gaza, increasing expansionist ambition from China, and general lack of cohesive competent leadership in de-escalation worldwide. While European leadership finally appears to be scrambling to find a way to not be so overly dependent on American political influence, much of the rest of the world(some within Europe included) appears to be turning more isolationist. A continuation of this trend makes the world ripe for expanded conflict, and we’re already seeing an increase in major conflicts worldwide.

All that to put into context the kind of world an American war economy would be hypothetically firing up in. While industrial capacity in the US could certainly sustain a hot war in Venezuela and then more, domestic industrial capacity is extremely degraded in terms of ability to sustain a war effort against even one near-peer adversary. It would take years to spin back up the necessary factories and material production that may prove futile in the attempt to break the inevitable stalemate resulting in the wait for production to ramp up. Pre-2000, America could absolutely stomp anyone in the world. After the offshoring of industrial capacity and recent alienation of those receiving said capacity, the US will find itself with an extremely challenging number of logistical problems. With the distrust the American people have for their government growing in intensity, I don’t see much domestic will to solve these problems. While domestic production issues would be a huge problem for America, exacerbated by the grossly incompetent actors in power, it would still be a stretch to say any foreign conflict would end up on American soil. And while American industrial capacity would certainly be hampered by proletariat resentment of the ruling class, the circumstances of whatever kicks off a war could very quickly change that factor. Like, say a Chinese invasion of Taiwan or Russian invasion of a NATO country.

Either way, American military domination isn’t going away any time soon. On top of that, American naval domination won’t even be remotely challenged for decades. The trump admin has legitimately done a ton of damage to the US in terms of military logistical capacity through mind-numbing incompetence and just straight up stupid geopolitical moves, but the erasure of American military hegemony would take muuuuuuuch more than the dumbfuckery of this limp-dick admin. I would be much more focused on the damage these dipshit fascists are doing geopolitically. Where the Biden admin demonstrated the soft power of American hegemony with the ease of mobilizing a good amount of the world against the Russian imperialist invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the trump admin has also demonstrated their baffling capacity to rapidly erode that soft power forrrr… no apparent reason. Although, as a side note, many of the isolationist and imperialist moves of the trump admin sure do seem suspiciously convenient for the fascist putin regime.

While all the above is important to keep in mind for our current world context, I think it remains most important for us to all recognize that the enemy isn’t the vague concept of “other nations”, but the irresponsible sociopaths in power. Workers in America and China have a hell of a lot more in common than the jackasses that rule over us. Why the fuck should we kill each other over their dick measuring contests? We need to shut the fuck up about their programming of “america bad”, “china bad”, “russia bad”, and start putting the pressure on those weilding their power irresponsibly starting with exposing the fucked up narrative and building solidarity.

I’m not sure what you mean by the US being close to “military capacity”, but if you mean that the US has degraded capacity to sustain military action to the point of effectively being spent by a hot war in Venezuela, then I’m gonna have to strongly disagree. The American military hasn’t had a draft in a very long time and the economy is nowhere near being fully diverted to war efforts. Where I will grant that American domestic manufacturing capability has been in serious decline for a few decades now, along with current supply stockpiles being much lower due to foreign material aid, it would still be silly to say that America’s ability to sustain multiple military actions across the globe is completely wiped out. Logistically speaking, the US capacity for expanded military action in addition to a hypothetical hot war in Venezuela is still unreasonably large.

Saying that the US is like nazi Germany in the middle of ww2 is extremely hyperbolic. Hard agree that the conditions are similar to Germany during the rise of the nazis, but they don’t have full control and it’s not a guarantee. The fascists are not in control, do not give into the bullshit idea that they are and we should just give up. Things are bad, but they will absolutely be much worse if the fascists do indeed take over.

Also, it may seem nitpicky, but I think there’s an important distinction I would make between the US and the trump admin in how you asked your question. Is the trump admin about to overplay their hand? They may have already with the kidnapping of another head of state on bogus charges, although the hegemony of American political power still shouldn’t be underestimated despite the steep drop-off in recent years. Trust in the trump admin abroad has certainly been irrevocably transmuted into aggressive distrust, and the moves being made domestically have only led to further intensify domestic polarization and tension. Where the public won’t necessarily move too much in their opinion over the kidnapping of Maduro, those in decision making positions in government are undoubtedly having some serious internal turmoil over how close to the line the trump admin is stepping. This is enough of an outrageous move that we might be hearing about some internal organizing in the US government to make some unprecedented and very destabilizing moves against the administration.

I know some edgelords are probably saying the line was crossed long ago for any number of atrocities the trump admin has perpetrated in the past, however, they VERY severely underestimate the risk of catastrophic consequences in removing the trump admin from power by force, whether done legally or not. The sheer amount of human suffering from a possible civil war as a result is extremely daunting and is absolutely not something to be considered so lightly, even in the face of the despicable actions of the trump admin.

Work at the speed of thought? Bro, that’s not at all possible. Like, legitimately, wtf?

He says a thesis written in two years would be better than one written in eight, therefore faster is better. Okay, a bolognese made in 6 hours is better than one made in 30 minutes, therefore slower is better. If I can use your same argument to make the opposite point, your argument is bad. Also, to be clear, if your bolognese takes less than four hours, you are wrong.

Speed as a universal metric is just silly and a downright childish oversimplification. Fuck your speed, use a relevant metric. On top of that, it has been and still is an absurd expectation from capitalists to do everything faster, and this “article” reeks of said absurd expectation.

ADHD is a neurodevelopmental disorder, either you’re born with it or you’re not. Sure, lots of things fight for our attention and that probably affects us in some way, but distractability isn’t the same thing as ADHD. It’s primarily a regulation disorder rather than ‘can’t focus disease’. Where I think you bring up a good point in a mechanism that probably reveals ADHD in some people, I would definitely give pushback on what appears to be a suggestion that the advertising industry as it exists causes ADHD. I don’t think any serious psychological professional would make that assertion.

This is the correct answer and I feel it’s very important to emphasize this point. You can have “symptoms” of whatever the fuck, but in order for it to be considered a disorder, it must disrupt your life in some way. I usually lean more into the camp of just trying to be supportive of people when they speak about mental health disorders, but there are definitely those kids out there self-diagnosing disorders like they’re collecting pokemon. As someone who legitimately has been diagnosed with multiple disorders by actual licensed psychological professionals, it’s aggravating to see those kids infantilize mental health in that capacity, where it perpetuates the already uphill battle for many of us to be taken seriously in the first place. ADHD has absolutely ruined my life and I would absolutely(in a hypothetical) take a relatively high chance of death at “curing” my ADHD without a single hesitation. Life is hard enough with all these fucking disorders, definitely don’t need the added burden of always feeling like I have to prove that I really am that fucked up.

Yup. It seems that whenever you stop being quite as inconvenient to neurotypicals, suddenly “you’re fine, you just need to apply yourself”.

Man, that’s exactly how I got diagnosed again as an adult. I was taken off of medication and all that when I was 12, so I thought I didn’t really have ADHD. Years later, I’m watching a video of “you might have ADHD if…” for laughs and it went something like:

“LAWL.”

“LOL”

“lol”

“… ah, beans.”