Honestly, with all the stuff going on the last few years it's easy to forget the Syrian Civil War never really ended.
I was under the impression Assad had managed to consolidate power and pushed the rebels to the outskirts. If the rebels can capture Syria's 2nd biggest city.. it puts the future of the Assad regime into doubt. And by extension Russia's influence in the region.
I do not think this bodes well for the future stability of the region.
i don't think the always thrown around "more education" is an effective answer to everything
you can educate kids up and down about the harms of smoking- if smoking is advertised as cool in popular media, there are cigarettes with colorful and fruity flavors, and it's easy for the kids to obtain then they will inevitably smoke cigarettes. everybody has known smoking causes cancer for a half century know.
if you don't want kids smoking, then you must act with force to restrict something. whether it's the restriction on subliminal advertising, the ban on colorful cigarettes, or prohibition of selling to underage smokers- you need some sort of ban.
i firmly believe in the near future we will view social media as we know it similar to how we see smoking. addictive little dopamine hits that will over time change the structure of your brain. we look back at the 50s and think it was crazy how they smoked cigarettes on airplanes, drank whiskey at work, and everyone bathed in lead and asbestos. they're going to look back at our time period and see us similarly
so if I were to say "should kids be using social media?" I wholeheartedly believe they should not be using it until their brains are developed. much like I don't think kids should be smoking cigarettes, drinking alcohol, or smoking weed
but the ultimate question is- what are the potential harms of a government ban and are those potential harms worth it?
that's where I am conflicted. a minor not being able to buy cigarettes is something that I don't really think hurts society very much.
but a ban on a minor accessing certain online spaces.. how do you accomplish that? well, you will need to track people's identities online somehow. this is the part where I think maybe the harms of kids using social media is not worth giving the government power to monitor and regulate social media websites.
American strategic goals and what Ukraine deserves are two separate topics that have no connection with each other
The Kurds have a right to exist, what happened to them once there was no more utility to the US?
The US is participating in the destruction of Ukraine for their own strategic interests. Just like every other thing the US has ever done.
American goals in Ukraine are
make Russia pay dearly for every inch of land they take in Ukraine
use this opportunity to give a nice cash injection to our defense contractors
gather as much intel & data on both Russia & the modern battlefield in general. Sort of like the Spanish Civil War before WW2. A playground to test out new technologies
These goals have already been accomplished. It's been a great couple years in terms of hurting Russia for cheap.
We want to prolong this war as long as possible. A Ukrainian victory would be just as bad as a Ukrainian loss. It's why we modulate our aid carefully. Like Chomsky was saying before his stroke - "we will fight them to the last Ukrainian"
I think a lot of people get blinded by propaganda in the moment. Even people who retroactively would be able to see it just fine (try and find someone who believes Iraq was a justified war) strongly believe the party lines.
Reality is American interests and Ukrainian interests are not aligned.
Thanks for the info. If the creditors agree to take a lowered payout, than it makes sense. I wasn't aware of any such deal before making my comment.
I don't want to dox myself but I know Parkland very well. The people who live there are loaded. So it makes sense they aren't hurting for money and would just prefer the Infowars website to be neutered, which it seems is the Onion's goal.
most democratic countries cosplay as democracies. just like most communist countries cosplayed as communist.
ideology in its purest form. After the death of God, you need something to fill that unapproachable void. So you inject ideals- civil service, egalitarianism, tolerance, justice, etc -- values that are virtuous and aspirational, but ultimately are just shiny veneers over a darker truth. it functions as scaffolding for systems that serve the interests of raw power. it is theater. performance. spectacle. underneath, the mechanisms of control, inequality, and corruption remain unchanged.
don't make the mistake of believing that India is somehow unique here
if we're talking about consecutive time spent, ie one single uninterrupted block of time, then I'd say about 7~8 hours.
one time my ex-girlfriend's cat managed to get way. we think it was one of the roommates opened the door to the back and wasn't paying much attention. the cat was sneaky, he would try to dart out all the time
i spent the entire day, basically, walking around the fairly large apartment complex yelling out his name and shaking a bag of treats
a few hours in, my ex had a mental breakdown and gave up thinking any continued searching was hopeless. she really liked the cat and wasn't taking it well
but i just kept at it. towards the end of the day, around dusk when it was starting to get dark, i heard an exasperated meow behind me and the cat came up running to me. it looked very scared and confused.
we had just moved from one place to another a few hours away. so it was used to be an outside cat but it didn't know the area whatsoever.
anyhow it actually stopped trying to run out of the house after that, so that was nice
I'm split between this would lead to good things and this will usher in a new McCarthy red scare style period.
Ironically though I think we are inching closer to the Chinese system as the Chinese system inches closer to our own.
A- brutal capitalism with workers rights stripped down as much as possible
B- a system where a small group of elites get to make all of the political decisions
C- a state who cooperates with the largest corporations in order to stay in power and maintain high profits
The difference is China has been slowly liberalizing, giving their people slightly more political and economic freedoms. Meanwhile here in the US we are doing rhe opposite.
It's almost as if we are both converging towards the same end goal. A sort of convergent evolution headed to the government with the highest fitness. Which unfortunately for us peons isn't designed for us
Every step in the right direction is better than taking no steps at all (or worse, taking steps backwards).
voting DNC is taking no steps at all. it's neoliberal status quo. brutal no-safety rails capitalism, genocide, and war.
. the only time in this country's history where people managed to get meaningful concessions out of the ruling class was when the ruling class was afraid. moments like the New Deal where communists were getting serious consideration. moments like the civil rights era where blacks and anti-war advocates were protesting en mass. moments like like stonewall riots which led to rights for gays.
these are steps in the right direction. voting DNC is pissing against the wind deluding yourself that you can somehow outvote fascism in a democracy
Reddit tries their best to reduce liability. In the past there have been subs that are focused on "raiding" and "brigading" or whatever you wanna call it. They hype up a bunch of easily impressionable users in a fever pitch and they go around spamming and vote rigging.
A well coordinated attack is enough to bring an active sub to its knees. This ruins the experience for the other users.
Of course the real reason, however, is because these types of subs when left unchecked tend to get too enthusiastic over time and create negative publicity for reddit - which of course puts them at risk of losing advertising revenue.
For example, /r/the_donald and their brigades and harassment https://www.wired.com/story/the-hate-fueled-rise-of-rthe-donald-and-its-epic-takedown/ which led to calls for violence and all sorts of tricky potential legal liabilities
or /r/wallstreetbets with their market manipulations https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gamestop-reddit-wallstreetbets-short-squeeze-2021-01-28/ that brought a lot of talk about government regulation
so they try to curb these types of behaviors right at the root and stem, in order to try and prevent it ultimately developing into something that could be a risk to the bottom line