Obviously there’s a proxy war between russia and the west in ukraine, but I don’t think the US wants a long attritional war.

They could have done more to not end up in one, but I think escalation management really is driving a lot of decisions in washington.

take as many free shots as he wanted at the heavily restrained and completely innocent man, a perk the military provided to each new recruit. “Now, I’m not entirely sure what this gentleman’s whole deal is. Looks like he could be from the Middle East.

Brutal.

Thank you this kind of comment is why I come here.

Yeah but presumably the parent in the M1 has a spouse operating a surveillance drone to provide real time fire child correction?

Yeah, I’m guessing it was that, which won an IgNobel prize like a decade ago.

If you’ve ever worked in a call center, this kind of thing happens from time to time. After a couple times you learn to ignore it and push through.

throwing muck

You seem to feel like you’re being attacked by a description of how some people suffer. It doesn’t imply that others don’t.

You see your hardships, can’t look past the color of your skin, and project.

I don’t see how my ‘hardships’ as a middle class white australian-american who moved to the US come into it. I’m describing how I observe the US to work.

Yes, rich people are more likely to crowdfund their rich friends.

White people are just more likely to be successful in their crowdfunding, even when poor.

I’m not arguing that there are no poor white people, that’s silly. My wife’s dad’s grew up shoeless and white in rural illinois. The existence of poor white people doesn’t disprove the fact non white people are a greater target for deliberate impoverishment.

I’m not deaf to class-based analysis. But this is the US. You just can’t talk about class without also talking about how racialized poverty is in most of the country. Crowdfunding is one of the many facits of our society that very clearly reflects that.

Possibly timing played a role, sure. But both those candidates are men, so it could just be more proof of her point.

Why do you make this a white vs not white issue?

Because that’s what the intention is.

Republicans (post civil rights, Dixiecrats before that) specifically target non-white communities with laws designed to hurt them. They can’t be as explicit about it as they once were, so they have to find proxy targets. Instead of just jailing blacks, we’ll over-enforce drug laws in certain communities. Instead of saying we’re trying to starve black families, we’ll use ‘welfare mothers’ as a proxy. The goal is still the same as it was for all of US history - to win votes from whites by promising to take from non-whites. School vouchers. Stop and frisk. Zero tolerance approaches. Gang enforcement units.

But using proxies instead of specifically targeting leads to some collateral emiseration. Luckily, white communities have vastly more intergenerational and communal wealth, so those crafting the laws know that white communities will be more resilient to the kind of damage they intend to inflict.

not a problem with whites, it’s a problem with the rich.

Crowdfunding success is heavily racialized. It strongly favours people with more wealth in their extended community or identity group. Poverty is incredibly racialized in the US, especially at the communal rather than individual level.

I certainly agree that rich people enjoy watching all the poors suffer, but here in the US there’s still a large demographic beyond just the rich that feel safer when black and brown people are disproportionately targeted for misery.

Crowdfunding campaigns like this are a great way for white communities to avoid the consequences of laws that were mostly designed to emiserate non-white americans.

Not in the late bronze age.

The Mycenian Greeks probably wrestled control of Crete from the Minoans ~300 before the late bronze age collapse of greek and hittite power structures.

Cultural elements and settlements of these “Eteocretans” remained, but I don’t think the Minoans were in any place to halt anything at that point. During the period we call collapse they seem to have been doing a lot of fleeing into the mountains.

The first two claims are not really supportable:

Human beings are the only living things that are truly aware of their own mortality and spend time pondering the meaning of life and death.[24] Awareness of human mortality arose some 150,000 years ago.[25]

The claim that only humans are aware of mortality is from an article about COVID and death anxiety by 3 psychologists, no primatologists, paleontologist or animal behavior specialist. Recently published elephant burials and long documented chimp and corvid mourning behavior could undermine this claim. Although an emotional reaction to death may not imply awareness of one’s own death.

The second claim that mortality awareness is only 150,000 years old is sourced to a 25 year old psychology paper. Our understanding of the human past has radically transformed since then. Sima de los Huesos may show mortuary practice from 400,000+ years ago, Dinaledi chamber may show non-sapiens mortuary practice from 200,000+. And if erectus (2M - 100k y/a) had fire, boats and language or proto-language well mortality awareness doesn’t seem out of the question.

There’s no good reason to think we know when awareness of death arose.

Reading beyond the headline, I kind of agree that she faced a sexist double standard where she suffered electorally for things that wouldn’t have impacted a male candidate as strongly.

Being a slimy, self-entitled political creature is pretty acceptable for a male politician.

Then again she did win the election by 2 percentage points. So as much as I dislike her, it’s probably more of a structural issue than either sexism or candidate quality.

Bauxite is the obvious one. Bringing bauxite to Australia. How could you forget about bauxite?

Pfft some glitch, you have to accept a massive nerf to average height, dental hygiene, disease load and interpersonal violence. Broad spectrum subsistence has a much higher skill cap.

In case anyone was curious about what sort of politician has a daughter who’s a full time missionary, yes he is exactly the cruel and corrupt grifter you’d expect, and a notably half assed one.

He introduced a bill to “regulate sexual content” in libraries, which he claimed was inspired by drag story hour, however drag story hours were not addressed in the bill.

He sponsored a bill to let parents sue schools if they don’t like what their children are learning.

He’s tried to pre-emptively block ranked-choice voting and forcibly de-transition adult prisoners as part of the “Missouri Child and Adolescent Protection Act.”

My favourite is that he tried to pre-emptively block cities from banning pet store animals, at the request of Petland and others, after Petland was linked to bacterial infection outbreaks, puppy-mills and some fairly obvious cruelty. “He further acknowledged that he had not researched existing Missouri law on the matter.” (per wikipedia)

If you’re cruel or rich, Ben Baker’s got your back.

I was just having a discussion with my family about recent union wins in the US, and when something good is a sign of how bad things must be. I suggested that there must be a german word for it, and my sister suggested maybe a chinese saying.

If you like the category of ‘things that sound like german has a word for it’, look into the 4-character chinese sayings called chengyu. One of my favourites is ‘Melon Patch, Under Plum’, meaning something that is completely innocent but should be avoided because it looks really sketchy. Don’t tie your shoes in a melon patch or fix your hat under a plum tree.

I read an article years ago, maybe like a decade ago, of some game industry person saying it was a cycle:

Incredible new graphics come out and people will buy the shiny regardless of anything else, then slowly they have to start making actually good games with those graphics to sell, then incredible new graphics come out and you don’t need to bother with story for a while.

There was a greek-australian comedian who was standing in front of the parthenon and said something like, “You can tell this house is greek cause of all the pillars”.