gravitas_deficiency , vor 3 Monaten

That is either deeply depressing or deeply concerning.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 3 Monaten

Arguably, yes, because it seems like everyone analogous to the Allies this time around can’t agree on anything and are simultaneously having to deal with a lot of hostile propaganda/manipulation, up to and including quisling politicians in our governments (sometimes entire governments, really) and hostile foreign service agents.

TL;DR: we’ve learned nothing

gravitas_deficiency , vor 3 Monaten

Man, it would be so fucking cool if Sweden just pulls a giga-chad move and is like “hey we got a couple squadrons of these older Grippens available. Sorry they’re not the newest, but here’s a couple hundred or so MBDA Meteors (arguably the best long-range AAM fully deployed in the world at the moment) and IRIS-Ts (roughly on par with the AIM-9X, one of the best short-range AAM fully deployed in the world at the moment) to go with it. Hope it helps.”

But also:

NATO AWACS has entered the channel

NATO AWACS wants to share DataLink

:3

gravitas_deficiency , vor 3 Monaten

Frankly, nearly anything would be better than the shit Orban has been pulling for fucking years

gravitas_deficiency , vor 3 Monaten

I will be mildly shocked if Russia doesn’t try something in Transnistria in the next few years.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 3 Monaten

Chechnya was illegally annexed by Russia.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 3 Monaten

Or perhaps a false flag. After all, that’s exactly how Putin initially solidified his hold on power and became Russia’s President.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 3 Monaten

And then, as is tradition in Russia: everything got worse.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 3 Monaten

Oh man, the tankies are out in force today, aren’t they?

gravitas_deficiency , vor 3 Monaten

The workers will win.

Love that. Not propaganda. Not boasting or flexing. Not intimidating. Just a statement of fact.

It’s pretty hilarious that Elon doesn’t even understand that he doesn’t understand the game he’s playing.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 3 Monaten

The one thing Russia has able to successfully ramp up production on is basic artillery shells. Analysts are putting their production numbers at something like 3x what Europe is putting out. It’s starting to become a problem.

And that little spineless shitfuck Johnson is doing precisely what Putin wants in this scenario. There is a direct causal relationship between Johnson + the GOP refusing to give anything to Ukraine for months and Ukraine’s recent strategic difficulties. I sincerely hope Johnson is able to experience the tender mercies of Russian captivity someday.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 4 Monaten

Hey Orban, as an American, from the bottom of my heart, I want to tell you to go fuck yourself, and that I wish we could kick you out of NATO, and that the rest of Europe could kick you out of the EU. If you like Putin so much more, join CSTO.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 4 Monaten

If you think their regular armed forces are bad, check out the shit that Wagner got into. Wagner has a ton of ties to the prison system and organized crime - particularly, they model their power dynamic after shit that you typically see in Russian prisons, with everything that that entails.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 4 Monaten

The point being made is that the global economic order, as built and maintained by our world leaders and “captains of industry”, is obviously not sustainable in a variety of absolutely crucial ways. We need to find a less capitalistic and more humanist dynamic to orchestrate our society by. It’s becoming more and more clear that simply assigning dollar-value amounts to everything and then comparing them is not a good holistic strategy for managing the efforts and direction of a civilization.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 4 Monaten

They do it covertly, too.

China wants to maintain full control of anyone who it views as it’s citizens (importantly distinct from actual citizens), regardless of whether or not they’re in China, and regardless of whether or not they have PRC citizenship or not.

Most nations would object to this, especially if it involves the PRC exerting jurisdiction within the host country’s borders, potentially on the host country’s citizens, and almost certainly on the host country’s legal residents. Orban, evidently, does not.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 4 Monaten

Why would anti Putin or pro Ukraine individuals conduct an attack on a US embassy in Moscow? That’s nonsensical.

Edit: yeah, my mistake

gravitas_deficiency , vor 4 Monaten

That… wasn’t a rule before…?

gravitas_deficiency , vor 4 Monaten

he comes

he comes

he comes

h̵̝̖͂e̵͖͈͐ ̷̛̪̗̜̥̓̉́c̸̜͎̬̦̦̀̀̀͛̚o̴̳͙͂m̷̲̓͋͆́̃ȇ̷̯̞͚̹͗̉͝ͅs̵̹͔̜͕̖̅͗̂͌̀

gravitas_deficiency , vor 4 Monaten

For real - didn’t think it was necessary to make a rule about this thing in particular in the context of “don’t be shitty to people” and human rights in general, but here we are.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 4 Monaten

I too am interested in seeing corroboration of their claim.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 4 Monaten

lol

gravitas_deficiency , vor 5 Monaten

In case you weren’t aware, it’s scheduled for sometime this year

gravitas_deficiency , vor 5 Monaten

I'll tell you what's at the bottom of it. If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.

-Lyndon B. Johnson, 36th President of the United States

gravitas_deficiency , vor 5 Monaten

Did something change…? I thought Orban had dropped the veto threat. That was a big news story a couple days ago.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 5 Monaten

Great headline pun as a result of British-style grammatical punctiliousness, ngl.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 5 Monaten

This stops working when the matters that Orban is vetoing are time-critical. Like military aid for Ukraine.

Orban is creating a situation where the EU has two bad alternatives to choose from, and he doesn’t think they’ll turn on Hungary. But they might, because at this point, most of Europe seems like they’d prefer Ukraine being in the union over Hungary. So if Orban calls the EU’s bluff, there’s a very good chance that the EU will call Orban’s bluff and kill their voting rights, with full knowledge that it would strongly push Hungary towards leaving the Union. It’s a trade off; everyone’s done the math at this point. We’ll see how it actually pans out in the coming weeks.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 5 Monaten

As someone who has worked in aerospace, and is also familiar with the saga of Boeing:

Boeing bought McDonnell in the mid 90s, but the McDD leadership essentially was able to work the situation such that they got inserted as the leadership and management of the now-merged company. They then proceeded to focus heavily on financial matters and stock price, with extremely predictable results.

To wit: there was actually a brand new plane in the works to replace the 737, but it was killed because leadership wanted to wring every possible penny out of the 737 design, despite the fact that the platform had reached its limits in several important and meaningful metrics. One of those metrics is “modern efficient engines can’t fit under the wings anymore”, which led to the (now obviously) ill-advised nacelle redesign and subsequent CG changes that necessitated MCAS if they wanted to maintain pilot type ratings without a new training/rating program (because those are expensive)… and then they made redundant safety features around that whole thing optional add-ons. For this door snafu, it was a matter of outsourcing work and then never doing the absolutely
required work of fully integrating QC process and systems between the contractor and Boeing.

There are of course many more projects and issues within those projects - the 737 is just one of the most glaring current focuses (as in: the defects are CLEARLY design and manufacturing process defects).

Boeing has a disturbingly clear record of prioritizing profit over safety repeatedly in the last few decades. Things are just coming to a head now, because the lack of safety-oriented culture has truly come home to roost.

If you’re talking about the 757 that lost a nose wheel recently: it’s still under investigation, but at this point I think it will likely be chalked up to a one-off maintenance miss

gravitas_deficiency , vor 5 Monaten

And that’s why Orban is so friendly with Putin: he’s hoping he can turn it into a land grab for Hungary.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 6 Monaten

Slovakia and The Netherlands are the new wild cards. We’ll see how things shake out.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 6 Monaten

Unfortunately, Biden will 100% try to block this. He is, in his own words, “a Zionist”.

Side note: great job further alienating progressives and people who are no longer willing to give Israel a free pass on the fact that they’re administering an apartheid state, Biden. Really hoping this isn’t the deciding point in the elections next year, but it very well could be.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 7 Monaten

And after the “election” Russia has coming up

gravitas_deficiency , vor 7 Monaten

The courts can say whatever they like. Doesn’t mean the boycott is gonna end. There’s tons of ways to “do your job” creatively without actually doing your job.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 7 Monaten

Sounds like the Swedish courts are having a bit of…

(•_•)

( •_•)>⌐■-■

(⌐■_■)

Stockholm Syndrome

gravitas_deficiency , vor 7 Monaten

While that may be true, I feel like you’re ignoring the fact that a foundational change to the core procedures that the EU operates by could absolutely drive more than a few member states to bail - and I’m not talking about Hungary or Poland.

Whenever you come across a “sword” solution to a Gordian knot of a situation like this, it’s crucial to consider how you’d feel if the shoe was on the other foot. This is, in fact, one of the core points of a democratic, rules-based system of government - the rules must be applied agnostically. If you’re making a rule that only “works” when you/your party are in power, it’s an objectively bad rule, and will be used in ways that you are guaranteed to not like.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 7 Monaten

As a goal, that’s neither here nor there.

We should do it because it’s for the common good.

Billionaires only help society by accident - and even that’s unusual. We should help them make a bigger difference

gravitas_deficiency , vor 7 Monaten

Narrator:

but they didn’t invest in green energy, because their existing investment strategies were far, far too profitable.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 7 Monaten

confused Tuberville noises

TBH as much of a shitheel asshat as the guy is, he’s also a decently accurate representation of one of the various segments on the lower half of the American bell curve.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 7 Monaten

You have heard of this, though. It’s called the IDF - specifically, the nationalist/Zionist factions within it. Neighboring countries count as “abroad”.

Edit:

I’m not attempting to be an apologist for any of the sides involved in this clusterfuck. If you take exception to my description of Israel and the IDF’s actions now and in many historical cases as what effectively amounts to apartheid as a state institution at best, then I suggest you do a LOT more research on the history of the region. To be fair, the Arab countries neighboring Israel came out of the gates HOT in 1948… but that also wasn’t really the beginning of the conflict - it was just the continuation of a very old one. The history of the region did not start when the UK and the UN just redrew the lines on the map in 1948 to give holocaust survivors a country of their own (I’m being reductive, but that’s more or less what it accomplished).

At the end of the day, the governments and non-state actors in the region have had various problems with each other for a long damn time, and however you want to frame any past or current conflict, it’s always the civilians who lose.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 7 Monaten

PIS isn’t gonna try to get all… extralegal, and try to stay in power or something, are they…?

gravitas_deficiency , vor 7 Monaten

It’s good that awareness is increasing.

But it would behoove everyone who’s participating in the debate even more to make a real attempt to understand the history of the conflict, and more broadly, the region. This includes the war that is now ongoing, as well as everything that has occurred in the region (and the contemporary geopolitics surrounding it) since the country was established in 1948, as well as UN/British ownership of Mandatory Palestine, the Ottoman period, the Mameluke period, all the way back to the Crusades, the Mongol invasion, the Byzantine and Roman empires, and ancient Egypt. Favoring a modern slant is understandable, but it’s crucially important to not consider the situation in a historical vacuum. There is subtlety in context, and that part of the world has a whole lot of context.

That’s not to say that the Israeli government is justified for their invasion, bombing, and de-facto implementation of an apartheid state. Nor is it to say that various state and non-state Arab entities are justified for conducting various acts of military action and terrorism over the years. All I mean is that there is a TON of cultural and religious history there, and violent, unilateral action pretty much always makes things worse for all the civilians in the area.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 8 Monaten

Wait, did they? Im not surprised if so, but that would be annoying as fuck

gravitas_deficiency , vor 8 Monaten

Dude if you’re expecting rational, good-faith argument from someone who’s got the Russian coat of arms on their user profile, I’ve got some bad news for you…

gravitas_deficiency , vor 8 Monaten

Lol guess we can kiss post-quantum TLS goodbye.

This is going to have catastrophically negative effects for the internet in general. And, as others have said, actual bad actors will just keep using the most advanced encryption available anyways. This only makes the vast majority of internet users less secure and easier targets for exploitation.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 9 Monaten

Well sure but that’s because Switzerland has a pretty awesome and geographically-appropriate-for-its-size train system.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 9 Monaten

I mean that Switzerland has a local and regional rail system that is damn near perfectly sized, scaled, and engineered for its geography and citizenry, which also integrates pretty well with the rail systems of all of its neighbors.

They could have made faster trains, but with the way they wanted to run them, it made more sense to design the rolling stock to have good top speed, but excellent acceleration, thus improving the average speed more meaningfully than a higher top speed would. The rail network is fairly pervasive - you can from and to just about anywhere in Switzerland using trains, with perhaps a bit of bus travel tacked onto either end.

Source: was just over there a couple months ago visiting a family friend, and used the train system a lot.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 9 Monaten

Lmao listen to yourself. 30% of a population is by definition a minority of said population.

And you can preserve cultural tradition just fine without being a reactionary asshole with your governmental policies.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 9 Monaten

Yeah uh, there’s a word for that: plurality. It’s a distinct concept from “majority”.

gravitas_deficiency , vor 9 Monaten

Nobody asked