In related news, US continues to undermine all of its own attempts at presenting itself as a legitimate state.

Also, Hasanabi got in at the last possible second to avoid claims of “interviewing a terrorist.”

Address to liberals in my digital walls: Yes I’m aware right wingers are lying and doing it anyway. Also it’s not “illegal” to interview or speak to “terrorists” despite what the Nazis of reddit would prefer to believe. Providing material support to them would be a different case. Not morally, but legally.

There’s been so many fucking “canaries in the coal mines” over the last several decades that at this point… “Deserve” is a word I’d use for whatever might come.

Israel right now is such a perfect fucking microcosm for the US and the world. We’re arrogant, entitled, over-extended, and too fattened up on our own bullshit to see that those “animals” are figuring out how to destroy us. Not because they “hate freedom” but because they hate being held under the boot of the US and its allies. If the US had any real leadership, any soul to speak of, it would see the results in Israel of decades of oppression and ruthless treatment and (obviously after forcing an end to that shit by forcing a one state solution) finally start to, in actual good faith, begin relations with Russia, China, nations in Africa, Iran, Venezuela, Brazil, etc. Maybe instead of crying about Chinese loans and Chinese industrial domination, fucking accept it’s over, the free ride is done, and it’s time to either negotiate a peaceful descent into equality with the world (not as its dominator)… Or, the alternative is, and I can’t see any other outcome, the total destruction of the US which probably means the world.

It’s this bullshit American exceptionalism mindset that has led to centuries of suffering from indigenous Americans all the way up to modern day Gazans and workers in the third world. The US just can’t fucking accept it was wrong about everything, it was founded on dogshit ideals and propped up by slavery and genocide, and it’s the same today, just most of it has been exported. I don’t understand why non-capitalists can’t see there is no "winning. There is no maintaining this empire even if you want to. It will end, and you can glide it to a respectable halt or explode like the fucking Hindenburg.

I think that’s about the deepest-cutting argument I can make to liberals and right wingers. It’s over. Everyone sees it’s over. You can explode and die or you can choose some sort of honorable path by rejecting your ancestors and choosing a more humane path. I think this is starting to sink in with younger generations, but not quickly enough, and those who end up in power even if "young"ish are still operating under the same mindset as the old ones. So, I dunno what’s to come in the US or the world. Absolutely nothing fucking good I can say that. When diplomacy with other countries is “bad” then I can promise NOTHING good will be coming. (But maybe)

“In 2018, Kim Jong Un and then U.S. President Donald Trump launched high-stakes diplomacy on the future of the North’s advancing nuclear arsenal. But their summit diplomacy fell apart a year later in 2019 due to wrangling over international economic sanctions on North Korea. Kim Jong Un has since focused on expanding and modernizing his nuclear arsenal, a move experts say he thinks would give him greater leverage to win U.S. concessions in future negotiations.”

How dumb do they think readers are? (Don’t answer that)

One of the very very very few Ws from Trump’s presidency was his attempts to restart diplomatic relations with DPRK.

It wasn’t ended by “COMPLEX THINGS YOU PLEBS CANT UNDERSTAND” it was ended by internal bad actors. The same war criminals who have lurked for decades (or a century in one case…). The types (not to say they DID this one, but this type of person) like John Bolton, Kissinger (rest in pissinger), Rumsfeld back before he bad actual power (also rot in piss), Stephen Miller, I mean the list goes on and on with all the little disgusting neoliberal, anti-communist, anti-human fuckers.

Seems pretty clear now that either Elon is completely incompetent or he’s purposely destroying Twitter. I could go 50/50 on which more is more true. Both could true also.

Damn. If you’re unlucky enough to have some crazy shit like that happen where clearly the military is at fault I feel like you gotta at least get some sort of small settlement. Like a “we’ll pay for the medical bills related to injuries for life and here’s $100K to say sorry and also to not talk about this in the media” or something. I actually don’t know how common payouts from the DoD to completely unrelated bystander citizens is. I have to imagine they make payments somewhat frequently though just because the DoD budget is an infinite pit and it’s easy to pay people and they won’t talk shit.

100% without a doubt the actual reason is two dumbasses “horsing around” and their NCO, or whoever, wrote it up as a faulty part or something.

I can easily see two early 20 somethings fighting over a can of Skoal with only one dip left in it and one finally gets the can and the other guy shoves him and he hits a window which pops out. The pilot is probably screaming “what the fuck?!” at them because he thinks he’s gonna lose his ability to fly. And their NCO calls them both dipshits and tells them they’ll be on extra duty cleaning floors for a week but he’ll take care of the BS on the backend with a report.

Their commander sees the report, leans back in his chair and taps the paper like “ahh! I remember those days!”

The DoD pays out some compensation and everyone moves on.

I suppose.

Although I choose to believe they’re treating helicopters like single use hovercrafts. They fly over a destination and everyone parachutes out letting the helicopter crash. Much more entertaining in my mind.

Dude the US military wrecks so many fucking helicopters. It’s wild.

I don’t want to overstate this too much, but I think it’s definitely a very relevant factor to consider that the west, especially the USA, has been ever-more aggressive towards China as they’ve gained the autonomy to fully dictate things they will produce on their terms and sell on their terms and especially in regards to America’s favorite thing to focus on in the last 100 years… energy and specifically oil.

It seems no coincidence that the combination of renewable energy sources being produced in a country that the US has to accept it can no longer dominate and the crisis of climate change necessitating moving from the energy source that US capital spent 100 years murdering across the globe to secure stable sources of is happening simultaneously with an ever-growing fear campaign against the Chinese state as a whole. In the past the US would bend nations to its will and simply assassinate and coup those it didn’t want to work with or couldn’t work with. Unfortunately for the US capitalists, they’ve finally met a country they can’t force to bend to their will and can and will, given time, erode the networks that gave the US power (control over petroleum and the wealth that came from it).

Just one of many things, but considering oil was at the heart of a ton of wars and conflicts, it probably can’t be discounted. Also, Americans can once again blame our shitty, greedy capitalists and politicians for the US not transitioning from oil 10-20 years ago. In 2008 when oil spiked super high, that was definitely the time to clearly go “oh… this sucks… let’s do solar and other renewables.” Many of us said it at the time even back then. I know nuclear is controversial, but in 2008 when the choice was “well solar technology is still not that great, nuclear is a mastered technology but scary to people, and oil is a nonstarter going forward… right?” Wrong! Any reasonable, logical, not-driven-by-oil-profits nation would’ve gone “uh, so build nuclear plants across the nation and throw billions into renewables research.” So what did the US do? Absolutely fuck all. Of course some universities here and around the globe kept researching and improving solar, etc. And now of course solar and wind, etc. are viable to the point that nuclear can (to my understanding, and I’m really not trying to do a back and forth pro/con nuclear energy thing- I don’t care either way that much) be basically ignored and just focus on solar, wind, hydro, etc. And yet, here in the moment as it’s arrived, the US did not lead the way in an inevitable transition from oil to renewable.

This should piss people off, but unfortunately due to propaganda and a general (sorry to say) stupidity and arrogance amongst Americans, they end up pissed off at “them goddamn Chinese commies!” for using a centrally planned economy to pivot into necessary tech and production and, simply put, outplaying America. This time the outmaneuvering can’t be dealt with with classic American brute strength because China has now reached a status in the world that America hasn’t had to contend with in over three decades. Another superpower with the ability to stare the leaders in the face and simply say “no” when asked or demanded to stop doing things counter to the wishes of American capital. Of course the capitalists could’ve seen this was coming and prepared to do something more than flail their arms and cry about Taiwan 24/7, but then again, war production is also extremely profitable…

What extensions does chrome have which are useful that Firefox doesn’t?

My only recurring issue with Firefox, which may have been fixed I dunno, is it for some reason it “isn’t officially supported” or whatever exact wording to use hardware security keys (like yubikey, which I use on every account that allows it). It’s only certain websites that don’t want to work though. Like google, Microsoft and many others were fine but I think paypal didn’t want to work properly but it does work on Edge, Chrome, probably Brave. Overall annoying as fuck at times but I deal with it to be out of Google’s-world

That 74 is kind of tricky and my vision is “normal”

This reminds me of a time I was taking one of these colorblind tests. The person administering it was flipping (way too fast) through the numbers and I was reading them fine. A trickier one came up which I could very clearly read, like this 71/74 one, and I said (because fucker was flipping way too fast) “71… no, 74 actually.” He marked it wrong. It felt like a real life Seinfeld incident after that where I kind of stopped the whole test and was saying basically, as nicely as I could, “hey. I said 74. Mark that correct.” MFer didn’t even vocalize a response. I can’t remember but I think he did like two more numbers, said I passed with whatever number of tests with one incorrect. I had to get my eyesight examined after that (this was for some pilot shit. Like a physical) and I told the doctor and he kind of shrugged it off too like “you passed it. It doesn’t matter.” IT MATTERS TO ME GODDAMNIT

Thanks for triggering this random traumatic event from over a decade ago.

Zoomers gonna zoom

E: Apparently zoomers can’t take a joke. Get over yourselves nerds