It seems to be a bit of both. The article does cite a lot of comments agreeing with what the older relatives said and getting a bunch of likes. So some people are laughing at how horrible and racist it is, but some are laughing at the unapologetically saying what we’re all thinking aspect.

A lot of racist jokes are just people saying their biases out loud and unapologetically, and then the racists laugh because they agree, and they get to affirm those beliefs. You might get some people on the other side laughing at the absurdity, but for the people of the race being made fun of, it just feels like the attack it is. Especially when the subject is serious and you can’t distance yourself from it, and nothing is more serious than genocide.

Like if you showed these to a Palestinian child they’d probably become depressed and scared by it. If you showed these to a boomer israeli they would probably laugh at it and say they’re right.

So if they lose “the bad guys” (russia, china and the u.s.) are going to team up and take over Europe? Does Russia get it all or do they split it with the americans? Does China get a slice?

Japan didn’t team up with Germany because of China, they did it in opposition to the soviets, Germany didn’t care about China, because it’s on the opposite side of the world. Just like China doesn’t care about Europe and ukraine. Yeah they’ll sell russia weapons and tech but they aren’t giving it out as aid.

The u.s. is not allied with russia and doesn’t hate nato as much as them. One wing of the political class wants more defense spending from allied countries. Trump hasn’t shown any intention of leaving nato, much less switching sides and joining russia against them. Even if he wanted to he’d be bumping against a defense establishment that has made nato the core of there strategy for the past half century.

The u.s. is still sending weapons to ukraine as military aid. Even if trump got his way we’d still be sending weapons, it’s just the Ukrainians would have to buy them, putting the u.s. in the same position to ukraine as China is to russia. So if China is supporting russia in that case, then the u.s. would still be supporting ukraine.

Peace between the great powers is the norm in the nuclear age. This combined with globalization makes it so going to war between powers more trouble than it’s worth.

You seem to view international politics as an axis of evil bad guys and an alliance of good guys keeping them in check. That was really only somewhat the case in ww2. International politics is about a set of powers, each with there own spheres of influence and varied and at times conflicting interests trying to pursue those interests.

The u.s. has no interest in helping russia conquer europe, neither does China. Both have a major interest in keeping russia weak and keeping the European economy functional as they are a large trading partner.

So you think sending people back into a warzone they tried to escape because they didnt want to go to war is a bad thing, so then the policy of not allowing men to leave is also bad, or that even desertion is valid. If you think this comparison is invalid or that the people who escaped early have more of a right to leave then the people trying to escape now please explain. Otherwise by your own definition what ukraine is doing is cruel, it can be cruelty in support of a grand cause, but it’s still cruel.

I agree conscription is the reason ukraine is able to stay in this war. I disagree that them losing will mean russia will march on nato and cause ww3. Even if we take nukes out of the picture, Russia can barely beat the literal poorest country in Europe, how are they going to take on the rest of europe. Even if the u.s. doesnt help, the EU has 3 times the population of russia and 10 times the gdp. Putin knows this and isn’t going to try, he may go for the Baltics in 10 years after his military has recovered, but there’s no way he’s making it passed the bug river in the forseeable future.

Either way back to the main point, if you think the stakes are so high and that Ukrainian bodies are the only thing defending civilization from barbarism, wouldn’t you want more of those bodies in Ukraine? Wouldn’t this order help the cause of preventing ww3?

Did you read my reply?

fuck russia for starting this war

How am I blaming ukraine?

I’m pointing out a contradiction in your support for refugee rights and mandatory conscription. Instead of addressing that contradiction you seem to want to focus on russia and pretend I’m an fsb plant.

I’m not defending russia here, putin is horrible and without him none of this would happen. Now that we agree on that explain to me how your in favor of mandatory conscription and refugee rights.

The khmer rouge wouldnt have happened without u.s. meddling and bombing in Cambodia, that doesnt mean we cant criticize the horrible things they did in retaliation. Just because there’s a greater cause of something doesn’t mean we can’t debate the decisions made by those effected.

If zelensky comes out tomorrow and says this is a great move by trump because ukraine needs the manpower are you going to change your position?

I wonder what the Ukrainian people want.

Well some want to leave, but the government isn’t allowing them to.

Why is it evil for the u.s. to send people back to a war zone but not for ukraine to keep people in a war zone?

And before you go for the whataboutism I know russia is doing it too and that’s fucked up. Fuck russia for starting this war but that doesn’t resolve the contradiction of supporting refugee rights and mandatory conscription.

And 0.7m people working. Ukraine is suffering a labor shortage because of the war. Unless these are old or infirm people, people tend to produce more with there labor then they take out in government services. This is one of the reasons immigration is a good thing and why this is a bad move for the u.s.

Going to steel man this since theres obviously no one on here answering this question seriously. Not a republican and don’t agree with all this, just imagining what my republican dad would say about this:

For ukraine and Europe, we have no interest in protecting them besides sentimental attachments. Ukraine is not our problem, it’s Europe’s and if they want to dump money into a lost cause by all means go ahead, but leave the u.s. out of it unless your going to compensate us for it. The u.s. isn’t threatened by Russia, we have an ocean, the world’s largest navy and nukes to protect us. The larger threat is China and we should be focusing on them, not russia which can barely invade it’s neighbor, much less march across Europe and the atlantic. Europe can handle its own problems.

For Canada and Mexico and tarriffs in general. We need to bring manufacturing back to America and revitalize the rust belt. We can’t do that if companies find it more profitable to go over seas and pay people pennies when they’d have to pay Americans much more. The only way to get them to come back is to make it too expensive to import things.

This is all about putting America first. For decades America has been spending billions to protect Europe and has been sending billions of dollars over seas to build factories owhile factory after factory closes here in the u.s. We need to stop all of that and spend our money in America for Americans.

Feel free to use this comment as a punching bag, I don’t care, just trying to give OP an actual answer if this was a legitimate question and not some rhetorical question seeking affirmation on how dumb the Republicans are. They are, don’t get me wrong, but just say so and don’t dress it up in questions like this.

So is the "common hold " they talk about more like the condominiums we have here in the u.s. eg. You own your unit, and you pay an HOA or some organization for building maintenance and amenities?

Ctr +f “cybertruck”: 0 results

Good job everybody!

Depends on where the burden is being placed. If it’s adding more hoops for everyday people to jump through to get what they need, no. If it’s adding more hoops for large organizations and corporations who can hire people for compliance, yes. If it’s just hiring more people on the government side to analyze the existing data, but the forms and processes stay the same on the other end, sure.

Ape hierarchies, at least within the troops, are mostly about mating not resource distribution. It’s not like the alpha male gets first pick of the fruit and all the other chimps wait until he’s done and then go in hierarchical order, they just disperse and grab what they can.

If you want to go down an essentialist path most pre-agricultural societies were anarchic. There may be a chief but they “ruled” at the discretion of the tribe. The chief, or anyone really, couldn’t hoard resources because

1. they couldnt monopolize violence and coerce people since there’s no specialization in anything much less violence so violence becomes a numbers game.

2. There’s only so much you can carry. Pre agricultural tribes were nomadic mostly and when the tribe moves camps you have to carry everything with you. So even if you were able to hoard enough food that won’t rot you won’t be able to carry it to the next camp.

3. Because of the above, wealth isn’t really a thing. This forces cooperation because without wealth, the individual can’t protect themselves from hardship. Selfish individualism only works if you’re able to build up some wealth to act as a buffer for leaner times. If you don’t have that wealth then you’re reliant on your social connections so you tend to cooperate and redistribute because it’s in your best interest to stay in good standing with the group so they will help you in harsher times.

All this changes with agriculture and the invention of wealth, first in grain then in gold and then stocks etc. Now your dependence on society is directly porportional to how much wealth you have, to the point where really rich people can fuck off to a cabin or island and never work or contribute to society ever again.

Violence specialization also becomes more or less a thing, increasing up until the invention of firearms at which point it becomes more of a numbers game and the hierarchies lessen.

All of this is to say that hierarchy is not natural, but the result of the ability to accumulate wealth combined with violence specialization and monopolization. If we get rid of those two concepts then anarchy may take over, how we do that in the modern world is another question.

It is anticapitalist by nature in that capitalism is a system where a person can own the means of production and use that ownership to acquire profits. That ownership is a form of domination and creates an arbitrary hierarchy, who makes all the decisions: the owner, why do they make all the decisons: because they had the wealth to buy the company.

You can have organization and markets though without capitalism, such as with anarcho-syndaclism. Basically you have a bunch of coops that are run and controlled by elected workers councils that can trade with each other voluntarily.

It’s weird, he already bought her a condo in downtown Manhattan probably worth millions, but she’s not seeking child support and wants full custody. So seems like the deal was she inseminated herself and got a condo in return and that was the end of it.

So not really deadbeat, more that neither he or the mother want him involved.

Eh, not really, ags sue companies all the time for not acting in there shareholders interests. It’s usually more along the lines of the CEO giving a contract to his buddy that costs the company more, but any time a public for profit company pursues some interest other than maximizing shareholder value they open themselves up for a lawsuit. It could be a purely nepotistic or self dealing interest, or it could be your interest in justice, if it’s not about making money and you didn’t disclose to the shareholders that your decision is not about making money you have defrauded them who are invested solely to make money.

It’s a reading of the fiduciary duty of loyalty that most companies and courts have come to accept, if you knowingly do something to decrease shareholder value for some personal interest than you can be sued for it. This is the reason public benefit companies exist, so you can pursue noble causes like dei or fighting climate change that may reduce profits, without risking a lawsuit.

This can be used for good such as in the case of the 2021 McDonald’s shareholder lawsuit that alleged it’s failure to address rampant sexual harassment caused a loss of reputation and shareholder value. Ironically as a result it implemented a DEI program to address the problems…

The problem with the lawsuit is that they have to prove the dei stuff was about some ideology of the board and not about making money. Which will be hard to prove because at the time forecasts probably would’ve showed that embracing dei would increase profits. Even today they probably made more money off the rainbow merch then they lost.

This isn’t even the craziest story from florida this week, did you miss the story of the Floridian terrorist who shot an Israeli tourist thinking they were Palestinian earlier this week?

I guess DeSantis has been quiet aver since he was destroyed by trump but the people of Florida have been maintaining there reputation.

Public for profit companies have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. When you issue shares of a company you are signing a contract to put the companies needs over anything else when administering the company.

If it just worked off proportional representation like you imagine then the majority shareholder could unilaterally sell the company off to themselves for pennies or do self dealing to enrich themselves at the companies expense. No one would ever invest in a company because they could never be sure their interests would be met unless they had a controlling stake.

Companies need a goal in order to judge the administration by and to be able to call foul if they stray from that goal to pursue personal interests. For most public companies that is profit, and if you stray from that goal for your own personal interests, even if it’s a noble one like preventing climate change, the other shareholders can sue you for that. They didn’t sign up for your personal moral ambitions, they signed up to make money and they have a contract that says so.

If you want to pursue things other than profit you can register as a public benefit corporation which can consider things like climate change in there decision making process without risking a lawsuit from shareholders. This changes the agreement between the shareholder and the company so the shareholder knows that they aren’t going to make the most money at all costs. None of the major oil companies are registered that way though.

Read up on the duty of loyalty here before calling bs and thinking you can change big oil from within

These are for profit public companies, they are legally required to prioritize profits over anything else. Even if you had a controlling stake if you tried to push through something that would decrease profits, like lowering fossil fuel production, or even adding expensive carbon capture methods that would cut into the bottom line, the rest of the shareholders could sue you.

Owning a stock keeps the price high though as you’re restricting supply, and it looks like his trust has also bought more shares so it’s increasing the demand as well.

A high stock price doesn’t fund the industry directly, unless it’s a smaller company that’s still issuing stock which he also seems to be invested in a lot of those. It does increase the power of the industry though. If a lot of people divested from fossil fuels that would lower the value of the stock and the net worth of the principal owners. Those principal owners are currently using their money to bribe politicians into ignoring the climate crisis and to increase fossil fuel extraction. If they had less money to do that, then it’d be a lot easier to pass legislation to address climate change.

He also seems to be buying bonds in the industry as well which is more directly funding the industry. Also, a high stock price allows the companies to get more bonds at a cheaper rate, so that also helps to fund the industry.

All of this is also missing the main point of the article in that bill gates is profiting from the fossil fuel industry and has a stake in seeing it continue, while pretending he’s a champion for climate change.

Yeah, if you repeated this test with the person having access to a stack exchange or not you’d see the same results. Not much difference between someone mindlessly copying an answer from stack overflow vs copying it from AI. Both lead to more homogeneous answers and lower critical thinking skills.

Even better, use the free fillable forms. You can fill them out and submit them all within your browser, no mail or paper required. Even has a do the math button that will add stuff up for you.

Have been using it for the past two tax cycles and once you understand it it’s quite easy, only 2 pages needed if you’re doing the standard deduction with a w2.