iNow

no

no but in a thread with a total of about 40 posts, damned near 20 of them are from you so… it would be nice if you could maybe let others offer their thoughts, or at the very least stop stymying the conversation in the 50% of the thread where you’re offering your own 🙏

Well placed clip 👍

You’re not the only member here. The comment wasn’t directed to you, but instead any reader. Sell me on the idea of democracy. That’s what I think could lead to the best discussion. If you don’t wish to participate, that’s fine, but then stop responding. This isn’t exactly rocket science. Was it not clear I was referring to individual citizens / voters and not to regimes? If not, then now you know. I was referring to individual citizens / voters, not regimes.

I don’t think this For this to help, you just first assume they care about avoiding revolutions. Is that a universal desire?

If you were sitting at a round table at a conference with attendees from around the globe, and some were from China, others were from Russia, some were from Afghanistan, and may others from Turkey. How would you convince these individuals who have known nothing other than their own systems of governance that "democracy" is better than what they have today back at home? How would you motivate them to become advocates for democracy once the conference is over and they return to their home countries?

This bears repeating, so I've repeated it here. If your vote didn't matter, the powers that be wouldn't be trying so extremely hard to take it from you, to make it harder for you to vote, to marginalize your voice and redraw districts so your voice counts less. If your vote didn't matter, there wouldn't have been so many hundreds or thousands (or hundreds of thousands / millions) of people who came before us fighting so hard or dying so often just to trying to obtain it. The right to vote is fundamental. It is the foundation in which ALL laws and ALL governance is rooted.

We all should hope China keeps its mitts off Taiwan, but should they pretend they’re a bacteriophage ready to envelop other nations then I’m glad Biden has said the US will be there to address such an unwelcome unwarranted encroachment upon the sovereignty of others.

Even the largest of buckets will eventually overflow if we keep adding drops to it one by one.

That’s not how the chemistry of milk works. It’s mostly water. It’s neither encased in nor enveloped by an impermeable lipid layer. The immune system operates in, around, between, through, across, and in large part because of “water molecules” so recognition would be if it’s own surroundings and environment.

This landed nicely upon my lobes and associated apparatus.

Sadly, I suspect most of these clothingless emperors feel shame in some extreme/profound ways and it’s a huge part of what motivates them (VP, DJT, KJU, BaA, etc)… And they’re too often over correcting in ways too wicked.

Wait, there’s bath photos? This thread of yawns just interest spawned.

Im sure he’s feeling bolstered after meeting today with China’s Xi.

It would’ve been quicker had you just said, “No.”

Oil execs who didn’t want to cut off supply to Europe with winter coming “Join or die.”

Absolutely, and it's more or less always been the case with humans (and I hypothesize, non-human animals) for as long as time itself. We're rather tribal, naturally seek others who confirm our preconceptions / remind us of ourselves, and it takes conscious attention focus to avoid splitting everyone into "us" and "them" buckets. With that foundation as the background, many humans are then quite easily drawn to specific narratives even when they're self-evidently false, even you and me who are otherwise rather rational and introspective. The internet has just supercharged it. In the before-times, we had to find these like-minded morons members of society in our own local village or town with maybe a few hundred people. The connections would only occur after chance encounters once or twice yearly at the local feed store or fuel pumping station. Now, however, we can find them on every corner of the oblate spheroid earth... nothing more needed than an internet connection, and the underlying software is actively pushing the connections which further amplify this tribalism and speed its growth. Then, corporations who build and manage the algorithms prioritize engagement, attention, and time focused within the app or in the community. They're financially incentivized to lock our minds into their worlds for as long as absolutely possible because it generates advertising dollars, and so they amplify the most attention grabbing content... which, as you surely have seen, is often the most extreme, most outrageous, and most disconnected from empirical reality. News is boring. Fighting and drama are fun. Humans are pretty simple in the end. Add to that "bad actors" and nation states who maintain their own power and wealth by convincing the masses not just of specific untruths, but of the idea that there's not such thing as truth and truth itself is an impossibility... and we land in the state we're in now with wars, and election denial, and climate change denial, and basically anything else that distracts us like cats to catnip instead of focusing on real problems that require our collective efforts and attention or from focusing on the cronies and crooks who want us focused on anything BUT them. Things will likely get worse before they get better now with deep-fake video technology and easily deployed bots and troll armies... but I do have a lot of faith in our younger digital natives who are aware of these challenges and organically building a societal immunity to much of it just with how they engage together. Their "mental immune systems" are more familiar and better experienced with these mind viruses and better equipped IMO to stamp them out than generations past.

Do you know what a false dichotomy is? What makes our position what? In what way?

Special, like in a short bus kind of way?

How do you know? Do you know what a nonsequitur is? What makes our position “central,” and what do you mean by “our position?”

How is that relevant?

Which evidence?

Before… time? A direction… before space? There is no north of the North Pole. There is direction before space itself. There is no “before” time itself. You basically just told us that you agreed because a unicorn told you to. In other words, you just preferred that answer. It aligned with your preconceptions and felt more psychologically comfortable. That’s fine. No judgment, but answer this: What… for you personally… would it mean to “know” anything at all? You sound solipsistic, even nihilistic… and nihilism isn’t love of Cleopatras Nile, more an annoyance that subtracts the smile. They actually sorta do when viewed through the prism of a weak minded adolescent whose mommy doesn’t love him and who’s bored of masturbating so is trying get a rise out of others online to feel a false sense of power and superiority, much like a pathetic booger eating troll

Shed like fur from a dog falling to the floor, not a small structure used for storing garden tools

I recommend drawing it with fat crayons and glitter