SubstantialNothingness [comrade/them]

Here’s some coverage: They’re holding the meeting 30 minutes away from an oil platform that is releasing large amounts of methane lol

For the most part they’ve failed to get anything done, which I’m sure is a perfectly acceptable outcome for the oil companies that this conference is designed to appease.

Thanks for the intel. That’s what I was looking for when I opened the thread today.

Too bad for them that they don’t have a monopoly on power within the state.

The earlier comments had me thinking that it was bought through write-offs of debt obligations (e.g. to the families) that were never realistically going to be repaid. If the families are considered investors, then they may stand to reclaim a lot more through long-term payouts from Infowars under The Onion’s administration.

But I could also be totally off base. I’ve absorbed a little info from others but I’m not actually that interested in the story. I haven’t done any due diligence whatsoever lol

That sounds to me like Jamie turned down an offer and Trump is doing damage control lol

Even the official appointments could fall through before he takes office so I agree there is very limited utility in speculating.

Sounds good to me.

I hate the word being misused almost as much as I hate being misunderstood when I use it correctly.

The US is escalating its attempts to buy itself time and slow China’s ascent.

TSMC to suspend production of advanced AI chips for China from Monday, FT reports

I did a deep dive several months back and I get the impression that many US bureaucrats/analysts see countering China on Taiwan as not feasible let alone beneficial for the US. [edit: I think some made the point that the US needs China for solar, steel, and other goods to have any meaningful green transition.]

I got the impression that they encourage de-escalation and a timeline of 10-20 years for a handover to occur. It seems to me like it’s the elected politicians who are using war-mongering to whip up votes among propagandized voters, using heated rhetoric and driving the resurgence of jingoism. 20 years gives them plenty of time to redirect their propaganda toward another, weaker nation.

Of course there is a very real fear of the propagandists drinking their own koolaid, or the crumbling empire lashing out. But every day the US’ edge is diminished more.

I don’t know what is best for China to do but I know that they shouldn’t wait forever to do it - however they are keen on playing the long game and good at it, and if they can afford to do so without hurting themselves, I think you’re “best possible outcome” is pretty likely.

I don’t think 20 years is going to be an acceptable timeline but I also don’t think it’s going to take 20 years for US force projection to collapse.

I agree that a lot is going to depend on who gets put into positions of power around Trump. Some outcomes seem more reliable than others but personally I don’t feel I can predict much with any reliability until there is a clearer picture of what the administration is going to look like.

(And if the admin sees turnover similar to the last one, then it’s going to be even harder to make reliable long-term predictions.)

With that said, I also share your cautious optimism. (e: Speaking in terms of the international political picture - I’m less optimistic about the immediate effects that many of our comrades around the world could experience.)

If I was Putin there’s no way I would settle for something like this immediately out of the gate.

I would at least try to wait for materiel to dry up and take easy territory gains requiring minimal cost in terms of money, resources, personnel.

Why settle for your demands of the old status quo when the new one benefits you even more?

Sometimes it takes awhile for people to recognize their own beliefs being spoken to them through another’s words.

At least the ones throwing their hands up and saying electoralism is out of their control are correct. Maybe they’ll even take the next step and commit to dual power, although I won’t hold my breath and wait on them.

Apparently the FBI foiled a right-winger looking to take out a power station in Tennessee.

https://archive.ph/YcmoA

Updates on floods in West and Central Africa this year, and a discussion of climatic trends in these regions (not good):

[Phys.org] Climate change-worsened floods wreak havoc in Africa

Look at that, the climate change subs captured by climate change deniers are on the list.

I would bet that almost every sub on their list is already full of astroturfers talking to themselves lol

This is a binary reality - it’s warmer or it’s not. And it takes like 5 seconds to confirm that it is. But this many people haven’t taken even 5 seconds to check over the past 24 years.

There’s no way that all those sensors over the past 100 years have been erroneous in just the right way to create a consistent illusion of warming. That’s like the smallest tail risk in the history of statistics lol

And the question doesn’t ask anything why there might be warming, it’s a simple quantitative question and these people still can’t face the reality.

Hopefully they gained some new data and insights from dealing with the ALBMs, like radar profiles and flight characteristics.

It must be difficult to strike a balance between not exposing too many assets to a SEAD/DEAD campaign while also keeping enough of them online to protect important installations. Like, if you hide your AA, then the distraction drones can score direct hits on targets that would usually be well-defended. Whereas if you expose the AA and it gets hit, those same targets still become exposed and you lose critical air defense assets. However I’m sure they have a lot of resources dedicated to planning for these circumstances.

It’s about liberals accepting atrocities under Biden that they would not under Trump

I agree with the sentiment, but in my experience it depends on what you consider “accepting.”

They also accepted everything under Trump imo - they just accepted it with the occasional fruitless protest thrown in the mix.

Had millions of people not been killed by COVID, would the world be less tolerant to genocide?

Only marginally, I think. The world was already primed before covid imo.

You know that does sound vaguely familiar. Thanks for the info!

I had no idea Tate converted to Islam.

It’s really interesting and full of twists and spins and all that, but I think I’d like off this rollercoaster now. Please and thank you.

The thread on the LivestreamFails sub or whatever? What a display of bad faith rhetoric that was.

And yeah that was one of the big strategies, to pretend this was supposed to support Palestine somehow. It’s fucking twitch - they don’t care about supporting anything except themselves lol