Yeah, it kind of makes sense if magic is rare, difficult to obtain, but not entirely foreign. Basically a luxury good.
To use an example luxury good, we all know what a private jet is. We couldn’t build one or buy one, but we know there are people who can. It’d be cool to be in one but not some unimaginable experience.
You don’t disagree with your government; you didn’t know what your government’s position was until right now.
You still don’t really know what your government’s position is, otherwise you’d understand that here, as in many cases, there’s an official stance for diplomatic relations and then a bunch of propaganda (for both domestic and foreign consumption) that undermines that official stance.
99% of the time, calling someone a genocide denier is just burden shifting. Genocide is a crime; you have to prove it happened, you can’t simply assert it did and then smear anyone who asks for evidence.
We have spy satellites that can read a license plates and genocides, by their very nature, leave a lot of evidence. If there were a genocide in Xinjiang we’d have what we see in Palestine: tons of documentation in a wide variety of news outlets about crimes against civilians and actions like UN officials resigning in protest.
How about firsthand testimony that can be corroborated. If you’ve ever been in court for anything, it’s standard to not simply take whatever story you hear at face value.
So point to a story you’re saying is true, then show how it can be corroborated (by video? by documentation?). Show how there is no realiatic alternate explanation. Explain how your corroborated story amounts to genocide, and isn’t just a story about someone being arrested, for instance.
China is such an excellent test for how gullible someone is. So many people will believe any bad thing they read on the internet about it, no matter how absurd, and no matter how easy it is to disprove.
So there’s a whole fucking Hundred Acre Wood exhibit, Pooh and all, but I guess if you text someone about it Xi appears from under your bed and black bags you? xibe-check
This is stupid even in the world of social credit score jokes that were fresh a decade ago. Praising China (here, just saying something accurate) would increase your credit score, you dolt.
The Gulf Stream plays a significant role in maintaining the climate of the US East Coast and Western Europe. “We conclude with a high degree of confidence that Gulf Stream transport has indeed slowed by about 4% in the past 40 years.” The full study is Here
Twitter has been operating at a massive loss for years, failing to book an annual profit since 2019 (Mauer, 2022). For eight out of the last ten years, the company has posted a loss.
If anyone wants to nitpick over the 2/10 years when they reported profitability, consider the real value of getting in the black twice in company history in an environment where you’re gearing up for a an IPO. The long-term trend is clearly that this is not a viable business model.
We know there’s no benefit to him here because a court forced him to go through with the purchase after he tried to back out. He did not want this mess.
Socialism took the USSR from a late-feudal backwater that just lost the most destructive war in history (to that point) to the first man in space, and it did so in one generation and in spite of two subsequent invasions.
Socialism took China from a bunch of squabbling warlords dominated by foreign empires, where famines were regular and severe enough that people regularly sold their own children to survive, to a modern economic powerhouse, lifting a billion people out of poverty along the way.
Socialism took Cuba from a plantation run by foreign gangsters to cutting-edge medicine and higher life expectancy than the U.S., all while fending off a low-intensity war the most powerful empire in the world has waged against it for the entirety of its existence.
Sports radio is usually terrible though lol. Sports stuff is a legitimate hole here (compared to reddit), but I also have to imagine it’s much more resource intensive to host/moderate. Game threads routinely get thousands or tens of thousands of comments – it’s a bunch of people in there for three hours straight – and people yell at each other over sports all the time.
It’s usually not, you’re right. Reddit sports forums – especially team specific ones – are dominated by sports radio type garbage takes.
But you also have at least some people on reddit who are trying to go deeper, or who have more perspective, than your drunk uncle yelling at the TV. So it’s a lot of shit but a decent amount of good, where sports radio is almost all shit.
The background was that President Putin declared in the autumn of 2021, and actually sent a draft treaty that they wanted NATO to sign, to promise no more NATO enlargement. That was what he sent us. And was a pre-condition for not invade Ukraine. Of course we didn’t sign that.
At least he had some good jokes to warm up the crowd!
I think I’ve told you before that I know it’s hard to allocate money for defence, because most politicians want to spend money on health, on education, on infrastructure instead of defence.
The U.S. is the only country on the planet that has a first-strike policy, i.e., that as a standing matter threatens to use nukes. This is not 80 years ago, this is right now.
Due to the sensitive and often classified nature of this information, there is no comprehensive list with the exact number or location of all bases, stations and installations. The total number of foreign sites with installations and facilities that are either in active use and service, or that may be activated and operated by American military personnel and allies, is just over 1,000.
If the U.S. actually gave a shit about women’s rights it wouldn’t ally with Saudi Arabia (and a dozen other countries) and wouldn’t have funded and armed fundamentalist Muslims throughout the 70s and 80s.
The U.S. view of human rights generally is that they are occasionally a useful rhetorical cudgel for browbeating skeptical liberals into supporting the war du jour.
Cool, now your brother is dead and you lost half your property. Your serial killer gun nut buddy doesn’t give a damn about you so he didn’t show up to fight himself, but now he holds the mortgage to your house because he lent you weapons to fight and lose.
The country’s ultranationalist groups came to the fore in 2014, when they kickstarted massive street protests that led to the ousting of the Russia-friendly president Viktor Yanukovych…
Torch-bearing ultra-right activists regularly march to the beat of drums across the Ukrainian capital’s downtown, chanting, “Death to traitors of Ukraine!” During one scuffle at the memorial to a Red Army general killed in the second world war, an elderly woman approached a group of radical nationalists shouting, “Hang the Russians!” and defied them, saying: “I’m Russian, hang me!”…
In a series of violent actions that underline their strength, rightwing radicals in recent years have assaulted gatherings by LGBT and women’s rights activists, attacked Roma encampments around the country, derailed a lecture on the history of the Holocaust and brawled with pro-Russia veterans…
Yermolayev said in the past the government turned a blind eye to the rise of nationalist groups, using them as a scare tactic, but now the ultra-right has turned on the authorities. “The well-organised and aggressive nationalism in Ukraine is a child of the government. It has lost control over radical nationalists. [Petro] Poroshenko has lost that game.”…
International human rights groups have strongly criticised the Ukrainian government for failing to track down and punish those responsible for the acts of violence and intimidation. The government has promised to rein in the ultranationalists, but has taken no action…
That’s a pretty good overview of the character of Ukraine’s neo-Nazis, as well as some on the scale of the problem. It mentions they sent “volunteer battalions” to the separatist regions, but does not have tons of detail on what they were doing there. This one has more detail on that:
“I have nothing against Russian nationalists, or a great Russia,” said Dmitry, as we sped through the dark Mariupol night in a pickup truck, a machine gunner positioned in the back. “But Putin’s not even a Russian. Putin’s a Jew.”
Dmitry – which he said is not his real name – is a native of east Ukraine and a member of the Azov battalion, a volunteer grouping that has been doing much of the frontline fighting in Ukraine’s war with pro-Russia separatists. The Azov, one of many volunteer brigades to fight alongside the Ukrainian army in the east of the country, has developed a reputation for fearlessness in battle…
In this next section, note how the neo-Nazis are declaring they’ll do whatever they want, and see themselves as held back by the actual military:
For the commanders and the generals in Kiev, who many in Azov and other volunteer battalions see as responsible for the awful losses the Ukrainian army has suffered in recent weeks, especially in the ill-fated retreat from Ilovaysk, there was only contempt. “Generals like those in charge of Ilovaysk should be imprisoned for treason,” said Skillt. “Heads are going to roll for sure, I think there will be a battle for power.”
The Ukrainian armed forces are “an army of lions led by a sheep”, said Dmitry, and there is only so long that dynamic can continue. With so many armed, battle-hardened and angry young men coming back from the front, there is a danger that the rolling of heads could be more than a metaphor.
And of course:
This week, Amnesty International called on the Ukrainian government to investigate rights abuses and possible executions by the Aidar, another battalion.
"The failure to stop abuses and possible war crimes by volunteer battalions risks significantly aggravating tensions in the east of the country and undermining the proclaimed intentions of the new Ukrainian authorities to strengthen and uphold the rule of law more broadly," said Salil Shetty, Amnesty International secretary general, in Kiev.
Legal loophole (startrek.website)
China has grown more new forest cover than any nation on Earth (media.mas.to)
visualcapitalist.com/mapped-30-years-of-deforesta…
deleted_by_moderator
what fact about our current world would freak people out if it were a newspaper headline a century ago?
Some news that would be completely mundane today but scary or shocking in the past.
le federation (lemmy.ml)
What's some sex ed info you didn't know until embarrasingly late?
Oh my god I’ve got so many 😭
Got to love Mastodon (files.catbox.moe)
Minimalists (reddthat.com)
Israel's siege of Gaza is illegal, EU says (euobserver.com)
Technically it's always the first in China until they get removed from the movie (startrek.website)
Sure. Why not. Anything goes. (startrek.website)
It’s Definitive – The Gulf Stream Is Weakening (www.iflscience.com)
The Gulf Stream plays a significant role in maintaining the climate of the US East Coast and Western Europe. “We conclude with a high degree of confidence that Gulf Stream transport has indeed slowed by about 4% in the past 40 years.” The full study is Here
Hawaii economists say Lahaina locals could be priced out of rebuilt town without zoning changes (apnews.com)
Beware fellow heathens (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
New wave of Mastodon users thanks to Elon Musk floating around the idea of charging everyone for Twitter (media.tech.lgbt)
This meme is not political (lemmy.ml)
Anti-socialism propaganda be like (lemmygrad.ml)
Reddit Activity Plummeted After The Protests (www.garbageday.email)
Excerpt:...
Neo-Nazi suspects discussed 'how easy' attacking [Finland's former prime minister] Sanna Marin would be, court hears (yle.fi)
Neo-Nazi suspects discussed ‘how easy’ attacking Sanna Marin would be, court hears...
Every third post on Lemmy (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
Need a politics-free safe space? It’s called “going for a walk”
Head of NATO says Russia invaded Ukraine because of NATO expansionism (www.nato.int)
From the guy’s own mouth.
The American garbage parties (lemmygrad.ml)
X’s new terms of service insist that tweets are now posts (www.theverge.com)
Fears of peace talks with Putin rise amid US squabbling (thehill.com)