No, the US effectively didn't. Russia actually did. It's truly incredible that you're promoting the results of a referendum held by an invading military force as legitimate and then telling me that I don't understand democracy. You can't have democracy at gunpoint. Would you be defending an American-run referendum to see if Basra wanted to join the USA in 2003? Because that is what you're doing right now.
Invading a non-NATO country does not do anything whatsoever to counter NATO presence near Russia. Russia has already had a land border with NATO for twenty years. Thanks to Finland joining it also just got a lot bigger, because funnily enough if Russia starts throwing its weight around everyone else is going to look for security from Russia. This reasoning doesn't even explain Russia's invasion, never mind justify it
A) It's not deflection to limit a response to the parts most relevant to what I had actually asked.
B) I compared an unprovoked outright invasion to an unprovoked outright invasion. If you can annex land because there's a civil war there and the people speak the same language as you, you'd be in favour of America annexing Ireland during the Troubles. Or Britain annexing it, for that matter. Never mind whether or not you're fomenting the civil war in the first place.
C) I'm in favour of self-determination for people - hell, I want the place I live to leave the country hat it's currently part of - but getting invaded is not self-determination.
D) Fun fact but you do not need to parrot the US State Department to think that Russia invaded Ukraine. If I was as virulently pro-America as you seem to think I am I probably wouldn't be using a thing America did as a negative comparison, would I?
Nigeria is, by far, the biggest country in ECOWAS. If ECOWAS militarily intervenes in Niger, it'll be Nigeria that is able to supply the bulk of the money, equipment, and manpower
Not one of the Baltic nations, but Poland has placed orders for enough modern tanks to build the biggest tank fleet in Europe outside of Russia. That's only the brand new orders too, before even looking at the current inventory
I'm not sure that analogy really holds. The iron cross had been part of German military iconography since before Germany was even a united country, whereas this Z thing appears to have popped up specifically for the current Russian invasion
It's a reference to Howard's "Terryology" system of logic. The following quote is him justifying his belief that 1 times 1 equals 2:
"How can it equal one? If one times one equals one that means that two is of no value because one times itself has no effect. One times one equals two because the square root of four is two, so what's the square root of two? Should be one, but we're told it's two, and that cannot be."
You misunderstand. Assuming you're buying 200 of product A or 750 of product A, you should expect the same proportion to be defective. Nobody's suggesting two entirely separate products should have the same failure rate, but the question is also not about comparing two entirely separate products
It's the country codes for Germany, Austria, and Switzerland (Deutschland for the D, Confederation Helvetica for the CH). Those are the three countries with a majority of their people speaking German other than Liechtenstein, which is extremely small
There's gyro as in gyroscope, where the Y vowel sound is like the word "eye", and there's gyro as in the Greek sandwich where the Y vowel is more like the vowel sound in "sea". The latter is often seen only as "gyros" because that's what the actual Greek word is, but because that seems like a plural in English the S is sometimes dropped.
Congratulations India! I had never considered that the moon's poles would be good for solar energy. My brain was stuck in the thinking of Earth's poles, but of course the moon doesn't have an atmosphere to get in the way of the light and make the poles colder and darker
Getting crucified made hammering nails in to wood a bit of an uncomfortable process for him, so he needed a change of career away from carpentry. Maybe the reason a Middle Eastern guy gets depicted as blonde so often is that he practiced bleaching his own hair
About 24 billion is non-military financial aid and 4 billion more is humanitarian, so that's a big chunk not being spent on bombs. Slightly more than half of the remainder is the estimated value of old stock being sent over and therefore could not be "spent" on assistance for Americans anyway. The remaining 23 billion that is actually money spent on equipment and training is less than half of one percent of annual federal government expenditure. Weapons for Ukraine are not the reason money isn't being spent on what you want it to be spent on.
Depends on what the countries sending it can afford and what it would take for Russia to stop invading. That's not the point I'm making. The point is that the none of the countries aiding Ukraine are currently spending anything anywhere close to enough of their budgets to significantly affect any other spending they do. If you're unhappy with how your government directs the other 99.6% of its budget, yeah, I get that. I am at mine too. But helping Ukraine is not the problem there.
Ukrainians sure as hell seem to feel otherwise. I'll also note that you lumped in $28 billion of non-military financial and humanitarian aid from America as "throwing money into the war machine", and America's aid is proportionally more military than most countries. Eight million Ukrainian refugees displaced by the war are being housed across Europe, and that is counted in the assistance figures too. If you don't think housing refugees counts as helping, then frankly go fuck yourself.
Where do you think inflation comes from?
It does not come from half a percent of the federal budget. The amount is simply nowhere near big enough. If all of the American spending on assistance to Ukraine was actual new money printed, it would increase the money supply in the US by a grand total of 0.35%. Hell even if the entire US military budget was new printed money it'd still only add 4%, and that's a ludicrously unrealistic scenario
Is dedollarisation why inflation rates were similar across Europe over the past year? Have the sanctions ended without me noticing and that's why the rates are now pretty much back down to normal in the US? And what happened to aid to Ukraine being the cause of inflation a moment ago?
Inflation is complex, but are you really arguing the war is unrelated?
I'm arguing that the US is largely isolated from the economic effects of the war, and that this is evidenced by the lesser inflation spike in the US compared to Europe. America is barely exposed to the Russian and Ukrainian markets and is even a net exporter of some highly impacted commodities like natural gas.
That doesn’t undo the inflation that already happened! The sanctions are priced in.
Nobody said it undid anything. If what you said was right, though, then surely the rates would stay high given that the circumstances you claim are causing them haven't changed? Since they haven't, it seems unreasonable to pin the blame there with no further justification.
It is, but I just wanted to highlight the multifaceted ways the burning money pile in Ukraine is causing inflation.
I think that actually you just started with a conclusion you wanted to reach - that whatever America is doing is bad in all situations - and said whatever came to mind to get there. The war in Ukraine does drive some inflation, but the US is largely isolated from it, and this is further evidenced by the fact that American inflation was already high before the Russian military movements in late February 2022. I mean really, can you think of nothing else that happened in the past few years that might perhaps have reduced production and trade across the world, thereby increasing prices? Something that has, unlike the Russian invasion, become less of a problem in the past year?
I'm sure that choosing a 0.4% decrease in government spending over equipping millions of people to defend their homes from a militaristic empire is somehow a move for human rights in your eyes, though.
Someone already said Shadow of the Colossus, so I can plug my other favourite Outer Wilds. Especially the tracks from Echoes of the Eye. Dark Passage is raw dread in audio form, the River is a spectacular adventure theme, and the jam at the end of the universe is a perfect ending
I just got a CO2 meter and checked the levels in my house and went down a rabbit hole trying to address the issue. Apparently it would take 249 areca palms to offset the carbon RESPIRATION of one adult....
The fact that you are isolating the word "potential" suggests that you don't realise what "global warming potential" actually is. It's a measurement for comparing the effect of greenhouse gases to carbon dioxide, not the top of an error bar
Yes, carbon sequestration is the term for it, but none of them are currently practical to do on a scale that would mitigate the effects of the fossil fuels we burn. Growing trees is an example of this, as they do lock up carbon in the process of growing, but they're kind of a risky prospect since if the tree dies and rots or is caught in a wildfire then it releases the carbon again. Another option is literally just sticking it back underground in mines or oil wells, but of course that takes a lot of energy to do and then whole point of burning fossil fuels is to get energy so this one is currently a bit self-defeating. They're things that might be helpful to do if we succeed in transitioning to clean energy and have an excess of it available
Absolutely. Or even just excess capacity of wind and solar, to be honest. Whatever works, so long as we don't need it to replace fossil fuels and it isn't itself making more CO2 to lock away the CO2
They're from a delightful blog (and now book) called the Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. It's a collection of neologisms with etymologies included, so yes they are made up but that's the point
I agree that mining crassus spheres is pretty tedious, so I just... don't. It's just some gold.
However there is kind of a faster way to do it. If you have a driller with you, he can drill out the terrain surrounding the sphere. Once the sphere has been totally disconnected from the terrain, it collapses in to a pile of nuggets in the middle. It still takes a while, but it's a lot faster than pickaxing the gold.
I’ve been thinking about the PS1 game ‘Driver’ a lot recently. It’s a game I spent a lot of time on during my youth, and whilst I’m sure it doesn’t hold up some 20 years later, it was still a highlight from my ‘gaming youth’....
DRG has a whole list of things that just feel good:
Fucking obliterating one grunt with your biggest gun or explosive as you board the drop pod
Going back to rescue your teammate that didn't make it to the drop pod even though it technically barely matters as long as one person makes it back alive
When building liquid morkite pipes that run parallel for a while, lining the support points up
Using a bulk detonator to kill a dreadnought
Mining a crassus detonator gold sphere by drilling all of the surrounding terrain away so that the entire sphere pops at once and collapses in to a neat pile
Noita: building wands with horrendous recoil. I know it's going to get me killed when I launch myself in to something dangerous, but it's just funny to be able to fly by the power of destroying everything in a given direction
5.3% is very much still in line as a fairly ordinary deficit compared to many other countries in the world. A little towards the higher end, but not out of the ordinary by any means. The 2027 projection is a fair cause for concern, but the point of this report is explicitly to make sure the American budget doesn't head that way. To quote:
"CBO’s baseline budget projections are meant to provide a benchmark that policymakers can use to assess the potential effects of changes in policy; they are not intended to provide a forecast of future budgetary outcomes."
I feel like I just watched the entire movie in three minutes. There was even a final fight where the hero is on the brink of losing and uncovers a new well of power through desperate determination. And I still feel like I wasted my time.
Is NATO meant to tell Ukraine how to handle peace deals? It seems to me like the war is carrying on because Ukraine is quite understandably unwilling to have another chunk hacked out of it by Russia
How does "the US is also bad" change anything about the argument? The argument was that Russia invading and annexing territory is not an expression of self-determination for the people whose homes are being annexed. The US also doing bad shit doesn't change anything about that because "the US annexes Donbas instead of Russia" isn't the alternative being presented here
Head of NATO says Russia invaded Ukraine because of NATO expansionism (www.nato.int)
From the guy’s own mouth.
Niger says France amassing troops, equipment in ECOWAS states (www.aljazeera.com)
Modern-day cavalry (lemmy.dbzer0.com)
Russian general admits Ukraine just a "stepping stone" to invade Europe (www.newsweek.com) Ukrainian
In Kazakhstan, local residents made a person cover a Z symbol on his car with paint. He tried to justify himself that his last name, Zinovyev, starts with a Z, and apologized for his actions. (streamable.com)
A video appeared from Kazakhstan. Local residents made a person cover a Z symbol on his car with paint....
timecube (timecube.2enp.com)
sourceTime CubeSome info: The Time Cube: Image Gallery (List View) | Know Your MemeFound onu/exipheas (reddit) comment on r/InternetIsBeautiful
Voice referendum: Australia to hold historic Indigenous vote in October (www.bbc.co.uk)
cross-posted from: lemmy.zip/post/2089850...
How can I compare the money saved when buying an item in bulk?
Lets say I can buy 200 of something for $20. but for $60, I can buy 750 of them. How can I quantify the money saved as cost per unit?
Dethroning lemmy.ml, lemm.ee rises as the second most active instance (lemmy.world)
cross-posted from: lemmy.world/post/3804525...
Todd Howard wants Elder Scrolls 6 to be ‘the ultimate fantasy-world simulator’ (www.videogameschronicle.com)
Is this even legal? (lemmy.world)
I just got this popup while playing New vegas. I don’t even use chrome, i’ve switched to firefox. How can this be allowed? Also, this is Win10
XKCD #2819: Pronunciation (sh.itjust.works)
I pronounce the ‘u’ in ‘pronunciation’ like in ‘putting’ but the ‘ou’ in ‘pronounce’ like in ‘wound’....
India lands spacecraft near south pole of moon in world first (www.theguardian.com)
India has become the first country to successfully land a spacecraft near the south pole of the moon.
Robot is well adjusted (sh.itjust.works)
🤓🤓🤓 rule (lemmy.blahaj.zone)
I swear to Iomedae, once i count out these d4s its over (pathfinder.social)
Ukraine running out of options to retake significant territory (www.washingtonpost.com)
What was the best video game music of all time?
For my money it’s a tie between Eurydice’s song from Hades, any of the tracks from VVVVVV and Still Alive. But what do you think?
What's a good game you played with an awful tutorial?
Either it didn’t teach you anything at all, or it taught you the most irrelevant parts of the game.
Russia's Luna-25 spacecraft crashes into Moon (www.bbc.com)
https://archive.li/10BV3...
Can someonr explain thr math of how someone is supposed to be able to be even close to net zero carbon footprint?
I just got a CO2 meter and checked the levels in my house and went down a rabbit hole trying to address the issue. Apparently it would take 249 areca palms to offset the carbon RESPIRATION of one adult....
deleted_by_moderator
What's your pet peeve in your favorite video game?
Mine is the lag in Stellaris, and lack of options to let me impact it. Like let me disable the ability for the AI to make habitats FFS!
Doing things in games because it simple felt good.
I’ve been thinking about the PS1 game ‘Driver’ a lot recently. It’s a game I spent a lot of time on during my youth, and whilst I’m sure it doesn’t hold up some 20 years later, it was still a highlight from my ‘gaming youth’....
Russia got richer even as the war in Ukraine raged on last year, while the West shed trillions of dollars of wealth (www.businessinsider.com)
**BLUE BEETLE Discussion Megapost** 2023-08-18 🪲🦸 (lemmy.film)
Title...
Nato official suggests Ukraine could give up land in exchange for membership (www.theguardian.com)
cross-posted from: lemmygrad.ml/post/1335364...
The Hard Reality: Ukraine’s Last-Gasp Offensive Has Failed (www.19fortyfive.com)