Basically a deer with a human face. Despite probably being some sort of magical nature spirit, his interests are primarily in technology and politics and science fiction.
Spent many years on Reddit before joining the Threadiverse as well.
Unfortunately, there’s no EU or NATO equivalent for us to rely on.
I would say this is a good time for you guys to make one. My home country is Canada, and I think it’d be great to see defensive pacts in both the Atlantic and Pacific - we’d be keen on joining both of them, I suspect. We’re threatened by Chinese influence too.
Problem is, a lot of them already are suffering and poor. Look at the nightmare that is American health care, for example. They’re dead last among the developed world and people would rather risk death than call an ambulance because they fear it’ll put them and their next-of-kin into debt forever. Losing a job can mean death for some because their health insurance depends on employment.
And yet the propaganda reverberates back and forth among them; “The United States is the greatest country in the world! Land of the free and home of the brave!”
I’m Canadian, and Trump’s been Trumping a lot about how Canada should be forcibly made the “51st state.” He said, among other insane and offensive drivel, that Canadians would get better healthcare if that happened. I honestly think a lot of Americans believe that. They are deeply indoctrinated.
We’ve seen plenty of other countries where this kind of indoctrination works. People may live terrible lives of deprivation, but as long as they believe their enemies are worse off they love dear leader for the bounty they’ve been given.
Hence why I said “I’m kind of looking forward to seeing what Europe manages to put together as a replacement.”
That axis is “USA + two regional powers that can’t even invade a neighboring country properly and have negligible economies.” Not exactly an upgrade over the alliances the US had before.
And I’m also getting a little tired of them expecting me to be sad that this is bad for the US. A lot of the “woe is me, the US is losing influence!” Sounds almost as whiny to the non-American audience as some of the MAGA stuff about the world not being “grateful” enough for them.
The US’ international influence has been a mixed blessing for a long time. I’m kind of looking forward to seeing what Europe manages to put together as a replacement. Could be a step up.
Yeah, so? They were willing to play along as long as America was reasonably well behaved about it. That was the unspoken bargain of America’s Cold War and post-Cold War international influence - they got to have plenty of soft power, and in exchange they got to play out their World Police fantasy.
Now that’s going to be going away.
The U.S. are no longer the leaders of the free world.
Frankly, most of the time that was said it was said by Americans and the rest of us just smiled and nodded politely.
Lol. “Use the laws against him!” Good idea 🙄
What, you’re suggesting an “extrajudicial” revoking of his citizenship, then? How would that work? Why is that remotely a good idea? A government that ignores laws and just does whatever comes to mind is exactly the problem here.
Btw I don’t know anyone who refers to Canada as “down here”. Pretty sure they mean the US.
Yes, obviously. I’m pointing out a significant difference between the two countries.
And Trump would likely claim that the immigrants whose birthright citizenship he wants to revoke are “invading” the US.
I’m not saying that Elon Musk isn’t awful. I’m saying that revoking his citizenship isn’t the right way to deal with that. It’s not even legal to do so it’s a moot question to begin with.
We can’t simply disavow Canadian citizens like that. If a Canadian citizen does something awful then we should do something about it. Put out a warrant for whatever it is he’s up to. If you think he’s a traitor, check the laws on treason and see if he qualifies for an actual charge.
That’s a hangin’ down here.
Canada does not have the death penalty.
Elon Musk’s mother is Canadian.
There is no legal precedent for revoking citizenship like this. Why is this any better than Trump’s push to revoke citizenship for immigrants that he doesn’t like? There are better ways to handle this.
I doubt he’s “giving in.”
What’s happening here is that Trump thinks he’s being a tough negotiator by doing all these supposed “power moves” of offering ridiculous deals and trash-talking his negotiating partner. But the result is ending up being the opposite - the US is throwing away all of the power it thought it had, Ukraine is showing that they don’t need the US. Each threat that Trump makes is a card he’s playing and revealing to actually be useless.
Now that the US has burned through its hand, Zelensky can turn around and tell them “okay, here’s my offer.”
Which, again, is not what you said they were doing this for.
Which is not the goal of terrorists. Terrorists are attempting to cause political change through their actions.
Or do you think that anything that involves murder, cheating, stealing, trafficking, kidnapping, and extortion is terrorism?
I would imagine it’s not a problem if the betting market is small compared to the things being bet on. In this case you’d have to manipulate the long term outcome of the Ukraine war to win a few tens of millions of dollars, which seems unlikely.
Nice. This implies that these businesses are concluding that Ukraine is going to win - or at least, not lose - and will therefore retain its sovereignty. Their investments wouldn’t be safe otherwise.
This sort of thing is why betting markets are so good at prediction. Experts can pontificate and analyze all they want but at the end of the day a betting market requires people to put their money where their mouth is.
Because a lot of people feel like the world is getting shittier, and so they’re voting for the parties that tell them “the world is shitty and we have the solution. It’s simple and straightforward and someone other than you will bear the brunt of it.”
If the left wants the far-right to stop gaining then it has to defuse this argument. They should be working to make people feel like the world is less shitty, convincing people that they have solutions for the world’s shittyness, and ensuring that those solutions are simple and straightforward and put the brunt of the effort on someone else.
This is the downside of democracy, you have to do what the people want. Sometimes that’s kind of annoying and difficult.
I’m not expecting them to do anything specifically to benefit the rest of us. But let them fight. If nothing else, it costs them money.
You don’t think the publishing industry would like to sue Meta over this?
Well, yes, why would you believe something without seeing it? But given how litigious the publishing industry is about this kind of thing I don’t see it as likely that they wouldn’t fight.
The US is a representative democracy, and those were its chosen representatives. Sorry, but you can’t collectively vote Trump into office and then immediately go “woah, we have nothing to do with any of this!” When he turns out to be exactly what everyone expected him to be.