RussianBot9580

But strangely, if enough people said they believed in the Great Salty Kangaroo, and part of their belief was a ritual consumption of vegemite every Tuesday - the request would have been granted.

Definitely some strange inclusions and exclusions. "Information technology" has NetApp but not Everpure, even though they have the same market cap and are in the same space. Qnity and Jabil are included with half the market cap.

A rah-rah attitude is great, but one should never underestimate an opponent. The reality is a stalemate with small groups occasionally moving past the front line. No meatwaves. This is true for both armies.

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2026/08/20/russia-and-ukraine-a...

Society solves its issues? Don't worry, there will be lots of warning signs before this happens. Pigs will be flying all over the place, for one.

Plenty of people catastrophise. By that logic, San Francisco should have been swept away by a tsunami of human poop by now.

Worked great with Germany, didn't it. My biggest worry is that this Western intent on winning will work. And whoever replaces Putin to take over a humiliated Russia will show the world what a real mad dictator is like.

As for no financial system in two months - that's been repeated for four years now. Good luck this time. The fuel situation is so catastrophic that it caused a 10% decrease in auto traffic. These numbers come from the Carnegie center, not Russian propaganda: https://carnegieendowment.org/russia-eurasia/politika/2026/0...

Lots of people say "Putin can stop this any at time if he wants to". But can he really?

Imagine for a second that you've been magically transformed into Putin, the president of Russia. You decide to stop the war. You whip out your pen and sign a piece of paper. The Duma obligingly votes all-in-favor the next day, like the good lap dogs they are.

But wait. The world hates Russians now. This comment will be downvoted into oblivion (which is why it's from a throwaway). People all over the world now hate Russian athletes, business people, scientists, and tourists. The country will remain isolated. Next, the EU's been sending all this money to Ukraine in hopes that they will get paid back with reparations. Will they suddenly play nice? Nah, you just saddled your country (remember - you are Putin) with crippling debt. Third - you made a good chunk of your population fight a war for the past 4 years, and told them it was just. Suddenly you have to do an about-face. What did they fight for?

So the Duma might just not play lap dog this time, and put someone else in charge...

According to my third cousin twice removed who once spelled the word "industry" (mostly correctly) - Americans basically work for McDonalds burgers. That's why they had to outsource high-precision manufacturing to Taiwan; they tried to make GPUs and phone chipsets in the US, but the 'muricans just kept getting their greasy fingers all over everything.

The family can just, you know, stop playing the video. It's inappropriate, and one would hope that the next judge doesn't allow it.

Apparently the legal team didn't think so, and believes their client would have received less than 10 years if the AI tear-jerker video wasn't played. Even though the word "forgiveness" was used - they are probably right.

I'm sorry for your memory loss.

The job was to increase the number of doctors by increasing the number of residency spots. The poor folks have been lobbying for 30 years, but they are just not too good at it, gosh darn it.

As a patient - do I really care if they have bad intentions or are simply incompetent? The results speak for themselves: there's a system that pits young residents against each other Hunger Games style and has them working 20 hour days. It allows only 5% of IMGs into residency slots. And this translates directly into mistakes and bad medical outcomes.

It's nice of you to talk to me like a child (thanks daddy!), but there's no secret comms channel needed. If an AMA official publicly came out with a platform of "let's cut your salaries in half!" they would not last long. And if there was no public announcement - their effort would be shot down behind the scenes. Simple as that.

> In the privacy of a voting booth, people will vote for Flock to feel safer

And of course the self-appointed illuminati who know better can't have people voting for what they want.

> Today we dogpile on Flock to get it cancelled, tomorrow the public will reach for something else.

Who's the "we" in this sentence? The people who want to keep cities crime-ridden? And why does your opinion matter more than that of the public? I thought these "we" were pro-democracy?

Not true. Sometimes we are under your bed. Better check.

If you took 30 years to deliver a project - would you still have your job? The fact that the AMA is still around means this is not one of the axes they are evaluated on. Classic misaligned incentives.

Is it? If I ran an organization whose members' salaries depended on my lobbying taking its time to produce as little of a result as possible - would I really want to do a good job? Or if I did - would I remain the head of said organization for very long?

In the SF Bay Area there's a town called Milpitas. There's a gigantic island next to it made of garbage. A government funded study has been running for over 10 years now trying to determine why Milpitas smells. They have not yet been successful. You see, succeeding means getting funding withdrawn from the study.

Nah, George Washington. He was so authentic that he never told a lie.

Haha - understood. Good one!

They'd write a limited test for a feature based on an ask from the software team garbled by a five layer game of telephone. Claim that the module passed validation. A few months later the software folks would have to pull a few all nighters to figure out how to work around the resulting turd during bringup.

How is it failure? You use your military to force trade to occur using your tokens. You control the supply of said tokens. You leave some other loser holding the bag for your debts. You win.

> I am personally willing to incur a higher risk of being the victim of a crime if it means government/police/private companies/etc. are not able to violate my privacy every waking moment of my life.

This is it precisely. Thank you for stating this so clearly.

And I am not. Practically speaking, invasion of privacy from the government or private companies affects me not at all. Petty crime does make daily life unpleasant. And before you say "but you don't know how that'll turn out" - we do. There is China, there is Russia, there is Dubai. These are places where a female can walk around safely in the middle of the night.

But think of it from another angle. It's easy to assume that everyone is on board with your cause when you are in a bubble and all of your friends are. But it could be that there's no grand conspiracy to suppress the public opinion. It's just that public opinion isn't quite what you think.

And yeah, there will be bad apples. On the balance, I think these bad apples are better than the ones they replace.

And a public officer would instead be driven by corruption, like that nice San Jose policewoman who signed off on customs forms for fentanyl shipments.

But why? For most people all they'll find out is "this guy commutes to work, goes to Costco, and has an affair". Big tech knows about the affair from text messages already.

Keep in mind that the general public's sentiment on Flock is nowhere near that of the Twitterati. My HOA wants to pay for a camera. All the old folks that attend the meetings are excited and think the technology is cool. The only "crime" we get is a bunch of teenagers sneaking into the pool after hours.

At the same time though, if a car that's obviously "not from around here" were to do a drive-by looking for open garages to grab some tools or a bike - I'd want that to be recorded and flagged.

I'd get lynched for sharing a thought like this from a non-throwaway account, but: I don't get the ultra-liberal folks obsession with the skid row. For whatever reason they seem to think that low rank criminals should be allowed to continue living however they please. An attempt to clean up crime in Oakland - for example - is met with cries of gentrification! Think of the families! Somehow everyone focuses on the family of the drug dealer and not of the hard working single mom who doesn't want her kids to join a gang. Is seems that only those involved in petty crime are considered to be the valuable members of the local community, and only their values need protecting.

Well - what's a core value? I'd say that if you can remove a value and still stay "you" then that value wasn't really core.

By that definition maybe even "loving my kids" wouldn't pass the test, as Viktor Frankl explains better than anyone could.

As for immigration, it is no accident that anti-immigrant rhetoric is on the rise precisely when the economy is doing poorly. When there were enough resources to go around - there wasn't nearly as much reason to oppose immigration. Which means that "my family is financially secure" is a much more core value for most people than being open to the world (even if they'll never admit it).

That also sounds nice on the surface - but has the same problem. Political positions disguised as core human values. Allow me to explain.

You say "values like how you treat people who are NOT close to you". Which is really code for "people who like open immigration policies are virtuous and people who oppose them are bad and/or less intelligent". But once you drill down to details - the picture changes. This kind of sentiment is used to drum up support for very specific pieces of very questionable legislation. Why should a specific ethnic group with a large and powerful diaspora get a free pass to ignore immigration laws, but other ethnic groups get the book? How is this about being virtuous and treating people NOT close to you equally? Well, you aren't allowed to ask these questions - you don't want to be a part of the dumb racist outgroup, do you?

It might help to realize that this is a uniquely American affliction. People almost anywhere else simply don't consider politics (or race or gender for that matter) to be nearly as important.

This would then let you see your neighbors as people. What you claim are core values are nothing of the sort. They are misconceptions invented by your in-group to dehumanize the out-group. In reality people's core values are: their kids, their health, love, belonging, a sense of purpose. The rest is just a puppet master hijacking these core values for organizing a crowd.

The timeline is very close, and this area was heavily contested, with Mexico, Russia, and the US vying for the area. After all, Fort Ross is right next to Sutter's Mill - exactly where gold was discovered.

So, in 1841 Sutter bought Fort Ross - and failed to pay until 1849, a year after the USA officially took California from Mexico. And by incredible coincidence - a year after gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill. The existence of gold was likely already known for some time. It's simply too perfect.

Also, the Americans used their favorite weapon against the colony - sanctions! Prior to Sutter's arrival, Fort Ross could trade with Mexicans and the local Indians. Sutter forbade this - America would not trade with anyone involved with Fort Ross. The more things change the more they stay the same :)