Aceticon @ Aceticon @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

Isn't that just tribalism or clubism in general?

For example, if one looks at footbal (soccer for Americans) fans, their "judgement" on the validity of faults and sanctions (or lack thereof) is entirelly dependent of whose team they support and almost invariably they side with whatever the important people of "their" team (like the coach, important players and even the club's manager) say with zero logical analysis and if you actually bring logic into it and it goes against "their" team, the biggest fans just get angry and dismiss it all.

People with a strong emotinal bond to a "team" judge messages in that domain based on the messager and which team it favours, rather than on the contents of and supporting evidence for the message itself.

I bet Bliken will go there personally to rebuke them, since that's the only way he can give them a wink and a nod along with the stern warning.

Putin isn't even able to overrun Ukraine who have been getting mostly equipment from 1 generation ago, mostly late and with a ton of limitations imposed on its use, and has a much smaller population than Europe (and a tiny Economy next to it), and you think he would be able to overrun Europe?

Poland alone would probably suffice to stop him.

You're right.

I checked the dictionary definitions and the words have indeed a somewhat different meaning than I thought, including in the detail that Nepotism is familiy and friends whilst Cronyism is only friends.

So thanks for that correction!

Indeed.

60 years ago we were supposed to having to work very little by now thanks to automation, then automation came and instead of the productivity gains of it ending up spread across society, what happenned instead was that the extra productivity went just pushed up dividend and CxO pay higher and due to the reduced need for workers due to automation the purchasing power of salaries actually went down (for example, in the US the percentage of corporate revenues that went to pay salaries fell from 23% in the 70s down to 7% by 2014).

Expecting that, under the exact system that's been moving us more and more towards Dystopia with each wave of automation, AI would somehow end up making things better for most people rather than better just for the Owner Class and worse for part or most of the rest, is pretty ill-informed and naive.

If you're getting back pain from an office chair then your arse is likely too far forward when you're sitting and you're putting pressure on your spine due it being at an angle other than 90 degrees from the seat, or your table is too low, lowering your arms, so you're bending forward.

You're suppose to feel your arse pushing against the back of the chair not leaving enough of a hole between the chair and your lower back that you can fit an arm in it, and when your arms are resting on the table (which they should be pretty much all the time if your keyboard and mouse are sufficiently forward) you should feel no pressure either downwards or upwards on your shoulders

I've been coding for over 3 decades, often for massive long hours (to the point that by the age of 17 I had RSI due to how my wrists were resting at the edge of the table and some years later when already doing it professionally went to the doctor with chest pain - which I feared were due to a hearth condition - which turned out to be work posture related) and at some point in my mid 20s I moved to The Netherlands and to a company which had its own Ergonomics Consultant (this was back in the peak of the 90s Tech boom so there was lots of money sloshing around) who would come around when you joined and adjust everything for you (they even had tables with adjustable height) and explain you all about the correct work posture.

Been following that advice and haven't had posture related problems since then whilst always using pretty standard office chairs (always with adjustable height, tough).

I have however seen plenty of people doing the lazy (and stupid) posture of being all the way forward on their chair and quite a lot with arms too low or too high (which is more understandable since most cheap office tables don't have adjustable height).

What the US politicians think, decide and legislate is irrelevant: the US actually targetting EU nations would directly yield counter-sanctions from the whole of the EU because that's a core part of the EU Membership Treaties (so, not the kind of thing that can just be blocked by a veto from a US-friendly EU member nation), and those would seriously impact the US Economy, not to mention the indirect impact on the US' broader geostrategical influence from treating the EU as an adversary.

For the EU it would be something like Brexit - even if the EU loses from a hard posture, it cannot afford to let the other side get away with it without very painful consequences because that would result in them doing even worst things later and would incentivise others to do the same - only in this case the EU would suffer way less from playing hardball with the US than it did from doing it with Brexiting Britain.

For the US it would basically be comitting Trade Suicide at the feet of China.

If the US Congress and Senate are too stupid and actually pass those laws and POTOS too is too stupid and actually uses it, all without the companies that are going to get screwed the most by counter-sanctions (mainly Tech) lobbying that proposal away into nothing, thats a lot more a US problem than an EU problem and there is no way at all that the upsides are close to even just begin to justify the downsides.

(Sure it would hurt the EU, just a lot less than doing nothing about it would).

Personally I would love for the US policians to try it and find out.

Smorgasbord all day every day would be Tortute!

I think you mean Cronyism, which unlike Nepotism isn't limited to family.

Looking at my own country, which has a massive culture of Cronyism, some years ago I concluded that Corruption is really just Cronyism in exchange for money hence why it's so easy for it to develop in countries with a culture of friends using the power and money entrusted to them by others to help their friends.

It seems to me this also applies to the US were "campaign contributions" facilitate the buying of active politicians in a way which is not legally treated as Corruption, just things like the "speech circuit", non-executive board memberships, funding of foundations and gold-plated "consultancy" are used to reward "friendly" policians after they retire from Politics in ways that completely obscure any Qui Pro Quo involved hence do get treated as Corruption even when they most definitelly are that (i.e. when a politician has explicitly agreed to use their power in a specific way when given a overt promise of such a reward at a later stage).

Want to see who politicians benefit, start by looking at whose parties they go to and which people do they socialize with.

The problem in the European Union is called Germany, whose politicians seem to have never leaved the whole "We support any Holocaust as long as it's a ´good´ race ´solving the problem' of a ´bad´ race" mindset.

If the US tries to hit any EU country with any commercial sanction the EU as whole is Treaty bound to impose counter-sanctions on the US and America doesn't really want to see its access to a market of 470 million people cut and its tacit support from the biggest trade block around to it's Guerrilla Trade War with China to dissapear completelly.

One of the main reason why the EU exists (the other being to incentivise Peace in Europe through tight trade ties) is exactly because whilst large nations like the US can indeed bully small and even medium sized nations via trade and sanctions, they can't bully a tightly integrated association of nations adding up to a larger Economy with a larger Market than the US.

The US trying that shit on EU nations would just result in a Trade War and a significant acceleration of the current post-Imperial decay stage the US is in.

Finger wagging intensifies

So the "I'm alright Jack" posture.

It's a selfish and immoral posture already when one takes it at the voting booth to chose a candidate that will personally benefit them whilst screwing most people, but it's especially low when one for personal upside maximization is knowingly part of the machinery that swindles people into supporting a Genocide well on it's way to Holocaust.

It's not what makes them money so they don't really have the business incentive for maximizing hardware sales that leads to a relentless pushing out of new versions of their hardware that are barely better than the last one and all manner of tricks for early obsolescence of older devices (things like purposeful OS and App under-performance and even incompatibility with older versions of the hardware).

Also in the big picture of gaming the Steam Deck is tiny and in its early stages, so business-wise is not the time to go down a strategy of relentless new hardware versions and enshittification, quite the opposite.

Absolutely, they're doing the right thing and as the right thing aligns with their business objectives it's a bit wishful thinking to claim its because they care so much about their customers as people.

Since Psychopathy and Sociopathy are ranges rather than absolutes, it's estimated that about 4% of humans are Psychopaths or Sociopaths and we're talking about the what's basically the handful of people in a universe of over 300 million who seeks and achieves positions at the top of the Power Duopoly in the US in a domain well know for it's cut-throating and backstabbing, I would say that the odds heavily favour the explanation of them being very high on the Sociopath (or Psychopath) - so called "well adjusted Sociopaths" - spectrum than them being normal people who are "relaxed about personally enabling the murder of tens of thousands of children".

The image of a Sociopaths or Psychopath who actively seeks to inflict horrible pain on others for their own pleasure is incredibly atypical and Hollywoodesque - being high on those scales just means having no empathy for others, including their suffering or joy, and the result is that a Sociopath or Psychopath simply does that which they think is better for themselves and they can get away with (they care about the consequences for themselves, not for others), with absolutely no consideration for how that makes others feel, hence harm or even death of others is fine since that has the same emotional resonance for them as breaking an inanimate object.

Fossil Fuels are decreasing as a percentage of the overall energy supply that powers so much of the Economy and Industrial and Agricultural production in Western Economies are a small fraction of the total (less than 20% together).

Nowadays it's not about the West making things with pillaged resources from the Global South, it's all Financialization and the Ultra-Wealthy extracting the last leftover wealth from everybody, everything and everywhere like the endgame in a Monopoly Game.

Oil by itself is not enough justification, IMHO.

Besides, Israel is being the very opposite of a force for stability in the region, which isn't going to help the Petro-Dollar.

(If you go check the Gold markets, it's never been this high, something which possibly signals increasing distrust in the US Dollar and other main currencies)

The Economy is not booming, it's only the prices of Assets such as houses that are in a bubble.

Last time around the "wealth" (even if illusory) was spreading a lot more and causing all sorts of things to grow by feeding consumption, as well as a general feeling of prosperity (until it turned out it was illusory and the whole castle of cards fell) whilst this time around it's pretty much only large asset owners who are actually gaining from this whilst the rest just increasingly feel poorer and more treading water ever harder merelly not to drown.

It's a different Economic climate and even a different feeling for most people, even if both periods share the house price bubble.

PS: And, by the way, this is not just in the US.

The only way to equate Israel with the Jewish Religion is to be a Racist - it requires one to believe that "Jews are all the same" hence they are all represented by Israel. This is expecially Racist given that there are many Jews who are openly critical of Israel, its actions and even its existence - it doesn't get much more obviously Racist than when non-Jews claim to know better about Jewishness and who represents All Jews than actual people who are Jews.

This is how you spot the Racists: not just the obvious ones but also the kind that playacts as anti-Racist whilst in practice, as I pointed out, holding extremelly prejudiced views and in practice viewing, judging and treating other human beings as "etnic group members" rather than people - they'll tell you all about what people of other etnicities are like and how you should support or not people based entirelly on the ethnicity they were born into.

In my personal experience Britain is riddled with Racist thinking, but a lot of it was disguised as "support of 'good' races" (only they carefully avoided the word "race"), except when it came to Muslims since discrimination against them has long been treated as acceptable.

You can chose to dip you hands in the blood of thousands of dead children by activelly rewarding a candidate who is enabling their murder, or you can chose not to.

Given the lack of Democracy in the American system, that means that you either participate hence end up with blood on your hands no matter which of the two electable candidates you vote for or do not participate.The choices of others who do participate are irrelevant for that decision.

Justifying your choice of supporting a enabler of child murder candidate because others might chose the candidate you dislike the most and hence makes you fear for yourself, is not the high moral standpoint you seem to think it is.

Absolutely, it's a though choice. However this preaching you and those like you are doing about "Not voting is a vote for Trump" is not done from the top of a Moral High Horse, it's from the top of the pile of the bloody bones of tens of thousands of murdered children which is still growing, and driven by at best selfish self-preservation not any kind of selfless moral principle.

So spare us the bullshit.

The slaughter of innocent children makes no difference to sociopaths.

If there is one thing this Genocide on its way to Holocaust has shown us. is that the Democrat Party leadership are without a doubt sociopaths of the worst kind: a normal person with the power they have would not be actively helping it by sending the Neue Nazis the very weapons which they know are being used to massacre children.

There really is no other possible conclusion: no normal person would go "yeah but our campaign contributions from the AIPAC are more important than tens of thousands of dead children" or "yeah but the profits of the MIC shareholders are more important than tens of thousands of dead children".

So a re-run of 2006-2007, but this time around there wasn't even an actual boom preceeding this.