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2 yr. ago

  • Pandaplomacy is absolutely a thing. That said, much like in the Cold War, it's good for nuclear superpowers with big armies to have a certain degree of open communication and, if not warm, at least cordial relations. Helps defuse potential problems early, before they turn into news articles.

    So, I welcome the move on that basis alone.

    On top of that, the move does have symbolic power, as the panda occupies a similar place in China as bald eagles do here in the US. Anything that warms feelings between Chinese and American citizens themselves is probably a good thing.

  • Large and powerful, yes. But powerful enough? Let's find out.

    Personally I prefer a system with robust checks and balances that prevent idiots from using it to enhance their own glory at the expense of their people.

  • Vice did a lot of very good, and generally in-moderate-depth reporting over the years. Hope an overabundance of people scrape that shit while we still have an opportunity. Once its hosted somewhere safe, you could probably even dump access to it somewhere like ... the fediverse.

  • One of the big disadvantages we have is that we're still somewhat under-developed, due to being newish still, alongside not having corporate-levels of resources to pour into development.

    This leaves us open to things like the recent spam flood. These things will get ironed out over time, but until they do, they'll inevitably harm the platform's growth.

    In just the past 6 months though, apps have rolled out and steadily improved, some security issues have been addressed, and larger communities have built-out their admin capacity. So, we're approaching being primed for growth, but that recent spam flood took me aback for a second.

    You want to make a strong first impression, since it carries a lot of influence and you only get one shot. So, before we really do heavy campaigning to try to draw people, we want to make sure they'll have a good experience while they're here. I think we're close, but not quite there yet.

    Progress has been steady and overall positive though. One thing I think that gets underestimated is the importance of the size of our body of old content, and how much it helps to grow that. The meme communities having pages and pages of memes to scroll, the news communities having articles on everything in triplicate, the tech communities having thousands of interesting old convos to look at, the art communities being crammed full of art, etc etc.

    That body of old stuff ends up being a kind of bedrock that future users will be more interested in building off of. Then the niche communities will start to pop more imo.

  • It's actually not, since they are a military ally, and in a war. If we stab them in the back mid-war, that makes our alliances worth less.

    This is the big reason we keep vetoing the ones that are only words. Weakens our alliances, and for nothing except some shame. When Netanyahu is shameless.

    But, if there was a mechanism, it might be worth it.

  • No, that is not my point. My point is that any assumption that our own American ethno-nationalists cannot make the Gazan situation dramatically worse is misplaced. It can get so, so much worse. It can potentially fully succeed.

    We have American people that advocate for genocide too, you know. And when they say it, they're thinking the Holocaust, not a few thousand. They're not pretending, or playing around.

  • Bullshit.

    Israel is a nuclear-armed nation, it is as immune to large-scale ground invasion as N Korea or Pakistan. They do not need our thousand pound bombs, nor our military alliance. This just isn't the 80s anymore.

    Similarly, Reagan wasn't facing a criminal trying to take down his own justice system, relying fully on being propped up by ethno-nationalists that want Palestine, all of it, exterminated, just to maintain his own position.

    We could probably stop them, if we threatened them with severe economic sanctions. Cutting off the weapons would simply make Netanyahu use even more indiscriminate tactics though, like starving them all, or firebombing the whole place. He can't accept a permanent cease fire though, because one would cost him, him personally, everything he has left.

    That's the problem with strongmen. They don't actually give a fuck about people, just themselves. And they'd rather be an evil tyrant than a loser.

    Probably can't fix that with a phone call, don't you think?

  • No, they are not all being killed. There are about 2 million innocent people in the entire Strip. Death figures according to the Gazan Health Ministry are around 30,000 currently.

    It's not impossible though, it's been attempted before in history, by ethno-nationalist asshats just like Netanyahu's supporters.

    This can get much worse. Many zealots want it worse.

  • Maher is pretty centrist, actually. Dude is straight up anti-mask, for instance. He has quite a few conservative positions, he'd prob be a repub if they weren't batshit insane these days.

    And, reread my comment, since I haven't even mentioned anyone moderating. That one came out of your brain, not my comment.

  • Unfortunately, a fair number of people, most likely. People can have short memories with politics, and the presidential debates tend to draw a wide audience. On top of that, some people are simply new to the political world in the past 4 years, finally reaching voting age and such.

    He's a veteran politician, spent decades in the Senate. There's probably few people on the planet that can handle yelling as smoothly as he can. He'll benefit from facing it down. People want strength and resilience in a president.