Yeah, and then Christianity took off and Europe ended up collapsing into ignorance and barbarism that it only managed to pull itself out of by stealing from the rest of the world.
The only quality that made Europe stand apart was a sort of cultural insanity - a loathsome combination of stultifying ignorance, unbridled greed and religious fervor that led vile scumbags to sail to other lands specifically in order to steal, murder and oppress.
And they couldn't even manage that without first stealing navigation technology from the Arabs.
Setting aside the fact that you couldn't even manage to get the dates for the Industrial Revolution right, your entire argument hinges on the laughable presumption that all advances anywhere on Earth outside of Europe were doled out to the inhabitants by Europeans, and that colonized nations, left to their own devices, would not have advanced.
I would go so far as to say that if the age of European colonialism had not happened, the world outside of Europe wiuld be even more advanced, and if anything it would be Europe that was lagging behind - that colonialism was a positive in the long run only for Europe, and was a negative for everyone else.
The only downside to a declining population is that the moneyed class will have fewer people to exploit, and at this point, anything that harms the moneyed class is a good thing.
Oh, and:
Many researchers believe this accelerating global shift is being driven in large part by a positive reality.
And I believe they're wrong. I believe it's driven primarily by the negative reality that much of human civilization (and the planet itself) has been warped and corrupted for the benefit of a relative handful of greedy, power-hungry psychopaths, and more people all the time don't want to bring a child into such a shitty world.
What it meant to me was that I had to unpin the link to my lemm.ee account from my Firefox home page.
It could've been the case that I would've had one less instance to choose from, but in the aftermath of the announcement, I found two new instances I wanted to try, so I'm actually one ahead in the long run.
By any measure, the exidtence of that great of a disparity in wealth in a society is evidence of the failure of the systems on which that society is built.
It's akin to if you were responsible for caring for a field of crops, and you ended up with a field in which two or three plants were enormous, bloated and overgrown. a few were more or less healthy, snd the rest were weak and shriveled and starving.
So literally what happened here is Trump said, "I want to violate the Constitution" and the Supreme Court said, " Okay — go ahead."
And that's it for the rule of law in the US.
All that's left now is to tally the mass murders along the way to the inevitable collapse of the US, and to hope that our descendents can build something better out of the rubble.
I still... maybe it's my years working construction, but when I look at RFK Jr. - his mannerisms and gestures and speech patterns and connection (or lack thereof) to reality - I see a tweaker, clear as a bell.
That's what I've used for years now, and I have no problems with them.
I actually have three of them, of varying ages, all of which still work fine. The older ones have simple switch shoulder buttons and the newer ones have analog triggers, and that's pretty much the only notable change they've made over the years.
The only "problem" I've run into with them is that the buttons and/or the pad will accumulate dust over time and stop working dependably, so I have to take them apart and clean the contacts every year or two. Which is very easy to do.
It's tempting - it would be greatvto be able to say something like, "I just want to thank you for being such an insufferable asshole that you were the catalyst that started the process that ended with my mom becoming a Democrat."
But I assume it would be lost on him. Like both Trump and Musk, I assume he's determinedly oblivious to the fact that he's an asshole
My mom is a lifetime Republicsn who up until last year was on a pure reactionary right feed on Facebook. She's basically turned 180° in just the last few months, and while it started with her immediate gut-level dislike for Vance, it was driven home by her imnediate, gut-level dislike for Musk. It's now expanded out to criticizing (and laughing at) Trump and the rest of the would-be oligarchs, and she's moved from Facebook to Reddit and is already trying to decide which Democrats she's going to vote for.
And while it actually started with Vance, it was almost entirely Musk (or as she referred to him for quite a while - "What's his name - the asshole co-president") who accomplished the most to drive her away from the party she'd supported her entire life.
Yeah, and then Christianity took off and Europe ended up collapsing into ignorance and barbarism that it only managed to pull itself out of by stealing from the rest of the world.
The only quality that made Europe stand apart was a sort of cultural insanity - a loathsome combination of stultifying ignorance, unbridled greed and religious fervor that led vile scumbags to sail to other lands specifically in order to steal, murder and oppress.
And they couldn't even manage that without first stealing navigation technology from the Arabs.