WoahWoah @ WoahWoah @lemmy.world

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2 yr. ago

The subtext here is brutally simple: Putin knows Trump is willing to withdraw from NATO, taking 70% of its defense budget with him, if Putin's demands aren't met. At that point, NATO becomes little more than letterhead, and new territorial "realities" manifest regardless of NATO's protests. Putin's saber-rattling serves a calculated purpose--he knows the actual foundation of NATO's power is already compromised through Trump.

Expect this antagonistic posturing from Putin to increase. Trump is already looking for an excuse to leave NATO, and his staff have outlined the executive branch's unilateral power to do so. Putin's role, which he's gleefully accepting, is to provoke NATO into actions that will give Trump his justification for withdrawal.

The withdrawal seems nearly inevitable at this point, especially given Trump's planned purge of military leadership. While the EU is attempting to plan for this contingency, losing 70% of your military strength is essentially an insurmountable problem for a coalition that has structured its entire defense strategy around U.S. backing.

The numbers here are stark: the U.S. spends four times what all EU member states combined spend on military funding - not just NATO allocations but total military spending. This creates an irrefutable power imbalance within the coalition. When Trump previously threatened withdrawal, NATO's attempts to develop alternative deterrent strategies went nowhere because the EU simply cannot afford to compensate for a U.S. exit. They essentially did nothing and hoped Biden's election would solve the problem.

This allowed the EU economy to avoid difficult choices, as making up for a U.S. withdrawal would likely destabilize the European economy. But now they face an impossible dilemma: attempt to compensate for U.S. withdrawal and risk economic crisis, or maintain current spending levels and leave member states critically exposed. Many NATO states, like Estonia, have defense strategies that amount to "try to survive for two weeks until NATO arrives." Putin understands the leverage he's gained through Trump and the Republican party's capture of the federal government. It's tremendous leverage. The EU should be in crisis mode, but they seem unable or unwilling to fully grasp that U.S. withdrawal from NATO isn't just possible but probable.

Pay attention. The tectonic plates of geopolitics are shifting beneath our feet.

The amount of white democrats that have as a subtext to their commentary about the Hispanic vote a "I hope Trump puts you in a camp and then kicks you out of the country for not voting for Harris" sentiment says a lot about the democrats.

Edit: angry white democrats downvoting. 🤣

Latine is more sensical in Spanish. You're correct that it's used more by young, urban, and non-male people. If by "out of touch" you mean it doesn't cater to Latino men over 30, you may be right. If being "in touch" means exclusively catering to older Latino men, I don't think that's a long-term winning strategy. More inclusive Spanish along with non-inclusive Spanish can generally coexist. I don't think it needs to be a universal decree.

Well, you may be right. I'm not going to try to divine cultural sentiment from 40 years ago or whatever. I just think the study collapsing a relatively stable category (people who are "overweight") with people who are obese and morbidly obese kind of hides the news. Sure, it makes for a splashier headline "75%!!" But the increase in obesity and morbid obesity is actually more dramatic when the "overweight" category is taken out of the focus.

Actually 40 years ago a higher percentage of Americans were "overweight," so it's unlikely it would seem more obvious then vs now. The difference is that now many more people are obese, but being obese is fairly noticeable unlike being overweight.

The percentage of people who are in the just-above-normal category of "overweight" has remained very steady and within a narrow band over the years, i.e., it's been consistently between roughly 31-34% for almost seven decades. It was 32.9% last year. That's why in my comment I noted that the real concerning thing about the study isn't really the amount of people who are overweight; it's the amount of people who are obese and morbidly obese.

Daily. And that's just the hats, not the signs, bumper stickers, shirts, etc. I live in a swing state. That said, over half the voters in the country voted for him, and as a group, they're very visible in their support, so I would be surprised if you don't see Trump paraphernalia in almost every area of the country, if you regularly go outside and are around people in places other than work. Big "if" on that last one given this is Lemmy. 😁

Yes, technically, they are. But it's unlikely you would see someone with a bmi of 26 walk by you on the street and think "that guy is overweight."

This guy has a BMI of 26. If he had clothes on, few people are going to assume he's overweight, even though technically he is:

To be fair, I don't think many of us would recognize someone who is a BMI of 26 as "overweight." It technically is, but you've probably seen people regularly that are "technically" overweight but would never realize it. You yourself might be (and, statistically, are likely to be) overweight according to BMI and not realize it.

The really staggering thing is obesity. From 1960 until about 1992, it was between 15-20%. By 2000 it was 30%. These days it's getting close to 45%.

Why is that the news? Using NHANES data for standardized numbers, in 1990 it was roughly 44% of Americans. That's lower than 1980 (_{47%), 1970 (}48%), and 1960 (~46%). Did you think Americans were unusually thin in 1990 or something?

The 1990s are actually when the numbers jump. By 2000, it's 65%. 2010, it's 68%. And in 2020 to the most recent yearly data (2023), its 74%.

Rhetorical impact.

Yeah, that's exactly what you said. He also said raw milk is dangerous to humans because pasteurized milk is safer for humans (??). I think he's drunk or just very dumb. Either way, just ignore him.

What a crazy story lol. I've never heard of that story until now.

RFK is secretly a flu virus wearing a human suit.

Privileged college kids larping as radicals that will only protest in safe spaces and only protest against people that agree with them and/or aren't a threat to them. It's kind of like whatever the opposite of "fighting the power" is. I'm convinced that's why there's so much infighting on the college left: they'd rather hyperventilate about a minor transgression that fails the immaculate morality purity test for someone that 99% agrees with them in all other respects than actually take their politics to people who have real and serious disagreements with them.

Hint: they're usually only a few blocks from college campus. You know, the area you and your friends never go? Where the poor people live? That you supposedly care about?

Not all are like this, obviously, but I regularly interact with "campus activists" in organizing circles, and it's largely an exercise in self-obsessive circle jerking in my experience. It's incredibly difficult to convince them to do something that might actually take them out of their comfort zone. They'd rather yell at each other, yell at other privileged, harmless college students that disagree with them, or protest college administrators. As though college administrations are some great fascist force.

They're one level above high school principals, Olivia. Relax.

Interestingly, research shows a surprising trend related to this topic: young adults today, on the whole, are engaging in less sexual activity than any generation for which we have data. Yet, this shift isn't equally distributed across genders—where young men (ages 18-25) once reported slightly higher rates of sexual activity than young women, the pattern has reversed. Now, young women report engaging in sex more frequently than their male counterparts, with the gender gap widening now to a degree that significantly favors women in this area.

The reasons for this shift are still under debate. Economic pressures, the influence of digital media, and evolving social norms are all posited as contributing factors. But the data does suggest (this is based on CDC and JAMA studies) that a smaller subset of men are experiencing a larger share of sexual activity, aligning with certain internet memes and narratives about “Chads” dominating the dating scene. Whether these cultural constructs, such as the "MRA" or "Chad" phenomenon, are reflective of or reactive to this social shift remains unclear. Nonetheless, they generally resonate with the timeline of the observed trends around sexual activity. I'll be curious to see how the trends indirectly the future of dating and sexual relationships among young adults.

But, all that aside, if more women choose to opt out of traditional dating or sexual encounters with men, more power to women. Coincidentally, it could begin to narrow or at least slow the widening gender gap in this area. I am unsure if that would be good, bad, or neutral. In general, a healthy sex life seems to be an important dimension of the human experience. I would imagine the fact that the overall trends are going down is probably a negative for the psychology of a generation, but I guess we'll see.

This age cohort also drinks less, has more eating disorders, smokes/vapes less, is more sleep deprived, parties less, is more risk-averse, has shorter attention spans, experiments with drugs less, is more (prescription) medicated, is more depressed, is more socially isolated, and is more anxious than previous generations at the same ages. Looking at research on Gen Z is pretty crazy. And it can be depressing sometimes, but it's a particularly unique age cohort. Scholars widely acknowledge Gen Z as being markedly different than previous youth generations.

I would never vote for the Green Party after watching two decades of their utter disregard for political calculus while being both supercilious and patronizing about it. If the party's behavior wasn't enough, their supporters are utterly obnoxious, self-congratulatory egotists.

I fully intend to support nearly any candidate running against a green party candidate at the local and regional level, and will happily make political donations to any organization running ads and/or mobilizing on-the-ground efforts against the green party. The green party has been one long abysmal failure after Nader/LaDuke.

They certainly don't need my help to die, but I'll help dig the grave anyway.

Remember how it took merrick garland two full years and an independently organized governmental January 6th committee forcing his hand before he pursued criminal charges against Trump? How investigations by the NYT and WaPo showed that, over a year onto Biden's presidency, Garland had ordered no investigations into Trump at all? Yeah.

That dude is singularly responsible for one of the biggest law enforcement failures in the history of the United States and an extreme dereliction of duty. What a coward. Like most cowards, he hoped if he did nothing and stayed quiet no one would notice him. Unfortunately, now anti-Trump people hate him for his failure to meaningfully prosecute and pro-Trump people hate him for attempting to prosecute in the first place.

This dude is the squirrel that runs across the street, then gets scared and tries to run back, then gets scared and tries to run across again, then gets scared and tries to run back... and then gets run over by the car.

Most people on Lemmy think online clout is a political cause.

Yes, people did precisely that in this case. Or do you speak for all trans people and trans allies? I didn't get the memo. You're literally doing the thing being criticized. I explained to you that they were pushed out for defending the terms female and male for biological sex in her field. Your response: "yeah, that's not what it was, it's because she's a crypto-conservative working for the IDF."

It's like, well. OK, but that's not what happened. Many people on the left have gone on fox news to defend positions. Do you just assume they too are all therefore secretly conservative? What a silly worldview to have.

Regardless, I'm not going to bicker with you, I don't want you hyperventilating again. I'll block you and make it easier for both of us. Good luck with your video games.

Buttigieg/AOC 2028. Never forget that despite looking like a choir boy, Mayor Pete is a bulldog. Love watching him regularly demolish frothing Republicans. AOC is great at/for a lot of things, but at the top of the ticket, she's got too many cheap, easy character weaknesses. Too young. Her voice. Her big-time speeches, like at the DNC, show she's an unpolished orator. No executive experience.

Other than her voice (I like it, but many people find it annoying), all of those flaws would go away if she serves as VP for 4-8 years.

If Newsom is the democrat's candidate, I will vote third party. Fuck that guy.