There is no rift, it all bullshit. NATO is the west

When you think your opponent is a monolith, it just means you don’t understand your opponent.

Russia’s Duganist foreign policy relies on the reality of a rift within nato. Part of the reason that they put so much renewed effort into their trumpist coup is to stoke that rift after their strategic failure in ukraine - bringing nato nations closer than at any point since 1990

Russia’s influence among US kleptocrats and fascists is if anything understated. The regime’s “accomplishments” are just a wishlist of russian foreign policy goals.

Trump has long been a russian asset and his business empire was just a front for russian mob money. His earliest advisors were almost entirely known russian agents. Destablising greenland and canada is russia attacking potential NW passage rivals, and greenland helps distance the us and eu. The first trump regime completely dismantled the state dept. and it’s still basically non-functional. Propaganda organs like VoA and USAID, cybersecurity too. Any institutions the empire uses to expand influence or defend itself. Massive self defeating tarriffs on allies and client states weaken alliances and increase pressure on the citizen body.

Iran was never in danger of becoming a meaningful geopolitical alternative, especially given that they were very clearly moving closer to the us. The war in iran cannot be said to be a nato power play give the current rift between nato members about the war, and the predictably destablising effect it would obviously have and is having on the structures of US hegemony.

It was very clearly a last minute decision by some of the dumbest us elites that russia could buy.

The position, goals and capabilities of the us empire were very different in '53 than today.

I think you’re making a general over-arching argument that is contradicted by the specific details.

I think this misses a lot of detail - suppresion of iran is an israeli goal more than a western elite goal. Yes israel is part of the us empire but before the current coup by the lunatic faction in the us, war with iran was becoming much less likely.

The obama nuclear deal was a huge win, iran was complying and un monitoring agreed. Moderates were in power and in the ascendancy in iran and actively talking about how to reduce their sanctions burden. Before the US killed all the moderates in power and let the regime massacre their supporters.

Also, US elites don’t want to maintain full specrrum dominance. Some say that to impress the rubes but they can see the US empire crumbling as much as anyone with eyes. The current goal of US elites is to loot the empire on the way down. That’s why they’re all in bed with russia, the saudis and china - though they keep the china links much quieter.

I’m summarizing my understanding of these panpsychism type theories.

I think part of the idea of this theory is that much of life shares the key elements that make up the scientific definition of consciousness.

I personally don’t see value in preserving the popular definition of consciousness as the human soul, but regardless of personal takes i hope we can agree that scientific theories should be based on the scientific use of the term.

Caterpillar supply the israeli military with the bulldozers they have used for decades to demolish the homes of palestinians.

These collective punishment policies are explicitly forbidden under the geneva convention and formed the early stages of the ongoing genocide that caterpillar continue to profit from.

People stretch the word “consciousness” to include things like free-will, human-level intelligence, articulating an understanding of the world, having ideologies, etc.

It’s very close to the classical greek word ψυχή, soul, from where we get psyche. And very close to how many christians have understood “soul”.

But often scientific inquiry leads us to realize how fictional and self-serving our understandings are. Souls aren’t real and consciousness in the brain is just an information sorting process.

Much of life may exhibit that process to some degree. Unsurprising, really - information sorting as complex as ours should have precursors.

Maybe you were having a bad day in the above linked convo, but fyi you come across as needlessly argumentative and more than a little misogynist. Tbh i didn’t even see the comment where you talk about being accused of rape because your others were too off-putting for me to continue reading.

Your comments make you seem angry at women. That doesn’t make you a rapist, but it goes a long way to explaining why all your friends would believe an allegation.

Yeah there’s a big difference between 70 and 80 for sure.

80+ is still is a ‘sometimes and small amounts’ thing for me, but many 70s and anything <60 taste just as sweet as milk chocolate to me

Maybe 2 years ago my partner had to explain to me that most people actually prefer milk chocolate, so when i buy dark chocolate as presents it’s not actually appreciated.

I’ve always preferred dark chocolate because it’s just so obviously better, and presumed everyone else did too. Finding out that most people like worse chocolate was quite a surprise🤷

If we just elect the right kind of imperialists things are bound to get better!

Aha! Thank you!

Couldn’t find an article from a credible site?

Not so weird, it’s pointing out that the fascist regime and their russian allies are absolutely willing to cook and stoke rape allegations as part of their disinformation campaigns.

There’s not another option. Platner is incredibly popular - outfundraising the sitting democrat governor! - and vocally supports some progressive causes.

Susan Collins has consistantly voted with our fascist regime while pretending she’s a moderate. She needs to go.

The effort and money the regime is focusing against Platner shows how much of a threat they see him as. He does need to win, and opponents of our fascist regime shouldn’t be listening to the regime’s attempts to defeat him.

Please. She clearly hated him as much as anyone. Probably more, since she had to spend more time with him.

As if she would be offended by someone re-enacting the day she was catapulted to national fame and never had to look at charlie kirk ever again.

The woman who started Ladies for Kavanaugh specifically to descredit Christine Blasey Ford’s rape allegations is going out of her way to say that he knew what the tattoo meant - so he almost certainly did not.

Given that we say “at university” not “at a university” I think we can assume Uni is a non-count noun and avoid pluralising it altogether.

Although i’ve noticed the way non-count nouns are treated seems less stable, so maybe that whole thing is on the way out. Data is often treated as a plural not a non-count noun - i heard “this data is” 15+ years ago, whereas i hear “these data are” now.

I think it’s very reasonable to pluralize the abbrievation with an apostrophe though, especially since “unis” would naturally be read with a short ‘i’ rather than the ‘ee’ of “Uni”

Tally systems and icons. It’s from these icons that writing emerges.

China might be the exception, writing maybe emerges from divination rather than accounting. But maybe it goes accounting > divination > writing.

[Platner’s accuser Lyndsey Fitfield’s] biography at her most recent role says that she loves “motherhood, marriage, home birth, raw milk—but also Botox & Chick-fil-A,” and she dislikes, "Facebook groups for moms, gentle parenting, mommy bloggers.

This is exactly the kind of person you’d expect to found a group like Ladies for Kavanaugh, which Fitfield admitted at the time was devoted solely to discreditting Christine Blasey Ford’s (very credible) rape allegations against the then-nominee.