theturtlemoves [he/him]

Also Free Palestine.

If Russia and Azerbaijan are fighting, why is Armenia pivoting to the west? Isn’t this their chance to retake the disputed territory with Russian help?

Isn’t she one of the relatively less ghoulish US politicians?

Dudes rock.

the French hate the perfidious Albionese

Perfectly understandable, even the Fr*nch have standards.

Best case scenario - roommate is an A-tier troll.

To be fair, people who do great research aren’t exactly famous for having operational common sense. (But that’s why you have administrative staff.)

the tendency of chat bots to be sycophantic

They don’t have to be, right? The companies make them behave like sycophants because they think that’s what customers want. But we can make better chatbots. In fact, I would expect a chatbot that just tells (what it thinks is) the truth would be simpler to make and cheaper to run.

Most important research is already backed up. Medical research of such importance, if it existed, would have multiple copies, with at least one somewhere far away (most likely a cloud backup).

If religion gets people to do good things, what’s wrong in it?

It’s definitely a reference to the GNU projects. That particular story has a lot of parallels to the history of programming, with a bunch of nerdy hackers helping the hero beat an evil corporation.

China already has the capacity to take on the US hegemony both economically and financially.

When you are the only country with a chance of winning, and when defeat would mean another century of waiting for the working class (and who knows how bad climate change will get under capitalism), wouldn’t you want to be absolutely sure of victory before making your move? And would it not be better to get as many of the neutral countries on your side as possible first? Or even to have the request for an alternative system come from a neutral country / ex-US ally who is now being bullied by the US, so even the local bourgs in all the other fence sitting countries can see who is their friend and who is their enemy?

The issue isn’t what you meant. The issue is how your words might be twisted. Antisemitism - actual antisemitism - might be on the rise now, thanks to Israel’s bloodlust.

Unfortunately, I don’t think ship crew (other than the captain and navigator) get much of a choice in where the ship goes.

Maybe we should ban Christianity while we’re at it. It has things like ‘Blessed are the peacemakers, for they will be called the children of God’. Pretty antisemitic if you think about it.

Who’d vote for Reform-lite when they can vote for Reform?

Courageous move by Keir Starmer, in the Yes Minister sense.

I don’t think he expects to get re-elected anyway.

guardian of the king’s underpants

Close enough

My initial reaction was ‘that’s not half bad (particularly for those already at risk)’ but then I realised that your health insurance system will abuse this.

‘Lie detectors’ don’t even work. They just measure how stressed you are and assume that stress = lying.