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It's weird, the guy demands loyalty but never shows any in returns. It's not like people don't know this. He throws people under the bus over and over, abandons them over and over or turns on them over and over — that's his entire track record. And people still line up to kiss the ring. I know Republicans believe that it's worth the risk and debasement because they're so terrified of being primaried ... I'm just kind of bemused at the lack of shame.

I didn't watch it. I didn't need to hear Putin's boring History rant to tell me that his motivation is pretty much "We used to own everybody around us 200 years ago. Those were the good old days. I want to bring the good old days back." I'm more bothered by the line of Republicans and fringe media types that fall over themselves trying to tell us "America is the bad guy here." I'm not use to people debasing themselves like this outside the world of fiction.

Maybe he should've taken a trip about an hour and a half out of Moscow. He could've traveled back to 1905. There's a whole genre of travel videos on YouTube chronicling how shitty it is to live in Russia. If you don't die of alcoholism, you're dying of air/ground/water pollution. Kind of a modern Republican party paradise.

Air strikes don't win wars. The U.S. learned that in Iraq and Afghanistan. Just going in guns firing doesn't work either. The use of special forces in targeted strikes at leadership were much more effective. We know Israel already has the intelligence resources and ability to do these targeted assaults, there doesn't seem to be much of a reason not to use them. Hamas needs to be eliminated in order for Gazans to have the extent of outside relations like the West Banks. The current strategy now just seems like they're trying to kill ants with a blowtorch. Netanyahu for some reason has thinks that pissing away the good will of the rest of the world following 10/7 was a winning strategy. I guess he believes he needs to hang on for a few months and Trump will give him a blank check to expel the Gazans into Egypt, a country he probably thinks Trump and Saudi Arabia could bribe into accepting them.

Are polls really anything aside from filler for 24-hour news cycles now? It seems like every election since Nate Silver got a little attention polls are just pushing everything else out of the news. This is after they are shown to pretty inaccurate. Seriously, I've seen the margin of error go from -/+2% to -/+5% in the last couple of years. +/-5% is pretty much the range of every election since the 1980s.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2023/jul/07/iberian-rewilding-project-aims-repopulate-empty-spain?CMP=oth_b-aplnews_d-1 Kind of related to the post about the cultured meat from the other day. That combined with many states losing population and lower birthrates overall makes me hopeful we can see something like this in the next few decades in the U.S.

https://www.politico.com/news/2023/07/05/desantis-trump-florida-2024-gop-primary-loyalty-00104819

Nobody was putting nukes in Ukraine with the intent of aiming them at Russia. Plus, considering Russia's aggression and it's past treatment of Ukraine (the Holodomor jumps to mind) gives it reason to seek both defensive arms and alliances like other former Soviet States like the Baltics and Poland. Anyway, what's your case that "Putin was right"?

From what I heard discussed on the news, it's not a room that public tourist groups would go through. It's a room a lot of people go through though if they've got business with someone in the White House. Even without the random tourists, it's still a lot of people from what they said. Doubt they were there to see Biden, he wasn't even there at the time.

Not the end of the world, but if you're on a road trip, you may want to buy a road map just in case GPS frazzles for a day. https://www.space.com/sun-coronal-mass-ejection-double-punch-july-2023

So, you really got nothing. Anyway, if anything, the Iraq War probably made Americans too restrained when it came to acting abroad. Kind of weird you're pointing at Syria considering that the mission against ISIS and protecting the Kurds was pretty successful until Trump decided to pull out because of his transactional politics that did not take into account the situation they'd be left with, causing one of our most consistent allies in the last 30 years to lose faith in us. You're also distorting facts by claiming the US "led Ukraine into war" overlooking the fact that Russia was the one who invaded without provocation, something they've been doing to Ukraine since 2014. No one is trying to start a war with China. China has been the aggressor in the South China Sea and Taiwan, an island that has been operating on its own for at least three generations and as a democracy since the 80s. Taiwan saw what happened to Hong Kong, they don't want that to happen to them. You're trying to throw up a lot of "what about" strawmen, but you can't seem to get to what you're trying to actually say, which is "Putin was right." I'm pretty sure the reason is that you can't actually support that argument.

They've been lobbying pretty hard, particularly during the Trump years. It's been pretty similar to their battle with plant-based meat alternatives. Here's a couple of links about it: https://thespoon.tech/traditional-meat-producers-lobby-trump-over-cultured-meat/ https://newrepublic.com/article/171709/inside-battle-big-ag-lab-grown-meat

I guess his logic is "they used to be part of the same state that doesn't exist anymore" and "a huge part of the country speaks Russian" I guess the same logic would make an invasion of Canada by the US OK in his book because we both used to belong to England and and a huge swath of it speaks English.

I've seen your photo. Now I'm picturing you with a meat cleaver and covered in blood. Seriously, we're talking about a couple of decades. Do you see yourself butchering or being replaced by a machine that can do most of that butchering for you?

You're probably more apt to catch a food borne illness or parasite from the meat you buy at the store than you would something produced in a lab that's just replicating the animal cells.

Well, you should follow that up with "because ...." Anyway, it's in the same vein as that food replicator technology on Star Trek. Are you saying you don't want food replicators?

Link: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/vaccines-cancer-treatment-could-be-next-big-advancement/

That's already something that's being worked on: It comes from this interesting article about being able to customize the meat that's grown: https://modernfarmer.com/2022/02/custom-cell-grown-meat/

I think we're probably still at least decade away from it being upscaled to a point where we can find it in the hot dog aisle at Walmart, but I'm pretty sure we'll get there within 20. The biggest obstacle aside from upscaling production is the various meat lobbies who are already coming out in full force against it. But, really, I think it would be a benefit for many farmers since they'd probably switch from breeding a lot of cows to focusing on breeding quality meat with fewer cows. Plus, the environmental impact, particularly on land usage and water pollution, would win out the debate in the end. I'd love to see most of that land used for animal agriculture be rewilded and human free, allowing wildlife to expand again. I don't have any love for western ranchers or southern chicken growers, the latter managing to stink up whole neighborhoods because they're given free reign to throw up their shit factories.

It'd be hard to do it through contamination because it would require a fetus. I think on the most part, the stigma of wanting to eat people will keep there from being a serious push for human meat. I'm sure there'd be a regulation put in place way before hand to prevent it, with the full support of the cultured meat companies because they don't want that stink attached to them.

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/lab-grown-meat-approved-for-sale-what-you-need-to-know/

I don't remember. Probably some shallow philosophical post that I was keen on in those rather lonely days.

China is more about the show than anything else. Most of its effort as a government is spent thought policing its own people. It's such an extensive effort that I'm sure they're worried that anything could shatter it, particularly a military effort that doesn't go well.

Liberal democracies don't need anti-Russian propaganda. Putin's own actions and words have been enough. Russia only managed to gain the support of six countries, almost all authoritarian regimes ... plus Donald Trump, when it came to a vote on the Ukraine situation at the UN. More than 140 voted against Russia. Russia dug it's own PR grave. I'm actually very curious as to what all this destruction Biden caused abroad. Can you give some examples of what country Biden has directed an invasion of during his presidency?