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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: September 15th, 2023

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  • There are two considerations.

    For the American government and corporations, Chinese espionage is an obvious and real threat. NVidia doesn’t want China to steal their chip designs and the Pentagon doesn’t want China to steal military info.

    For American private citizens, it isn’t really a threat. It’s actually preferable in a way, because you know they won’t disclose whatever they learn to the American government. You might even consider buying a fully “designed and made in China” device, which the NSA might not have a backdoor to.

    This only makes it more concerning to the American government, because they lose control over their citizens.


  • Also, having been on the other side of such a situation: it’s not cool to pressure or guilt trip your guests. Either be hospitable and let them do whatever they want, or don’t invite them.

    If people aren’t hungry, then they aren’t hungry. Maybe they are on a diet, maybe they misunderstood OP’s intention and ate beforehand. Maybe they are recovering from something and don’t want to eat too much.

    And as for the two that did not showed up. It’s a good practice to reconfirm the night before. Sometimes people forget. Sometimes life gets in the way.

    If they did reconfirm and still didn’t show up and did not have a good excuse, then I would start looking for better friends.

    Hope OP has better success next time. I do understand that the situation sucks.

    But it’s also a situation that, in my opinion, is preventable.



  • I agree with this take.

    AI will definitely make some white collar jobs way more productive, and thus change the nature of that work and reduce the number of people employed in those jobs.

    A good example is translation, where translators are now mostly reviewing translated texts instead of translating from scratch.

    This means the ability to read fast and take on the role of editor is what remains important in the remaining jobs for translators.


  • The only country that can be blamed for destroying Iraqi industry is the USA. Two decades of war, one decade of sanctions and another decade of war (by Saddam against Iran) sponsored by the USA in the 1980s.

    Obviously, Iranian industry will outcompete Iraqi industry at this point in history.

    Iraq needs to rebuild and they need outside help.

    I’m not gonna defend Iranian war mongering. And neither will I defend Turkish war mongering, or IS, USA or Israeli war mongering.

    But the only path forward for Iraq is by making peace with the two power brokers in the region: Turkey and Iran.

    And that’s what the current government is trying to achieve. The Turkey-Iraq corridor and the new port they are building are going to lay the foundation for their future prosperity.

    As for Iran, Iran is desperate for allies. It won’t be that difficult to find some mutually beneficial relationship with them.


  • It’s more-or-less geographic destiny that Iran and Turkey will become the dominant powers in Western Asia.

    They both basically ruled the area for most of history.

    The best we (the West) could do is nudge them towards human rights and peace and friendship. For Turkey, that’s mostly a done deal.

    For Iran, that was exactly what Obama tried to do. And it’s also what Iran has been trying to get for the past 25 years.

    Iran is inherently on a path towards secularisation and more dovish policies. It’s the threat of war by the US and Israel that keeps the defense hawks in power.

    Iran, especially, will never fully trust the USA - and for good reason. But they do want better relations with the USA. They just don’t want to get burned or bombed.








  • Hamas is trying to keep as many alive as they can.

    But (a) 2000 pound bunker busters don’t discriminate between Palestinians and Israelis and (b) if the IDF comes too close to the hostages, their guards have to decide whether to let them go alive or to kill them.

    In the case of the Druze guy, I can definitely see Hamas choosing not to kill him. But in cases of Israelis who also served in the IDF, the rational choice is to kill them instead of giving the IDF a propaganda win.

    And finally, sometimes the IDF probably accidentally kills them and tries to blame Hamas if they can get away with it.



  • To be fair, it’s a flawed argument.

    You can be against Google and Apple and still use a smartphone.

    You can be against a genocide being sponsored with your tax dollars and still work and pay tax.

    And yes, you can use the healthcare system that exists today and still want a different one tomorrow.

    Or do you think that advocates of universal healthcare are also hypocrites for using Obamacare?