This very much depends on the subject, I suspect. For math or computer science, wikipedia is an excellent source, and the credentials of the editors maintaining those areas are formidable (to say the least). Their explanations of the underlaying mechanisms are in my experience a little variable in quality, but I haven’t found one that’s even close to outright wrong.
They may laugh now, but you’re gonna kick ass when you get isekai’d.
People root for underdogs.
And Palestine seems to be kinda on Russia’s side as well so remind me again why I should support them at all?
… Please stop agreeing with me, you’re awful.
Not trying to be that guy I swear, have you got a source? That number seems pretty high, even for Israel.
Those are phrases that get repeated verbatim as responses, which is the hypothetical reason they might be included on this (maaaaybe fake?) list. I’m actually slightly tired of them too, I have a couple students that really overuse them as responses to everything.
…Though I’d never be dumb enough to tell them that.
Sorry, maybe I’m misunderstanding. It’s just that none of what you’ve listed is inherent to the fediverse? There’s nothing preventing data collection of that sort by an instance owner, and claiming anonymity on a system explicitly designed around open ledger social media doesn’t seem entirely credible. There’s nothing preventing someone from including tracking pixels, for example, and your browser can still be fingerprinted and linked to your activity on lemmy by 3rd parties through a number of meta-analytical approaches.
I love the fediverse and there’s lots of good reasons for that, but I really just don’t think anonymity is a selling point here. Again, might be misunderstanding what you mean, if so I apologize!
Yeah it’s absolutely not true, everything done on the fediverse/activitypub is extremely easy to scrape (an unavoidable consequence of the design) and inevitably will be, if it isn’t happening already. Though, it’s true that it’s not being hoarded and since everyone can scrape it, it’s probably not being sold either!
(Apologies that this response took a minute, there were scythe-related hijinx)
While it’s not really a whatabboutism (since I’m not trying to deflect the conversation to an unrelated topic, I don’t actually want to talk about the Uyghur right now), you’re otherwise 100% correct. Explicitly, even! That’s the whole reason I said it, to provide an (ironic) example and to point out your response in a way that is personally unimpeachable. How did you react to it when you read it?
Damn, sorry about the OECD link - I didn’t catch that it was loading a cached page when I followed it. Public entity webdesign, what a charming thing. This one should be fixed. It’s a great site to get familiar with in general, really. An invaluable source for a great many topics.
Again, you’re not wrong and this was the explicit point. That’s what all that lampshading I did was about.
I’m not sure I strictly disagree here - I’m curious why you think the US is overextending itself? In what ways have we overextended, or what signs of that are you seeing that I’m not of a potentially catastrophic strategic overinvestment are present in the Ukraine war? I won’t argue that China isn’t making great strides geopolitically, that is patently true, but the gains they are making are mainly at the Russian Federation’s expense - China has moved in to support many regions that were once staunch bastions of Russocentric influence.
That’s not to say they’re not gaining ground against the US, but the US and China’s economies and development are closely tied together. Example: China is the #1 home country for foreign students studying in the US, in every university system with which I am familiar (which is west coast and ivy league I admit, I don’t know much about student populations in the flyover states except to say that Earlham and OSU both follow this trend the last time I checked) and we sponsor thousands upon thousands of our graduate researchers to Chinese universities in kind. The US has as well entrusted a great deal of technological advances, even licenses for silicon design technology and other secrecy-order technologies like ultra-high-yield solar panels (rumored 45% efficiency) (this is the only S.O. technology I know of to be acknowledged) to China, and that wasn’t even done for entirely hubristic or greed-based reasons. Realistically, China is the only near-peer power to the US, and (aside from that little whoops about russia) that’s been true for a long damn time.
Anyways, Cooperation between the two states would be beneficial for the whole world. If we can both clear up our issues with homegrown fascists, and oligarch worship we might actually be able to get a whole lot of good done for the world, especially now that Russia has effectively removed itself from the world stage (and now stands impotently in the shadows, trying to be menacing). Joint US/China projects are already some of the most influential in the world, extending this would be to everyone’s benefit.
Sorry, things are getting… dumb… here but I think that hits your major points. I don’t like to do full point-by-point breakdowns, since it just spirals into longer and longer walls of text if both parties take to it, and I already spend enough of my time bickering with well-meaning randos on this website. This seems like a decent response to your overall thesis, though?
Ok, cool! So you agree that the US should copy China’s approach of avoiding military entanglements like Ukraine and instead focus on peaceful economic development! Glad we got that cleared up.
Oh come on, you’re better than resorting to middleschool-tier baiting. We both know it’s more complicated than you’re presenting even if there’s no chinese boots on the ground.
That’s… the point. The time period is pretty old.
I think we might both be confused here; to my mind, bringing up the age of the data which is being used to address a historical point seems almost ontological. Why are we arguing about it?
Do you notice when you’re doing that? Constantly shifting the conversation to a new topic when you’ve been batted down over the last one, rejecting things out of hand that might go counter to your position instead of trying to at least understand the intent with which they were shared? Remember when this was about Ukraine, Instead of what you’re trying to shift it to, the moral relativity betwixt China and the US?
All those links are highly relevant here (I admit #2 requires you to scroll a little, and #4 is a database frontend so maybe it was unfair to assume you’d be able to interact with it), arguably the third link most of all (it shows a ton of things in that very compact table, individual donations yes and it’s a fine example of how China’s restrictions on extraterritorial charity affect their potential impact.)
Look I get it, you’re pro-china, but you’re just assuming I’m opposed to you. It’s… I mean, it’s the stereotypical reason why so many people dislike .ml users, you’re constantly coming in here and intentionally provoking interactions that you comfortably know the dance steps to. You personally are persecuting yourself, and it’s kinda embarrassing. Gladhandedly dismissing the other party, focusing only on the things you support, never reflecting on anything that’s actually said in favor of attacking in kind.
even if the US is narrowly ahead, it’s a richer country and it’s a much smaller fraction of the military budget compared to the same numbers for China
(edit:) Look you did it again. “Even if you were right, it doesn’t matter and anyways I’m still right”
Anyways, here’s a fun hypothetical example: I do not support China because of their ongoing public genocide of the uyghur people.
That source still shows the US ahead in the period from 2000 to 2014, but that data is pretty old at this point
Which data on that time period wouldn’t be pretty old?
characterization of their approaches
That was never the topic of discussion, I was never arguing US vs China, but I’m a nice person so you’re free to claim your uncontested victory on this point.
Didn’t notice there were multiple links, I take it?
Really? I certainly didn’t.
The unspoken implication there was credible people. Generally one can assume things like that, if they’re discussing in good faith. It’s like how I didn’t point out you’re so unfamiliar with this topic that you can’t even spell realpolitik right - it’s a minor concession made to ease conversation that costs me nothing. “The benefit of the doubt”, as it were.
“Whataboutism” isn’t a real thing and if it was, this isn’t one.
Oh buddy, no. Just no.
Oh boy. Only have time for a top three, so in no particular order:
… Literally everyone. China was aligned as a ‘follower’ of the Russian Federation’s geopolitical lead prior to russia’s utter stomping in Ukraine. Was it incorrect? Well, obviously. But the image of the great russian bear was the specter keeping the western world up at night.
A blatant whatabboutism but just to address it: The US will be fine (diminished geopolitcally no doubt, but still in a powerful position) after this all gets sorted out internally. We survived the last trump admin, we’ll come through this one too. This just isn’t the fall of the roman empire like oh so many people are claiming, politically it just doesn’t even resemble it.
I… what? We opened half a dozen hospitals in my state alone last year. Additionally, you know the US has been the world’s largest source of charity and investment in developing nations for decades, right? Look you’re repeating lines from some seriously anti-china propaganda here and it’s a little weird. You know about trump canceling USAID and why that’s bad, right?
There’s lots of things to criticize the US on (and it’s something I do all the time, lets be clear) but you clearly don’t know what you’re talking about.
when it’s the reason we can’t have things like free healthcare or higher education.
The reason we don’t have healthcare is fascism, not “military spending taking all the money”. We could 100% have free uni and healthcare without reducing a cent to the pentagon’s budget. In many states we even have (limited) free healthcare, entirely funded by state budgets. You’re just repeating bullshit right-wing talking points like they’re objective truth, but with a lefty spin on them.
You might have a point if the US were fighting in Ukraine, but… we’re not? We’re advising the Ukraine army, sharing intelligence we’d be gathering anyways and giving AFU a bunch of export weapon systems we found by rummaging around in the pentagon’s couch cushions. This has been a spectacular opportunity for the US because it costs us almost nothing, yet what used to be considered our biggest opponent is teetering on the brink of cultural and economic collapse. Seriously, even if Kiev were to fall tomorrow NATO would be no-contest the victor. Nobody cares about the bear any more.
But… Ukraine falling to Russia would strengthen the US’s military (and cultural) hegemony over the western world. If this truly was the rationale behind the US’s involvement in Ukraine, everything we’ve done thus far would make absolutely zero sense. Strengthening Ukraine and spurring investment into the home-grown EU defense industry only serves to weaken our position as the lynchpin of NATO. A better justification for US involvement in Ukraine is that this is a great opportunity to starve Russia’s economy by forcing them into conflicts they cannot economically support (which was much the same strategy that lead to the collapse of the soviet union).
I think it’s more that it’s hard to explain why palantir’s war crimes are war crimes (to the average uninformed voter, to be clear. Information warfare, what an abstract concept), but “My Child’s Classmates Digitally Removed Her Clothes” is pretty easy to explain (and the country isn’t divided about pedophilia even being a crime…)
It wasn’t even big news here, so it wouldn’t have been hard to miss if you weren’t following specifically usa political outlets. We like to hide all the juiciest drama behind the most boring court proceedings, because we suck as a country.
or… something like that.
Eehng… the fraud was mostly done against other rich conservatives & the NRA members themselves, so there wasn’t much of a way to convince people it was all the fault of liberals. Plus you can’t let everyone get away with it, so just throw the most inept ones under the bus occasionally and chalk it up as an example of conservative self-regulation.
People post this kind of stuff in the reviews for every kinky item on Amazon, I’ve never understood the compulsion to share your fic in that medium but I guess some folks gotta write when the inspiration hits 'em…