wpb
@wpb@lemmy.world
- Comment on The Art of Surrender 1 week ago:
That last part was interesting to me. Every president since Eisenhower, every single one, no exceptions (none), was a war criminal. Has any administration ever prosecuted a previous one for war crimes?
- Comment on it's a matter of motivation 1 week ago:
One of these is not like the others
- Comment on First Satellites 1 week ago:
Yes.
- Comment on First Satellites 1 week ago:
Not to get too “um actually” on this but Sputnik 1 predates Explorer 1
- Comment on 1 week ago:
The article doesn’t contradict what I said
Yes it does, read it again. It claims homelessness, not recorded, not perceived, not logged, but real actual homelessness went up for reasons other than “when communism fell, the government was replaced by beautiful honest angels who would never tell a lie about their own performance”, namely something along the lines of the housing market being privatized and folks selling homes without being able to purchase a new one.
Academic studies have shown that the Soviet Union in the 1980s not only had homelessness, but they had it at a rate that was higherthan what the US had at that time.
I’m not disputing this. I did have a similar conversation with someone about this earlier, who claimed something similar, and initially the “academic studies” they referred to were a listicle and an article written by someone from an institute whose mission statement was sth like “we’re here to write propaganda against communism”. I think eventually they found something that could more reasonably be called academic sources, but I’m curious what you’re referring to here.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Homelessness_in_Russia
Unless the USSR set aside some funds to have wikipedia run propaganda for them in the future, it seems that you’re wrong.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Why is the background smooth behind the swastika?
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
After the fall of the Soviet Union, every single ex soviet state in Europe (outside of Russia and Belarus) went on a spree to “decommunize” their architecture because it’s so soulless and terrible, and they’re better off for it
Their homelessness did skyrocket after the USSR dissolved though. So saying “they’re better off for it” kind of depends on what you value more, pretty buildings or housing people.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Tell me you’ve never been homeless without telling me you’ve never been homeless
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
I love this kind of thread. It always attracts some guy who finds it necessary to point out that in the USSR people had to endure the absolute horrors of having roommates. I think I saw him phrase it as them having “survived” roommates.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
When i buy games i rarely use steam to do it
I hate to sound like a debbie debater but anecdotal evidence does not really weigh up against the fact that they control like 75% of PC gaming distribution. And to re-iterate the point I made in the comment you replied to, the argument is that they control enough of the market so they could do serious harm. The argument is not that they control more of their market than other monopolies, like the energy providers, or that they control 100% of the market.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Ok sure. But just because other stuff is worse doesn’t mean you shouldn’t fix something. We don’t stop fining drunk drivers just because murder is worse.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
“Others could get a bigger bazooka” is also not something that would satisfy me if my neighbor has a bazooka.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
It doesn’t matter that it’s not your fault. If you happen to stumble into a situation where you end up being able to do immense harm, it’s for the good of all of us if there’s some mechanism that ensures that you won’t be able to.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
If my neighbor finds a bazooka rather than buy one, he still has a bazooka.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Let me ask you this: does it matter? Whether my neighbor buys or just happens upon a bazooka, he has a bazooka, and I don’t feel safe.
- Comment on 2 weeks ago:
Mandatory preface to prevent angry fanboys stinking up the replies: I like Steam. I use Steam.
Some folks in this thread are using American case law to argue that Steam is not a monopoly, or that Steam is a good (??@#!?!?) monopoly. They look at other cases, like Microsoft, and point out how far Microsoft had to go before it was considered a monopoly by American judges, and then point out that Steam is not as bad. There are two problems with that line of reasoning.
The first is that monopoly law has been absolutely gutted by Reagan, and worsened by every administration (dem and rep alike) up until Biden. In the Biden admin, Lina Khan has made some very small steps to tighten up monopoly laws a bit, but obviously Trump happened (although Harris was pretty much the same as the dems before Biden, so not much hope there either). The bar for being a monopoly is unreasonably high, and American monopoly law is an absolute joke.
Secondly, this line of thinking conflates legality with morality, or being good (enough) for society. I hope I don’t need to convince you that this idea is false. Slavery was legal.
The argument here is not that Steam is, in the current flawed legal American sense, a monopoly, but that it is a monopoly in the sense that it has cornered enough of the gaming market that it could do very serious harm.
Note that “they’re not currently doing harm” is not a great counterargument here. When my neighbor buys a bazooka, I won’t be satisfied by “don’t worry I’m not currently using it”.
- Comment on Why conservative men repeatedly crash Grindr 4 weeks ago:
There it is!
- Comment on Unconventional strategy. 4 weeks ago:
Haha your head is pretty far up your ass. No funding means no iron dome, no iron dome means no pissrael.
- Comment on Unconventional strategy. 4 weeks ago:
Ok, so I think our wires cross regarding terminology here. We’re roughly on the same page. So, when you believe something, you can put some probability on how likely it is to be true. I think we both agree that putting probability 1 is either mistaken or a lie. It is asserting that you’re infallible. And I think we both agree that asserting your infallibility is silly. So, to every belief you have you put some probability. If I look at the cat on the mat in broad daylight I will put 0.999, and I’ll put 0.99 if it’s a dimly lit room or whatever. In any case, despite believing the cat to be on the mat, I admit that I am human, therefore fallible, and I will assign some non-zero probability to the negation, namely 0.001 or 0.01. And here I think we’re still on the same page.
Here I think we diverge, and it’s just a matter of definition. I’ve been referring to that small sliver of probability of the negation of my belief being true as “doubt”. So with my definition of doubt, you will agree, there is always some doubt. Sometimes more, sometimes less, but it is always there. Let’s refer to my definition of doubt as “schmoubt”.
If feel like your conception of doubt is basically when schmoubt reaches a certain threshold, namely where you’re no longer comfortable saying you believe the proposition. So for example, we might dim the lights quite a lot, and maybe my schmoubt goes all the way up to 0.4 or whatever, and I no longer believe there is a cat on the mat. I’m pretty sure there’s something sitting on something, but my schmoubt for the statement “the cat is on the mat” is too high for me to justify my belief to myself. So clearly you believe schmoubt is real, but you wouldn’t call it doubt. What do you call it?
Regarding the funeral thing, I think you need to be a bit more critical of your analysis. It is perfectly consistent to believe in an afterlife but also be sad when someone passes. Because for the time being, you will be separated from them. You will be going at it alone, for quite some time in some cases. It’s the same as being sad your significant other will work abroad for a while. You will see them again, and this is temporary, but you are sad because you will not be able to enjoy their physical presence for a while.
- Comment on Unconventional strategy. 4 weeks ago:
Look up UN votes on various issues regarding Israel. We’re already there, and have been for decades. It’s just that the US holds the UN hostage with their veto power.
- Comment on Unconventional strategy. 4 weeks ago:
If your bar for believing something is that you’re 100% certain that it is true (i.e., a complete lack of doubt), then you’ve rendered the whole concept of belief useless as there is no proposition this applies to.
Me, if I see a cat sitting on a mat, I will believe there is a cat on the mat. But it might be that it’s a capybara wearing an incredibly convincing cat costume. Very low odds, but the possibility is there. It could also be that I was a bit careless in looking, and the cat is actually sitting on an especially mat-like section of the newspaper. There is always doubt. Sometimes there’s more (maybe the lights were off), sometimes there’s less (I spend a good hour examining the cat-mat situation, consulting biologists and mat experts), but there is always doubt.
Asserting you have no doubt is asserting you made no mistake in assessing reality, i.e., that you’re perfect. And call me a dick, but I don’t think you are.
- Comment on Unconventional strategy. 4 weeks ago:
Exactly, and the allied forces could’ve just not attacked the nazis. All Germany wanted was to be left alone. Great point!
- Comment on Waffle House: Pull up then. 😐 5 weeks ago:
This is advertising. Cute posts from corporate accounts are there for no reason other than creating brand awareness. You reposted advertising.
- Comment on the two party system is just one big party 1 month ago:
So, I hate to be that guy, but the dems get a chance every 4 years or so, and yet here we are. It seems that the democratic leaderships of the past haven’t really prevented the slow and continuous slide to fascism. And please do note that every dem president and candidate is more right wing than the previous ones. They’re sliding too.
- Comment on the two party system is just one big party 1 month ago:
He’s not saying that.
- Comment on the two party system is just one big party 1 month ago:
That would be a weird thing to say indeed. No one’s saying that though.
- Comment on Current events dictate that I post this. 1 month ago:
You know what bombs do? They kill people, indiscriminately, especially when you throw them on desnsely populated civilian centers that you’ve driven 100s of thousands of refugees into. What are you going to tell me next, “muh human shields”? Fuck off.
- Comment on Current events dictate that I post this. 1 month ago:
Because they always argue in bad faith based on a surface level reading of headlines. It’s always the same story. I see a “tankie” citing research, statistics, historical texts on one side, and on the other I see someone like you, floundering. It’s embarrassing, and a waste of time, because you’re not in this in good faith. You never really engage with the arguments. So what’s the point?
- Comment on Current events dictate that I post this. 1 month ago:
There is not a single good bomb thrown by Israel in history, just like Russia hasn’t thrown a good bomb in the history of the Ukraine conflict. The reasoning is exactly the same. Israel, like Russia, is the aggressor, the occupier in this conflict, since its very inception. It’s very clear from your comments that you don’t read history, and it would serve you well to be less confident about the things you clearly don’t really know about.