jimbohn

Yes, totally a leap. Just check out the list of coincidences that Schmerika made in this thread. Epstein could have been a Nigerian spy as much as a Mossad one, am I right?

Who said the story doesn't add up? Things seem to add up pretty nicely. Mossad and FSB are the first suspects, given their history. The countries have quite an overlapping background among their elites, and it shows. Regardless, do you agree or not that in the US media it seems ok to point the finger at russia, but not at israel, when it comes to this?

As a European, I find it very funny to see how nobody in the US is willing to address the elephant in the room called Mossad. This looks more likely an israeli operation which sourced girls from russia and likely had the FSB as a customer/scratch my back I scratch yours/collab thing. I mean, most US politicians and the president seem to be on an "israel first" agenda.

Became used in some circles due to russians using the symbol "Z" for their new great patriotic war. It can be seen as an attempt not to lump all russians together, but instead to distinguish the pro-war group (which, if you like limits, tends toward 1).

Because most propaganda I see online seems to have a clear direction, and because of some not-so-recent "scandals" where a bunch of American influencers/grifters were discovered to be paid by russia to incite civil war.

When it comes to the internet, it seems to me that "the other parties" here carries a lot of weight when it comes to disinfo, polarizing propaganda, etc.

Same for me, these things you mentioned either felt like stuff for edge or "convoluted hobby project", with maybe some cv padding along. Perhaps we need to buy into the full ecosystem to understand the value.

Ah, I see, I misread the part about rate, my bad.

Just to be clear, I think you meant to say it's half the civilian casualty rate in Ukraine. Aside from guns, it seems like the Iranian government also pulled in foreign mercenaries to shoot on their own citizens, geez.

The whole European political elite and ruling class feels like a quasi-aristocracy (something the US is slowly moving into as well, with political dynasties and such) that is used to go to some big-name art/humanities place and then slide into the bureaucracy ladder. Totally detached people, and it's a pity because we really need Europe to be better.

Yeah, or even just protectionism. Most economists I've heard say that protectionism doesn't work, but I feel like China being quiet and protectionist in the infancy of its key industries was like the move of the century for them.

Agree with you on pretty much everything you have said. The background of policymakers in Europe really annoys me. Just to be clear, I wasn't glazing Iran or anything.

Kinda envious of them that, due to sanctions, they end up with hyperscalers. Europe will never get hyperscales while being too tight with the US, and any protectionism at the service industry level would make the US go more mental than it already is.

The problem is that programming logic/state is discrete and not continous so you can't assume similar behaviour given "similar state", and that possible states grow exponentially. Selecting the desired state will mean writing an extremely detailed spec that is akin to a programming language, which is what Dijkstra hinted at in the past.

Asking for an example is ill-posed, given that democracies are rather young constructs compared to the wider human history. Mind you, I am rooting for Taiwan, but I would expect something like what happened in Hong Kong rather than all-out war if the USA rug pulls Taiwan when it comes to support. Europe has already signaled that they won't do anything when it comes to Taiwan.