Miles O'Brien

I fully expect oil companies to convince governments to tax their citizens 150% to subsidize their new oil wells, just so they can continue looking for and opening new ones LONG after it ceases to be profitable.

It’s like conservatives and democracy. They’re okay with it as long as they can keep “winning” but when they can’t win anymore, they won’t change their behavior, they’ll stop using democracy.

I’d argue we already passed that point for both conservatives (in most major countries) AND oil company profits.

The cost of dealing with fossil fuels has been far outweighing the cost of using them, and has been for many many decades. If our species makes it that long, our grandchildren’s grandchildren’s great great great grandchildren will still be dealing with our mistakes.

They were already doing so, and this wouldn’t excuse anything Russians have been doing even if Ukraine had bombed the fuck out of the place.

It’s definitely a false flag (in my opinion, not actual confirmation by anyone as far as I’m aware), but not a very good one.

Well, putin orchestrated apartment bombings decades ago, so this isn’t too much of a stretch.

I guess he didn’t actually want to damage it though, since locals say nothing happened. You’d think he’d at least set off a grenade in the front lawn to make it more convincing.

Doesn’t targeting individuals for political purposes during a war break a bunch of international agreements or at least come close?

I’m not sure. That said, I don’t consider “ending a war” to be a political purpose, but if the “rules” of war say you aren’t allowed to take out the leadership, then the rules are “only the poor have to die” and fuck that classist bullshit…

And while your enemy being Warcrimes-R-Us doesn’t excuse your own war crimes, I think if your enemy is trying to genocide you, then you are within your rights to fight however you need to in order to not be genocided.

Genuine question to anyone with an answer: why the FUCK would ANYONE think drone-bombing the ABSOLUTE SHIT out of his residence would be a bad thing?

If anything, this just makes them look even weaker than usual. “we can’t keep this small country that we said would fold in 72 hours from making large-scale attacks against our country’s leadership” isn’t a great look unless you want to look pathetic.

I’m confused as to why they’re saying this like it’s some kind of “gotcha” moment that the world will somehow turn on them for.

I can only assume it’s because they believe Putler is somehow “above” the rest of us and the rest of the world should agree that you don’t harm the nobility.

Hey now those were TERRORIST KIDS looking for TERORIST FOOD because of their TERRORIST STARVATION

See you know they’re the bad guys because I called them terrorists.

You’d leave in a fucking second if you could.

Not op, but happily. In a heartbeat. Wouldn’t even have time to finish the conversation if it were an option.

And yes, they absolutely can be vocally pissed that a privileged old white rich man and his privileged rich kids will get to continue living much better lives due to their riches that allowed them to leave.

It’s like people here WANT to be pissed off at everything.

Lol

I’d love to if I could afford it. Neither my wife or I are particularly tied to our families.

“You have to protest!”

“no, not like that”

Think of it like when you know you need to have the car keys taken from grandpa because he’s an actual danger to himself and others.

But it’s easier said than done, especially when grandpa is surrounded by people who either refuse to acknowledge his bad driving, or actively encourage him to go out and drive.

Also grandpa is armed and there’s no guarantee that any of the people around him will stop him from shooting you and everyone in the neighborhood for trying.

And don’t forget that half your siblings are actively cheering grandpa on and calling you slurs for even suggesting something is wrong, and they are also armed and aching for an excuse to shoot you. Your own gun isn’t much use since you aren’t close to grandpa, and by yourself you can accomplish little to nothing, and you can’t reliably call your saner siblings to help out without drawing grandpa’s caregivers attention.

The whole government is one giant dementia patient and needs to be burned to the ground so we can build something better, but there’s no guarantee any of your siblings will make it or even be successful.

Unrelated, my mental health is great these days.

10 years ago you’re absolutely correct.

Now? Just one less barrier for fascists to do their thing.

In a way that will realistically never happen in such a large country that arms it’s police like they’re military.

I’ll happily arm up, call the people I train with, and get to work. unfortunately without large scale organization that simply isn’t allowed by the alphabet squads because “domestic terrorism” or any number of made up bullshit claims (any leftist/progressive group. see also: black Panthers) the only thing that would result is 1-15 people dead in the street. Or more likely their beds, because they got raided at 2am and the cops just dropped grenades on their houses/apartments.

I do love how much I’ve been seeing “.ca” users clearly advocating that the US go through another revolution/civil war/domestic disturbance that causes the deaths of thousands, if not millions.

Whaaaaat? Are they suggesting the United States would ever do anything to harm people? People who have done nothing to deserve it, and certainly not to the united states?

And then the US lied about it???

Noooooooooo, that could never happen… repeatedly… throuought our entire history…

I feel like I need a shower after reading that.

A hot one.

I’m a big fan of “you paid us to remove your shit, you didn’t pay us, here’s your shit/equivalent of your shit back”

I would agree if it weren’t painfully obvious the Russian elections that brought put in in weren’t heavily influenced by putin-run domestic terrorism and election fraud.

Wait, actually, it still is a good comparison.

Carry on.

So theft and extortion. I remember when those were crimes.

Why would you give water to a country that has threatened to invade you in recent months?

I love how when I point out it’s owned by a nazi, people rush in to defend their use of twitter and most usually it’s some form of “it’s the best for what it is/it has a huge user base” and me responding with a picture of musk doing the ol’ Hitler Salute saying “okay but you’re supporting this guy, and if you sit at a table with 10 nazis…” usually results in being blocked, people simply ignoring me, or saying something dismissive.

This is definitely what sane, rational people do.