Yes, I’m sure Chinese companies are losing countless millions out of their love for FOSS and this absolutely isn’t a strategy to stem the tide of investments into US AI companies.

Definitely a good time for anyone who can to shift to a decentralized grid less determined by fuels, particularly if they’re imported. Of course non-carbon power generation, storage, and transport needs replacement but it’s not as immediate. Say for example a country has sufficient solar, battery, and EV transportation and for whatever reason natural gas and fuel is not around, the country can still function for years before a battery shortage becomes dire. In the case of fuel power generation, and transport things can come to a halt overnight if ever for whatever reason there is a fuel shortage.

US politicians are cheaper than you might think.

Intel != Missiles. Passing intel, giving loans, even giving arms is not a direct attack from country A against country B. These games are very old, older than these nations. As you have pointed out these actions are taken on both sides, these aren’t the same as the US blowing up a Chinese fishing boat or Russia bowing up a US comms satellite or Pakistan launching missiles at an indian oil refinery and so on. One is bullshit nations do that does not consecrate a definite act of war, and the other is an actual act of war.

That said people will actually strike with the argument that their enemy was playing those games even though most of the time they were as well but it’s good when they play those games and bad when their enemy does, so goes the bullshit logic of conflict.

With the wider context of the recent deployment of “totally not space weapons but they could be used that way” I think there is more to the story. Also what is China’s involvement in Ukraine?

They have been playing around with jamming GPS. Maybe they are warming up for a preemptive strike? Test reaction times, play around with downing satellite comms, taking out infrastructure with emp or sleeping malware like stuxnet. Essentially set up a strike and stop any retaliation, a one shot kill. I think everyone is still thankfully resistant to using nukes and MAD.

Yes but also no. That would essentially be an open and direct act of aggression. May as well lay out a fat welcome mat and send an invitation to kick off WWIII

Yup, it’s interesting how public this all is in contrast to the Manhattan project.

The Chinese fishing fleet is pretty renowned for causing issues with fishing globally. I can’t think of anyone else really on that level.

They’re not the only ones. Chinese (and other) fishing fleets sure do have an issue with their transponder going out for a while. Aka going radio silent and fishing where they shouldn’t be, particularly in countries waters who don’t have the means to stop them.

That would make sense if the Russians are assuming they will never take that land. Then again they are extremely famous for being the meat grinder in warfare aka they will sacrifice 10K soldiers just to take out a few hundred of their enemy so maybe they are more so committing to clearing up these biohazards with their own people in the situation where they take the land.

Sidebar I’m ruined by the internet and the word goon no longer means what it once did.

The problem with most ideologies is people getting too fanatical and even if it’s hidden it’ll come out eventually. You can fool some of the people some of the time but not all the people all the time. Another issue with fanaticism is it has diminishing outcomes. Look at how maga is now harming the right wing voting base. Sure it works for a little while but it’s too hot, eventually it burns the hand holding it. At the end of the day every last person on earth wants the same thing, wellbeing for themselves and their loved ones. Whoever gives them that will win their vote. Fanaticism has a way of ultimately diminishing wellbeing.

Cool, let’s see how she uses her position to improve the lives of her constituents. It’s a big moment for a few people to really sell an idea particularly against large amounts of dissent and apprehension. That means they don’t need to be normal or good, they need to be stellar. Society is a numbers game and to win the game you need to win the minds and hearts of the majority and that’s done by being consistently awesome and doing awesome shit. As much as humans play games, meritocracy is still there aka no matter how much people dislike you, if you’re awesome enough for long enough they will love you.

I’m sure there’s some coal but the amount of gas is quite substantial. Unfortunately Russia now only has one way forward, they must take the eastern region of Ukraine at almost any cost. The US is now in an equally bad shit show with Iran. There is no case where they win but they will not accept a complete loss. It’s kinda basic game theory and human behavior, a sunken cost needs to be justified even if you’re still losing globally.

It’s going to be tough for Russia to financially justify this war. If they concede now it’s a massive loss. I’m guessing they’re after those absolutely massive gas deposits in the eastern region which were threatening their energy hold on the EU.

They’re in a bad position long-term. I get him trying to bring back some Soviet glory but didn’t work out the way they expected. Now the only sliver of hope they have is snagging up those natural gas fields in Eastern Ukraine.

Cool, they’ve been through a lot. I hope their new government does a lot of awesome stuff for them.

Who’s to say the issue was necessarily with the server. Dishes being dirty, or the food having issues wouldn’t be their fault. Also your assumption does really depend on the restaurant and how they manage tipping.

My issue isn’t with the service staff, it’s with business owners who are increasingly abusing their workers by offloading their pay onto tips. I mainly fight this by just not eating out or eating out at places where tipping isn’t customary. Also for what it’s worth I only stay stateside a portion of the year, where else I stay tipping is unusual, not unheard of but definitely not a common thing people do. So in the end instead of 15% they get 0% because I didn’t go out to eat and of course the business owner gets $0.