“Objectively” doesn’t mean what you think it does, and calling others childish makes adequate people suspect you are a teen.

You’re not the main character,

You are. You are also responsible for your own choices whether you admit it or not.

That is the most selfish possible way to approach life.

If taking responsibility is selfish, then selfishness is a virtue.

at least you’ll be able to vote again and you might actually get to negotiate for things that make people’s lives better.

They are already threatening you with Trump if you don’t vote for them and don’t want to compromise. So about that “you’ll be able to vote again” - I think that’s true, but since that threat works, that’ll likely be the same kind of choice over and over. When you agree to get owned for protection, you usually don’t get owned just once.

Selfish naive children.

For fuck’s sake, are you 16?

How can a grown person be that arrogant without knowing shit about game theory?

Voting for the party that is consciously using the other one as a boogeyman will enable someone worse with no doubt. They are both worse.

And before the actual ballots are being cast, the public opinion sending right signals to Dems would reduce that risk.

It’s my choice to make whether that is true.

Well, I had migraine. But it’s rather that your personality is a bunch of nonsense.

The first paragraph is not very readable, but it’s the least important one.

The second one - I think you could find it in yourself to understand it, so being dumb doesn’t excuse you.

The third one - I’m certain you understood it. You might consider yourself very smart and cynical, only you’re not.

Yeah, I’ve recently talked with my therapist about this choice between very slow, very hard work and sitting on my butt dreaming. And about the idea that it’s better to avoid action than to act, if I’m not sure I’ll act right. And how it apparently came to me in my teens, when I’ve been doing martial arts for some time, girls would smile at me often, and in general I thought I might be too stupid and happy and there should be something smarter. That ‘smarter’ was, of course, just another teenage idea of being wise and not like everyone else. Fucked up my life for a decade.

By the way, people who’d be removed and theoretical and talk about some imagined third movement created via some magic other than voting - would be called ‘idiots’ in ancient Athens. Because they are on the side of an idea, not real politics. Then it became a rude word.

Any such decision to try and find a smart shortcut, or that it’s better to wait and see how it goes instead of sweating, - are all wrong and are exactly what propaganda works for. Being honest is smarter than being dishonest. And voting for the party most fitting your ideals is smarter than for the lesser evil.

They’ll just be afraid.

Ye-es, but nobody in the West said so. Maybe if in that one moment things went differently, Russia would be at least a very flawed democracy today.

Russian Supreme Court in 1993 when ruling that Yeltsin and the parliament should both resign and have new presidential and parliament elections. Yeltsin’s opposition agreed, Yeltsin said he’s the president and it’s democratic and legal that he decides everything and sent tanks.

Since the US was friendly with Yeltsin, this was considered business as usual.

Those mass disinformation campaigns are being done by (sometimes “almost”) nation state level actors. Governments are going to counter only some of them.

As for my own opinion - in 2020 during Artsakh war there were a few Turkish immigrant events in European countries where they’d march, yell Turkish neo-Nazi stuff, yell that they are looking for Armenians and so on. I don’t remember governments of those countries (who are already in charge of regulating fascists on their streets) doing anything about that.

I think this is going to be the same here - a regulation is a price tag in disguise. Smaller actors will be barred from doing those disinformation campaigns, bigger ones or friendly with the right governments will not be.

Killing and splitting corporations is better, but the previous part about price tag is the exact reason they are not doing this. Those governments want to have bot campaigns of their own, to manufacture consent, to see what people are saying, to control the public discourse. They just don’t want others to do it too.

This is a toad fucking a viper, as they say in Russian.

I guess his PoV is that Xitter is his property, thus when he does whatever there, it’s not censorship, but when state demands from him to do whatever there, it is.

But his position would be easier to defend were he not Elon Musk.

Most of all about neo-colonial politics. Many actions presented as the opposite of that are in fact neo-colonial. Such as the kind of governments and forces and “recognized borders” all European and related countries (including USA and Russia) support very firmly (as in - helping suppress every movement contrarian to them with any amount of cruelty being allowed).

Well, thx, but I already have a couple of noname Chinese cables with braided cover (to avoid breaking) which seem to be as good as anything else I’ve touched, and were kinda cheap.

No strategy was involved in buying them, though, so I’ll remember you advice.

“This shit” was said in the context of a society exactly opposite to anglosphere, where being “poor” is an indulgence for violating every moral rule, every promise, every obligation and every law.

More than that, it was said about the exact people who are, relatively speaking, not poor, rather almost privileged, but are hateful and envious of everyone actually doing useful work, and consider corruption good because in their opinion a bureaucracy worker stealing something entrusted to them is “a respected in the society person collecting rent from their position” or something like that.

The profession of a schoolteacher in Russia pays shit, which is why 3 kinds of people want that - those who are too dumb for other work, those who are idealistic, and those who want to feel that they are important and powerful (power over children) even more than to be paid well.

There are more people of the 2nd kind than you think, but those were of the 3rd undoubtedly. 1st kind is almost extinct - it’s not hard to find a job that pays better, if you don’t want power over children.

I think it’s clear how the 3rd kind intersects with sympathies to sociopathic behavior, and sympathies for corruption and organized crime.

EDIT: Oh, I just realized you thought they were bootlickers and hateful of poor people in this memory of mine. No, they considered that BS to be good for poor people. Basically hateful of capitalism most when it’s many small businesses honestly competing, but thinking oligopoly and state capitalism would be better. They considered me to be on the side of some “rich” people who hurt the poor. While big company owners and such were not, because they are apparently doing lots of charity etc and are respected people. So the “rich” they’d hate would be the “middle class”, not the “boss class”.

Judges are not supposed to work for the majority. They are supposed to work for justice.

Justice in most cases means opposing political power (formal in this case).

Thus they should be selected in some way radically different from how political power is formed.

Sortition is one way, if you don’t want some entrenched faction reproducing itself. Would be better than US too. But still sortition from the pool of qualified people, that is, judges, and not just every random bloke who applies, of course.

I mean, Australians won’t care a lot after Europeans have scraped their continent

OK, where I live the price difference is not the same.

and you know it will charge your phone at the fastest speed it’s capable of

Are you really advocating for buying an Apple-branded USB-C cable?

That’s not surprising, but if that doesn’t change, things won’t get better.

You don’t want oligarchy and she’s on oligarchy’s side. Please remember what made Trump win the first time.

I don’t expect her to improve things at all. Only compared to what would happen if Trump would win.