It may be a holdover from an aging stereotype. Not sure how the kids nowadays perceive east Asians, but in the 90’s it was definitely the cause of a lot of the fights I got into as a kid.

There’s a better video of a guy who is pretty clearly involved in organized crime, front kicking him in the chest, and then beating the shit out of his two friends by himself.

I’ve been waiting for him to go to Korea. A lot of western people still think Chinese, Japanese, and Korean people are a homogeneous bunch of meek doormats.

Korean culture is polite, but also very very angry if it’s not reciprocated. Plus, every dude grew up with a national sport that involves kicking people and then they have to go into the military.

This dude got assaulted by random Korean dudes like 4 different times and streamers put out a bounty on his head. The hilarious part is that the news stations and police are protecting the identity of the people who assaulted him, but have made him public enemy number 1.

Tbf I did say it was passed after being modified to hell by special interest.

My dude… The inflation reduction act is an amended version of the build back better deal. What are you talking about?

On July 27, Manchin and Schumer announced the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, the final result of these negotiations, surprising other congressional Democrats.[192] The bill, which includes provisions on tax, health care, and climate and energy spending, was introduced in the Senate as an amendment to the Build Back Better Act. On August 7, the Senate passed the bill on a 50–50 vote with Vice President Harris breaking the tie.[193] On August 12, 2022, the House passed the bill on a 220–207 vote.[194] President Biden signed it into law on August 16.[195]

Funny when it was the more neoliberal, pro-business dems that shot it down, shortly before leaving the democratic party.

Shot it down? The bill passed in 2022 after being modified to hell by special interest.

There’s really not a whole lot of corporate profits to be found in here, though

If it’s not going to be implemented directly by the state it means that it’s going to be implemented by private businesses. Those private business owners are going to walk away with the lion’s share of any money they accept from the government.

It actually raised corporate taxes, which is not a neoliberal policy position:

It’s almost like corporations aren’t a monolith of mutual aid and support. You don’t think Raytheon wouldn’t support raising some taxes if it meant they could funnel a ton of government funding towards the privatized military industrial sector?

I think the inherent problem with the build back better deal is it’s still framed within the neoliberal trickle down economics of post Regan America.

Would it have increased some workers protections and child care, sure. But it would ultimately be a gift to the shareholders and owners of corporations able to tap into the 3 trillion dollars of funding.

Americans are tired of progressive bills that vicariously improve their lives by further bribing the economic class that actually have their boots on our necks.

People are tired of seeing headlines that the American economy is doing fine while they struggle to put food on the table. Nobody cares if your bosses retirement portfolio is breaking records when they have to pull overtime to maintain the same quality of life they had 20 years ago.

I’m guessing they believe that the real estate collapse is a 4d chess move to entrap private equity. I’m also guessing they don’t realize the largest real estate developers in China are already state owned entities…

SOE are owned by the state, but they are operated just like any other profit seeking organizations, and thus are not immune to the same problems with private equity we have in the west.

My dude, this is what happens when you create an ethno state. Especially when you purposely conflate ethnicity, religion, and nationality into one stigma which you create organizations to define and police.

Antisemitism as it’s currently defined is in part a byproduct of cognitive dissonance applied at the geopolitical scale. You cannot claim to define Jewish people by both ethnicity and religion, and then claim there are Jewish people who are not not religiously motivated.

Eh, for a country that’s not in Europe, let alone NATO, they’ve done more than most. South Korea’s main goal is to counter North Korea’s geopolitical agenda. They’ve had laws on the books that prevent them from openly giving lethal aid to countries for decades now.

They are allowed to, and have circumvented this rule when N Korea gets involved, but they’ve done it in a tit for that manor. Sending shells through third parties to vicariously give lethal aid when N Korea “secretly” supplies Russia with rockets and shells.

This escalation from Russia and North Korea will likely be met by an escalation in a similar tit for tat manor. I don’t think they’ll send actual troops to Ukraine, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they ramp up shell production, as well as making the K2 tank factory go brrrr.

I think now that we’ve successfully prosecuted the Jan. 6th domestic terrorists, we can put this notion to rest.

Except that the feds had their kiddy gloves on for sentencing… Out of the thousands of people there only a small percentage have caught charges that drastically change their lives, and even then not to the point of treason nor terrorism charges.

We absolutely can and should go after these nutjobs threatening federal workers.

I agree, but I don’t see it happening any time soon. Not when the person who led them is still considered appropriate for the highest position in the land to half of the electorate.

Islamic fundamental extremism didn’t really find its way into Afghanistan until the 80’s. It was transplanted by the Saudi government who were in part supported by the United States as a way to counter the Soviet invasion.

If you actually ever get the chance to meet an actual Afghan family, I think you would be surprised of how kind they generally are, hospitality is a cornerstone of their culture.

I think it’s important to realize that the cultural identity of the Taliban to America isn’t actually based off of Afghan culture, it’s based off of the Saudi, and that the Afghan people are the real victims of this .

Mainly because after the pr disasters of ruby ridge and then Waco, right winged militia’s grew in numbers, basically using the events as marketing materials.

Right winged grifters love it when they are confronted, it fulfills all their fantasies about the underdog standing up to authority, and proves in their minds that they were correct the whole time.

Since the American fascist movements have legitimized news organizations that will echo their claims, it’s extremely hard to actually crack down on them without turning them into Martyrs.

The end result has been the federal government putting right winged extremists on the back burner for the last 30 years, allowing them to fester into the infection we know and hate today.

I fucking wish. At least then I wouldn’t have to be put on hold for 30 min just to have to eventually explain to a person who was hired 3 weeks ago how to do their job.

Private insurance always has you speak to an actual adjuster for authorization, mainly because they know any sort of automated system would be more accurate and faster than having you talk to their undertrained and understaffed employees.

Private insurance’s goal is to erect as many barriers between the provider and the patients as possible, and then blame the provider for all the barriers. It works every time.

“I have the best insurance, they told me it would be covered”. Nope, Medicare is the best insurance and you traded that away for a privatized Medicare supplemental that lies to you about your coverage.

One feels pain and has a brain.

There is no scientific consensus that invertebrates on the evolutionary scale of krill feel pain, and a ganglia isn’t exactly what passes as a brain in vertebrates.

That makes for a more complex creature which can feel more and experience the world more.

I think that’s highly reductive, especially considering that we continue to discover more and more about mushrooms. We already know that mushrooms are capable of learning, individual decision making, and have a short term memory.

We cant really make a qualified position of their complexity because we still don’t understand a lot about mushrooms.

Right now Brent Crude is just 71.28. Oil prices are going down.

Yes, and as soon as it gets cold oil the price of oil will rise once again. It’s not like countries are divesting from fossil fuels any time soon.

Additionally Russia does not have the technical ability to fix all of the refineries that Ukraine has been blowing up nor do they have the ability to fix all of the upstream production problems being created.

Russia isn’t a technologically deprived nation, and they have one of the largest oil producing and refining operations in the world. They may not be able to repair the damages with imported parts as they would have 5 years ago, but refining tech isn’t exactly a new science, or particularly complicated.

Productions of raw products is dropping fast](https://ycharts.com/indicators/russia_crude_oil_production)and those declines are going to both continue and accelerate.

If you examine that chart for the year it seems bad, but if you just click on the scale of 5 years, it’s pretty much just average. The important thing to look at is exports, which have been rapidly increasing.

O&G is not going to be propping up Russia’s economy for much longer.

I think that’s a bit optimistic given that the West is hesitant to actually enforce the embargo, and are equally hesitant to divest from the fossil fuel sector.

We just don’t have the spine to actually give an ultimatum of “you can do business with the US, or you can do business with Russia” to countries like India or China. That would be putting the interest of the nation and democracy in general, before the interest of private profit.

To add to what the other two commenters mentioned, it’s about intent too.

I don’t actually think intent is really important to the moral equation. A species going extinct because of over hunting, and a species going extinct because of habitat destruction are pretty morally equivalent to me.

The animals that die in crop fields die regardless given that the corn harvested

Is that not the same reasoning people use to validate hunting?

then some - to feed other animals which you end up consuming. Thus, it’s fewer animals dying overall.

This is getting closer to the ethical imperative question I asked. So it seems that the ethical dilemma is based on preserving as much life as possible?

If so, would it be more ethical to eat the insect as a protein source rather than the soy beans they are feeding upon? If the insects as you say are going to be destroyed during the harvest, would it not be morally justified to gather and eat the insects before or after?

My point isn’t to be pedantic or actually implement anything we’ve talked about. I’m just pointing out the internal contradictions that occur in veganism. Not to try and sway anyone’s life choices, but to allow for people to understand that it’s logically imperfect, and to not let perfection be the enemy of good.

Accepting for the sake of discussion (but not generally) that hunting is “ethical”, hunting is also a privilege. We obviously cannot all eat hunted meat for survival. You’ve no doubt seen the figures.

The sheer variety of produce we currently experience is also an unsustainable privilege.

Eating something with palm oil is also a privilege, one that destroys natural habitats and leads to excess carbon being released to the atmosphere.

I’m not trying to equivocate the two, but the moral justification is similar.

Here’s our belief system: don’t kill or hurt animals as much as is possible.

Right, but by what is the ethical delineation between say a krill and a mushroom?

What is the difference between lesser evolved animals and highly evolved plants or microbes?

The Russian economy cannot handle the strain of the war, and they can’t keep the economy up by being at war.

Unfortunately, the collapse is very slow. Their national wealth fund is currently their bread basket, and that is maintained by their energy exports. With the price of oil being so high, they should be able to sustain their current economy for a couple years at least. There will be shortages, especially in areas where they were reliant on imports.

However, from what I’ve read, oil would have to drop to around $60 a barrel to spur an economic collapse swift and bad enough to make the war unsustainable. That or the EU and US would actually have to militaristically enforce the energy embargo.