You’re assuming FB cares enough to have opinions on most things. It only cares about generating traffic. Spreading disinformation and generating echo chambers is only a side-effect.

If FB was losing revenue (through boycott or regulation) because it was allowing rampant fake news, the easiest thing it could do would be to hire a pool of people with Wikipedia experience. Do you have a better solution?

Yes, that’s not working so well, obviously. But there is a cynical assault on truth. It’s literally a 1984 meme today. We need to get back to journalistic standards for publishing news. For the most part, the hordes of Wikipedia contributors do a good job at it.

Because that be inconvenient for you?

Do not discount the power of sleepless obsessives. The volunteers at Wikipedia are compulsive about the rules. Facebook needs to hire them to fact check.

You’re tacitly admitting Russia got kicked out of the G8. And you know who has oil and gas? Ukraine. Guess where all that sweet, sweet foreign capital is going to be redirected? And probably Russia’s frozen foreign currency reserves, too.

The biggest misconception is that it’s uncontrollably dangerous. Yes, like all sources of power, it can be dangerous, if not used responsibly. Coal and electricity kill you, too. But the fossil fuel industry has been waging a disinformation campaign against nuclear energy for decades.

The truth is that France has used nuclear for most of it’s energy needs for more than half a century. The US Navy has run 1st generation reactors for even longer, without incident. And the design of the fourth generation reactors is built to be passively safe. Unlike Chernobyl, if you cut power to them, they simply shut off, not melt down.

Another misconception is regarding nuclear waste. Current fourth generation reactors use the “spent” fuel rods of our first generation reactors as their fuel! This transmutes them from isotopes with ten thousand year half-lives to much more manageable isotopes with fifty year half-lives. So the solution to the nuclear waste disposal problem we already have now is to generate even more zero-carbon power from nuclear energy!

Russia is offering certificates of ownership, rather than delivery. People being to suspect it doesn’t all exist, at that point.

Lol, are you rushing to sign up for a Russian back account? I hear the exchange rate for rubles is starting to look like satoshis. And China plays so many games with their currency that nobody trusts it now. Seriously, keep wishing as hard as you can, but there’s nothing better yet.

I think the point is, nobody trusts them enough to accept certificates. They’ll sell it – at discount – when they put it on a train and deliver bullion.

Those monopolistic practices have created a software ecosystem that’s dominated by their OS. They aren’t the only solution anymore, but they are still the largest.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/20/russia-bombed-mariupol-art-school-sheltering-400-people-says-ukraine

When will America get around to this?

Yes, the top 10% wealthiest (the West?) enjoy a life on the backs of the rest. That has to change, simply from the carbon output. How do you convince westerners to sacrifice their comfort? Thanks, Russia?

I hope Europe uses this opportunity to curb their dependence on carbon-based fuel.

I don’t understand how it’s clear the Soviets achieved “more than anyone else.” They might have, without saddled by an authoritarian government. But despite your constant harping about my lack of historical knowledge, you did know that their manned moon landing was cancelled after their N-1 booster blew up three times? Why? Lack of computers to control many small rockets at once. And of course, they’re timetable was determined autocratically. It wasn’t the threat from the west, it was the threats from their own government.

Lol. Where did you learn this history? Stalin regularly purged his generals for giving him bad news. Field promotions were cheap and easy to come by. Interestingly, this is why so many Russian generals have been “liquidated” recently. They’re right up on the front lines because no one else has authority or information to make decisions and it’s their head in the noose. Remind me, professor, when was the last time an American general was killed in action?

I think you should read Clausewitz again. NATO got Russia to break it’s teeth on an unaffiliated nation. That isn’t achieving Putin’s goals. It’s achieving NATO’s goals with a minimum of effort. With an image of a mad dog, Putin has driven fence-sitting nations to join the EU and NATO. All that’s left for Russia is to hide under the skirts of China. Checkmate.

Chechnya and Syria? So more war crimes, I’m afraid…

Consider how immature that is. “You better not stand too close to me, or I’ll beat up my next door neighbor!” The west is like, “Are you sure you want to do that? We won’t invite you to anymore parties and we’ll give him our spare guns…” Now Putin is crying that they made him get shot. An idiotic miscalculation of historic proportions.

Cheaters never prosper. It’s not creating security, but serfdom. All the lies, the assassinations, the war crimes have finally come home to roost. Because of Putin’s megalomania, Russia is now captured in China’s orbit. Great, now you don’t answer to western masters. Now, it’s eastern masters.

Seeing dilapidated the state of it’s air force, navy, and military the claim of 6000 working nukes is absolutely preposterous. I cry bullshit.

No, I said Stalinist, since he left a stain that wasn’t easily removed, even today. He did actually send Korolev to prison in Siberia, though. Imagine what the Soviet space program might have achieved, if getting sent to a gulag a daily option. Echoes of the past, as Putin threatens his generals with arrest for telling him what he doesn’t want to hear.

In the US, the space shuttle’s goal was to reuse expensive engines and thereby bring the cost per kg of payload down. This did not come to pass. The Soviets spent all the money to copy the same idea but never actually used it, because they concluded, as well, that it wasn’t economic.

The invasion is in progress. The results are unclear at the moment, but judging by how insistent Putin and ~~Lapdog ~~Lavrov are bleating more and more about peace talks, it implies the stalled offensive cannot be sustained much longer. I honestly don’t see how Ukraine can capitulate to demilitarize, given Russia’s repeated aggression.

Whining to the west doesn’t work. France walked a long, hard road. Vietnam didn’t complain about it’s plight, it adapted. India didn’t cave into the American sphere and look at them today. Those countries built themselves up, they didn’t try to succeed by dragging everyone else down. Russia’s current strategy is deeply flawed.

Russia supplies the world with a flood of simple to maintain rifles, sure. Older Soviet gear is always on sale, too, just like anything that wasn’t nailed down from that era. But night vision gear on Russian tanks is French. Russia just isn’t the high tech wonderland you imagine. You’re being thick headed insisting that any single country is self-sufficient.

Also, you what happened to the great Soviet stockpiles of nuclear weapons? They were sold to the American nuclear energy industry to power homes and televisions. The ultimate triumph of capitalism.

Yes, I agree you. I would love that we address the extraordinary power that Murdoch and Koch have accrued while no one was looking. Again, I wish Putin would act like a big boy, shut up, and sit down so we can deal with the real problems of this age.