SoyViking [he/him]

I don’t know the details of how the US legal system works but isn’t a plea bargain essentially the same as a settlement in civil cases?

If so, it should (at least in theory) have very little prejudicial value since the courts did not rule on the question if Assange’s culpability.

I know that in the real world the US regime once again learned that it can get away with murder and journalists all over the world have already learned the lesson that the evil empire will fuck them up if they air their dirty laundry. But from a legal nerd point of view a settlement should be quite useles as a precedent.

Everybody will know that this is a forced confession anyways so who cares?

I vaguely remember playing it a little back in the day

Taiwan is China, even the separatist regime in Taipei agrees on that.

I hate to be a killjoy but I wonder how many of the people who answered “Yes the war has killed or injured hundreds of thousands of people and it needs to stop” really meant to say “Yes the war has killed [etc…] and it must stop with a negotiated settlement resulting in the unconditional surrender of Russia”.

In Danish we have “you can’t cut the hair off a bald guy”

I’m shivering imagining how cursed the content on the EU branded social media apps was. I’m having nightmarish visions of Eldritch horror levels of neoliberal cringe.

I’ve received checks three or four times in my life. I’ve never written one. As a kid I had a physical paper booklet for the savings account I put my birthday money into. The only way I can get to own a house is by winning the lottery. I remember when small shops had manual credit card machines that would transfer your account details to a slip of paper. I also remember when local stores would give credit to people from the community. I get low-key annoyed when I have to use cash instead of digital payments. My retirement plan is not to retire.

Yes. While cannabis is unproblematic to most users, some cannabis users experience substance abuse disorders that are hurting their health and social relations. They should receive qualified and empathetic care, not condemnation and criminalisation.

This is where the idea of “personal responsibility” is useful for liberals. Flatly admitting that they want a desperate underclass is too mask off for them to feel like good people so they invent a way of blaming individual victims rather than the economic system.

The poor has a theoretical opportunity to pull themselves up by the bootstraps so when they don’t do that it’s really their own fault. Of course that theoretical opportunity doesn’t translate into actual opportunity for most people but that’s fine, as there’s enough window dressing of meritocracy to make the opportunity look real if you are careful not to go into too much detail.

This is also the reason why liberals hate discussing real-world examples. Their logic only works in abstract thought experiments where they get to control the variables. Saying that everyone has the opportunity to succeed is a lot easier than saying that Bob, who has a set of very concrete and undeniable material conditions, has the opportunity succeed.

Wow! I’m so impressed with her immense moral courage! It is so brave to do the right thing only when doing so becomes less damaging to your career than not doing it would be.

How is the indigenous resistance surrendering going to end generations of apartheid and occupation?

It’s so annoying that being irrationality afraid of nuclear power is simply assumed to be a leftist position where I live, by leftists and non-leftists alike. No thought goes into it, nuclear power is scary because of nuclear bombs and Chernobyl and that’s it.

defend ourselves against Putin

Putin is going to come and finish the job for Stalin any day now. Just wait and see, tomorrow the Bolchevik hordes might be flooding into Germany, to eat your Dachshunds and turning the Oktoberfest into a vodka and balalaika festival.

Why would Putin do that? Simply because he is evil.

The only sensible response is to cut every social program to fund the construction of a German death star.

And to elaborate on what you said, liberals believe that the “stupid” people are the proles. The uncultured, unwashed and financially unsuccessful masses who deserve every punch the invisible hand of the market throws at them. Liberals simply can’t conceive of someone with a fancy education, an expensive suit and good table manners being a fascist.

Because they don’t want to live in peace with their neighbours. They want to conquer them, subjugate them and displace them so they can steal their land. That is the core belief of Zionism.

Aren’t “Israeli” people mostly genocidal settlers? Making that lot the poster children of Judaism is deeply antisemitic. Don’t smear our Jewish comrades, neighbours and friends by suggesting that “Israel” speaks for them.

I once read that when Sweden decided to switch from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar they didn’t do it all at once, disliking the idea of jumping so many days forwards/backwards (I can’t remember which way the Julian is out of sync). Instead they opted for a plan to move their calendar one single day every year over several decades. I remember the place I read about it saying that it just confused everyone and the plan was scrapped after a few years.

If you can’t use it for porn and you can’t use it to make pictures of powerful people in unflattering situations then what is the use case for AI?

You are either a deeply unserious person or you’re doing a very commited bit. I can’t decide which one it is.