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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 11th, 2023

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  • Yeah, it was both. The european brands avoided electric cars for a long time, while the chinese pushed hard for them. And because electric motors and car batteries were a new technology, this was a great opportunity for the chinese to pull ahead(everyone started from 0).

    And the chinese also used their cooperations and acquisitions(Volvo and Lotus are owned by the chinese brand Geely), in order to improve the conventional car making part production(everything other than the electric engine and batteries). Tesla followed a similar arc. Their motors/batteries are great, the other parts started as bad but they are improving all the time.


  • I was travelling within EU(from EU country, to another EU country) and in the layover airport, i was forced to go through facial recognition/passport check. This has happened only once and i think it was in France(CDG) or maybe Germany. And if i werent an EU citizen, i would literally have to go through a manual passport check, with long lines.

    To be fair, i rarely go through CDG and i never have any issues with german layover airports(which i have used dozens of times), which is why i think it was CDG.


  • Neither Europe nor the US can make chips like this, thats why they are trying so hard to convince TSMC to make a chip fab in their territories. Does this mean that white people are too stupid to make chips? No, they just cant atm and they arent willing to invest the infinite time and money it would take to reach that level, especially since their ally Taiwan(TSMC) is already making the most advanced chips in the world.

    China on the other hand needs to become more self reliant, especially with the new Cold War escalating. So they have to do it. And they are doing it. But it will still take a lot of time and money to be able to manufacturer modern high end chips.

    TSMC is taiwanese, which is “yellow” people. Why are you trying to spin this as a racist thing? Literally the best people in the world manufacturing chips are taiwanese(han). Why would anyone think that the chinese, who are basically the same ethnicity(han), wont be able to make advanced chips because of racial reasons?


  • It’s not sinophobia. Neither the EU nor the US can manufacture high tech chips, which is why they are sucking TSMC’s dick in order to make some chip fabs in their territory. It’s extremely hard and expensive to develop(or start developing) this. It’s literally the most technologically advanced thing humans make.

    And even TSMC relies on western companies all over their world for the manufacturing of their tools and tech. But since China does not have that luxury, they have to make everything from scratch and that is extremely hard. I am still not convinced China can make 7nm but remains to be seen.


  • Because manufacturing super high tech chips is extremely hard and complicated and basically only a couple companies in the world can do it and they also depend on parts and technology from other companies all over the “western” world. China didnt have anything near this capability. It requires advanced research and knowhow on a million different technologies. So unless China does extensive industrial espionage(which they are trying to do), it’s gonna take them like 10+ years to start producing anything relatively modern without needing any external parts/help.

    In any case, it remains to be seen if it is actually 7nm. With a new cold war ramping up, China is trying to become self-reliant as much as possible.



  • Turkey under the Kemalists is an example of a primarily Muslim nation at least attempting to build a liberal democracy.

    Yes, building a liberal democracy by using military dictatorships. When you are trying to force something on people that dont want it(at least the majority), thats when you get Erdogan. It might suck for turks living in Western Turkey and in cities like Istanbul, Izmir and Ankara but the other half of turks have a majority.

    And one of the fundamental principles of a democracy is that majority rules. You cant use the military to overthrow democratically elected governments just because you dont like their policy.

    However, i agree with your point, there are plenty of turks who selfidentity as muslim and are ok with lgbtq, etc, just like there are christians. Though i never understood how that works. Like how can the Church of Sweden participate in Pride parades. At what point something stops being christianity and becomes a social club? In the Bible is clearly says that homosexuality is bad.


  • yes I don’t believe the earth is flat or that lizard people control the world - but look back in history and think about all the times the “official” narrative was wrong. WMDs come to mind.

    The official narrative for the WMD in Iraq was that WMD didnt exist, according to the UN nuclear inspectors. It was the US that wanted to create an alternative narrative that WMD are a thing, with satellite photos and yellowcake stories. And this is why the vast majority of europeans were against the invasion of Iraq. I think only in the US, the majority of the public supported the invasion.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_reactions_to_the_prelude_to_the_Iraq_War

    Most governments opposed it. And even in countries where the government supported it, the public didnt. If your closest allies are telling you “this is bad, dont do it”, then maybe it is bad.


  • 500GB. I wanted to get more storage but then i realized that with 1gbit internet connection, i dont need it, i can download whatever i want in a few minutes. Fast internet is a game changer, it allows me to try and test games without thinking about it.

    I also have a 2tB hdd for media but i dont use that to store games.


  • Noone is using windows because it is cool and hip and i doubt microsoft advertises windows. People use windows because they work and do what they want. Maybe they could use ubuntu, but why would they do that? What does ubuntu offer that windows dont?

    I’ll tell you why they(including me) dont use linux, because maybe their wifi wont work(or they will have to compile the universe to make it work) or their favourite app or game wont work. And even if you could make a piece of hardware or software work in linux, the performance might be inferior because it will be using generic drivers, instead of the proprietary windows only drivers that the manufacturer has made.

    Ultimately, people dont care about open source or privacy enough, to sacrifice their convenience.


  • It’s not semantics. True, you can overthrow a government without a military invasion but doing a military invasion is much more serious and more “bad”. My point is that the US hasnt recently done the “more bad” thing(except for Libya but not even Russia gave a fuck about that), while Russia is actively doing the “more bad” thing.

    The expanding of NATO depends on democratically elected governments of sovereign countries choosing to join an alliance. NATO didnt roll tanks over those countries forcing them to join NATO. If NATO did that, i would agree that it would be a very bad thing.

    There are a lot of degrees of interactions between countries. Soft power, hard power, hybrid warfare, etc. Not all of them are equal or destructive. Just because Russia is currently doing the worst kind of interaction(invasion), you cant equate all negative interactions between countries to rationalize “but all countries are doing bad stuff”.

    Russia had very little soft power and with this invasion, they wasted large chunks of it. They proved to everyone that ultimately, they are willing to use military force to achieve their objectives. The fact that the US did/does it, doesnt justify it. Both sides can be bad and in this specific situation, one side is clearly in the wrong while the other side is supporting the “good” side(for their own reasons).

    Do you not think that we should respect country borders and their governments, especially when they are democratically elected? The whole “it was a coup, thats how Zelensky got elected” is bullshit that was started by Russia AFTER the invasion.

    I went back and checked the russian statements after the latest ukranian elections, where the actual antirussian candidate(Poroshenko) had lost. The Kremlin was tendative but hopeful since their main “bad guy” had lost. Kremlin didnt say anything about staged elections, didnt say anything about CIA conspiracy to elect Zelensky or anything like that. Kremlin was “well, at least that asshole(Poroshenko) lost, maybe we can find some common ground with Zelensky”.

    But Russia lacked the soft power to do that. So they overplayed their hand and used hard power to achieve it.

    the USA deployed troops for a “joint training” with Brazilian troops during (far-right USA backed) Bolsonaro’s government.

    I mean the US is training people from other countries and when it comes to Latin America, those people are usually far right. Is this a good thing? No. But this isnt as bad as invading a country. Again, it is a spectrum. There is a difference between Russia training for example people from Donbas(bad), or giving them Buk missiles(more bad) or straight up invading(most bad) or straight up going after Ukraine’s capital instead of just liberating/securing the separatist regions(you have gone full disney bad guy).

    This is what i am talking about Russia overplaying their hand. You cant really talk about “protecting the people of Donbas”, when you are literally speed marching(literally airlifting and dropping) to Kiev. You dont give a fuck about Donbas, you just want a regime change(through violence, against the democratic results) in Ukraine.





  • When did the last military coup in Latin America, orchestrated by CIA ,happen? I am not saying that the US is great but at some point, we need to talk about the present. And at the present(and recent past), the US is not trying to overthrow a government, at least not by using military force in Latin America.

    As far as the war in Ukraine in concerned, the US is doing the right thing, even if they are doing it because it benefits them. This is the only time since WW2 that the US is doing the right thing. Have you ever wondered why historically neutral countries like Sweden want to join NATO now? What caused that change?

    Mexico has every right to join the Warsaw Pact and i would be on Mexico’s and Russia’s side if the US invaded Mexico for wanting to join an alliance.

    Now let’s talk about how NATO is threatening Russia. How would that happen? If Ukraine joined NATO, do you think NATO would invade Russia? You do realize that Russia has nukes, right? NATO is not about invading Russia, it’s about preventing Russia, a big country with nukes, from invading smaller countries with no nukes.



  • Take robot or AI childporn as another example if cannibalism isn’t bringing home the intuition. It’s not harming children (at least directly) but it could reasonably be argued that it’s perpetuating and normalizing a violent and problematic practice.

    It could be argued but i am not so sure about that. You could start arguing about how “i fucked my stepmother” porn normalizes abuse but would you? I think these are philosophical or psychological subjects that ultimately have no real studies behind them.

    I’d like to believe that people are aware of the fundamental differences. These products are trying to appeal to non vegans who dont want to eat meat for health reasons. These people arent vegan in the first place. Is the existence of vegan meat equivalents make it harder or easier to convert these people into veganism? I think it makes it easier.

    It doesnt “normalize” abuse, abuse is already normalized. It is trying to change people and change takes time. In your AI childporn example, childporn isnt normalized and i could see AI childporn normalizing it and increasing real life child abuse.

    In the end, the animals dont care why they arent being killed. Me being vegan and not eating meat is as impactful as someone who isnt vegan and is eating a vegan meat equivalent. And this is the goal of veganism. Veganism isnt a religion, it isnt about purity, it isnt about you or your concepts of righteousness. It’s about reducing death and suffering.


  • Most vegans are against causing death and suffering to animals, not against how things taste. The abhorrent part is the killing, not the taste(for most vegans).

    Also i think your definitions are self limiting without a reason. Seitan tastes like “meat”, yet it is not. You cant just assign exclusivity on specific tastes. Those tastes can exist outside the realm of meat. But it is easier to talk about those things by referencing something that most people are familiar with(meat or sausage or burger).

    Would you be ok if we assigned 16 digit numbers to specific tastes and then used that number to describe products that have that taste? Is the use of the word “meat” that is problematic to you?