I mean th US has fear of ANY socialist scheme. Healthcare is an obvious one. — I like sushi

Strictly speaking, that's bread and circuses, not socialism, but it's not true. Medicare is essential to the financial stability of every hospital in America. If Medicare withdraws support from a hospital (for instance, due to fraud or poor quality care), that hospital goes under. Medicaid pays for a wide range of health costs, and Social Security pays out for disability. My uncle had Downs and all his bills were paid for by his father's social security, so that was decades of care.

Obamacare is also alive and well, contrary to what you may hear.

But when you talk about socialism, do you mean government ownership of the means of production? Or is it more bread and circuses you're referring to?

An example of a country where a significant chunk of industry is actually nationalized is Russia.

I think fathers used to be more dictatorial than they are now. Martin Luther was severely physically abused by his father, but he just laughed about it. Those people were hard core.

That's what Trump has claimed a couple of times, among other things — jorndoe

Members of the US government have wanted Greenland for defense purposes since the 1860s.

He joined 9 years ago. This is known as a "zombie account" and reuse generally signifies that the user was banned and is now resorting to the use of a former sock puppet.

They'll get around to banning you again. Eventually.

You're @Bob Ross right?

He has said that Christianity is America's creed. — BitconnectCarlos

He said the two coincide in terms of values. Christian nationalism is the attitude that all Americans should be Christian.

Ad hom. — BitconnectCarlos

The people who are worried about "political Islam" are also anti-Semitic, homophobic, racist, and sexist. And they publicly praise Adolph Hitler.

It's likely to be Vance's Christian nationalism in 2028 if the Republicans win. — BitconnectCarlos

He hangs out with Christian nationalists, but hasn't claimed to be one himself, unless you know where he's said otherwise?

. Conservatives today are deeply concerned with mass migration and political Islam — BitconnectCarlos

The people who are worried about "political Islam" are also anti-Semitic, homophobic, racist, and sexist. They praise freaking Adolph Hitler.

Sure. But isn't that part of the issue though that parties seems to be radicalising each other over time. And congress basically seems to have become mostly ineffective as it can hardly pass any new laws that can really reform where necessary. That does seem to be an issue at a time the world is changing so fast. — ChatteringMonkey

The situation is definitely in flux. How do you see it playing out?

The US did still bomb Iran, Nigeria and Yemen outside of its hemisphere just last year. It doesn't seem to want to leave Israel and the middle east (the younger generation does I'm aware). And I don't think it can give up control over the pacific and the Chinese sea because losing Taiwan would mean losing control over most of the chips produced in the world. — ChatteringMonkey

I don't really see a coherent foreign policy in any of that, though. I really think what's been happening is that Trump gets briefed by various parties, and he renders some opinion. There's no collection of strategists looking at a map, thinking about long-term plans.

There is an initiative led by the government to boost domestic chip manufacturing. It's not like the US doesn't have the ability to make them. Manufacturing has been outsourced because it's cheaper. My guess is that will be navigated by the bottom line. In other words, when it becomes too expensive to maintain ties with Taiwan, the US will make more of its own chips.

The Monroe doctrine, focus on America first etc sounds nice in theory, and I'm sure many of the younger generations really would want to prefer that, but it seems to me geo-political realities would still steer the US into a more global direction, certainly as distances have become effectively shorter or irrelevant because of technology. — ChatteringMonkey

What I'm most tuned into is an abiding isolationism that's been pretty potent since the Iraq disaster. When Trump promised isolation, he was definitely playing to the crowd. When you asked if an empire can remain democratic, I was thinking of Rome. Rome's empire building was the result of armed aristocrats who gained financially from foreign conquest. The US works the opposite way. American aristocrats feel no ties to the US itself. They can just leave and be global entities if they want. So they use the American military, but they don't pay back into the system to reimburse the US government.

In a way, severing ties with the rest of the world would allow the US to recover from this situation. I'm actually thinking out loud, so criticize at will. :grin:

I would say I agree if 'suffering' is interpreted as 'suffering as we mean it in our culture' or something like that. Clearly, cessation of 'dukkha' is the aim of Buddhist practice. This is true whether Nirvana is merely the end of dukkha or 'something more'. — boundless

May I be free of suffering and the roots of suffering
May I be free of fear.
May I be free of anger.
May I be free of craving and aversion.

I've just recite this as a way to reset and enjoy the associated buzz of having a mind and body at peace.

I wouldn't want everyone to be that way all the time because humanity would disappear. I love this world. :smile:

Yes, but it is becoming a problem more and more. Not only does it make the US difficult to govern, — ChatteringMonkey

I don't think it's making the US difficult to govern. Most Americans are fairly sheep-like in person. They just want to feed their families and, so far, this hasn't been a big problem. At this point, I don't think anybody has a firm understanding of what the Republican party stands for. As an apolitical moderate, I miss the old conservatives. I understood them.

but it's also destabilising for its allies and the world to have wildly oscillating election cycles every 4 year. Can an empire really stay a democracy longer term? — ChatteringMonkey

I think some destabilization was implied by the end of the Cold War. The world has just been cruising on old ideas. Millennials are just now becoming old enough to take power and direct policy. They don't look like hawks to me. I don't think maintaining an empire is on their radar. And if you notice, neither Venezuela nor Greenland are about empire. It's about the stability and defense of things close by. If the US was threatening to take Denmark, that would be empire building. But there's no percentage in taking Denmark.

Since American foreign policy changes every four years, it's probably better to just react to events in the moment and forestall any long term plans (such as scrapping NATO).

The only way to solve the problem is to stop burning fossil fuels pronto and sequester large amounts of carbon from the atmosphere asap.
I don’t see AI coming to the rescue any time soon. — Punshhh

Do you think this might be a little closed minded? Remember, the way out of chinese puzzle isn't to pull backward. It's to push forward.

Eric Cline says the Iliad, the Odyssey, and the book of Exodus are probably memories from the same time period.

But what if AI helps us solve the problem?

I was aware of that, but again, if Trump actually seized Greenland by military force, it would be a far bigger deal than extracting Maduro from Venezuela. (Which, according to reports, is now undergoing a massive crackdown by the military and intelligence communities. ) — Wayfarer

In terms of the US relationship with Europe, yes, it would be a blow.

Taking over a failed state is a big open-ended mess, though. I heard the power is back on in Caracas.

I don't know if you meant to put this in the climate change thread, but it's true that an AI data center is supposed to require gigawatts.

I haven't looked far into it, but I know that a glass manufacturing plant requires megawatts, not gigawatts. I'm not sure why the data centers require that much energy.

Since the 19th century, the United States has made several attempts to purchase the island of Greenland from Denmark. There were notable internal discussions within the U.S. federal government about acquiring Greenland in 1867, 1910, 1946, 1955, 2019, and 2025, and acquisition has been advocated by American secretaries of state William H. Seward and James F. Byrnes, privately by Vice President Nelson Rockefeller, and publicly by President Donald Trump, among others. After World War II, the United States secretly offered to buy Greenland; there was public discussion about purchasing the island during Trump's first term in 2019 and again after Trump's 2024 reelection, as part of his American expansionism policy. Since taking office in 2025, Trump has threatened to invade or annex Greenland and engaged in hybrid warfare against Greenland. — wikipedia

I'd say so.

Squirrel seeks shelter:

Kripke specifically says the statement he's analyzing, ("H20 is water") is an expression of a scientific discovery (N&N pg. 128). Still, this is too foggy for you. I guess when he earlier talks about Kant saying that gold is a yellow metal, you'd object that Kant isn't asserting something meaningful because we don't know for sure what gold is.

My objections have been more around natural kinds as rigid designators, not proper names. Kripke's example "water is H2O" is about a natural kind. — Richard B

Gotcha. Do you think it's true that water is H20?

My main point with this example is if "air" can be non-rigid, then so can "water". But I am open to hear why one would think otherwise. — Richard B

Rigid designation is for proper names. We can use "water" as a proper name like this:

The water in the pool could have been more alkaline.

that bolded section can serve as a rigid designator because we know which water is being discussed. And here:

Water is H20.

as you mentioned, we can't assess this statement one way or the other until we know what the speaker is talking about. Once we determine that here, "water" is being used to refer to a particular chemical, we can treat it like a proper name.

So in all cases where we use rigid designation, it has to be clear which person, place, or thing is being talked about. If there is any confusion at all about that, we can't use rigid designation.

To use "water" non-rigidly, you'd just have to come up with a statement where it's not being used to refer to a particular thing, like

I'm having trouble keeping my head above water.

I generally trust the Brookings Institution more than a lot of other voices — T Clark

I think you just like the name: Brookings Institute.

lot more worse. — ssu

Despite ranking as one of the world’s top 15 countries in renewable fresh water resources, nearly 8 out of 10 Venezuelans do not have continuous access to clean drinking water and basic sanitation. For most citizens, the water they sporadically consume is of dubious quality or not drinkable. Clean water in Venezuela has become a luxury, and even with price controls set in place, a bottle of water is about $3, a significant portion of the country’s minimum wage of approximately $8 a month. — here

Am I not also raising a concern about the process of rigid designation as well? — Richard B

I think you're looking for some all-purpose meaning to "air" like we might find in a dictionary. We aren't concerned with that with rigid designation. We're analyzing a particular expression. We're just interested in what our speaker means by it.

It would be a shock to the system but not unexpected from Trump — Questioner

I see.

SO, this is all going to work out well... — Banno

Venezuela was already a failed state. How much worse could it get?

I'm Canadian, and though it would shock me it would not surprise me if Trump moves on Canada. — Questioner

Why would it shock you if it wouldn't surprise you? :chin:

:lol:

And now some words from John Dewey: "Philosophy recovers itself when it ceases to be a device
for dealing with the problems of philosophers
and beomes a method, cultivated by philosophers, for dealing with the problems of men." — Ciceronianus

Quantum physics started with Einstein wondering why iron glows when it gets hot. I think you'd tell Einstein to stop lollygagging and get back to making doughnuts.

After reading all this stuff about how Germany cracked during WW2, I accidentally listened to Strauss' Also sprach Zarathustra. It freaked me out

No, they don’t go beyond time, since they are inextricable. from it. They are incoherent without it. — Joshs

Nevertheless, Derrida's critique is about a tendency to ignore ABSENCE and DIFFERENCE in favor of presence, as in the presence of the color blue, versus the absence of that color.

The way that absence and difference are internal to presence what time is. — Joshs

If you mean presence and absence are aspects of change, then yes. But presence and absence go eat beyond that, so we don't have to confine ourselves to time.

This blurb suggests that it's not primarily about time. It's about presence versus absence. Do you have a quote that contradicts this?

Derrida characterizes as the “metaphysics of presence.” This is the tendency to conceive fundamental philosophical concepts such as truth, reality, and being in terms of ideas such as presence, essence, identity, and origin—and in the process to ignore the crucial role of absence and difference. — Britannica

. here

A reporter just asked who's in charge in Venezuela and Trump basically said the US is. We just freakin' annexed Venezuela?

Holy Sh*t — Joshs

Exactly.

I remember it as God pooping out of the sky. I don't remember a cathedral.