Calling things “state-run” is giving too much credit to the organizational level of how any of this operated and fundamentally… why?

It seems more that all of this is because of the corrupted power that wealth grants people. It’s not just the money, it’s that money gets you through the door of so many places of power, and in those places are people who are both in the financial, commercial and state sector, because that’s simply where the power is.

There’s no grand scheme or goal with any of these people. Their perverted desires are common throughout all classes of society, but when you have wealth you have the power to hide it in such a way you can organize an entire movement of it. And with bribes and lobbying, you get whatever the fuck you want.

Further, if you keep dirt on people, that grants even more power.

I think the movie “Mountainhead” really shows this. It was criticized for ridiculing billionaires in ways that were over the top, but from those who actually have insight into the private behavior of the super rich and powerful, it was spot on.

If people ever seen a poor family suddenly being struck with wealth through lottery, and witnessing how they sometimes end up in tragedy as they cannot handle what that kind of money does to people, this is similar, but to people with much more control over their situation and better understanding of how to use that money. And many of them just lets lose in ways that are so immoral they could very well be aliens.

They are simply delusional, perverted people who’s headspeace is so fucked by their power that there’s nothing they wouldn’t try and do because they have so much power through the ties to other rich people and state officials backing them up.

It creates a web of perversion, with people who don’t see the population as people, but something alienated from themselves, “things”, so to speak. And so they treat people as things.

But there’s no goal here, there’s no real agenda.

It’s just corrupted infantile minds playing games with the world, personal perverted ideas being manifested because there’s no consequences at that level of society.

This is basically what led up to the French Revolution. If things don’t turn around and things change for the better, people will get fed up of being treated as things, and we will see some literal heads roll down the streets again, ridding society of these parasites who rape and plunder both literally and spiritually.

It’s not about state power, it’s about a global oligarchic aristocracy who don’t give a fuck about states, nations or anything but their own pleasure as they ride on the backs of the worlds population with a big “Yee-Haw!”

Ireland hardly fares any better. Probably worse in that we're highly compromised and dependent on American tech. — Baden

Isn’t all really a larger interconnected web of trade and ownership over companies established in many nations around the globe? While some nations have become more influential and important for others within global trade, even those larger nations depend on a lot of others to make that dependence work. A domino chain of dependence. Looking at the whole global economy in a reductionist way, it’s more of a complex web.

But now the US put heavy tariffs on most, which we haven’t even seen the full effects of yet as the consequences have just begun within the national economy in the US.

And since the behavior of the US have tainted their reputation and future prospects in international relations, and Europe is quickly looking at local solutions for replacing much of that current dependence; we might see a situation where the US, in the future, will look to amend the relations on more mutual level of trade.

And if it goes sideways, well, the US doesn’t have nearly as good of a national economy as people think, and if the AI bubble pops, that could burn the economy over there. If Europe have figured out a way to cover much of the dependence by that time, we would survive much better from such a crash.

The EU, right now, is globetrotting and speeding up trade relation deals that’s been in slow talks for decades. I think that’s setting up possibilities for bypassing the US and getting much of the base components and supplies from the sources themselves rather than through US products and tech.

The big question, I think, is what the US economy is without tech trade. If the others’ tech dependence is reduced, and most of the US economy, that is resting on tech companies and the AI hype bubble, goes down, what does the US have then?

Well, technically playing the market like that is textbook market manipulation at the highest level. It’s obvious he’s been doing it, he even said out loud “I’ve made my friends billions of dollars.”

And as always, the law doesn’t apply to Trump. If anyone else did the same, they would be getting decades in prison.

This is why I say that people should just start breaking the law against the government. Why should the people care about the law if it doesn’t exist and doesn’t lead to consequences? Through a basic Kantian perspective, Trump is universalizing breaking the law.

The people should be able to manipulate the market for their own gain and shoot ICE agents that shouts at people.

If the law doesn’t apply to everyone equally, then the law doesn’t really exist, except as a way for some to have power over others. In those situations, revolution is the only method.

Unfortunately, Gavin isn’t enough. The rot is deep, and it requires a rebirth of what it means to be the United States. The good people in the US are the few who’s never really getting traction because the culture is so infected with the neoliberal hyper-individualized capitalist ideology that people view it as a fact of physical reality. There’s no difference between Iran and the US in this sense, both are composed of some good people and the rest deeply and fundamentally having their head in religious ideals of a promised land. It’s just that for most of us in the west, the US have been close to our own values at the surface level, but underneath, there’s an indoctrinated delusion that is now breaking at the seams.

Bloody or not, a revolution may be needed to shake the foundations away from the delusions of old doctrines.

“This is what you voted for, so why are you questioning every decision he makes? God didn’t save his life so he could make mistakes. He knows what he is doing. Maybe it’s time to shut the fuck up and let him cook.” — Questioner

This is why people call it christo-nationalist death cult. Basically, there’s no difference between Islamic fundamentalists in Middle East and Christian fundamentalism in the US. It’s the same form of religious fundamentalism in which people are ready to kill for it.

If people actually dig a little deeper into the Christian culture of the US, you see the same form of “paradise” worshipping death cults that we often attribute to Islamic fundamentalists. Who fall to their knees in front of a self-made cult leader who’s just in it for their own power and narcissism.

The US will never become a stable nation until the cultists are branded extremists. The MAGA movement and the Christi-fascists need to be branded as such and the state need to ditch the connection to Christianity and become a proper secular government.

I’ve never understood how we look at the Middle East with criticism of their religious states and laws while the US is basically the same but with Christianity as its religious base.

It’s basically an outdated relic of a time when the church had the power. Why are we still doing that shit in the world? It wasn’t even true of many of the old civilizations that came and went, many of them were more secular than we realize. Many of the gods of pantheons were just treated as gods of stuff around the people and so were spoken in language, but were less in control over their society. During the Middle Ages, most of the peasants used folk lore in the pantheonic fashion and the church weren’t as in control as people think.

The modern US has tied the Christian belief to the manifest destiny with Columbia as a national Christian icon. It’s an all-American Christian religion that has been used for US exceptionalism.

And now, when the American dream is dead, and most rural areas are dying, people hold onto that faith more and more as a cult because realizing the bullshit that the US has become is too much for the US spirit. “The American dream isn’t dead, we will still manifest desitiny, we’re the greatest country in the world, we are the leaders of the free world, we are the chosen ones”—It all comes crashing down.

As I mentioned before, Las Vegas is the best analogy of the US. Built in the worst place possible, ignoring the climate and the low ground water; when you drive into the city, all commercial posters speak of “getting loans and credits” while going out of town the backside of those same commercial signs show “get legal help”, “want financial advice?”. The strip is filled with simulacra of dead empires, plastic renditions, fake skies, impotent sizes of real statues somewhere else, “why go to Europe when you can see Venice in an ozon-filled air-conditioned bunker? You walk down the strip as the poor are either dying on the street or dressed up as the king’s entertainment—and if you walk past the buildings’ shiny exterior, you see the crumbling concrete backside and peering over the parking lot for the working staff, you see their residences for miles; broken houses slowly decaying.

This is the heart of the US. A shiny surface that tries to fool people through its plastic polish, hiding a deep rot underneath. A rot that’s ignored by the working staff on the promise that they will some day manifest their destiny. Wipe enough tables from cocaine and saturated fat and some day you will own the stage in one of those plastic not-to-scale versions of a Roman temple, for the eyes of richer people eating a smash burger made by your neighbor while being wipped by some celebrity chef.

Trump is just a messenger of the rot. The US needs to absolutely fail as a society before its population understands just how rotten everything is. The nation has the potential of actually being a “leader of the free world”, because they already have the economic ties to the world, they have the cultural influence, but for it to happen, they need to lead by example and not just put on a shiny dress.

Prove to the world that they are the peak of humanity’s knowledge, prove that they embrace the multiculture fact that is the sum of the entire earth, prove that dreams are actually possible and that people want to go there to live the dream and that this dream is actually real.

For that to happen, the christo-nationalist death cult fascists need to be fought, they need to be branded extremists and disappear. The state and constitution needs to be reworked into a new paradigm, breaking off from Christian fundamentalism and into actual representative democratic power, based on knowledge and competent leadership for the people and international relations. The neoliberal capitalist experiment needs to be thrown in the trash and economic policies need to be formed in favor of the people rather than the capitalists. Lobbyists need to be banned from Washington, transparency and better room for the people to speak in Washington. Education absolutely free and the same for all, health care free for all, oppurtunities open for all, social support for the poor and homeless to help them get back on their feet, help for the addicts to rid themselves of addiction, free mental care etc. etc. etc. for the nation to thrive, it needs the people to thrive first.

Trump is the manifestation of everything that’s wrong with the US and for the US to survive and become better, him and all similar to him needs to be removed from having any power whatsoever. That’s not an opinion, it’s the cold hard fact of what is going on. They need to be removed, as well as all the similar political figures on the left who do nothing but speak tropes without action.

The US needs to grow a backbone, and not in the manifest destiny, Christian fundamentalist Trump strong man bullshit-kind—but the educated, morally exemplary, humanist and “for all mankind” way. And it can’t be a shiny surface, it needs to be the core of ideals and foundation of every land, town, and city. Of every person from the toilet cleaner to the university professor, to company CEO.

For that to happen, the US needs to collapse and die, it needs to be picked apart by vultures, excremented by them into becoming the fertilizer for the good to finally grow.

The rot must go.

I guess kicking off the tail lights warrants being executed by two agents firing multiple shots… and civil unrest due to what had already happened is justifiable. If laws and regulations are broken by federal agents, then why should the public take that like good little slaves? Going out and create chaos is justifiable, or else people can just bow down to the illegal state violence. It’s like people forget that ICE isn’t just breaking the law by shooting people, they break the law over and over. Why the fuck should people accept that? And why the fuck would any of that unrest justify execution?

The defensive whatsboutism about the ICE agents behavior, not just in this but in all areas is appalling and disgusting. There’s no ”sides” in this as if things were on equal standing, there’s the normal side and the fascist side. And I’m tired of hearing the utter bullshit omitting from the apologists of the Trump regime. There’s enough to warrant calling Trump’s regime fascist, we even have researchers on authoritarianism backing that up. So I will just say that anyone defending ICE and the Trump regime’s behavior will in my eyes be active supporters of what’s going on and through that be irrelevant to even engage with. Enough is enough, and I think the ones who agree should do the same. To stop feeding the attention addicts.

The elected King? Yes. — Banno

…and the system that enables such a king to be elected.

The US needs an electoral commission. But to do that it would need a public service that is not appointed by the president. — Banno

This is at the core of the problems with US politics. It's built on a system in which the power that can be abused is also the power who decides who's deciding if that power is abused and what to do about it. It's a damn ouroboros.

It doesn't take much brain power to understand that what needs to be fixed in the US is to form a government which has independent entities who all gets checked independently. And with that, a much stricter form of power that if abused will immediately render the elected officials unfit for office.

There's a proposed law for Welsh elections that politicians will not be able to lie to promote a candidate. Of course the politicians all call out that it would limit free speech, but it's the best law I've heard about for a while that's actually a proposition. There's no reason why lying would be necessary, and if politicians fear that they accidentally mislead, then, maybe... politicians need to be a bit more fucking educated on the matters they govern so they can speak the truth.

I think that democracy is dead, or, the form of democracy we've had in most places of democratic nations have become outdated. It cannot exist together with the internet, because the internet is a machine that takes lies and spins them out of control. It doesn't matter if it's intentional in marketing for elections or not...

The world needs to evolve democracy into a better form of it. It starts with removing the ability for politicians to spin elections with lies, manipulation, threats and fear mongering. To make "being a politician" a very hard job that at the top of the game requires tremendous leadership, intelligence and representative grit. We need to purge all the charlatans and bullshitters from halls of power everywhere. There can be some low level idiots as part of fringe parties, but to reach the top of power, there should be so many traps for grifters and authoritarians that they don't even get the time to lift a megaphone within a political sphere.

It’s really stupid, is what it is. Because Trump is 80, and he’s deeply unpopular. They’ll get wiped out in the midterms, beyond a doubt, and then Trump is out of office forever. Then he’ll be dead — hopefully sooner than later, but not long — and what becomes of this weird coalition?

All the precedents they’re setting will be used against them. Just a matter of time. And I look forward to it. — Mikie

But the democrats aren't doing well either. They're so out of touch with reality they can't even muster much opposition against what is happening now. Most of it is just politicians saying "we don't like this", but not much else.

The US needs a purge and rewrite of how their political system works. Because the system today will just invite some new Trump into office at some point.

What the US should do is to really use this as an opportunity to restructure the political system into having much more rigorous guardrails against grifters and authoritarians.

But the US population is either too stupid, or too apathetic to ever muster any such change, even after something like this. Slaves of the modern condition do not have the power, even if they are free to do so. They've been conditioned to not care.

The guy resisted arrest, obviously - a pretty fucking dumb thing to do. — Tzeentch

What was the cause for arrest?

Guy was carrying too. Like how suicidal can you get? — Tzeentch

It was a legal carry, don’t you understand US laws?

I never said it was morally justified. — Tzeentch

So what are you saying then?

What did he do wrong? So far you’ve amounted to him carrying a weapon, which he legally had the right to do. So, you are essentially making up causes that doesn’t apply.

Nope. Try again. — Tzeentch

Stop bullshitting, what did he do wrong? You said “play stupid games” about him, so what games did he play to warrant being shot do death?

Why can’t you give a straight answer to what you yourself claimed? Law enforcement can only use deadly force if it is warranted, so please justify what you’re saying and say what he did wrong.

Give a straight answer to your strawmen? Get outta here buddy. :lol: — Tzeentch

What strawman? You defend the actions of the ICE agents by pointing out that the victim did something wrong, i.e he committed some crime to warrant being shot to death.

I’m asking you what crime he did or what he did wrong. How the fuck is that a strawman?

Guy was carrying too. Like how suicidal can you get? — Tzeentch

He had a legal carry that he didn’t even draw or have his hands on. Just stop. The evidence is clear here and you’re just grasping at straws to defend unlawful actions by state agents.

So naturally I wonder, why? What’s your game here? Because this just feels like fascist apologist bs to me.

I'm not defending state power. Just stating the obvious. If you think the state and its various agents are incompetent, corrupt nazis, etc. all the more reason not to do what guy did. — Tzeentch

I ask again, what crime did he commit? What did he do to warrant being killed like that? Give a straight answer.

Arrest for what? What's the crime here? Please elaborate because you are downplaying this event. I don't understand how you think you're not doing that?

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2026/jan/24/alex-pretti-killing-witness-testimony

You are essentially just arguing along the line of what the Trump admin is saying, which are lies proven by video and witness reports.

You can unbunch your panties now. I never said it was morally justified. What I said is that the guy played stupid games and won his stupid prize. — Tzeentch

No, he did not, he carried legally, didn't draw his gun. He was filming them, legally, they had no right to beat him down, and they removed his legally carried gun and only after it was removed did they back off and shot him on the ground.

There's no stupid games being played here but what the ICE agents did. I don't know why you try to downplay all of this, what are you defending here?

Are you an American? — Questioner

I am not, I'm just generally opposed to obvious fascism. Especially when it starts to threaten our neighbors and us with supposed military action. Then it's not just opposition in general, but actually building towards Trump becoming an actual enemy of our Scandinavian nations.

Looks that way so far. I look forward to Trump supporters spinning this, or simply cheering on executions for resistance. — Mikie

I look forward to Trump and MAGA being labeled as an extremist violent group and dealt with accordingly. They've now flown a little too close to the sun. State sanctioned execution should be such a red flag that the national guard should arrest and fight back against ICE. Trump and his bootlickers should be arrested for sanctioning and defending these murders.

Actually, the people should just stop working, stop society fully in support against the government. If everyone who oppose this violence just stopped participating in society, it would fuck the government up so much. On top of that, march against the white house, demand justice, tell the apathetic and lazy politicians in Washington that if they don't remove Trump, they will be dragged down with him.

The US population should as a whole nation oppose this. But I've lost hope in the common people. They simply don't care until a boot is on their head. Well, that's happening now, so why wait until the boot comes to their door? Isn't one fascist boot too many?

Looking at the videos, it is interesting how the other shooters followed the first, a spasm of fear notable in other killings by groups. — Paine

They are violent extremists. These people are the low-lives of society, incel fuckers who are like children with toys getting approval to beat up or kill any US citizens they like without consequences.

This kind of thing was the thing the second amendment was made for, to defend against a power abusing government. It's basically in the constitution that the people have the right to shoot back in defense against ICE. It's just a matter of time before this happens.



Yeah, "could be", in that it could actually be a spark for civil war. It's never been this close. If people start arming themselves in defense of ICE, it could cause shootouts in the streets and Trump will never back off, he's too much of a narcissist being led by Stephen-the-actual-nazi-Miller and Peter-trying-to-have-a-Patton-speech-Hegseth, to de-escalate. Which means he could very well send troops and escalate if such a thing happens.

You may be underestimating him (or his advisers). I've heard a suggestion that the plan is to provoke serious unrest so that the Insurrection Act can be invoked and the elections suspended. Much as I admire Minnesota, it might be wise to save the opposition until after the election. — Ludwig V

Yeah, he seems hell bent on causing so much trouble that there's a real chance of major shootouts.

But, all it takes would be for the mentally functioning people in the US to just stand up against him, with the threat of violently dragging him out of office. There should be far more people like that than people supporting him. I'm just wondering when people reach the point of having enough and actually acting on it.

A bit of a stretch to call it an execution. Seemed like a classic case of "play stupid games, win stupid prizes" to me. — Tzeentch

You serious? In what society would you classify their actions as supported by the law? And if you classify their actions as legitimate in breaking the law, then why not just shoot every ICE agent attacking the people since these ICE agents are really the ones who plays stupid games here. Attempt some basic Kantian ethics to your defense of their actions and universalize their behavior, you see a pattern of fascist executions in that? How many more of these killings would it take for you to see clearly how immoral all of this is?

So the latest killing was a straight up execution of a man they pinned down. Video really looks like the kind of violence in war zones.

So now, there’s actually a risk of civil war or serious violent unrest. Trump is too stupid and narcissistic to draw back and the governor is calling for resistance, calling in the national guard.

If the republicans doesn’t back the fuck away from Trump now, there might not be any republicans anymore. They will all be considered guilty and there will be a reckoning for aligning with, and supporting Trump.

If this isn’t de-escalating quickly, it could be a serious moment for the US.

I’m listen to the speech now, he’s lost his mind. — Punshhh

He never had a mind. He's a mad king and has always been. The only reason we've not seen this is because he had adults around him who slapped him if he misbehaved. Now the bully is roaming free and has his bully friends around him. The population of the US obviously can't do anything to remove him. And if he attacks with violence, if he does something towards allies, well, he's to become an actual enemy and a legitimate target for other nations. If that happens, the US population might want to step aside and let the adults deal with him.

Laws can go beyond ethics and address procedural issues. Ethics are taught in family and society.

For example, an old man can't sleep with a 4 y/o. But they can with an adult. Let's use laws and ethics interchangeably. Why do you think we've all agreed to this? Let's assume the kid is his own and no community war will break out. — Copernicus

You argue like both laws and ethics overall was something that everyone just decided on overnight. Morality and laws grows out of society over time. Most fundamental moral values appeared organically over years of trying to find stability within social communities. If someone murders, steals or abuse a child, it has always had major negative consequences on the community in which it happened. And so people started to adopt values that forms the basis for stability in that community.

By the time a community grew so large it needed laws, those laws were based on those values.

And if we look at nations and cultures with practices which breaks against this basic idea of stability, they’re usually corrupted states in which people of power decide what’s best for them and not the society they govern. In those places, violence and immoral behavior becomes a norm only accepted by the risk of more violence and harm. If that society were to rid themselves of abusive leaders, they would slowly rid themselves of such values over time as the need for stability overturns the arbitrary ethics that were forced upon the people.

If we look at nations today which are considered free democracies (actual free democracies, not the US), the fundamental laws reflect the people’s need for collective stability. They’re a set of ethics which over hundreds of years have, more or less by blood, been arrived at through trial and error of societal norms.

Morality is just an extension of the basic instincts that flock animals have to form a stability within the flock. It’s extended into a more advanced form because of the cognitive differences between animals and humans. Since humans make more complex decisions and since humans are able to form larger blocks of collective groups, morality becomes more complex along the line of the complexity of human interaction. But it’s still based on the stability of the group and the stability of the individual psyche based on the emotional guidance it has for our interaction with others.

If we treat the complexity of us as an intelligent species and that all our actions and what we humans build and transforms in reality, to be part of our biological being, then morality is an organic self-guiding mechanism for collective stability and psychological balance of the individual. Arrived at over time through evolutionary trial and error. Our laws are only reflections of this, put into systemic practice by the necessity to govern a massive amount of people as a collective.

I think you're confusing ethics with laws. (3) — Copernicus

Laws are formed out of the morals of the people. Laws are just the most extreme form of the consensus of morals. And if laws are based on morals that only half of the people hold, then it usually becomes the focus of that time's politics.

Though, morality changes and shifts with time. It is not a decision made by a majority that “now we think like this”, but rather a defining set of values by a certain generation. A new generation will likely shift what is considered moral and as the older generation dies, the new generation morals start to become the norm.

I tried to use an overly ironic twist to it all. Because I think the biggest travesty isn’t that a monster is a monster… it’s that so many people in opposition can’t seem to do anything to remove a corrupt, power-abusing politician from power. If this had been any other nation, there would have been hell to pay for his actions. The US was supposed to be the land of the free, who had constitutional power to oppose an abusing government. It’s been the foundational philosophy behind most politics there.

Yet, when shit hits the fan and they get a king behaving like a child and wielding an excess of power, the exact thing the civil war fought against, everyone hides down. The US has always talked the talk, and this is the time to walk the walk. But everyone stands still, and they seem to have become silent.

Except for a few brave ones speaking out in the streets, there’s very little outrage where it matters. The rebelious police, the reluctant military, the whistleblowing secret service agent. The journalist reveal, the pentagon deepthroat, where’s the actual explosion of hits and shrapnel against him? And even with the few who tried, very little happens.

The constitution is a joke, a performance. It doesn’t mean anything anymore. Trump killed it. It’s up to the new US to decide by what measure the US should exist. A closed off authoritarian nation like Russia and China? Or a renewal of the US values, with an updated constitution which prevents people like Trump from taking power? To take power away from the dying neoliberal monster which destroyed most of the US, and make sure the nation is run by actual leaders and representatives of democracy. To form an immunity against the blight of power-abusing charlatans.

He needs to be removed immediately, but no one has the guts to actually do it. There’s no one right now who can argue against his abuse of power. He’s a text book example of breaking the constitution in every way that should matter. So the last chance is to remove him before he destroys the US further. And the ways to do this is diminishing.

The USA is fucked. — Banno

Sounds like the US is only Trump… maybe the rest are just slaves in his empire then. Apethetic or by will, they salute to him, and every single citizen stand by his side.

I guess no one will remove him, because everyone aligns with everything he does.

I wish everything I’ve ever hold in my hand would automatically become my possession. Just imagine how successful one would become. I could just grab the declaration of independence and it would become my declaration of independence to with as I please. Or I could just grab the presidential pen and I would be president. Together with the constitution I would own the nation.

Just grab everything… grab grab grab.

That's the difference between technological and scientific projects. Technology makes constant advances on top of existent technology in an ever faster cycle. Technological progress is driven by moneys coming from governmental and industrial sources because for the most part capital is required for man power to create the machinery of inventions. — magritte

But that is not true. The inventions and engineering done in scientific projects are often created to solve a problem with that scientific research. You're only looking at a part of the sector of engineering research, mainly that which is exclusively done within the companies which produce products in military and consumer application. The tech I'm talking about is tech usually created for the research, and which is then spread into the business sector, and this tech usually ends up being untied to a specific company. Just look at GPS, the internet.

Point being is that if we're going to the moon for scientific research, the engineering required to accomplish it may produce technology that will later find its way into other sectors, but if NASA designed it, it usually do not have copyright ownership as NASA is a research entity.

For example, I can access all files from the JWST telescope, the raw files and process and work with them myself. There's no copyright, I can even sell prints developed from them. Because there's no ownership of the telescope, it's engineered for the purpose of science and the only thing preventing me from also accessing the control of that telescope is that I have to propose a reason for a target capture within a framework of a specific research, not because they gatekeep, but because the cue for accessing and controlling the telescope is extremely long.

(Obviously, we have not seen any progress in philosophy or in the arts for the past 50 years) — magritte

That's a ridiculous statement. Not sure how you arrive at that conclusion.

The argument makes a great deal of sense when that research directly effects people's lives, as in genetic or cancer research done at small, focused laboratories and less sense when talking about mega science like the CERN Large Hadron Collider or manned space flight. — magritte

Yet, most inventions people use today have come out of large scientific projects as the engineering required spawned much of the technology we use today. So that argument doesn't really hold much water and the public are generally pretty bad at knowing that the thing they use daily came from something the public once deemed "unnecessary" to fund.

This is the type of argument that makes me cringe a little, since you need to just take one look at the enormous money spent in military research to find projects that are absolutely ludicrous. Like, how's it going with those rail guns?

One might believe that because the outcome of scientific research is unknown, it is irrelevant, but that's not how to view these things. It's the intention that matters. We aren't doing science for no reason, we do it for the betterment of humanity, to add to the body of knowledge that is our entire species, and through it engineer our way out of the cave so to speak.

For all the things we can fund today, science, with its miniscule funding already, seems like an odd choice to criticize getting funding. There are tons of other stuff in society that actually warrants criticizing getting money. But science is not really one of them and I don't really understand why that notion keeps popping up.

We spend more money on mindless consumption of AI slop and influencer nonsense than we spend on science, education and engineering.

“an expensive joyride for the ultra rich” and “nationalism”, neither of which are “good reasons.” Is there something that I have overlooked? — an-salad

Science? The main purpose of the mission to go to the moon is primarily for scientific reasons and to establish a scientific base of operations in the long run. The only reasons why ultra rich people are involved is because their pride and bullshit keeps a flow of money to fund these scientific endeavours since the public don't care about anything other than mindless consumption and politicians don't care about anything but maintaining their power.

The amount of money spent on anything scientific globally today is so small it's embarrassing. If we took just a fraction of the funding that the global military gets each year we could have solved so many scientific problems today.

Every time I see someone question the funding of scientific missions, studies, experiments, research, engineering or education I wonder how they arrived at that perspective rather than questioning so much else we people waste money on globally instead of scientific research and development.

:up:

The difference between advocating and analysis is often obscured by those who use "freedom of speech" as a tool to attempt bringing in a trojan horse of bigoted bullshit to a discussion.

If someone is unable to spot the difference, that is either utter stupidity, or just an act to keep the "freedom of speech"-shield up against any criticism.

Not tolerating the intolerant is an act to defend freedom of speech.

But I’m more interested in how the republicans will deal with him.

If they don’t, in any way, then the republican party is dead by becoming a conservative MAGA death cult.

How will the republicans ever be able to heal from this? The only way would be to fraction off into a new party for those who didn’t side with Trump. It would create a bad election at the start, but they could recover if they side with the democrats on the main mission to put an end to this cult bullshit. Otherwise, what will happen when the boomers of the old republicans die off leaving just the young cultists left; those who were brought up in the evangelical radicalist church schools who produce fanatics like a factory, and who tries to torture LGBTQ+ people into becoming straight.

If the US don’t become a fanatical Christian fundamentalist nation that the MAGA wants, then it will probably strike back hard at the fundamentalists in a way that breaks the nation in half.

The people in the mid-USA have nothing to live for anymore. It’s just a wasteland of dismantled industries that will never be brought back, whatever people believe about tariffs. They’re doomed to hate the regions of the US that holds up the economy. And they will hate until they die off. These people are the ones who cheer on Trump’s violence, because it’s their fantasy of striking back at whatever made their life shit. How will they survive after Trumps demise? They will be absolutely ignored once the illusion of Trump caring about them disappears with him.

Either the US ends Trump now, or there’s a risk of pushing the cult into becoming actual violent extremists. I wouldn’t be surprised if they end up becoming a major terrorist faction in the future, especially if they feel failed.

Then others can follow his lead and claim they don’t need to abide with international law to deal with him.

But it seems no one has the balls to do anything about him. That’s why I always ask “where’s the line?”. How far can he go without direct consequences? His personal military force ICE just killed a civilian and him and MAGA just blames it on the left. He’s constantly pushing further and further without real pushback.

When does anything blow up in his face? Because there are lots of people just constantly talking about “the latest thing” he’s done being the end of him, yet he continues further and further. The constitution doesn’t mean anything, the law doesn’t mean anything, international law doesn’t mean anything, people’s lives doesn’t mean anything. And no one gives a shit.

In any functioning nation, they would have arrested him months ago. If the government can’t deal with him, then soon enough the people will. History is relentless with examples of this.

if Trump actually seized Greenland by military force, it would be a far bigger deal than extracting Maduro from Venezuela. — Wayfarer

I really hope Danish and allied military gets to Greenland and defend against such a thing. Attacking Greenland in a way that leads to combat against allied troops within Nato would be such a diplomatic disaster for Trump. He would also essentially become a military target and invoking article 5 against the US would stir things up quite a bit.

If the opposition in the US doesn't do anything about Trump in such a case, I would conclude that the US is quite fucked and have a hard time recovering. But the real deal would be to target Trump with the international court. He wouldn't be able to go anywhere as a president, not anywhere that actually matters for a US president anyway.

I would love for all of these morons who infested the US and Europe to just fuck off to Russia like all the other authoritarians and morons of society. It's quickly becoming a cesspool for such low lives and I wouldn't mind putting up a big iron wall against that part of the world. Let them rot in there.

I think the credible motivation is that there was some real Maduro hawks in the Administration - notably Marco Rubio himself - and Trump was infuriated by Maduro's dancing around on television like nobody could touch him. 'That'll learn him'. I can hear him saying it. — Wayfarer

Yeah, seems plausible.., I’m constantly reminded that I give Trump and his idiots too much intellectual credit for decisions, when in reality most of them are just a bunch of absolute morons representing the most brainless slobs of meat walking this earth.

Rubio was visibly infuriated when a reporter kept pressing him on what it means that all the other enablers around Maduro are still in place. Trump might have been wanting to cut the head off the snake, but what if the snake is a Medusa? — Wayfarer

Maybe because most people think that the problems with an authoritarian regime is only the leader. That's only true in authoritarian nations in which the dictator rules his closest people with fear. But most authoritarian regimes are composed of a wide net of people who keeps all parts of the nation within the same grasp of power. Even Trump's cult following functions like this, with lots of little nazis and corrupt grifters handling stuff around him. Even though Trump and his people are so stupid and incompetent that I think that house of card would fall with the weight of tungsten if he gets removed or dies.

Normally, if something like this happens, the best way would be to let the UN go in and arrange an election in which the people in power have no power other than to just run the nation until the election is done. The idiots in Washington have now essentially just created a power vacuum at the top and if they don't get an election running fast it will be chaos.

But it's obvious that Trump is just after the oil and minerals for the AI business. Venezuela is among the wealthiest in the world in that regard. He just want someone he can bully into giving him all those goods. He doesn't give a shit about democracy or the people of Venezuela.

The best flipping finger that Venezuela can give to Trump and his cultists would be to change into a proper democracy that starts to do business with their resources at a high price in order to enrich the people and make the nation prosper as a whole. It has just been so good for Trump that Maduro were so authoritarian, it enabled an attack that could just pass as legitimate, even if it isn't. But a proper democracy that opposes the US imperialism? That would be a nightmare for Trump.

The political opposition to Trump hasn't woken up to the fact that this isn't a normal President — ssu

I don’t really speak of the opposition, but everyone who sees him for what he is. This isn’t really about political sides, it’s an about normal people against a cult leader.

The big irony would be if the Swedish sub that took out a US carrier during Baltic exercises… in the end took it down for real during an invasion.

With that said, the US military does have the right to reject illegal orders. Maybe there’s some intelligent brain cells within the US navy who simply will reject orders from that orange pig until people had enough and remove him from office.

I still don’t understand how far he can go before those with the power to remove him, do so. How many illegal things has he done by now? What does it take for the US to remove a president? Impeachment doesn’t work if the people who decide on it are part of his cult.

I really hope that Denmark invokes article 5 if they try to annex Greenland. And seriously push back against the US with military force. It would cause such a turmoil in the US that I don’t think Trump would survive it.

The features are:

1. AI Summaries (Topic Summaries)
Automatically generates short summaries of long threads, helping users catch up without reading entire discussions.

2. Semantic Search
Search powered by embeddings rather than keywords, returning relevant results even when queries use different wording.

3. AI Moderation
Detects spam, toxicity, NSFW material, and problematic content, reducing moderator workload.

4. AI Bot
A chat-style assistant that users can interact with. It can answer questions using forum content or general knowledge, depending on the model used.

5. Post Editing Assistant
Suggests rewrites, clarifications, translations, or tone adjustments while composing or editing posts.

6. AI Autofill / Autocomplete
Offers context-aware writing suggestions to help users complete sentences or refine ideas as they type.

7. AI Tools for Staff
Provides moderators/admins with tools such as user-history summaries and condensed views of long discussions.

8. AI Tagging / Categorization
Automatically assigns tags or recommends categories, improving forum organisation with minimal manual effort.

9. Related Topics (AI-powered)
Suggests similar past threads based on semantic similarity rather than keyword matching.

10. AI Translation
Provides instant translation of posts or post drafts, supporting multilingual community participation.

In other words, it's not for doing philosophy but for (a) managing the forum, (b) providing help to users ("how do I update my avatar?"), and (c) other unobtrusive useful things like summarizing topics, translation, and suggesting titles. — Jamal

Here’s my take on the AI stuff…

Good to have:
1
2
9 (especially if it can also be recommendations when reading a thread as to find related discussions and topics if you’re in the mood for a certain general topic to discuss)

Good, but in need of careful monitoring so it doesn’t skew anything:
3 (as long as it is reliable enough and doesn’t falsely flag people)
7 (as long as the AI doesn’t hallucinate stuff about members and discussions leading to wrongful bans or thread locks)

Should not be used:
4 (will most probably be hallucinating and convey bad takes and information. It will inhabit the problems of LLMs generally)

5 (Tone can be a power and a negative, but an AI constantly breathing down your neck to make everything sound bland will make conversations feel unpassionately uninteresting, it will make mistakes, might interpret an ironic harsh tone for being real etc. And it will more often than not interpret an argument wrong if that text is too novel compared to the topics it’s been trained on. Even if it’s just assisting it will cause a writing experience filled with constant interruptions by an obnoxious entity pushing for a direction it thinks is right, but more often than not will be negative for the writer. And clarifications are part of the dynamics of a discussion, someone asking for clarifications is part of the process of figuring out a topic together with others. So number 5 is more destructive to the experience than people think. People can use outside LLMs for assisting in modifying tone if they want to analyze their argument, but shouldn’t be ”on” by default on the forum)

6 (for the same reason as 5, NO manipulation while writing. And in this case it would risk manipulating the idea/intent/argument by changing the context of the text. Absolute ban on this on)

8 (this would funnel the whole forum into an algorithm that promotes what it thinks should be recommended. The whole point of this forum is to get away from the algorithmic slop of social media. We should absolutely not have an algorithm like this, it is death.

10 (This forum is English as the primary language. That’s not controversial and any translations is up to members to use their own LLMs for, it shouldn’t be part of the forum. It can also be filled with errors if the AI interprets something more complex than common texts. A very esoteric and creative text could be interpreted wrong)

———

In general, any AI use that change texts, guides you while writing or manipulates what’s being recommended/highlighted/focused on, should be absolutely banned from this forum. Those uses of AI is exactly what the forum rules on AI were formed against.

Any form of summarization, advanced searches or mod tools for spotting problems (but with the mod verifying, not the AI deciding anything), could be helpful.

But what of hate? We see so much of it, in the current political turmoil darkening the world. What is the evolutionary advantage of hate? — Questioner

Hate is the reaction of our narratively constructed world view having an immune system, rejection towards that which threaten it. Some of it is logical, much of it isn't.

You hate a person who killed someone you love because the act of doing so needs to be stopped in order to preserve the being of your group. Naturally, it becomes a way to defend against what could destroy you and your loved ones.

But the irrational hate we see is that reaction system going haywire because of the constructed narratives we live by. Someone hates the other football team, because it threatens the success of their own group, based on the fictional narrative constructed about this sport and this tournament.

The same fictional narratives exists everywhere; we construct narratives that define our entire sense of being and world view.

Why we see an increase of hate in the world is because social media's research found out that conflict gains more attention and interactions, so the algorithms pits two opposing views together to produce that drama, increasing hate. Two fictional narratives which collides into hateful behavior.

While shutting off these algorithms would generate a good neutralization of much of today's hate, the solution to hate in general is to find out which narratives are fictional and which are based in actual facts. The narrative based on facts should be strived towards as the way of life, being and world view to dominate and we should abolish narratives based on nothing else by constructions through arbitrary experiences.

It is mostly through these arbitrary narratives clashing with truth that we get irrational hate. But I see no problem with those fighting for narratives which are based on facts to hate those who operate on arbitrary ones or outright lies for the purpose of power. That form of hate is the "immune system" fighting against a destructive social construct.

Was thinking of entering the topic, but then I realized there’s a rise in these topics seemingly increasing on this forum.

And it just feels part of the culture war nonsense that tries to subliminally attack trans, gays and every other LGBTQ person in society. My opinion is that these discussions are very low quality for this forum. I’m not sure we should entertain the level of discourse that comes out of the rising hate we see in society.

If we’re talking about the science around transsexualism, how the situation is for transsexuals in society and history, if we talk out of respect for transsexuals, then that’s fine… but wrapped in this form of moral judgement is just low quality in my opinion.

We can easily have a civil discussion between each other who aren’t transsexuals, but a civil discussion that isn’t having insights and perspective from the people it’s about is seriously lacking in being able to have a qualitative level. If any in this discussion are are trans, that’s good, but it risks just becoming a bunch of hetero males discussion LGBTQ topics through a very narrow lens.

And I don't think I am alone in viewing the possibility in purely scientific terms. — Questioner

As do I, but we still run into the hard problem, that our imagination of another reality is dependent on the physical properties of our own, thus making our imagination unable to comprehend any of it. We can try and theorize it, but it will mostly boil down to extrapolations of how it relates to our reality, rather than form an actual understanding of the other reality.