Congratulations citizen! You have been awarded with a 600 FICO score for promulgating sinophobic nonsense. If you also prove that China is the Big Evil, you can get an additional 250 FICO score.

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I don’t think you see the irony in using the dead trope of “Social Credits” when an actual credit score exists in FICO and can be used to deny you housing, loans (and therefore access to education), jobs, and more. And if you think it’s just financial transactions, try looking at what companies like LexisNexis have on you that it coalesces into things like “RiskView”, or how much of a profile skip tracing agencies have on everyone. Then you have the profiles built on you by several government domestic (and foreign) surveillance agencies. And you have the profiles built on you by several big tech companies. Just because there’s not a single, unified, government-sponsored surveillance and consumer rating agency doesn’t mean the tangible effects of such disparate systems aren’t identical to what you claim happens in China (i.e., denial of services and access). It doesn’t matter if it’s 50 different entities controlling parts of the system if the end result is identical.

There was also evidence that these balloons had equipment on board that did not line up with what is expected on a weather balloon.

Do you mind sharing your evidence? Because that’s not what was officially reported by the Pentagon. It was reported that it had off-the-shelf components (i.e., exactly what you’d expect on a weather balloon), and didn’t collect or transmit anything.

Chinese spy balloon didn’t collect intelligence as it flew over US: Pentagon:

The Chinese spy balloon that was shot down over the Atlantic Ocean in early February was built, at least partly, using American off-the-shelf parts, a U.S. official has confirmed to ABC News. […] Later Thursday, Pentagon press secretary Brig. Gen. Pat Ryder said that the balloon not only did not transmit data back to China – it never collected any.

You’ll note that media still insists on using the phrase “spy balloon” when it was just a weather balloon. They even said as much, and they still use fearmongering phrasing because they know it serves their narrative.

So what’s the conclusion as to what’s happening?

As I wrote about in a thread a couple weeks back (here, here, and here), this should have been fine, and was fine on paper.

According to official statements it was going to be diluted, before release, to a level that was even lower than what Fukushima NPP put out while operational. Then it was going to be released at a rate that maintained this concentration.

Did Japan lie? Did it not dilute how it said it would? Was it a technical failure and dilution did not occur at the level they said it would, or was it released too fast at the dilution level they set? Was there not testing at release time/site?

Olga is glad that Russia has intervened in the conflict, and she indeed corrected me when I once referred to the Russian SMO as an “invasion”, telling me that Russia did not invade. Rather, they were invited and welcomed in. That does seem to be the prevailing view in Donetsk as far as I can tell.

Russia, Donbass, and the reality of the conflict in Ukraine

You can thank Meta for that. They sued the registrar managing several ccTLDs, including .ml, .ga, .gq, .cf, and .tk. Meta even goes so far to fabricate a conspiracy theory about the registrar being part of a cybercriminal ring; they feign concern and wreak havoc.

But nothing is falling, all of the temperature records are rising.

I see what you’re saying. I had taken the use to mean the situation is tumbling, not the temperatures. But upon a closer reading (of the title specifically) it seems a more reasonable interpretation of the word tumble is:

Climate records tumble,

The object of the verb ‘tumble’ is “climate records”. That is, the climate records are tumbling. A tumbling record is one which has fallen over and been surpassed. So what they’re saying by using the word “tumble” is: previous climate records have fallen over and been surpassed.

I do agree it’s a weird word choice, but I don’t think it’s wrong or even playing on a potential uncommon secondary definition. It’s not saying temperatures have tumbled, but rather records have tumbled.

If a condition is worsening (a “fall”) “tumble” applies just fine. Indeed, “tumble” is just a way to say “falling rapidly” in this context.

The reason “tumble” (and its notion of “fall”) is applicable is because the situation is worsening. If it was rapidly improving, nobody would say “tumble”; it’s not simply that it is occurring rapidly.

Common but disturbing behavior: investigating whether calling out fascism is a problem, but not invesgating whether fascism is a problem.

Punishing people for saying what they see.

Why would you reevaluate your position when you’re getting exactly what you want though? If you think he’s accidentally stumbled into fascist support, you’re blind. He’s specifically targeting fascist support. It does him good; I personally think he also truly believes in fascism, but either way, it does serve his goals.

Specifically,

The amendments pushed through by House Republicans included gutting diversity, equity and inclusion programmes at the Department of Defence. It banned flying pro-LGBTQ flags at military bases and ended funding for transgender-related medical services.

In perhaps the most telling reflection of the times, the bill also included a provision that would eliminate a Pentagon policy that offers time off and travel reimbursement to members of the military who must travel across states to receive an abortion.

Not being able to freely express yourself on military bases feels very Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: “you’re allowed to be gay and serve, but you have to stay closeted to do so”.

Somehow Israel is a genocidal imperialist government driven by blood and soil nationalism, and it’s supposed to get a pass for…handwavy reasons…

Well I’m sorry you can’t fathom that there is potential future value in old games. I even said that we can’t know the future value of something like this, so the safest thing to do is to just preserve them as well as we can.

Do you disagree with all of the explicit examples of ways it can be valuable that I laid out? Or do you simply want to assert the games are “meaningless” and ignore every way in which value can still be derived, or could be derived in the future, from them?

I suspect you haven’t actually thought this through and are just being antagonistic for fun; that’s how it comes off, anyway.

So why should the Library of Congress exist? Why should the Internet Archive exist?

“They’re books, who gives a shit. Most things are lost over time.” “They’re web pages, who gives a shit. Most things are lost over time.”

There’s value in record-keeping. People can analyze it on a technical perspective (like a literary analysis). People can enjoy old games (like reading a book from the 1500s). People can analyze trends in the industry. There are endless reasons why record-keeping could be useful, and you can never plan for all of them ahead of time.

What a meaningless “list”. The article even says:

Israel has never been on the list, while a Saudi-led military coalition was removed from the list in 2020 several years after it was first named for killing and injuring children in Yemen.

The report found that Israeli forces killed 42 children and injured 933 children in 2022. Israel is not the offenders list.

Hold parties responsible, but don’t pick and choose.

If we’re going to do this whole “your source is unreliable” nonsense, can we at least get some consistency? Attack the BBC for outright lies and misinformation and siding with moneyed interests at the expense of the rest of humanity; attack CNN for the same; attack The Economist for the same; attack NYT for the same; attack the Washington Post for the same.

Also, just because their editorial opinion differs from yours doesn’t mean they’re unreliable. Just because they “defended Bashar Al-Assad” doesn’t mean they are “fake news”. There are plenty of people in the world whose world-view does not align with yours, and they aren’t all lying and wrong. It should also be noted that if an article links out to other sources, then even if you don’t agree with the article’s editorial opinion, you can still gauge the truthfulness and form opinions on the subject by following to the sources.

Edit to add: In this specific case, we saw several news sources you are unlikely to call ‘fake news’ all report the same lie with tiny variations: NYT, CNN, and Politico, among others. What they said was so blatantly false, even the Pentagon denounced it. Cuba condemned the reports, saying:

Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio said the accusation is “untrue and unfounded”, arguing that the articles were “promoted with the malicious intention to justify the unprecedented reinforcement of the economic blockade, destabilization and the aggression against Cuba”.

Why would the USA do such a thing? Perhaps it’s because The Pentagon Is Freaking Out About a Potential War With China (Because America might lose.). Have we seen similar actions from these untrustworthy news sources in the past? Absolutely, NYT published an article in 2020 that, while demonstrably false, was still cited by the US House of Representatives Armed Services Committee and used to extend the war in Afghanistan; the Pentagon even admitted the report was false only a couple weeks later.

Before you get all up in arms that a news outlet from another country or side of the political spectrum must be spewing 100% lies, you should ask yourself why you are willingly to blindly believe the entrenched western media outlets, who have proven time and again that they are used to manipulate world events, manipulate public opinion, and are overall a blight on the average man’s wellbeing.