There are 2 things they are trying to do here IMO:

• They are using tariffs to bully weaker countries into worse deals and to interfere in our politics. Here in Colombia the media (all right wing lapdogs) keep talking how president Petro needs to bend the knee and just acept whatever Trump wants to do because it would be so bad for Colombia if we get extra tariffs. And they keep spewing propaganda making it sound like Petro is the one being crazy to kill any remaining support he has (not that he needs any help jajajaja, he has been a really mediocre president on his own and the extreme right is going to get an easy win next election anyway). They are not wrong of course, a trade war between Colombia and USA would hurt Colombia so much more than the USA just because of the relative size of our economies. And Trump and the rest of the republican assholes are using this to bully us and the rest of latin american countries.
• They want to reshape the tax collection in USA to remove taxes from rich people and collect more from poor people. At the end of the day, blanket tariffs on all products is just another regressive sales tax that will fall mostly on poor people. They want to reduce wealth taxes and income taxes which are collected mostly on rich people and instead replace them with regressive taxes like tariffs instead. I mean, his recemt tax changes shifted a huge amount of the tax burden away from the rich and to the poor and middle classes. If you want to put a conspiracy hat, they also think this will create a population boom in the USA. Research shows that people under worse economic conditions have more children, so they want to make life harder to poor people to get more and cheaper workers. At the very least the Musk rat has spoken openly about this, so it’s not crazy to think this is part of their stupid plan.

Long term, the USA is royally fucked because of this. They are killing any good will the USA has with the rest of the world and they are screwing the poor people that actully generate the wealth of their country. But short term rich people will make bank with all this and the rest of us will pay for it.

As to why he is being downvoted, my experience in lemmy has shown me that people here are incredibly sensitive to rudeness (maybe this applies to other social networks, I wouldn’t know). It’s very common to see interactions like this, a person says something awful but they say it in a polite way. Then, someone who understands the awfulness replies with something like “wtf, this shit is awful because …” and they get downvoted even though they are right because they weren’t polite. And the most people just follow the number, like lemmings hahaha. Social networks are just awful to have meaningful conversations I guess.

As to the topic at hand, a part of me kind of misses the pandemic. Of course, the rational part of me understand that this is irrational and another pandemic would be awful. Specially because I lucked out in the last one and me and my family were all ok, but who knows what will happen in the next one. It would be incredibly dumb for me, or anyone, to wish for another one.

But it’s hard not to miss some aspects of the pandemic, specially now that people in charge are forcing all of us to return to the status quo by force and coercion. For example, for me (an autistic person, though luckily I can mask very well) the silence during the pandemic was just life changing. Before then, I didn’t realize just how noisy cars are and how much stress this adds to my life. It’s hard for me to express just how much enjoyable my day to day was just because of that.

And here we are today, as a type this from my home I only hear car after car after car and it’s incredibly annoying and incredibly exhausting. For me, it literally takes order of magnitude more energy and will power to get through my day now. And this is from my home, when I’m forced to go to an office or any other place is just so much worse. And I just have to suck it up and deal with it, society will just not accomodate for me because for most people this is not an issue.

And that’s why you get a lot of people kind of wishing for another pandemic. For a lot of us, it was literally the first time that we saw a society that accomodated us like it accomodates normal people and it was just life changing. Of course, I don’t wish for another pandemic. The amount of suffering it brought is not worth it of course, and the negative impacts were huge too (the social isolation for example).

But I kind of get it, at this point is very clear that society will just go back to the old status quo and we just have to suck it up. In fact, it seems to be getting worse and worse every day with bullshit RTO mandates, and bullshit laws, and people becoming increasingly intolerant to people who are different. And it’s clear that nothing short of another pandemic will force society to acommodate us again. Quite the opposite, everywere it seems like goverments and corporations are just doubling down and quashing dissent. And when you put it all together, it’s hard for a part of me to not miss the possitive changes I experienced during the pandemic. Of course, I also remember what it costed to some of my friends and neighboors and understand that this wish is not rational. But still, a part of me does miss it a bit.

I think my reply to your other comment applies here (https://lemmy.world/comment/14037207). And in fact the situation is not as bad as I thought, so Ibstand corrected.

Yeah. My point was that without US support their resistance radically changes from the stalemate they have now to an occupation and resistance from the Ukranians. And in case of an occupation the resistance groups don’t get a seat at the table so to speak.

But some other commenter has also shown me that the europeans are actually masively ramping up their aid to Ukraine which will more than cover the missing aid from the US. So, assuming they deliver (which I assume they will), the situation is not as bad as I thought. So I stand corrected.

https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/. As of today the split is around 40% US. But the europeans are indeed promising a large increase of aid which can more than cover what the US will stop contributing, I wasn’t aware of that. I really hope they deliver, then Ukraine may maintain the stalemate without US support. So the situation is not as bad as I thought jajajaja, nice.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/1303432/total-bilateral-aid-to-ukraine/ my man, US alone is more than 50% of total aid. You are just arguing from vibes lol.

Yeah, I hope they can ramp their support to replace what the US will stop contributing. But I don’t see this happening sadly. They have had years to ramp up their support, and as you said, every incentive to do so. So I assume they are already giving close to what they can/want. But I’m a random dude jajajaja, I hope I’m wrong.

Again, in practice yes. The choice Ukranians will get is accept whatever the US negotiates or continue their resistance without US support. In the second case there is simply no. way they don’t get steam rolled, and then there is just no negotiation, just occupation.

No, I get that. And I really wish they make the Russian invaders suffer. The point I’m trying to make is that without the material support they have been receiving from the USA I don’t see a way for Ukraine to keep fighting toe to toe with Russia for long (I hope I’m proven wrong, I really do. But I don’t see how).

Of course this doesn’t mean that Ukranians are going to roll over and accept this without fighting. But if they decide to continue the resistance, the nature of the conflict will change dramatically. I just don’t see how Ukraine can maintain the current stalemate without the huge material support they are receiving today. But if they decide to keep fighting (which I hope they do), this will become an asymetrical conflict like Afghanistan or Vietnam.

Obviously I may be wrong, I hope I’m wrong. But it seems naive to assume nothing is going to change without USA support.

EDIT: Turns out that the Europeans are dramatically ramping their aid to Ukraine (https://www.ifw-kiel.de/topics/war-against-ukraine/ukraine-support-tracker/). So the situation is not as bad as I thought, they may be ok without the US. Keeping the original comment below anyway.

Unfortunately yes in practice. Ukraine can’t sutain their defense from Russia without all the external support they are getting, in particular from the USA (and NATO in general). So in practice, the USA can absolutely negotiate with Russia and then force Ukraine to accept whatever they negotiate. And given that the Americans picked Trump as president this has a good chance of happening.

Not saying this is right or anything like that. It sucks for the Ukranians and of course I would like for this to be different, this should be up to the Ukranians. But this is the reality of the situation, turns out that puting a traitor in charge of the biggest super power in the world has world reaching consequences even if americans didn’t think about that when voting.

If you actually read the article you will see that they tested both allowing the students to ask for answers from the LLM, and then limiting the students to just ask for guidance from the LLM. In the first case the students did significantly worse than their peers that didn’t use the LLM. In the second one they performed the same as students who didn’t use it. So, if the results of this study can be replicated, this shows that LLMs are at best useless for learning and most likely harmful. Most students are not going to limit their use of LLMs for guidance.

You AI shills are just ridiculous, you defend this technology without even bothering to read the points under discussion. Or maybe you read an LLM generated summary? Hahahaha. In any case, do better man.

https://cepr.net/data-from-bolivias-election-add-more-evidence-that-oas-fabricated-last-years-fraud-claims/

The USA, through the OAS, fabricated a bogus statistics report acussing Evo of stealing the elections. This was the time when the Elon rat tweeted that “they would coup whoever the wanted”. Even at the time, a lot of staticians were reporting that the analysis was bogus. The awful woman they put in charge ordered at least 2 massacres against people protesting the coup. And as soon as she let the country had elections, Evo’s party won by more than 50% of the vote. Keep in mind that unlike the USA, there are more than 2 parties in Bolivia, so they had more than 20% lead in the vote. It’s very obvious that Bolivians want Evo and his party in power. The OAS and USA are full of shit as usual.

The coup at least resulted in 2 term limits being implemented in Bolivia so Evo can’t stay in power forever, so not all bad. But the USA can’t stop fucking in latin america.

Look at this guy posts people. He’s just one of the many Milei shills being paid by his fucking government. Lemmy is getting pretty bad with this kind of shit, there are a lot of these single issue accounts with a few “random” posts and comments to give them legitimacy. Sometimes is very hard to know, but this account is pretty blatant. Like most of his posts and comments are pro Milei bullshit “news”. This is going to break this platform, and it’s worrying seeing this so fast in a platform this small.

Thanks! I will check it out.

I’m sorry to be rude, but do you have anything to contribute here? I mean, I’m probably wrong in several points, that’s what happens when you are as opinionated as I am hahaha. But your comment is useless man, do better.

Thanks for a nice response! My main problem with checking news sites is that it’s quite a bit of work and I’m very lazy hahaha. Specially because of what I said, for me this is mostly about my curiosity, so I can’t invest the time required to properly inform myself this way. Plus there is the issue of bias, I only speak spanish and english, so my sources are biased that way by default (fuck Putin just in case anyone mistakes this for support for that prick lol).

In my naivety I was hoping to get a few websites with like a minute to minute of the developments. I remember seeing several beautiful sites like these for the Syrian civil war, and I assume there are some for this conflict too. Obviously, as you pointed out, these sites will surely be biased (some to one side, some to the other) and incomplete. But if I have a few of these, I can at least go and take a look at them everytime I see a headline like this and create my own uneducated opinion lol.

I mean, you are probably right, I have no clue lol. But this entire thread is exactly what I was NOT asking about. And you guys get mad with me for pointing this out lol. I was literally asking about a place to check “raw” data about the conflict. Thankfully, some dude actually shared a site like this in a different reply. Obviously, I will have to check it to decide how reliable it’s. But that was what I was asking about, not this …

Thank you man! This is exactly the kind of thing I was looking for.

Guys, I mean this what I’m talking about lol. I guess the answer to my question must be in another thread hahaha. Have fun

Honest question here, any website that’s accurately tracking the current reality in Ukraine? Within reason of course, it’s an unstable situation by definition. I see a lot of headlines that make it sound like Russia is winning, and then some articles claiming Ukraine is kicking ass hahaha. So I honestly have no idea what’s going on because of the flood of propaganda.

Just in case, I really really have no horse in this race. I’m from latin america, so this only affects me via globalization. But I would love to be able to track the situation there just for morbid curiosity.