For the record, there is actually no necessarily discernable difference between sarcasm and lying to someone’s face. People that are very sarcastic will often not adjust their delivery whatsoever. The whole point of sarcasm is to be somewhat plausible and convincing, after all.

The only real difference is in the motive to be humorous, which is just not necessarily discernable. This is why sarcasm is usually not used with complete strangers irl, since they won’t know the person well enough to necessarily detect it, unless you grossly exaggerate it. Which is basically the same as an irl /s, where you deliver it in either an exaggerated deadpan or an almost singsong fashion to make it very blatant. Even in these cases, the person will often offer a polite apology for using sarcasm with a stranger, since it’s kinda broadly felt that that’s just not a great idea.

Ultimately sarcasm is predicated on the idea that people’s casual words should not be trusted though, which is just generally good advice anyway. Trust systems, not people, unless you know them well. Words are simply too cheap, they’re as often a toy as they are some serious information transfer mechanism.

I was going to say gasoline, but actually no, not really.

It was just a matter of time, we’ve had automated vacuum cleaners for ages now.

Putting guns on them is a bit harder, you definitely want a well-tested system for that. But cameras is pretty easy.

Same technique as making and integrating a cornstarch slurry to thicken a soup.

That’s a little disingenuous. The majority of the Jewish population is Mizrahi, or descending from the region. Only about a third are Ashkenazi, from Europe.

That said, I do agree that we should all blame the British, as usual.

Thinking we should have a right to anonymity irl is a little silly to me, I think forcing protestors to identify is fairly reasonable. A lot of the rest is getting a little out of hand, though. Private investigators are a pretty egregious step before one has strong evidence of some sort of malfeasance more significant than occupying a space and sitting there.

China does have a very large number of active duty servicemembers, though I don’t think that’s all that surprising when they’re one of the planet’s largest countries, and have been steadily modernizing over the last few decades. I also imagine their unusually high youth unemployment numbers contribute to the ease of recruitment. When you have over a billion population, keeping 1% of them active duty is probably not particularly difficult.

Russia has the advantage of global recruitment, and are offering frankly huge financial incentives to anyone willing to fight. It’s got to be rapidly draining their coffers. I suspect Xi is mainly just war profiteering off of them. In light of western sanctions, this has probably been the best period to be a Chinese exporter in many years. lol Russia is likely willing to pay top dollar for whatever they require to fuel their war machine. And there’s always their raw material exports as well.

This is just off of wikipedia, so I’m not sure how up-to-date it is:

3 aircraft carriers 4 landing helicopter docks 12 amphibious transport docks 32 landing ship tanks 33 landing ship mediums 58 destroyers 54 frigates 75 corvettes 150 missile boats 26 submarine chasers 17+ gunboats 36 mine countermeasure vessels 79 submarines 19 replenishment ships 232 auxiliaries

Those corvettes, missile and gun boats could all be considered “small”. The frigates and up are all capable of deep water work further out, independently if necessary. Interestingly, it’s almost a revival of the 19th century French naval doctrine Jeune École, which was typified by a heavy reliance on torpedo boats, with the idea that that would be a cheaper way to operate a navy while still posing a threat to the larger battleships that dominated naval strategy during that period.

It’s certainly more than just a big business. Which is also smart, a large country would want a significant blue water navy if it hopes for influence on the global stage. Even the UK and France have them, and they are much smaller countries. It would just be very illogical for China to ignore blue water capabilities.

Yeah, the problem isn’t the articles you post, those are fine. Trying to misdirect onto that is a strawman. People don’t like you due to how you engage in comment sections with the people that want to talk about those articles.

Yeah, not particularly fun, either. Would be very convenient if you were looking for an excuse to never bother with anything though.

Yeah, exporting some smaller craft is definitely not out of the question. It’s always nice when you can gather up additional buyers for your kit, that way you can leverage additional economies of scale to keep your own costs down. They are building large amounts of naval assets that won’t be suitable for export though. Patrol craft are one thing. Larger seagoing warships are another–most countries simply don’t maintain a very large fleet of them, as they’re very expensive to operate and not broadly useful during peacetime outside of certain niche situations. Since its the type of thing where a few countries would maybe buy a few every few decades, it’s never really going to be a big money maker for anyone.

That’s an interesting insight on moving into Russia’s export market. I hadn’t thought of that, but it actually makes a tremendous amount of sense. lol Aircraft are definitely a hotter export market. They’re just something you want in greater numbers, generally speaking, and have a much broader appeal.

Fair question. Yes I was considering arms suppliers specifically. I’m not sure we can simply include every company that works with the military in any way though, it makes more sense to consider companies that get the majority of their profits from the military-affiliated work.

I would not count Kraft as part of the MIC for instance.

Yeah, that’s an evolution from his earlier style. Note that he often subtly flips it to something personal though. Just pay attention to how often he talks about “you” and “them”. He seldom addresses facts or arguments, instead he addresses people. Individuals and groups.

What frustrates me is there is enough trolling on social media already, we should not be condoning it by simply allowing it here, in what is usually a more mature Lemmy space. We don’t need more internet-ey behavior on the internet, there’s already plenty everywhere.

Regardless of his intentions, it’s very aggravating how many of his clearly combative comments stay up despite “no trolling” being in rule 4.

I frankly do not understand why we have the rule if it is never going to be enforced. Is there question among our mod team about what constitutes trolling?

Looking through the modlog though, the only rule 4 enforcement seems to be low-effort stuff. High-effort trolling appears to be completely welcome in this community, which I just do not understand. But I’m contemplating beginning to take advantage of it. I can piss people off with subtle, passive-aggressive personal digs and logical fallacies while maintaining a veneer of civility too. It’s been a lot of years, but I’m sure it’ll come right back to me.

Anyone genuinely dedicated to a socialist or environmental cause would pretty clearly see the danger posed by a Trump presidency.

People with no training who care about their health, looking at internet posts and using their own judgement is the exact thing fueling the antivax movement…

Nothing wrong with a good gambeson.

Should back those up on punch cards, just to be extra safe. As a bonus, they even make good coasters.

Ah, that makes sense. Yeah, I admit I misjudged you based solely off of the server you’re from, which was rather immature of me. I imagine you’ve probably noticed that .ml has a high population of overt Marxist-Leninist folks on it, and is one of the hubs of leftism on Lemmy. That certainly doesn’t apply to everyone who signed up on it though. lol Centrist does make a lot more sense in hindsight. I doubt you can really call yourself center-right anymore though, in the American scale at least, simply due to how crazy the right has gotten in recent years. That Overton Window jumped like 5 notches rightward on us, and left a lot of people behind. You could be a fairly typical neolib, free-trade, privatization, etc. We have a community of them here on .world, they post a fair bit of news, you might find some like-minded people if you are.

I agree wholeheartedly. The only places I’ve heard that extensively discussed are more serious geostrategic groups. CSIS most prominently. Most of the media plays into the more potentially … dramatic possibilities though. Much better as clickbait I imagine, for us peons.

Regarding navy I’m not so sure. The scale of their fleet build up is very impressive. Generally, naval ships are not exactly a hot export market, especially when you’re considering the larger, more advanced blue water stuff. They’re pretty clearly moving towards global power projection capabilities. This does not necessarily indicate a future of aggression, though, as such a force also has a very important role in securing the sea trade that China relies so heavily on in addition to being a strong tool for diplomatic pressure. Look at how we use ours, after all. Naval power is also the sort of thing that needs to be developed over many years, you can’t just spin up the institutions and knowledge base necessary to effectively deploy to another hemisphere in just a few years, it takes decades. So I see it as a long-term investment and hedge against the future.

Yeah, I’m keeping my fingers crossed. Harris has been fairly successful with small dollar fundraising, so she’s a little more insulated from having to rely on big doner money as a typical politician. She does have room to pivot on Gaza and implement a few tough policies if she can wrangle the legislature. That’s the steepest hurdle though, and she doesn’t have Biden’s half century of experience and saved-up political capital in the Senate. She’ll need to be bolder, I think, but the Byzantine nature of legislative wrangling is getting a bit outside my ken.

I think people tend to misunderstand East Asian cultures in general. There’s a patience present in most of them, that I know anything about anyway, that is less present in West European cultures. Xi seems to exemplify this, and has seemed to be in no rush to make bold moves when they’re unnecessary and carry a significant degree of uncertainty. Where a westerner sees the naval buildup and might be inclined to see it as a massive red flag, I see a man keeping his options open. Having a tool is one thing, it allows flexibility. Using that tool puts you on a course from which you cannot return. I suspect he understands this, so I don’t foresee any immanent attacks on Taiwan. Especially given the rugged Taiwanese geography and having their fabs in such an easy-to-destroy state.

Hawks gonna hawk though. While our MIC isn’t the major power it was in the Cold War era, it does still carry some influence. Though personally I’d be happier if we simply built our own navy up, perhaps in partnership with S Korean industry to help keep costs down, and otherwise adopted Teddy Roosevelts philosophy of “walk softly and carry a big stick”. If a country wishes to partner with us, like the Philippines for instance, that’s one thing, but we don’t need to posture and message so aggressively. Green Berets on Taiwan was a miscalculation, for instance, even if invited imo. Taiwanese soldiers could come here for specialized training if they wished, we didn’t need to deploy there.

And yeah, we’re mostly all different shades of left and/or progressive on here. lol Personally I’m a progressive, and while I tend to take a detail-oriented view instead of trying to keep things exclusively at the much more accessible broad-strokes level, I think the majority of Lemmings all want the same general direction for the world. With some disagreement on how to get there. That’s healthy though.

edit: Oh, and on the racism note … yeah. ~sigh