HN user
Every time I see events like this happen, I get extremely skeptical of the idea that China will somehow replace the US as leader of the world. I’m not sure if I’m justified in thinking so, but I just cannot imagine actions like this leading to a creative, innovative culture.
I do think that a pacifist can stand up to violence, but I don’t think working in the defense industry is the way to do that.
The more wars I study, the more I realize the genius of MLK and Gandhi. Violence just begets violence.
The opposite, in fact. I used to be mostly neutral about war, but now I would consider myself a borderline pacifist. After studying this war and its causes, I realized that it was the consequence of geopolitical actors (including the defense industry) acting in certain ways over the last few decades. It is the kind of game where the only move is to not play.
There are many people that aren’t religious extremists who think that abortion is, at best, extremely morally problematic. It’s fundamentally a question about the definition of life, not the adherence to certain religious beliefs.
It’s not a minority view, both in the United States and in the world at large.
I don’t quite understand why American progressives think they represent the world at large. Neo-colonialism, I suppose.
It isn’t wrong legally and if anything, had the constitution been followed correctly, this decision is how it should have played out in the first place. It is only controversial because some people think their personal opinions on controversial issues should override democratic mechanisms.
Most other first world nations have more restrictive laws on abortion. Yes, even Western Europe.
Yes frankly this website is not capable of entertaining certain contrarian ideas. Which of course are only contrarian in the narrow societal bubbles they occupy.
I blame the downvote mechanism for rewarding echo chambers and punishing outlier opinions.
/Shrug.
If you worked for Amazon, Facebook, Google, or a similar social media / adtech company, I think you’d be doing more real damage to society. The only difference is that these organizations have a better PR department.
Crypto has pluses and minuses and you should determine whether it’s a technology you believe in or not. I think basing your opinion of it on “the public” or (notoriously uninformed about crypto) HN opinion is just a bit mentally weak. Either believe in what you’re doing, or do something else. But don’t base your feelings on what the mob thinks.
The whole region was chaotic for centuries. Poland invaded Russia at one point as well. Everyone pretty much invaded everyone else.
Certainly no one was “justified” here, I just meant to point out that the article is written to be misleading. The region in question (St. Petersburg) does indeed seem to have been occupied by Russians for a considerable period of time prior to Sweden occupying it.
The historical portion of this article is misleading and relies on Western people’s lack knowledge of the region. It makes you think that Sweden then was Sweden today, a neutral peaceful country. In reality, Sweden had spent the previous century invading and destroying Central and Eastern Europe. It was so destructive that some historians estimate the damage in Poland exceeded that of World War 2.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deluge_(history)
Peter the Great indeed did “take back” the land from Sweden, which Sweden had conquered from Russia about a century beforehand.
Nyenschantz was built in 1611 to establish Swedish rule in Ingria, which had been annexed from the Tsardom of Russia during the Time of Troubles.
Interesting that at no point does anyone stop and think, “Gee, maybe tearing down every institution and social obligation in the name of individualist consumerism wasn’t a good idea? Perhaps our ancestors and their thousands of years old traditions concerning marriage and dating weren’t outdated idiots after all?”
Nope. The solution is always more dating apps, more self-help books, more targeted algorithms to find your perfect match and fulfill your individualist desires for pleasure and purpose. If you aren’t happy with your dating situation, it’s because you aren’t knowledgeable or hard-working enough.
There is an exact year: 2008. Two reasons:
- Obama is elected with significant help from new social media tactics. Powerful interests realize that tech will shape the future of politics. This leads to less "technology for technology's sake" and more of its use to achieve sociopolitical goals.
https://www.gsb.stanford.edu/faculty-research/case-studies/o...
- The financial crash heats up resentment against elites. While it may seem like the East Coast media and financial set are opponents of Big Tech, to the average person, they're both out of touch elites. Tech stopped being cool when it stopped being the underdog.
Sadly it feels like single purchase software is on its way out. All the momentum is toward SAAS.
Perhaps if you had invested your life savings into a business, which was then forced to be shut down, you would have more sympathy.
Yes well that’s the issue with utilitarianism and any other calculated ethical system. You can always justify some horrible things by saying “but we saved X more lives.”
Nitter.net is a life saver for this.
I have lost a lot of respect for certain very accomplished people because they tweet their hot takes on current issues constantly. I follow you because you’re an awesome musician/writer/entrepreneur/whatever, not because I need your extremely uninformed opinion on geopolitics or social issues.
Baltics are easily neutralized with taking the Suwalki gap. The Russians were also not happy with them joining NATO, but couldn’t do much about it. And Ukraine (Kievan Rus) is the center of eastern Slavic civilization and therefore much more important to Putin than a largely unrelated culture in Latvia, Lithuania, etc.
Otherwise yes I do think Mearsheimer is a little too mechanical in his theories and doesn’t factor in ideologies, especially in the modern Information Age.
The world isn’t a Marvel movie with good guys and bad guys. It’s more like Sicario: mostly bad guys with some innocent people caught in the crossfire.
I have studied this situation nonstop for the last week and I pretty much have the same opinion as you. If you ask a simple question, Cui bono? (Who benefits?) it becomes clear that it’s ultimately another military industrial complex project. The sad part is that the only real victims here are the Ukrainian people, who were led along with false promises.
Had NATO been wiser, none of this would be happening.
This article is straight up hatred propaganda and should be flagged.
If you ever wondered how Americans of Japanese descent ended up in camps during WW2, now you know.
Getting employees to accept remote work was a brilliant reverse psychology move by companies. Now industry salaries will drop as it becomes acceptable to hire in low cost regions or abroad. This will happen automatically as the market adjusts.
If you are a highly paid engineer and want to keep it that way, you should do everything in your power to limit the industry to specific geographical locations.
It’s a bit too complex to summarize, but if you study NATO’s actions in the region, you’ll see that we helped set up this precarious situation.
Again, as I said in my initial comment, most of the blame here is on Russia. Nonetheless, the world isn’t black and white.
Judging from your other comments, you haven’t bothered to educate yourself very much on this situation.
Please, be trollish elsewhere and waste someone else’s time.
I don’t think anyone is saying that Russia is justified, more that if we want a solution here we have to understand their motivations.
If the sanctions didn’t work before, I don’t know why they would work now.
I don’t have the answers, but certainly any move toward more militarization of the world is usually a bad thing.
From Russia’s point of view, they had many reasons to annex Crimea. It wasn’t just a random act of aggression.
Having studied this situation a bit, my conclusion is that both sides are to blame, with Russia being considerably more culpable due to choosing the violent option. Geopolitics isn’t simple and thinking that one side is entirely to blame is just naive and falling for propaganda.
By escalation I’m referring to the giant effort to exclude Russia from everything, including liquor stores and name registrars.
It is really distressing, not only because it’s ethically wrong to blame groups of people for individual actions, but also because it’s pragmatically against the interests of the West. We gain nothing by escalating this.
Seems like this barrage of sanctions and anti-Russian sentiment will do nothing but push Russia further toward China. I really don’t see the West removing them easily, even if Russia withdrew immediately. No one seems to care about arriving at a solution that will minimize bloodshed. Instead the media is more reminiscent of 1984 and drumming up a war against Eurasia than of rational realpolitik.
This is the true birth of a multipolar world. Let’s hope it doesn’t lead to more conflicts.