I give you the benefit of doubt, maybe there is a tiny chance you are not aware about sex tourism is what this story is about.

Jesus fucking forget reading the article, fucking idiot didn’t even get beyond the first half of the headline lol.

List of Brazilian inventions

Only two genders, male and political.

Only two races, white and political.

I’m not sure if regular libs have been migrating to Lemmy leaving only the worst posters or if they are just becoming shittier.

Oh it is pretty clear now libs were never going to actually support real climate activism in the long run, anything that actualy threatens to disrupt their comfortable lives and treats.

I think also its just the fact any real climate action is inherently against the liberal democracy that continues to fail despite constantly promising e.g all the climate accords. The libs will naturally see protests against this inaction as a protest against democracy therefore everyone will be declared eco-fascists/tankies or worse.

I want to highlight this particular update by Mercouris yesterday but just the last 10 minutes where he talks about the G20 and a specific article from the Financial times. I know not everyone enjoys his style but this is IMO some very good commentary. If you’re bothered by his speech(he is on the slower side) maybe try 1.5x speed.

I think this time he manages to give a very good overview of the current climate and I think it is worth watching. Just a few points

-FT/west dismayed over Xi not attending the G20

-India supposedly frustrated that no progress is made because when dealing with the US means everything is always tied to agreement on the Ukraine war issue.

-Western narrative tries to blame lack of progress on the Chinese but they also can’t understand that the Chinese views are also supported by many other global south countries therefore(my take here) this is a nonstarter, even if China wasn’t socialist there is no imperative for China or anyone else to agree with anything, in other simpler words the west always saw these meetings as a place to sign and give orders instead of a place for negotiation and diplomacy. [Insert Marxist theory about imperialism here if its not already obvious.]

-Xi doesn’t bother going because the G20 is increasingly irrelevant.

-Important point that we can notice that the west wants to keep the appearance of normality in relationship with China, the US keeps sending some irrelevant dumb idiot official after the other, between Yelen and Blinken etc while also going off the rails and escalating e.g Taiwan issue and chip war. The CPC on the other hand already understands this.

-Also points out(not the first time, he said this since last year) that the Chinese already understand they can’t make deals with the US because every time one western official goes and says one thing the US government then goes and does the opposite.

-What he didn’t mention in all of this is this isn’t the first time and at least it is still fresh in my memory the absolute chad Xi berating Canadian PM whatever his idiot name is on the last G20 over exactly the same issue i.e Western guy comes and says one thing then turns around and says another to the media.

-Finally he thinks Xi simply doesn’t like Biden(specially after Biden calling him a dictator) and that is one of the main reasons as well. Personally I call this maybe his worst take here, but then again if I were Xi it would be extremely tough to not go on CGTN or something and tell Biden to draw a clock every single time I could so I can relate.

Quite sad because it is a channel I otherwise enjoy and I do find her commentary useful obviously in science but even “adjacent” areas like climate change etc she wasn’t this level of bad.

Now given first she makes a video effectively “preemptively” apologizing and dismissing criticism and then this shit, sigh I don’t know, just sad and disappointing. The fact the two most recent videos are so tightly correlated I think makes it clear she is trying to diversify and is now also trying to make this transition by slowly driving away even liberals and just going all in on her personality cult.

I’ll also go against some of the comments here because this sort of content is extremely out of touch with her viewers IMO even with the liberal types its at fucking 14k-8k ration in 24h.

I’m not sure where exactly it went wrong on her content pipeline, it is extremely puzzling.

The people that want to be told capitalism is great are fucking boomers in general, those that want to feel less guilty about destroying the world etc, specially Dem voters in the US. But that is not her viewership and besides she isn’t even in the US anyway.

The millennial/gen X types are obviously not leftist enough to be socialist but are definitely “left” enough to see a photo of a black child starving in Africa and not go smiling and saying “yep Capitalism is extremely successful, yep 100% agree science lady”.

As I said very surprising how out of touch she is with this one.

I mean this in the nicest way possible but this doesn’t make sense to me, did you miss a word somewhere? Honestly, “wouldn’t expect what”?

Expect bad performance? Expect from Bethesda? Expect the politics OP mentioned? Or maybe you meant “a great game that surpassed expectations e.g BG3?”

Take a guess?

Respectfuly, it is painful to read shit like this from uninformed people.

Here try googling this “Ukraine counter offensive goal crimea before:2023-07-01”(without quotes), just 3 random examples.

Zelensky signaled Ukraine’s counteroffensive against Russia is underway. Here’s what to expect

In terms of its goals, Kyiv has consistently said that it wants to recapture all of the territory controlled by Russia. In an address earlier this year Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said that included Crimea.

“It is not an intention, it is our land. Crimea is our sea and our mountains,” Zelensky said.

Ukraine ‘ready’ to talk to Russia on Crimea if counteroffensive succeeds lol lmao

Ukraine’s counteroffensive: Goals, opportunities, risks

In September 2022, in his only programmatic paper so far, Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces of Ukraine Lieutenant General Valeriy Zaluzhnyi offered only a rough sketch of how a Ukrainian counteroffensive might look. In the paper, he spoke of “several resolute, ideally simultaneous counterattacks.” One strategically crucial target Zaluzhnyi mentioned was the Crimean peninsula, which Russia illegally annexed in 2014. In Kyiv, all agree this is the main direction Ukraine should focus its efforts. But they are also expecting surprises and deceptive maneuvers. Many, however, doubt Ukraine has enough equipment and fighting power to regain the peninsula.

Even western media tried to downplay it casting doubt from the beginning but the point I highlight is undeniably the planned goal was not achieved and it wont be achieved. Everyone would call that a failure.

But even the fucking Nazis can’t agree on their own narrative and they’re just coping now

Ukraine counteroffensive creeps ahead, measured in blood exactly 2 months ago, July 1st 2023

Last week, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy said the counteroffensive was “slower than desired”, without getting too specific. Ukraine says it has recaptured a cluster of villages in operations that liberated 130 square km (50 square miles) in the south, but this is a small percentage of the total territory held by Russia.

Go tell Zelensky to shut the fuck up, oh wait.

US caught straight lying or someone else caught playing both sides and getting burned as a result? Both are possible.

Indonesia rubbishes Pentagon’s ‘joint statement’ on China and Russia

“There is no joint statement and no press conference. What is important for me to underline is that our relationship with China is very good. We respect each other, we already have mutual understanding. I conveyed that in the US,” he said, adding “We are close friends with China, we respect America, and we seek friendship with Russia.”

A hexbear user tries to escape life in the European Union. Colorized, circa 2023

deleted by creator

Notice the date posted, show it to them and see if they still care.

I’ll be honest Captain, that lawful neutral encompasses one of if not the worst aspect of Trek aka Hollywood liberalism which is realy thin veiled

“Yes of course we can’t let the asiatic horde/blacks/jews get their hands on our precious tech, not only their primitive brains can’t understand it there is no way to tell the kind of EVIIIIIIIIILLLLLLLLL they could do with it!”.

Fuck off. Being against diplomatic trading is literally the opposite of what they claim to preach but whatever even though I think that specific arc they try very hard to paint them as realy realy evil…

Is it ok if I want to murder my neighbor? I’m not going to, but I want to. This idiot represents everything I despise. Today, though, I’m inching closer to losing it. He’s got this dumb fucking riding lawnmower that he’s somehow tweaked so it backfires every 30 seconds. My PTSD is at rage level right now.

I’m terribly sorry but reading this comment just makes me realize this should’ve been the appropriate reaction to this gem.

I always imagined the kind of psycho that would actually own a lawnmower and love it enough to actually relate to this dumb promo video.

Sure, but like even today, right now you can just make a montage where on the left side of the screen this(link is still on the OP above) plays while on the right side of the screen you insert their piece of garbage “content”.

Saying that she pushed the democratic party leftward makes no sense when Biden is continuing Trump’s policies.

First of all its important to keep in mind the vast and overwhelming air superiority of the Russian AF, per wiki numbers Even if we assume Ukraine can get around 50 F-16s which is already optimistic they’ll be up against at least 500-750 Su-27/30/34/35 fighters, of these only arguably the Su-27 is a reasonable contemporary opponent, every other variant is far superior in every way including available armament. Even if only a small part of that can be deployed to the Ukrainian theater it is still over 2-3:1 advantage in numbers alone.

The elephant in the room is of course we already know the Su-57(5th gen stealth) is operational and I’m sure Russia will be extremely excited to test and get a confirmed kill with it.

The weapons;roles that could be used on F-16s I’ll give a very brief summary:

-JADAMs(GPS guided long range bombs): In practice Ukraine is already using these with little success(“Russia jamming U.S. smart bombs in Ukraine, leaked docs say” ). Current Ukrainian bombers have to fly at low altitude and “loft” the bomb to the target, this means that the F-16 will make no difference here since it is just as vulnerable as current aircraft. The maximum range of 72km in practice is a lot less.

-The latest hype from western media e.g Forbes is the JASSM(AGM-158). It is a very modern GPS long range cruise missile that can be fired from F-16s, but the important point here is the operational history is basicaly non-existent, it was first used in Syria only 5 years ago.

I seriously doubt the US is willing to use one of its most modern weapons and risking giving away yet more secrets, its the whole reason Ukraine’s F-16s are obsolete versions, the whole reason why the US wont give modern Abrams tanks etc. Yes they did hand out HIMARS and Javelins but I think they surely regret the former(Russia is now capable of jamming it ) and the latter is pretty much irrelevant.

-The rest: The F-16 can restrict the current freedom of Russian Su-25 bombers and Ka-52 helis but this is very far away from the magical bullet Ukraine is hoping for, besides any aggressive movement towards Russian aircraft risk their own fighters, is Ukraine willing to risk their precious fighters to engage some old bombers? In any case Russia got 150+ Su-25 bombers and 100+ Ka-52s.

It is very hard to have a rational say of what Ukraine is expecting because rationally speaking expectations should be extremely low. But Ukraine wants more and more magical shit because they’re ideologically committed to fighting for Crimea despite it being a very bad military goal.

My assumption is also that as I said it is realy about the early advantage where the US can theoretically still become the leader in renewable energy and that this leadership in turn would be equivalent to the 19th-20th century early advantage by European capitalists industrialization.

People rightly point out giving up the dollar dominance is painful to say the least but it is either you do that in a conscious and planned manner or just let your enemies dictate the terms. Either way the de-dollarization is guaranteed and IMO it is best to get ahead of it by transforming/leading this process towards something that is even remotely advantageous for the US again.

It realy is just lets go back to US capitalism in the post-war period which is recognized as the golden era simply because there was a massive incentive and opportunity for investment into real production. The key areas where true technological innovation(i.e not grifter “tech” bullshit in IT)happens is in energy and manufacturing, even more so taking climate change into account.

Given the OP’s prompt, a rational/competent US leadership would recognize that the US must abandon or at least temporarily sacrifice the strongest neoliberal forces now in order to come up ahead later.

The US created the Petrodollar, they should kill it while they still control it.

The way to “respond” to the BRICS is to cooperate with China and actualy put the US ahead of the renewable energy race. I don’t want to make a cheesy comparison with the space race, but you can note that all these technologies overlap with a great number of industries and sectors of the economy, obviously as energy is the foundation of any economy and it gives capitalism a much needed new area of investment that can be translated to real world material goods. People call it the second industrial revolution etc I wont go into that.

The benefit here isn’t just economic, the BRICS nations are still heavily invested into fossil fuels and the “best” way for western capitalism to compete here would be to make them irrelevant, to crash their energy export economies.

But it should be obvious here that the US itself is too heavily invested and dependent on fossil fuels and this wouldn’t just be a change of leadership but a mini-revolution against big oil so I guess it invalidates the whole premise.