It’s not quite true that we “never” hear about Ukraine’s far right. We hear about them fairly regularly in fact - from Putin’s apologists and sycophants.

“We do not currently assess” is ludicrously blatant mealy-mouthed misdirection.

Ah… yes. A lot of things just clicked into place for me, and not just regarding Vance.

Most notably really - trying to grasp the idea of “TheoBros” broadly - I wondered how such a thing is even possible. How can any even moderately intelligent person spend a great deal of time online and cling to a Christian belief at all, and much less a conservative one? There’s just far too much information out there that contradicts that view. Granted, there is of course content tailored to affirm it, but it’s essentially a specialist thing - not just a bubble, but a very specific and limited bubble, surrounded by a sea of contrary views and contradicting facts.

And then it clicked - the way to maintain a conservative Christian viewpoint on the internet is to be an aggressively censorious conspiracy theorist.

The only way they can face the sea of contradictory information is to ascribe it to some sort of ridiculously massive conspiracy by the forces of evil - such that the vast majority of what exists on the internet is the lies of Satan’s minions - and to establish little, aggressively monitored and censored enclaves in which their views and only their views are allowed, and everything else is condemned and preferably censored.

Their whole cognitively dissonant view on “free speech” - in which they somehow simultaneously cry about being “censored” generally simply for being massively downvoted and even as they, in their own bubbles, overtly censor any and all contrary views - suddenly makes sense. They explain away the fact that the vast majority of people disagree with them and even condemn them as a conspiracy to silence them, and create the illusion that they’re not merely a noxious and irrational few by aggressively monitoring and controlling their walled gardens, so that opposition is at least underrepresented if not silenced entirely.

It also explains their slippery relationship with truth, and specifically things like Vance clinging to the Haitians eating pets myth even after it’s been proven false. For them, coming across information that proves them wrong has to be an essentially daily occurrence, so they undoubtedly work out an approach to it, such that they, exactly as he’s doing, just flatly ignore the necessary ramifications of the truth and instead just blithely cling to whatever myth affirms their beliefs.

Yeah… suddenly a whole lot of previously inexplicable behavior and beliefs are making sense to me…

And frankly, while it’s notably pathetic and cringily willfully ignorant, it’s also scary. More on that later maybe…

Right. The country in which officials insist that soldiers should be entirely free to sexually abuse Palestinians can investigate itself. 🙄

Israel is a rogue state.

I first read that headline as “is deranged.”

Same sentiment but more precise.

Israel is a rogue state.

Intelligence is a measure of reasoning ability. LLMs do not reason at all, and therefore cannot be categorized in terms of intelligence at all.

LLMs have been engineered such that they can generally produce content that bears a resemblance to products of reason, but the process by which that’s accomplished is a purely statistical one with zero awareness of the ideas communicated by the words they generate and therefore is not and cannot be reason. Reason is and will remain impossible at least until an AI possesses an understanding of the ideas represented by the words it generates.

The BitGenerations games on the GBA, and especially Orbital. They’re stylish but graphically simple arcade style games - generally some combination of puzzle-solving and action.

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It’s safe to assume at this point that delays and chaos (and the opportunities both will provide for fraud) are the exact point.

This time around, Georgia is going to be prepared to “find” Trump however many votes he needs.

Even as cynical as I am, it astonishes me that the Republicans have become entirely up-front about the fact that they don’t really give a shit about the American people and are only interested in how policy decisions affect them personally.

It’s not just the case that they’ll institute harmful policies if they can blame the Democrats for them or oppose beneficial policies that they can’t claim credit for themselves, but that they do it openly and obviously.

And their wholly emotion-driven supporters remain completely oblivious…

And here we have the root cause of every other problem that plagues the US - the entire nation, socially, politically and even psychologically, has been warped towards the sole purpose of pouring as much wealth as possible into the pockets of a relative few.

What you need to know is that the government is corrupt and works almost exclusively for the benefit of the wealthy few, which has caused considerable problems for everyone else, which problems they want you to blame on someone other than them.

It’s the state of mind caused by simultaneously believing two (or more) things that conflict with each other.

Like all conservatives, he wants to do unto others as he would not want done unto him.

Can’t starve people to death if other people are allowed to give them food.

And while they’re arguing about who’s causing the most chaos, the rest of us are left wondering—how did it get this bad?

Actually, that’s easy.

It got this bad because our system is so warped and corrupt that most politicians can no longer even pretend to run on policies and principles. If they get elected, they’re going to do one and only one thing - they’re going to serve the interests of the wealthy individuals and corporations that pay them the fattest bribes. They obviously can’t run on a promise to do that, but they can’t promise to do anything else because they’re not going to do anything else. So they run on hatred and fear - they run on things like “ELECT US BECAUSE THE IMMIGRANTS ARE EATING YOUR PETS!!”

It really is just that simple.

And if the world were a just place instead of a twisted shithole designed to maximize the privilege of a relative few wealthy and empowered parasites, you could work fewer hours, make the same or even more money and afford a house.

But instead the system has been warped so that you have to work long hours for insufficient pay and still can’t afford a decent life, and all so that a relative few executives, board nembers, bankers, investors and politicians can siphon off the bulk of the wealth you generate so that they can buy more houses and bigger yachts.

No - actually I was talking worldwide. Russia’s just a notable example.

And I would say that all of the things you listed are, directly or indirectly, consequences of the fact that wealthy authoritarian parasites have warped societies to their benefit regardless of the harm done to others, so are actually examples of exactly what I’m talking about.