261–270 of 380 posts
This situation reminds me how people were declaring the end of twitter with swift, unconventional moves. It's worth looking back from time perspective.
"Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad." - Thomas Frank
We have like 100 years of bad government by people who love government to dispel this nonsense.
Also, screw breathable air and drinkable water, even more than the internet and microwave. Above all else, ballpoint pens and velcro need to just stop.
Excuse me. It’s rush hour. I need to go yell at a busy bridge until the thing just falls the fuck over.
> “The only thing a return to the office has given me is an hour of traffic while driving and a loss in efficiency,” said the worker, who requested anonymity for fear of job reprisals. RTO in a nutshell. As someone who chose my living location based on where my family wants to live first and jobs second, this sudden turn to RTO mandates is infinitely depressing. Most of my work involves talking to people in different…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> It is mind blowing to me that this is what people want. It is not what people want. The Trump administration’s popularity is already below 50%, and much lower among independents (around 30% depending on the poll). Many people aren’t yet aware of what’s happening. A lot of the electorate is getting their news from filtered sources like Fox News or various far right media outlets. Joe Rogan has gone all in on praisin…
Tons of voters reverse many of their positions if you explain the issues to them without using the labels they’re used to. I’m not sure “they could have known, but didn’t bother to learn, and instead voted based on Fox News and talk radio and podcast and Facebook post bullshit” is enough to say they didn’t vote for this. If it is, that’s… kinda usually the case.
…and that reversing lasts until the next time they turn on their TV and get reset by Fox News. I used to see it all the time with my parents. Now I just don’t talk to them much.
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It can't be only attributed to ignorance, you see many comments here on Hacker News defending it with vitriol I had never experienced on this forum even during Trump's 1st presidency. Somehow Americans have really bought into it, the lies, the disinformation, the destruction. I cannot understand, the moving targets shift (CRT, immigration, DEI, cancel culture, wokeness, whatever is next) so it isn't about them whatso…
We know that Russia has run a very long, very extensive disinformation campaign against the west. It might be expected that that extends to HN. Not everything posted here is someone's actual opinion. Some of it is deliberate propaganda and attempts to manipulate. That's hard to accept, given what HN was once. The difference between ten years ago and last year was noticeable; the difference between last year and this…
It can be Russian disinfo but it's definitely not only that.
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It's part of the promised pain. Trump promised us some pain. He said it was necessary before things can get better.
Its much easier to destroy than to build, and this is thoughtless destruction. How can anyone expect thoughtful reconstruction?
"Bad government is the natural product of rule by those who believe government is bad." - Thomas Frank
We have like 100 years of bad government by people who love government to dispel this nonsense.
What metrics would you use to assess the quality of life you think best?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
We have like 100 years of bad government by people who love government to dispel this nonsense.
Yeah, we’d be much much better off if the Great Depression was still happening, and Hitler got to slaughter our ancestors. I’m guessing the congress critters are pretty nostalgic for stuff like polio, tuberculosis, measles and the bubonic plague. Also, screw breathable air and drinkable water, even more than the internet and microwave. Above all else, ballpoint pens and velcro need to just stop. Excuse me. It’s rush…
What have the New Dealer's ever done for us?
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The US has perhaps the most battle hardened military in the history of the world. It’s had real combat deployments continually for going on 25 years. At best you can suggest it would be too allocated to counter insurgency but combined arms battles is the heart of American doctrine and its shown its value in Ukraine not its weakness. I think there are real questions about US military composition, particularly its navy…
You assume that continuous combat deployments automatically translate to full-scale war readiness, but there's a big difference between counterinsurgency operations and peer-to-peer warfare. The US military has been engaged in conflicts for decades, but most of them involved fighting non-state actors or weaker conventional forces, not a high-intensity war against an advanced military.
The US military is far a cut above everything else, in terms of tactical readiness, sheer firepower and especially effective size.
We outspend any other nation - China included of which we spend an estimated 2.5 times more than - and we have been in that lead position for decades, not just years.
While yes, US forces haven’t squared off against conventional militaries of any note in some time, the US military has at least been engaged in real conflict. To my recollection the Chinese military have undertaken no significant military campaigns in the last 20+ years and lack the air & sea power to functionally match anything the US military can throw at it by comparison.
Which leaves ground forces, which is both vulnerable to air power and is effectively the numbers game the Chinese can win outright in a protracted war that escalated to that level, and cyber warfare, which the Chinese have proven to be quite adept at but the US military has been aware and developing counter measures against that for a long time as well
This talking conventionally of course.
China being a nuclear power means it would be unlikely to escalate past a certain point if anyone is acting rationally. There’s no reason you want to give another nuclear power a reason to use those weapons, and certainly the US nuclear arsenal is not one anyone wants to see fired either.
So in all likelihood this continues as a Cold War