Good thing Crimea’s not in Russia, then.

Planes are necessary to some level unless human civilization is to regress. I love trains, but they can’t cross an ocean or fly to the other side of the world in a day. People won’t give up flying, so at a certain point technology needs to step in to make a fix. Technology can’t fix everything, but it can sure help.

The nice thing about hydrogen being that once you have a hydrogen powered vehicle, it doesn’t matter where the hydrogen comes from. Grey hydrogen or green hydrogen, it works the same. It’s much the same as with grid power. When you can separate pollution from the vehicle, you can later reduce that pollution at a single centralized source rather than a million smaller sources.

While this is certainly possible, I’m a little skeptical that it will be widely adopted. Giving up currency sovereignty is huge for a government. If they’re not largely on the same page, it could go bad really fast. Latin America also has some huge ideological differences that could spill over into currency management. Remember Greece’s woes? Those were partially exasperated by Germany being a stick in the mud over the European Central Bank. I would expect Latin America to experience worse.

She talks about both groups of countries in the video, but she never says that the Russia aligned countries have been approached. Just the six others that have bought arms from Russia.

RT reported that Cuba, Venezuela, and Nicaragua were among the countries that the US asked. VOA reported that the US specifically avoided those countries but talked to six others. Only one can be true. Which one is more probably lying, the one the makes no sense or the one that totally makes sense?

Come on, this is just lazy.

Wait, are they blaming heavy equipment manufacturers because they sell heavy equipment to Israel? That makes it a stretch to say that these companies demolished Palestinian homes. I could maybe see a case if that was all that excavation equipment was useful for, but it has a multitude of uses.

I’m okay with this, but I wish everyone would stop acting like Kissinger belongs near the levers of power instead of behind bars.

Again, that’s a structural problem that it shares with any Reddit-like site, at least when karma has any sort of significance. Anything with a low barrier to entry will allow bots.

Exactly, I think Twitter could have continued on indefinitely if Elon hadn’t dropped in and mucked everything up. The model worked well enough and they were finally tamping down the moderation issues more or less. There were problems with monetizing, but even that gap was being shrunk.

Oh yeah, that was really good. Weird, but good. Definitely a good one for someone who works in a service industry and is just done with shitty customers.

From what I can gather, there were repeated problems with brigading. It’s also worth noting that Lemmy uses much the same structure as Reddit, so the complaints from r/banned about “supermods” apply just as much here.

Currently, no. Digg collapsed because the format of the site was changed in extreme and unpopular ways. Elon is massively mismanaging Twitter while also learning that moderation is hard. Reddit of course has its own balancing act, but it shows no signs of complete collapse like with previous sites.

This implies…

And here’s where you’re making a mistake. You’re drawing all sorts of inferences to put words in my mouth. I don’t know if you’re just a spiteful individual, but it’s a pattern of behavior.

Evidently, he’d be perfectly fine with the system as long as the slave owners weren’t allowed to egregiously abuse their slaves.

Slavery is intrinsically abusive. I didn’t think I needed to bother saying that. Chattel slavery is intrinsically more abusive than other forms of slavery, especially as was practiced in the South.

Thus he even argues that the modern prison slavery in US is not comparable to chattel slavery.

Comparable? Hell no, in the same way that the Holocaust is not comparable with a few dozen people being murdered. Obviously both are evil, but one is terrible on a completely different scale than the other.

Exactly. Won by the labor movement after the American Civil War. Not achieved by capitalists and not involved in abolishing chattel slavery.

Things like the 8 hour work day?

Well, I made an attempt. I just ask that you consult with someone who you will actually pay attention to as to whether this comparison is an offensive one to make. As I said, when you’re starting to sound like a neo-confederate, step back and ask whether you’re saying something offensive.

• Spends money on purchasing slaves vs. Can exchange one “slave” (worker) for another: This leaves out the horrors of the slave trade, both transatlantic and domestic. Families were routinely split apart. Slave auctions were dehumanizing. Enslaved people were entirely at the mercy of their enslavers. The states would help track down escaped slaves, and the federal government attempted to force Northern states to cooperate via the Fugitive Slave Act. I won’t whitewash the poor balance in employer-employee relationships, but it’s offensive to put it in the same league. Workers can leave. They can move companies, cities, states, or countries. Workers are not forced to leave their family, at least not at a level that is utterly non-negotiable.
• Pays for the total upkeep of the slaves: Yeah, in the same way you keep up a piece of machinery. If it was no longer profitable to pay for the “upkeep” of an enslaved person because of age or disability, they were subject to being sold off for medical experiments, left in the woods to die, etc. Quality health care was not in the cards.
• If a slave gets sick it’s [the enslaver’s] problem: Only if it interfered with work. And if you’re making a comparison with modern capitalism, workplace injuries are very much the employer’s problem because of worker’s compensation. Likewise health care insurance is commonly employer provided. There are also pieces of the social safety net, with are partially paid for by businesses in various ways.
• Slaves come to work on their own: I see no downside to people having their own homes instead of whatever half-assed shack their enslaver provides.
• Only has to pay for 8 hours of their lives: That other 16 hours was a hard won victory by unions. Going over 8 means paying overtime. Slaves didn’t get overtime, but they did get over 8 hours of work.