TheHiddenCatboy

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: June 13th, 2023

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  • I know this is in jest, but it’s definitely something the shitheads would push. And my answer goes thusly:

    No. The Economy hasn’t done a damn thing for me, and it’s done less for my wife. I’m treading water, unable to afford a house or a car on what was once an unfathomable sum of money when I was younger. It has done less for my wife, who relies on my job to keep a roof over her head. You want us to have kids? Reassure us that our kids will have a better life, and stop vampire-squidding us and sucking down every loose dollar.


  • There’s this possible ending in Cyberpunk 2077 that I think speaks to how Billionaires view the world. The leader of the Japanese megacorp Arasaka is arguably the most powerful man in Japan, more-so than even the Japanese emperor. His company’s security forces includes an aircraft carrier, not to mention endless drones and faceless goons equipped with … if not the best technology on the planet, then the second best. And they’ve unlocked the technology of digitising a person’s consciousness and storing it.

    The CEO’s son is a bit of a rebel, trying to undermine his father. He eventually gets very hands-on (integral part of the plot that your character witnesses first-hand early in the game) and bumps his father off and takes over Arasaka. And if you play the game a certain way, you reach an ending where the daughter of the CEO assists her dead father in … coopting the son’s body, displacing his consciousness, and ‘reincarnating’ in the son’s body, to continue his centuries of ownership of Arasaka.

    This is fiction, but Cyberpunk is all about assuming the worst of our corporate overlords. I don’t think it’s an overreach.



  • Exactly. Any half-way competent Russian commander would steamroll Ukraine because Russia has roughly 10x the GDP as Ukraine (or it did before the invasion, at least), and roughly 4x the population. That Russia has only managed to take a sliver of land on the west side of Ukraine and not the whole country suggests that Russia has dropped the ball in an epic way AND Ukraine has gotten crazy lucky. This war should have been over a long time ago if Russia was 1/10th what we thought it was back in early 2021 before the invasion. That it’s not and not only has Ukraine managed to hold Russia off but actually take over Russian territory puts the lie to Russian propaganda that they deserve a seat at the same table as the US and China. As the Infographics Show likes to put it, we thought Russia was the second strongest military in the world. Now we know it’s the second strongest military in Ukraine…




  • Then you missed an opportunity to justify that opinion.

    Germany isn’t perfect. Nobody is. But there is no lie that the USA no longer is the bastion of freedom it claimed to be, but is a lot more like 1930s Germany than today’s Germany is. Let’s talk some facts.

    Germany scores 40/40 in terms of political rights, and 55/60 on Civil Liberties. This score matched their 2023 score, and while the 2024 report isn’t done yet, we can get a look at 2023’s view. Germany collected all available points on the political side of the equation, for its Mixed Proportional Representation system, vibrant political parties, and good political system balance. The areas it gets dinged on include:

    • Women are underrepresented in government.
    • Non-Native Residents find it hard to become citizens.
    • There are concerns about the retention and analysis of data, including possible retributory use that could impact free speech.
    • Politically motivated crimes are on the rise.
    • While Germany overall is doing a good job on equal rights, Roma and Senti people face discrimination, and women still show an 18% underpayment compared to men.

    Perhaps you take exception to ‘gave rise to Fascism’ and ‘unleashed two world wars’? I get you. From a pure factuality standpoint, this statement leaves something to be desired. Germany didn’t give rise to Fascism. IMO, that ‘honour’ goes to Italy. And World War 1 was mostly started by Austria. but let’s be clear here. Germany viewed the fight between Austria and Bosnia to be just the opening it needed to take on Russia and France. And World War 2? 100% started by Germany, in their quest to find lebensraum, or living space, while they displaced undesirables like Jews and Slavs. While Italy started Fascism, it was Germany that objectively planned to bring its own brand of fascism globally. Maybe you’d prefer: “The nation that fanned the flames of both world wars, starting one and enlarging the other, and was the largest force for the spread of the toxic ideology of Fascism, has become a global model of democracy”?

    I agree with the rest of it, too. The USA has fallen to becoming what we fought against in the 1940s. And Germany may well become what has to fight against to us in the 2030s…