This is the propaganda I can get behind.

And with trolleybuses powered on a renewable grid, it's zero gallons!

Tankies ignoring the agency of other countries so they can blame anything and everything on the US is just a repackaged form of American exceptionalism. They don't believe Russians or Ukrainians are actually people with agency beyond what the US "makes" them do.

One of my roommates in undergrad was from China, and whenever he went back to China to visit his family, we literally couldn't contact him because all the messaging apps/services we use are blocked in China.

Another family friend of mine lived and taught in Macau as a professor for a while, and he explained how he had to get a VPN just to access the regular internet.

Any government that locks down access like that is not one worthy of admiration. It's insane that people defend the CCP.

Why does everyone always focus so much on architecture? Like, if you really wanna visualize how South Korea is materially much better off than North Korea, just use the satellite view at night where North Korea is almost completely absent of lights.

There's a million better things to criticize North Korea for besides having commie blocks. Especially considering the pic they chose genuinely doesn't look that bad.

Such a weird attempt at a meme from these folks.

Me, who's not in web dev:

It's especially dumb because RISC-V is -- dare I say it -- inevitably the future. Trying to crack down on RISC-V is like trying to crack down on Linux or solar photovoltaics or wind turbines. That is, you can try to crack down, but the fundamental value proposition is simply too good. All you'll achieve in cracking down is hurting yourself while everyone else gets ahead.

This is so true for the housing crisis. Conservative NIMBYs will be like "deregulation good!" and "free market good!", but then they religiously show up to any and all city hall meetings to rant and rave about how we need to use heavy-handed regulations to protect "historic" parking lots and the "neighborhood character".

Just today I saw this list of the largest tram networks in history: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_tram_and_light_rail_transit_systems_ever

The largest existing one is Melbourne, at a little over 250 km of tramways. Los Angeles at its peak had over 1700 km of tramways.

Truly insane what we tore up. A crime against humanity.

This video by a political science professor explains it best: https://youtu.be/zMxHU34IgyY?si=N5oHElN4Xlbiqznh

In short, the only people who truly know are Hamas, and the best the rest of us can do is speculate.

Some possibilities are that Hamas wanted to sabotage normalizing relations between Israel and the rest of the Muslim world, that Hamas wanted to bait Israel into a wildly disproportionate response that would garner themselves sympathy and recruits, that Hamas was bluffing and feigning strength and counting on Israel to think the attack was bait, that Hamas was just acting on bloodlust and wanted to attack regardless of the consequences, or many other possibilities.

Further, we focus a lot on the substative issues, i.e., the grievances and disagreements at hand, but we don't talk about the bargaining frictions nearly enough. There are countless border disputes around the world, and yet they rarely result in war. Why? Because war is costly and most wish to avoid it. War typically happens when there are both substantive issues and bargaining frictions, i.e., things preventing the two sides from negotiating a solution. But us onlookers can't even know for sure what these frictions are, only speculate.

All this is simply the nature of the fog of war, that the true strategies/goals won't be known for a while, if ever. Anyone who tries to tell you with certainty why they did what they did at this stage doesn't actually know with any degree of certainty. Nobody but Hamas actually knows.

I do recommend watching the full video above, as the professor is very engaging, rather amusing, and covers this topic quite thoroughly.

If I had a kid doing stem cell research at 10 years old, I'd probably be the opposite of mad, so long as they're following proper ethical and safety standards in their labwork.

Good solution is to tax land. The land value tax cannot be passed on to tenants, both in economic theory and in observed practice.

Plus, it's just a super good tax. Progressive, hard to evade, super efficient, incentivizes density and disincentivizes sprawl. It's so good that economists of all different ideologies agree, from free-market libertarians like Milton Friedman to New Keynesians and social democrats like Joseph Stiglitz.

We should be taxing land, not labor.

It certainly doesn't help that it's literally illegal to build enough housing across the vast majority of urban land (at least in the US and Canada). Nothing like good ol' fashioned manufactured scarcity to guarantee line keeps on going up.

It's the mother of all regulatory capture, where our local governments (who are supposed to represent the needs of the people) have passed so many frickin laws to systematically manufacture and maintain the artificial scarcity of housing that keeps these ghouls' investments so wildly profitable. Restrictive zoning that makes townhouses and duplexes literally illegal? Check. Arbitrary and pseudoscientific parking minimums? Check. Setback requirements so everyone is legally required to have a massive resource-consuming, space-wasting front lawn whether they want it or not? Check.

Utter insanity.

Pros of yacht-centric development:

• If you own a yacht, it means you are rich and therefore better than others.
• If you're in a car, some homeless guy could just walk up to your car and beg for money (so awkward!). In a yacht, what are they gonna do, swim?
• Waterfront access is the American dream. Building roads instead of canals is literally communism.
• Yachts and canals are great for home values. Gotta keep those prices going up!
• Cars just aren't sufficient for your average person to haul 20 friends to their weekly parties on their private islands. People need their yachts to go about these basic necessities of life!

Pros of car-centric development:

• ???
• There are no pros of car-centric development.

Yeah, we ignored the Tea Party as silly folks in 2008 and 2012, but by 2016 they had rebranded as MAGA and now they run the GOP.

Any delusional, hateful ideology -- be it tankies, Nazis, or whatever -- will fester if you let it.

What's ironic is my city, Montreal, is arguably the biggest cycling city in North America. Even in winter the bike lanes are filled with cyclists. Why? Turns out that all you need is good-quality bike infrastructure that you actually maintain in the winter and people will happily bike year-round.

Excellent point, brother. Always choose AMERICAN MUSCLE over COMMIE OIL.

People complain about the UN doing nothing, but it's also important to remember it was literally designed to not be able to do anything if one of the security council nations -- USA, UK, France, Russia, or China -- vetoes it. And USA always vetoes anything against the Israeli government.

Considering the UN's hands are tied, I'm very glad they're at least using their figurative microphone and international influence to call attention to how fucked up the treatment of Palestinians is.

I don't know for others, but growing up American, Israel and its friends in Washington had done a terrific job of conflating any criticism of Israel with anti-semitism. What finally got me to re-evaluate my stance on the Israeli government a few years back was when well-known, respectable organizations like the Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International started using the word "apartheid" to describe the situation of Palestinians.

Hearing sources like the UN Office for Human Rights, the UN Secretary General, Human Rights Watch, and Amnesty International calling out the Israeli government's actions in strong, unequivocal terms like "war crime" and "apartheid" is a start. I wish they could do more, and I sure as heck am angry with US foreign policy in this, but I'm just glad the UN has the balls to actually call this a war crime.

I'm not even communist — rather a Georgist myself — but it's so fun to portray THEM as the conservative reactionaries and paid shills. They literally don't even know how to properly respond. The best part is everything I said is 100% true: tankies ARE in fact errand boys for the imperial elites. Or at the very least useful idiots.

In francophone Switzerland, they use septante, huitante, and nonante for 70, 80, and 90, respectively. Much more sensical, imo.

This is exactly what I don't understand about people who want peace in Ukraine as soon as possible and at all costs: capitulation for the sake of short-term peace endangers long-term peace.

If we globally set the precedent that you can invade whomever you want and win just because you have nukes, that makes for a vastly more dangerous world. Every country with nukes will suddenly be more willing to go all imperialist, and all the countries without nukes will want to have them as a guarantee against invasion. And I don't know about y'all, but a world with way more nukes in way more hands is way more dangerous.

Plus, Putin has shown he'll keep on invading neighbors so long as he can get away with it. Delivering a crushing defeat to Russia and specifically Putin is the only way to achieve a more lasting peace.