I think it’s because he hoped there were actual guarantees, considering Trump is definitely interested in Ukraine’s mineral industry. But as the meeting went on it became increasingly clear that keeping Putin his BFF was even more important and he just wanted to have his cake and eat it too.
I mean, he was asking a question that had to be asked at one point or another. If Vance had an answer to that, he wouldn’t have lost face. If he didn’t, that means any kind of deal they could’ve made would’ve been useless (if not harmful) to Ukraine.
What would’ve he gained by not making that question? The chance to make a deal with no warranties? I feel like he’s a very good strategic thinker, and that wasn’t a choice dictated by pride or by the heat of the moment. There was nothing significant to gain by not asking that question, they would’ve just discussed the deal behind closed doors and he’d still have to refuse because Trump’s only warranty would still be “well so far he hasn’t broken promises with me, though”.
So what should’ve been the answer to Vance’s proposal of “diplomacy”, in your opinion? Do you think he shouldn’t have questioned the validity of it, in spite of the precedents? Wouldn’t that just mean accepting the deal without any guarantee of protection like it happened before?
They’re not “against reform”, they’re disenfranchised, lazy or just… not the brightest minds.
They made a mistake (a big one at that), but that doesn’t mean that they like what’s happening. The upper class has been doing their best to keep us dumb, busy, tired and uninformed. And it’s clearly working.
First, people supporting Trump are not the majority by any metric. They are 49.8% of the people who voted, which is 31,8% of the eligible voters and 23,3% of the total us population. You could argue that the majority of people “don’t hate” Trump, and while that’s still a scary metric, it’s not the point that I wanted to make.
“They” aren’t Republicans or Trump supporters, they’re wealth-hoarding billionaires that actively make people’s lives worse. As it has already been said, support for Luigi is pretty much bipartisan. Nearly everyone hates those people, and even plenty of people who voted Trump did it because they see him as “one of the people” (for some godforsaken reason). They’re propagandized into voting Republican through all the culture war, misinformation and fear mongering, but when people like Brian Thompson die, no one is actually sad and a lot actually celebrate.
Trump does indeed have a personality cult, but from what I’ve gathered the great majority of people voting him aren’t part of that and they don’t actually like him, it’s just that they hate “the gays”, “the libs”, or “the immigrants” more.
He traded his life for another. He showed the world that it’s possible. And “we” outnumber “them”. Making people realize that is an achievement in itself.
Would you say people like Rosa Parks “didn’t accomplish anything”?
23% voted for Trump, and 55% also indirectly did by not voting or going third-party.
The rest of the group feels otherwise, probably NOT because they don’t care if their candidate gets elected, but rather that they don’t understand how crucial it is to their party (along with gerrymandering). And their first gut instinct is that popular vote is justified/rational/logical whatever.
The (European) centrist part in me think the “less engaged” Republicans are those who like the central right-wing ideas (small government, less taxes etc.), but don’t like how crazy the current Republican party is, and since they have no real representative they identify themselves as “less engaged”. Those people would probably prefer for the electoral college to be abolished so that the current Republican party never gets elected again and they’re forced to shift to candidates that are actually sane in order to win back votes.
…but yeah, your analysis might be correct too, those “less engaged” people could also be MAGAs that just don’t understand how they wouldn’t win an actually democratic election.
So it’s a matter of being relatively easy to scam people with it? Is it an issue only when the NFT is “made” for the first time or for every transaction too?
I personally thought the appeal was that you can sell them as regular items, whereas if they were in a traditional database you still would’ve needed the transaction to be approved by the database itself.
At least that’s what I figured, I know nothing of how selling an NFT works so I could be just talking out of my ass.
Sorry, I tried to understand this Oracle Paradox you’re talking about but every explanation I found had so much jargon that it fried my brain at the third line. Do you know where can I find an ELI5?
And yes, I get why people dislike the concept of NFTs, but mocking their value (or lack thereof) seems dumb when it’s “obtained” the same way as pretty much every other collectible.
Why does everyone need to point out how “they were always worthless”? It’s a collector’s “item”, it only has value if someone wants to buy it, nothing new.
The only difference is that this one’s value if the market completely crashes is absolute zero, but does that change much if regular collectible items are physical and can be sold for 1 cent instead?
I never bought NFTs and never will, but as a collector this pisses me off because it’s the same as those people who mock card collections because “it’s just cardboard”. You’re completely missing the point.
Because I love iPhones and iOs, I just wish the ones making them weren’t such asses with their customers.
From Joe Biden, the man who said he was going to beat Joe Biden?
I mean, it could definitely be a joke, but I wouldn’t put it past him to do that. He’s definitely senile, the wrong thing about the “speech” in the article is that Trump is in no position to say that when he’s even worse.
Fuck the algorithm. My favorite Youtubers still do quality videos, luckily, but now they take longer because they have to fill their channels periodically with less inspired stuff or the all-seeing algorithm will toss them out. I hate it.
Full stats by the way:
Among women, 63.3% reported being the target of sexual harassment versus 23.7% of men
29.9% of women had been sexually assaulted versus 6.9% of men
10.9% of women experiencing forced physical contact for career opportunities (a form of sexual assault) versus 0.7% of men
Being raped by a colleague was reported by 0.8% of women versus 0.1% of men
Not sure why it keeps being framed as “versus” like it’s some sort of competition and it doesn’t mean both sexes get sexually harassed and that’s not fucking okay for either.
The spokesperson added that searches for “Writers Guild of America” and “Writers Guild of America Strike” were not impacted.
Ok, if that’s true I can believe that.
That’s weed. Weed is far less dangerous than the stuff we were talking about.
Also my view might be skewed due to living in Europe, so “selling to pay cancer bills” wasn’t really what I thought of.
Even if it was someone desperate for money, they still tried to sell a very dangerous drug to another human. That’s not ok, in my opinion.
That’s where I draw the line: if you’re only harming yourself you need help. If you’re trying to fuel others’ addiction, it’s jail. At most if it’s clear that the person has a huge drug issue you could force the rehabilitation center in that case as well (but again, the first time. If you still sell meth after that you’re asking for it).
I still think the ultimate outcome wouldn’t have changed but yeah, rewatching it he does seem a bit more provocative than in the rest of the interview. Maybe it did tick him off a bit too much and he decided to go for it in the heat of the moment.