Gust

Reminds me of the undergrad experience of someone who is not me, lol. They had “the dropbox”, spoken about only in hushed tones and never openly acknowledged, which may have contained a pdf copy of every single text required by the curriculum of that person’s major.

“Even users in r/massivecock, where most of the posts are images of erect penises, railed against ICE in their captions.”

First two paragraphs, sure. I wasnt disagreeing with your conclusions, just pointing out that your analysis was flawed. I share your opinion that Europe is unlikely to be credibly militarily threatened by the US, CN, RU, or even CN+RU. I do think china is significantly closer to being a credible threat than your analysis indicates. Historically, how many expansionist empires have decided they had enough territory on their own?

As far as disagreeing with SIPRI figures… they have been the global academic authority on defense economics for almost 60 years. You are welcome to disagree with them based on vibes but there’s really no more to discuss if you don’t have a reremovedble source of evidence to back your opinion.

This last paragraph is entirely vibes based on my end, so don’t give it more credit than the opinion of some rando on the fediverse. I don’t know that I’d count on Ukraine to be ride or die with Europe in the future. The rest of Europe certainly has not acted in a way to engender that level of mutual defense with Ukraine in the past 12 years. Maybe the Baltic states have, but the larger European economies have spent 12 years appeasing their gas station dictator rather than fully supporting Ukraine. They are saints beyond what the EU deserves if they do fully commit to the EU defensive bloc in the future.

Your analysis ignores the concept of purchasing power parity (ppp). I linked a SIPRI faq page below, #12 explains the concept of ppp as it relates to military spending pretty well. The second link I provided shows 2024 global military spend figures that account for ppp.

TLDR: your analysis underestimates European military spend compared to the US but vastly overestimates European military spend compared to Russia or China.

https://www.sipri.org/databases/milex/frequently-asked-questions#PPP

https://militaryppp.com/blog/

I didn’t know they had Warthunder in China too

The politicians go where the people are, not the other way around. It sounds weird but I think a social media platform has to be a good place for folk with low tech literacy to post and chat about cute cat videos before it can ever be politically relevant. I’ve yet to come across a fedi client that I think my mom in her 60s could handle/would find appealing, and I kinda think you need something like that for widespread adoption. If you had a fedi client like that and some incentive to sign up like free lotteries run on the eu server for the first few months to catalyze a critical mass of users, I bet you’d have a fighting chance at breaking away from US social media walled gardens

They say you pay your auxiliaries in patriotism. That and two pennies will buy them a beer.

From the abstract, emphasis mine

“Moreover, although inequality initially seemed to undermine mental health, the publication-bias-corrected association was null”

Maybe this term is reasonable and I’m just not familiar with the field of study, but this sounds suspiciously like “when you ignore all the woke dei nonsense” dressed up in academic language.

Edit: it also points out that economic inequality does cause adverse mental health outcomes but only in low income people so that can be ignored for the conclusion. Honestly I feel like my takeaway is that getting published in Nature doesn’t mean what it used to

I think the problem is less horny 14yos and more the fact that they listen to scum like Andrew Tate or the Paul brothers growing up. I see so many teenagers who live a life where the only voice in their life that speaks positively of/to them is the chud on social media trying to groom them into an angry incel. Let’s be better than blaming children for the fact that we as a society have given up the act of raising kids in favor of generating more shareholder value. It’s not the kids’ fault that both of their parents probably work 50+ hour weeks to survive and youtube is the only parent in the house most of the time

The one I remember most clearly is like… sorry in advance for tmi. Do not continue reading if you dont want to read a sex story

So we tended to do a decent amount of foreplay, and this night it was really hot and heavy. She was really seductively trying to get me to say I needed to be inside her, and we were on that line of fooling around for a while in a way we were both really into. At one point I’m on my back and she’s teasing me while straddling me, and I finally give in and tell her I need her. What does she do? Gives me the most Samuel Jackson ass expression she can muster and a “shit negro, that’s all you had to say!” I almost died laughing

The best sex I’ve ever had was with a woman who regularly (temporarily) cockblocked herself by making me laugh so hard I couldn’t stay hard

A lot of people already mentioned it but geant4 is the gold standard for that kind of simulation. It could also be worth looking into pythia if you’re interested in simulating high energy events with geant4

What’s the difference between a million and a billion? About a billion