If you just look at numbers maybe, we can see from Russia (large navy) vs Ukraine (no navy) that there are serious disadvantages when waging a war of attrition, even with relatively near distances and supply lines.

The Israeli navy has no meaningful capability control Norwegian waters and they would be insane to try.

Norway having a small military and being easy to bully sounds familiar, perhaps the Russians remember how that goes and can explain.

To be clear, what I said was “I think that’s a strange comment” to someone saying “Americans want to kill me” in comparison to those in the Middle East.

If you read that back carefully, you might notice that I was careful not to say “I support the systematic and brutal murder of millions of people” - that’s because, like any sane person, I see that what Israel are doing is abhorrent. I never argued or insinuated that lgbtq people should support the genocide of bigots, but again for the sake of clarity my position is that only a literal insane person could think that. An eye for an eye leaves the whole world blind.

So, with that said, your post that I responded to seems to imply that you think Americans (in general) hate you in the same way that many in the middle east hate you. To me, that is an incredibly naive view, and a very strange thing for someone who’s never lived there to make.

I think that it’s possible to condemn elements of a culture, in an honest way ie. that the Islamic attitude to LGB is worse than that in western countries, however bad western countries often are (for some reason I think there’s sometimes less hate for the T in Islamic culture) but pull short of supporting the worst elements of western culture (like islamophobia) and absolutely without endorsing literal war crimes.

Have you ever spent time in a middle eastern country and been visibly “out”? (I’m assuming you’re saying this in reference to existing somewhere on the lgbtq spectrum)

If the answer is no, but you have spent time in America, then I think this is a strange comment.

Poland is one of the largest militaries in NATO and have a special hatred of Russia. I imagine alongside the UK and France, Russia has nukes aimed at Poland already.

They are plenty threatening already, though obviously adding nukes, even if American controlled, exacerbates things.

Hard to see something if you’ve got your eyes closed. There’s plenty of liberal support for Assange, just this week the centre right led government of Australia passed a motion to urge the UK and US to return him to Australia.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-15/motion-to-urge-us-uk-to-allow-julian-assange-return/103469226?utm_source=abc_news_app&utm_medium=content_shared&utm_campaign=abc_news_app&utm_content=other

Why did you reply again without reading either post?

The post said they are trying to vape and gradually reduce their nicotine intake to 0. I don’t know how it can be made any more clear in stating that their near term goal is not to stop vaping, but to reduce the nicotine dose in the vape to 0.

They are trying to reduce their nicotine dosage in their vape but due to their addiction, are having withdrawals and ultimately re-adding the dose. This is 100% due to nicotine, they are not trying to reduce how many times they inhale the vape.

Dude that guy said very clearly his method was to lower the nicotine dose in his vape to ween down to 0mg/nicotine free vape. He isn’t trying to quit the habit, you didn’t even read his post.

Quietly returning to the status quo is radically different from what happened after the Munich Olympics. What is it that makes you think the mossad and their political leaders are so much quicker to drop a grudge now?

Not even that extreme, just an overcrowded train with someone who smells or is drunk is way worse than being in traffic. For plenty of women, someone who looks threatening can make a trip mega uncomfortable.

Mid 30s Aussie living the the US. Yes I can drive a manual, yes I do drive a manual and yes I think it should be mandatory for 100% of learning drivers regardless of whether they plan to daily drive an automatic or manual when licensed.

The quality of driving here is considerably worse here than what I’ve experienced in Australia or Europe and I’m convinced requiring people to drive in a machine that forces them to consider the next ~100m leads to higher quality, more mindful drivers.

You came across as super patronizing so I responded the same. It’s not that big of a thing man, chill out.

You can eat and not pay attention with a manual transmission, I don’t know why we’d pretend you can’t. If you’re just on the highway cruising both are just going to be in one gear all the time.

I never claimed you couldn’t eat and drive a manual. I said that people who claim autos are better because they make it easier to choose to drive distracted (alternative phrasing - who choose to drive like a reckless asshole) shouldn’t be on the road.

Either way, the problem is that people have to drive even if they don’t want to engage. The popularity of automatic transmissions proves that (to most Americans at least) cars are an appliance and something people do because they have to. Fuck cars.

Well, yeah, that’s always been the case. There are some enthusiasts sure, but for the most part a car is seen as a more convenient bus. But people riding the bus seldom choose to behave dangerously while commuting, there’s something about the mentality of these people (choosing to drive distracted) that is at odds with normal, acceptable behavior

You don’t need to assure me of the blatantly obvious. My point wasn’t that you can’t eat and drive manual at the same time, it was that all these people claim automatic is a better transmission on the basis it facilitates their choice to drive distracted shouldn’t be on the road. I didn’t see a single person saying “oh I like driving manual better because it makes it easier for me to be an irresponsible road user”.

All of these people responding that they prefer auto so they can eat or otherwise not pay attention in the car are the best (only?) argument for why everyone should drive manual.

Whatever your transmission preference is, if you’re not engaged in driving you shouldn’t be on the road!

I’ve never seen or heard of this but I’m skeptical that there is any speed hump design that wouldn’t be a negative for emergency services, increase wear and tear to vehicles that cross them and that wouldn’t be less of an impact to lifted chassis vehicles. These problems are avoided by the other, better solutions so why are humps even a part of the conversation at all?

Speed bumps are the worst possible solution, they often mean if you’re in a conventional car you have to come to a near complete stop and if you’re in a large SUV you can cross at 20mph. This reinforces the trend away from conventional cars to higher ride height vehicles which is a disaster for road safety (especially pedestrian and cyclist safety).

They do successfully slow down the flow of traffic (and also cause traffic to follow alternative paths, at least until speed bumps are saturated in the area) but it fucks up emergency vehicle access and damages cars (increases wear and tear). The other road design solutions (more narrow roads, inclusion of roundabouts, addition of choke points etc) all are equally as effective as humps at reducing speeders and diverting traffic away from roads (in some cases they are better) and have none of the negative consequences, speed humps should never be used imo.

The two differences you listed improve traffic flow and safety massively!

Driver education is often more strict depending on country (I’m thinking Scandinavian countries and Germany), unsurprisingly this makes a big difference.

Traveling faster is a bit of a moot point. If people drive faster and rate of incidents and road toll are lower, surely that proves that travel speed isn’t the problem in the US.

But really, the drink driving culture in America is terrifying. The state of Texas has a similar population to Australia (where I’m from), 9,560 people died on the road in Q1 2022 in texas. Australia had just under 2000 FOR THE WHOLE YEAR! Both places have similar speed limits that are considerably slower than Europe, so I don’t think it would be honest to try and say the low speed limits cause deaths. My best guess would be that drink driving is enforced at 0.05 in Australia compared to 0.08 in Texas. On top of this, Texas only enforces if officers have a cause for lawful detainment, which is a high threshold to cross compared to random breath tests common where I’m from.

It’s incorrect to think of most road laws as being in place for safety, instead recognize that it’s largely a tax by another name. It is never safe to drive 20mph below prevailing traffic, regardless of what the sign on the side of the road instructs.

To avoid fines, pay attention and try to avoid routes where there are often cops collecting a toll, especially during quieter times when you’re one of a smaller number of commuters (and more likely to be the sucker who gets pinged). If you’re white, congratulations, you’re way less likely to be the unlucky party who gets pinged.

The reason I asked was because I think there’s a fundamental disagreement between what it actually is that people disagree about.

Your earlier post suggests that your stance on abortion is different than that of the mainstream conservative narrative. This seems normal, based on how every vote on that issue seems to be playing out, there is a disconnect between the ideology that conservative leaders are pushing and what their supporters actually think. The exact same situation is true with affirmation action on the left - voters consistently reject it regardless of party affiliation or self identified political leaning.

I’d hear people identify CRT as being closely related to affirmative action, in that it’s an actual policy that gives out some advantage (or seeks to remove some other existing advantage, if you have a different perspective) vs being some purely academic case study more like what a other response to your response described.

Where I’m going with this is that depending on what you’re describing when you say CRT, it’s very easily possible that your position of opposing it is consistent with a clear majority of people who identify as “left”. The disagreement isn’t about ideology, but about semantics that is being exploited by a political class to drive support.