work in academia. The peer reviews are far more brutal than existing on the internet.

https://youtu.be/IlD08Rh6xa8?si=FvN687WPkiX0j8A9

I think this scene nails it.

https://web.archive.org/web/20160812025917/http://www.iariw.org/papers/2014/GustafssonPaper.pdf

Purchasing power parity isn’t used to measure purchasing power?

Fuck. I might have to discard my multiple advanced degrees in mathematics.

I’m not arguing in bad faith. I’m sharing my opinion, backed by my own research experience in Cybersecurity and AI that this seems incredibly unlikely and kindly provided a source for the numbers I cited while you continuously insult me.

Occam’s razor would suggest that everyone who disagrees with you on the internet isn’t a simp for Russia and that a diversity of opinions is natural.

I’ve not said anything positive about Russia at all-- just that their PPP is higher than Japan’s, which isn’t an opinion at all.

No. I’m saying the US had the technological capability to stop missiles from flying at all, the financial power to make life difficult for the Bibi regime, the political power to back the ICJ, and is in no way compelled to reprint IDF propaganda to sway the American electorate towards their pro-settler policies, but they failed on all counts. The US made Iranian nuclear refineries shake themselves apart, but US tech companies now build AI tools to aid the IDF in their campaign of total destruction.

Maybe the ceasefire wouldn’t have been total, but the polls clearly showed that the lack of effort would (and did) cost them the election.

Why are you insulting me for disagreeing with you?

Why is it that everyone who disagrees with you is a foreign agent?

How am I being pro Russia? I called them oligarchic AND pointed out that any strength implied by that graph is due from war expenditures and not some underlying strength.

if PPP wasn’t a useful indicator of purchasing power, it probably wouldn’t be called purchasing power parity and be published by the World Bank.

My only claim here is that it would be silly to waste time on Lemmy when there are bigger and easier fish to fry. I’m not even denying Russian propagandists exist and called Tim Pool a shill.

I am incredibly amused that this somehow adds up to being a Russian troll rather than someone who can hear and acknowledge opinions that are different than my own.

Good luck with the whole fascism thing. I’m sure your echo chamber will win the election next time!

lol. Didn’t realize the world bank was a Russian asset. My bad.

I didn’t change the subject. I’m saying those right were earned by unions and not gifted by politicians.

As somebody who lives and works in Sweden with a PhD in computer science, I had more disposable income when I washed dishes in NYC. So, yeah, I would say wages are pretty low.

classic neoliberal compassion

Also, the bombings of Kurdish positions today are done by NATO member Turkey who also compelled Sweden to change their laws and hand over Kurdish journalists that Erdogan didn’t like.

The US is no ally to the Kurds-- it was a partnership of convenience. In Kurdish, there’s a saying,

ji çiyan pê ve heval nînin

No friends but the mountains.

I’m just responding to a comment about them being able to afford it. They clearly have money on hand, which makes per capita GDP metrics a non sequitur given the oligarchic nature of Russia. Since it’s a war economy with a huge degree of state centralization, looking at total economic power makes a lot more sense, to me at least.

Why are we talking about quality of life suddenly? At no point did I say Russia was better than Japan-- i said they have plenty of capital and a relatively cheap labor pool.

I’m conceding that Russia can, in fact, waste money on Lemmy trolls. I still don’t think it’s at all likely and would be very happy to see some mod logs that prove me wrong.

Do you think there are Russian trolls on every discord server and IRC chat room too? It must be exhausting to live like that.

no, no. I’m conceding that-- not ignoring that.

https://hms.harvard.edu/news/exploring-science-acupuncture

Acupuncture actual does have clinical significant effects though.

I added an arxiv link and a stack overflow link that show that I’m not alone in this assertion of equivalence.

I blame autocorrect for the Merkle typos.

You mean the country with basically universal union membership and literally 0 legislation around minimum wage?

The one where worker’s rights are guaranteed by union negotiations and the threat of a strike rather than national legislation?

Not at all, but ISIS was a creation of the Bush administration’s disastrous policies post invasion that excluded any Ba’ath party member from joining the new administration. Given that Party membership was a prerequisite for any government job under the Hussein regime and that most of the GDP was based on nationalized oil exports, this excluded pretty much every working professional from participating in society post march of 2003. That’s precisely why ISIS was able to set up a massive and functioning bureaucracy in a matter of weeks-- tons of people had valid reasons to hate the US backed regime and had no other option, economically.

I personally went to Kurdistan to teach refugee children how to use computers during the first Trump Administration and when the YPG insisted I carry a gun for self defense, I only kept a single bullet in the magazine. So, I do very much put my money where my mouth is.

I smoked hookah with teenage Assad Regime soldiers who became ISIS guards before the Kurds took over the administration and they became YPG recruits. The single most striking thing about the experience was how little the ideology mattered to the people on the ground. Consistently, it seemed like the primary concern was feeding ones family rather than this or that ideology.

These problems were created by the colonial conquest of the Ottoman empire and the root issue has always been Sykes Picot. More white people in the middle east shooting brown people will never solve that problem.

Tu dizani Kurdi, heval?

the end of American involvement in Syria and Afghanistan

We define “blockchain” and “blockchain network”, and then discuss two very different, well known classes of blockchain networks: cryptocurrencies and Git repositories.

https://arxiv.org/abs/1803.00892

183 votes for your “similar but not the same” and 103 votes for “they are the same”. At the very least, I’d say this is far from settled fact

yeah, but this SO post has many up voted comments supporting my points as well.

I’m arguing that we should be working in and with working class communities to tangibly improve their material conditions and you’re comparing me to a MAGA?

That’s some weird dissonance.