You were the polite one and I was the rude one. No need for you to apologize.

Appreciate the discussion. Hopefully the world we leave is a better place than when we were born into it.

My tone was a bit over the top and I generalized regarding instances. For that I will apologize.

The USA is an “easy target” because it’s incredibly active in the world stage. Very few nations have the resources available to it to do what the USA is capable of doing. With that said this is the classic man in the arena argument – the USA is most certainly in the arena and there are good and bad things that come with it. I believe your argument to be reductionist at best – USA bad because XYZ. There’s a whole hell of a lot more to it than that. So you’ve mentioned Iran, Iraq, and Afghanistan. What about long, successful alliances between USA with Jordan, Egypt, Israel (hot button I know), and Saudi Arabia.

The struggle in the region today is very much Iran and Saudi Arabia throwing their weight around and many groups of people are caught in the middle. USA included. Israel was on a path to discuss normalization of relations with Saudi Arabia and suddenly that is not a thing anymore. Hrm. Convenient. Wonder why?

Things are not as simple as you make it out to be. It takes two to tango.

The tried and true bot everything bad because USA … do you argue that things would be fundamentally better or worse today if the USA had never been involved? Half these commie ML troll bots on the internet keep spitting out the same old crap. Profit bad. Bad. Bad. They ignore the fact that a woman got shot for wearing a head scarf. You going to blame that on the USA? Get out of here with that crap.

You sound confident. Like a person I can trust.

Check out https://wiby.me/

The Internet gained steam through hobbyists and is now that corporate shell as described. In my opinion it absolutely was a better place 25 years ago. Today the internet is filled with social engineering everyone’s trying to influence something and it’s terrible.

Workers are now paid 20+ bucks an hour for fast food and the machine still ask for a tip. Yeah, I’m not made of money and we obviously need jobs. I have drastically cut down dining out but new minimum wage laws which are good has thrown tipping culture into chaos. You don’t know when to tip and when not to tip and what someone gets paid and what they don’t get paid. It sucks. Everyone should just be paid a living wage so we can call it a day on tipping.

When people are content what is there to say? People tend to post about topics that anger or frustrate them. The quality of the post varies on the sincerity of the user. Anything from shitposting to actually articulate arguments. You’re unlikely to find the latter on any form of social media. Most constructive conversation happens face to face. It’s just too easy to derail an online conversation and there are powers that be that are literally troll farms because it works.

There was a message yesterday about the game werewolf. An informed minority will generally control the uninformed majority. You get a small number of people to troll and that’s all it takes to derail conversation around any topic they don’t like.

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There I was … lotion at the ready … then … suddenly … I have a strong craving for soup and cigarette.

It tasted fishy though but hey … it was good for me.

Thank you.

Does Lemmy need a “people of Wal-Mart” group to remind people who the real American voters are?

We’re here. We’re fat. We’re voting.

Pew Pew Pew … 'merica.

Source: am a fat American (US citizen not to be confused with those “other” Americans)

Edit: readers can attribute /s based on their philosophy… Pew Pew Pew

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Win11 is why I’m using Linux Mint. Gaming was the last barrier for me and Steam is doing God’s work.

MS is positioning Windows as an ad platform. Start menu is now a cluster fuck without regedit and deep dive into settings.

I prefer an OS that doesn’t ask about advertisement IDs on install.

Origin is Scotland I believe…Glasgow.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicken_tikka_masala

streaming apps

Is there a FOSS option to turn something like a pi zero into streaming device? My assumption is a flavor of Android is required?

Edit: referring to streaming services such as Netflix. I’m aware of that home plex and jellyfin servers exist

Never had a problem with Brother printers

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Growing up latch key many a canned chicken was turned into chicken salad.

Tastes better than it looks but that’s not saying much. Would not recommend but if yer hungry dive in.

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Where we disagree is in saying Hamas didn’t start this current conflict. They certainly did. Has shit been going on here for millenia? of course. The “strawman” was to remind you of the fact this opened with mass rape and murder at a music festival – that’s a fact.

You seemed to argue that thousand years of history seemingly justifies that and I’m telling you that it does not. " If Hamas did "… So you’re absolute when it comes to Israel but when it comes to Hamas there’ are modifiers. Your bias is showing.

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-67613153

https://www.cnn.com/2023/12/06/middleeast/rape-sexual-violence-hamas-israel-what-we-know-intl/index.html

Israel has done plenty of things that they should not be doing. The warlike bombardment of a city is not justified and has soured world opinion against them.

Yeah, so mass rape and terrorism is OK in your book if the ends justify the means? Hamas did start the conflict.

Israel was in talks with Saudi Arabia to normalize relations and Iran didn’t want that at all and they gave Hamas the green light to attack.

https://www.usip.org/publications/2023/09/saudi-israel-normalization-agreement-horizon

Everything that happens in that region is about Saudi Arabia and Iran.