Posts by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
(DIR) Post #B11go7iE4H1h58IWjA by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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Liberals hate everything Trump does, which is good, but their opposition is phrased as: everything should go back to how it used to be, which is not good. In world terms, the globe is littered with frozen conflicts that the US has held in place for a long time. Now that Trump has declared that the post WW II settlement is officially dead, these will unfreeze, for good or for bad.Note that freezing them also means that no progress was ever being made on them.
(DIR) Post #B11go8AEO9QaTzOtNY by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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People tend to not even recall why important elements of the world scene are even there. Are Germany and Japan naturally peace-loving nations and that's why they have small militaries and depend on the protection of allies? Of course not. They were disarmed after WW II and put in alliances that would keep them from re-arming, as economically successful countries would ordinarily do. The EU may or may not restrain Germany, but not Japan.
(DIR) Post #B11go8pLvGJyXWdjTU by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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In addition to the immediate post WW II issues, the early Cold War issues have come undone.In Korea, for instance, the division of the country and frozen line depended on US defense. No one really knows what happens now.There are US power-projection bases all over the world. Maybe countries will start to realize that these bases are just launching pads for invasion of themselves now that they don't defend them against anyone.
(DIR) Post #B11go9ZR9vBUqSCXJ2 by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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The only elements still holding for now are the late Cold War issues. Nuclear disarmament, for one, and general nuclear weapons treaties. The disarmament part is creaking, of course, since Israel, India, Pakistan, and North Korea all have nuclear weapons now, but we're not at the stage where any country that can make them has them, which would be dozens more.
(DIR) Post #B11goA2rOWiiJhy2AS by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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Many of the rest of the issues come under the general area of imperial expansion -- Russia and Ukraine, China and Taiwan, and US and whatever neighboring country it has its eyes on. FDR was very good at building an empire and built a rare one that believably disavowed geographic expansion, which allowed economic expansion. But that is gone.
(DIR) Post #B11goAS1swqxZlk8Om by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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/fin
(DIR) Post #B1IXuUxyGvV7mCvER6 by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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I know that this is obvious, but the purpose of the US military is not to defend anything, it's to kill people. "Soldier" is just a shorter word for paid killer.https://www.stripes.com/theaters/us/2025-12-15/us-military-strikes-boats-20105796.html
(DIR) Post #B1IXuVp95E2GR7nhJo by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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In the US military, they don't even have the decency to be conscripts who didn't have much choice. They volunteered to kill people.
(DIR) Post #B1oczhXFGHg1R5Icz2 by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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@kjhealy see also: getting a start on installing Linux on all home machines
(DIR) Post #B1yiah6BH6ACBcmdrE by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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One less-discussed role of LLM #AI is how they cause a societal Freudian return of the repressed. Why would a Tesla ask a child for nudes? Because it has been made off a data set in which people apparently often do that. Why would Grok generate a label for itself as MechaHitler? Because Musk put 4chan in as part of its dataset. People are learning about parts of the Internet, and widespread parts of our society, that they do not ordinarily visit or admit to.
(DIR) Post #B1zMJhaIDDU0w7JvhQ by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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Without states, you might just have warlords using their armed forces to grab less powerful warlords from other continents, killing a bunch of people in the process, and dragging the less powerful warlord back for a show trial. It's a good thing that we live in a world where that doesn't happen.
(DIR) Post #B1zMM24P1B893CW0ci by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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The possible or impending US war on Venezuela (an aggressive war, which is considered to be the supreme war crime) is leading to a lot of distressing "what would the US do?" talk on social media and a lot of blaming Trump specifically for what the US does.Would the US sponsor death squads? Yes, it has.Would it bomb civilians indiscriminately? Yes, it has.Would it commit genocide? Yes, it has.Would it nuke a non-war-critical city? Yes, it has.
(DIR) Post #B1zMM2PJlPrQ64IiDw by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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Why does it do all these things? Because it is an empire, and empires thrive on displays of deadly power. A peak empire doesn't want a rules based order or any nonsense like that. It wants to bully whatever other power it can. And therefore it demonstrates how willing and eager it is to kill people.
(DIR) Post #B1zMM2ggipksxwQaIa by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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All of the people being sad that Trump is destroying America are, in part, sad that he's destroying the pretense that the American order was not built on one massacre after another.
(DIR) Post #B25Eb4fI1E4ol2BqNs by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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@Lana ICE is no different from any other cops. None of them “enforce the law”.
(DIR) Post #B27qVMHzRSnlBHU7KC by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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Periodic self-repetition: there is really no difference between ICE, "Federal agents", and ordinary cops. Law and order nerds like to enumerate powers that each of them have, but they could be better and most usefully employed in memorizing D&D monster classifications. They all have the power to kill, beat, and detain, none of them will face any meaningful penalty for doing so except in very unusual cases, and they are all allies of each other. None will arrest or stop any of the others.
(DIR) Post #B2BncxmAwV0EF1NV6O by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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@davidgerard Thanks: do you have a handy link for a similar thing about how to move from MacOS?
(DIR) Post #B2FnnOVamENyH4aSKu by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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@atax1a as it happens I wrote a whole thing:https://rpuchalsky.blogspot.com/2026/01/why-niemoller-poem-is-bad.html
(DIR) Post #B2RPUpUaHKDeqNGlQ8 by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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A video of uncertain provenance showing an elderly Hmong man being arrested by ICE in sub-zero weather, wearing very little.The Hmong in Minnesota are there because they were US allies in Vietnam. People should remember: never be a US ally. The US will not remember.
(DIR) Post #B2SYJf3hp6D42qPGng by richpuchalsky@mastodon.social
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@PhoenixSerenity I've masked since the beginning of Covid (actually, since masks were obtainable after the beginning) and I've never had someone question me about it in public. Partly due to where I live, partly due to personal characteristics.My non-nuclear family members still ask when I'm going to stop at every family gathering, though.