Pudutr0n

I see the spirit of your position now, and appreciate you taking time in explaining it to me. I hope you’re right, too.

Vietnam and Afghanistan may like to have a word with your first argument. I understand your second point, but i don’t see supporting arguments backing the clear trend of authoritarian governments eroding their military forces by their very nature you are so convinced about.

A bad economy will definitely weaken military strength in the long run,just like the diplomatic and trade sanctions that often are imposed on authoritarian or anti US/West regimes will. However, do you really think if we isolated these effects, the war efforts of an authoritarian government with full control over its population and production is inherently worse off than a functional democracy with broad civil rights? You may argue that this effect isolation is a hypothetical fiction, but then we’d just be talking about economies vs economies… which wasn’t my point.

Look, friend, I’m in no way saying “therefore China wins the arms race”. I’m saying authoritarianism, in the short term, by its nature has the possibility of assigning and coordinating way more resources to war efforts than a democracy. Given 2 identical counties neighboring each other, on any given day, put a totalitarian regime on one, and a democratic government on another… Which do you think has the advantage?

I hope you understand I’m presenting my position and arguments from a place of good faith and respect.

You seem to be under the impression that a stronger army will succeed in invasion of foreign territory by default. Also, are we not going to address how the west has been preparing Ukraine for such invasion for the same period of time? The only reason why Ukraine is NATO is for exactly what’s happening. Buffer warzone between Russia and the west.

I can appreciate your arguments, but I think complete conviction is unwise.

You sure about that? China and Russia hiked their way up to the top 3 in what… 15 years?

Agreed. The economy and well-being of countries definitely suffer from authoritarian regimes in the long term, but…

What about their armies?

Wasn’t aware of that. Thx for sharing.

Np man. Thanks for mentioning it.

Yes. Yes it is.

Gratitude has demonstrable psychological benefits, you know…

This is a better article. It’s a CrowdStrike issue with an update (security software)

It’s a crowdstrike issue.

better article about the problem here.

As someone who used to work in a job that involved giving companies reports they paid for, I gotta say while large auditing firms will likely defend their reputation before the company that hired them, mid and small companies will just follow the paycheck. Doesn’t look that big to me.

Hey, I don’t disagree with you, bud. Was just an invitation to look back not at the broken system itself, which is a given… but at your part in the whole thing and how you’d like to relate to it. Food for thought.

This is just my opinion based on this post so don’t take my word for it unless it adds up to you, but it seems to me that you’re obsessing over the fear that big tech is causing your destructive / irreflexive / procastinating behavior and trying to cut all connection with big tech instead of possibly also addressing your relationship with whatever media/services/software you use.

My point is, if your entire life becomes FOSS and private and free of large corporate overlords, you might still find yourself engaging in self destructive doomscrolling somewhere or another, or mindlessly doing something else you don’t think is great doing.

While I applaud your efforts and I think you should be proud of the sacrifices and work you’ve done, I also think it might be a good moment to sit back and think of the big picture of how you’d like to fit into the contemporary world.

Wanna go fully off the grid? Sure, but understand the costs and try to be fair regarding the benefits. Want to minimize harm to yourself without loosing too much comfort? That’s great but there are a ton of ways you can improve your mental health and peace of mind beyond what platforms and software you choose to use.

I am an addict. a poly-substance addict, specifically. I’ll always be an addict, no matter how long I stay sober for and there’s nothing anyone can do about this. That’s OK, though. You know why? Because I understand that cravings for what we yearn for are just some of our fears in disguise. We fear on missing out, on not having, on not being, on going “hungry” on something. And when it happens and we feel it, we built it up so much with fear we made it into a monster and try to run away from the bad feeling as quickly as possible. We try to drown the desire with some other dopamine source… Doom scrolling, food, sexual release, video games, whatever.

When you understand satisfying a craving is just running away from fear, you can face your fear: “so what if this happens? bring it, bitches.” Of course sometimes you’ll still give in to what your better self wants to avoid, but sometimes you won’t and that’s a good thing.

Well, i don’t really have a point beyond inviting you to figure out what you’re really scared of, what the real problems you face are, and trying to go big picture on the best approach to address them for yourself.