Apparently Marta didn’t expect to cachy them paws for pulling the old fake ball throw. Poodles are masters when it comes time to throw down (13 stories).

Which is why I, as a professional guard baby, always bring a tennis ball and a kitten to expected kidnappings: to distract puppies and to distract the kidnapper with “dad with the kitten he said he didn’t want” moments.

I see the BRI as a soft precursor imperialism and just a different place on the same “spectrum” of imperialism. They aren’t committing crimes like Belgium, obviously, but China’s handling of Tibet and Interference with it’s other direct neighbors does signal to me more than willingness to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries.

I do not think this is unique to China in any way, mind you, but I do not see any indications China is better than any of the 5 eyes countries or Russia. I believe all governments are inherently amoral entities, being an abstract collection of laws and bureaucracy.

The Western Roman empire is an interesting case, as while the various “barbarian” empires were fairly short lived, the members each ended up running their own globe-spanning empires, not to mention the various Holy Roman Empires.

I would like to thank you as well, this has been an excellent discussion and I have enjoyed learning about your perspective.

You are correct, I do not want to imply that China is the primary exploiter in Africa, nor is the belt and road as it currently exists nearly as bad as historical colonization in the region. My concern is that in a global crisis like the complete collapse of the US, China and others would take the opportunity to expand in a similar fashion.

I would argue that there is not a substantive material difference between imperialism since the 1900s and Rome. Each replacement empire brings new spins on the same formulas. The US empire isn’t much different at this point than feudal empires of the past, just with monopolies instead of aristocracy.

The problem I see is that there has never been a significant lag time between empires and is more a passing of the baton as additional empires either rise from the remains or are subsumed by another empire.

My only point was that I think you are being incredibly optimistic on how long it takes to fill an imperialist power vacuum, or that the US is definitely currently worse than whatever would replace it. I would say that I am extrapolating from basically all of human history rather than doomerism, but I suppose that is a matter of perspective.

Chinese fishing fleets have been documentedly invading fisheries all over the world and not just the South China Sea. Latin America might experience more lag time on foreign influence due to the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, but exploitation in Africa is not primarily being done by the US currently so I wouldn’t expect to see massive shakeups there.

That is only because the US has outsourced it for them. Europe basically invented third world intervention and only back to back world wars stopped it. If power flips back to Europe and China, don’t think that means the global south will suddenly be interference free. Ask China’s neighbors and any country with fishable ocean how non-expansionist and non-interference they are.

The only reason I haven’t switched to Manjaro permanently is because mods for the Warhammer tides games is much more tedious and I play Battlefield 6. The rootkit anti cheat software that many of the new multiplayer games use suck, but I do still want to play some of those games.

I am kind of sad noone has posted Mordin singing the best version of this song.

Instructions unclear, used my fartbox and now there’s even more corrosion than using my cakehole.

To add insult to injury, they are fully capable of adding the 4g module because Canadian Volts were able to be upgraded. GM decided to not let US owners pay for the upgrade, because fuck us that’s why.

Not the OP, but you can clean all the parts when torn down for service. Vacuum bags instead of holding tanks also helps with that, but mostly it’s the filters. Replace all the filters and the smells go with it.

My mid 2000’s Japanese SUV. Manual transmission, regular old v6 gas engine, only one “computer”. Same engine, drivetrain, and frame for 3-4 different models so parts are abundant. Can repair/replace anything on it with a handful of power tools and elbow grease.

It’s good to see the papyrus guy bounced back and became Secretary of State

The same way that Patriot Act activity was required to get court orders and be specific instances with no bulk surveillance?

FISA warrants became rubber stamps and with no penalties from violations, it became “legal” authoritarian police state bullshit.

That’s how the turtle do.

Seriously, some aquatic turtles can extend their time under water by using their cloaca like primitive gills. Look up cloacal respiration.

And still somehow miraculously forget they can actually use the spices they invaded for in the first place…

Edit- look, we’re missing each other because I am arguing a larger cultural issue, you are arguing specific laws

That was the only thing I was actually asking about. I especially agree with your points about our government/politicians. It appears that the main disagreement we might have is if rape culture is the normalization/glorification of sexual assault specifically or a wider classification of power dynamics in any form.

I think anyone who commits the crime of rape is a rapist and rightly so, but am just leery about watering down the definition of rape.

I do not care how legal this might have been

I want to be clear that it wasn’t legal. Gaetz 100% committed statutory rape under current criminal law. It’s a strict accountability law, you don’t have to knowingly do it to commit the crime.

The only reason I posted at all was that after reading the article I didn’t think the persons comment you replied to was necessarily a great example of rape culture.

My point was that at one time separate but equal was considered enlightened by a majority of the population. I agree that short societal memory is a curse we have to work around.

The Constitution is not permanent and unchangeable, it is a living document that can and has been amended to suit new or changing needs. That’s why they are called Amendments in the first place. It is by design a lot more difficult to change than other laws, and this is a good thing, but the Founders knew they couldn’t get everything right for all time.

The 40 year old ID-ing the women he has sex with at a party is icky for sleeping with someone half his age (double so if he is specifically looking for 18 year olds), but that is not illegal. Should that be lumped under rape culture though? Should sex work in general be lumped under rape culture?

If she was not 18, regardless of if she had a fake ID, it is still statutory. There is no mens rea required for statutory. It is however harder in such a case to secure prosecution and conviction.

He may very well have known his friend brought an underage girl to sleep with him, or asked him to find probable underage girls advertising as 18 for plausible deniability. He also may have paid his friend to pay for prostitutes for the party. I won’t give Gaetz the benefit of the doubt on anything, but the article doesn’t indicate any of those things happened.

At least we got a conviction for the person with the least plausible deniability, because we rarely get that unfortunately.

While it doesn’t make Gaetz not a shitbag, unless the article is wrong he wasn’t the person who solicited her, set it up, or paid her. It’s also still statutory even if she lied about her age and had a false ID (and we don’t know if Gaetz was actually lied to and checked her ID), but I am not sure if this is a good example of rape culture.

100% unequal power dynamics being a rich politician sleeping with an 18 year old escort at a party, but in the case all parties are 18 or older is it sex work or rape?

Joel Greenberg, the one who actually met her and did the soliciting and paid her, was charged and convicted for child sex trafficking and ID fraud/identity theft for this. I am pleasantly surprised he was both charged and convicted given track records on both of those things. If 11 years is a sufficient sentence is another story.