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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 24th, 2023

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  • Why would you do anything? It still works, so keep using it. Changing the OS just because you can sounds like a really bad idea to someone who’s been using the same thing for 11 years (and I’m a Linux user so no pro-Apple bias here). It sure sounds like she’s not the greatest fan of change.

    And also, as already said by many other comments, an 11 year old laptop is about the opposite of planned obsolescence.



  • It is debated whether it was necessary, but the position that it was wrong is self-contradictory.

    It assumes that the atomic bombs were not a huge factor in the decision to surrender, as they would surrender anyway due to conventional warfare (US bombing and USSR attacking and removing the best negotiating venue for a conditional surrender). Which might be true. But, at the same time it assumes that the nuclear bombs were somehow worse than the conventional bombing that has been going on. So the atomic bombs had to be both ineffectual and hugely damaging at the same time.




  • The great leap forward was such a colossal clusterfuck that you can’t blame it on any one thing (although most of them would be prevented without the authoritarianism). Literally everything was wrong. Sparrows, lysenkoism, forced collectivization (basically, and perhaps ironically, farmers not owning the means of production), Mao just being evil, backyard burners, rigid chain of command that gave the chairman absolute authority but at the same prevented him from knowing what was going on, everything.


  • The thing about corruption is that it’s very inefficient. Spending a trillion dollars on weapons translates to only a couple of billions in the pockets of profiteers, the rest is used to actually make the weapons, move them in place, and to pay the people using them.

    So with a useless war, you waste far more than you would if you just have the money to the profiteers.