Nei, jeg er kjøtt og blod og stål og smøreolje som deg

How true is the dead internet theory, in your view?

I’ll ask anyway. Why do companies like bots?

You’re right. The problem is not so much the concept as what happens when residential property can be turned into Hotels by installing an app.

I think going after short-term rentals is exactly what they should be doing. If they take bribes not to then that’s a huge problem though.

The problem here is that you’re competing with tourists sleeping four to a room and you just can’t outbid them for apartments, even with high wages. The solution here is to set aside properties for resident locals so that they aren’t forced to.

This is bordering on the conspiratorial. The Russians believed they would defeat Ukraine very quickly. They never expected to be in this situation

If you are unwilling to negotiate and compromise with your enemy and rather go to war

Who went to war in Ukraine?

the US and Nato, when they do the exact same things, somehow have good reasons.

But they don’t do the exact same things. The USA and NATO don’t annex parts of other countries.

they do have some legitimate claim to it.

They recognized it as part of Ukraine on independence and then reaffirmed it with the Budapest memorandum. They have no claim, it was naked aggression

December 2021 is two months before the invasion, not “years”, like you wrote previously. I agree that once the Russians stationed their army at the Ukrainian border and threatened to invade, that the invasion became fairly predictable.

Personally I thought these demands weren’t too outrageous.

Russia wanted to dictate the military movements and foreign policy of nine countries, otherwise they would attack a different country from those nine. I don’t believe anyone has ever tried to pull a more outrageous stunt. Those demands were meant to provide cover for aggression, not to start a negotiation. It worked on you.

the US is doing things like that all the time

The last time the USA waged a war to take territory from a neighbour was in 1848, nearly two hundred years ago, and I don’t think they’ve ever made demands of one country and then waged war on a completely different country when they weren’t met. They do not, in fact, do things like that all the time. You can object to a lot of what the USA does, but even at their worst, they don’t act like this.

For someone who criticizes others for accepting justifications for war, you sure are very accepting of justifications for war, provided the Russians are the ones doing the justifying.

when Russia invades after they said they would for years.

They absolutely didn’t. In fact, Putin ruled out war against Ukraine on many occasions, both before and after the invasions of Crimea and Eastern Ukraine.

It was so predictable that I can’t help but assume that it was a deliberate trap set for Russia.

Up until the tanks crossed the border people didn’t believe Russia would invade because they couldn’t believe the Russians could be that stupid. To concoct a plot on such a massive scale with a payoff that relied on the rank idiocy of Russian command doesn’t seem very smart

Also bureaucracy and public ownership

and hyper-socialist policies

The Nordic Model isn’t really all that Socialist. It’s based on strong welfare and labor rights, but also very much on the free market. The most Socialist country in Europe is probably France

The effect of the 2 party system on how people understand politics and society is incredibly interesting

Maybe? We’re currently trying to implement a different economic transition, from pollution to green. I don’t think popular resistance to those changes imply that we should try for a happy medium instead. Similarly, the difficulty in achieving Socialism democratically doesn’t necessarily imply anything about how desirable the end state would be.

The big issue with “trying” communism is that it historically has only really occurred through violent revolution. The political instability in these situations gives a perfect opportunity for the seizing of power by exactly those kinds of people.

Gradualist Socialism was the political project for Social Democrats in post-war Europe. They had 30-odd years to achieve it in several countries. The issue becomes that once they started notching up victories, radicalism decreased, and that when they’re not starving and oppressed people categorically will not vote to let someone collectivize their farms and expropriate their homes. It seems clear to me that in real-world conditions, a Socialist state can only come about through revolution, because the path in a democracy is far too long and leaves far too many angles of attack from a liberal opposition.

Equal disregard for civilian life on both sides

I disagree. Equal disregard for Palestinian civilians maybe. The Israelis care deeply about their own and would never employ the tactics Hamas do.

Still more dangerous for the IDF and less vengeance-effective than just raining death on thousands of civilians on the off-chance that you might also kill a handful of terrorists that Hamas can easily replace.

Do you feel your description matches the reality of this Palestinian dentist? Are the described actions consistent with callously raining death on thousands of civilians?

In a US style first past the post system the Nazis would have made a clean sweep in July 1932, and wouldn’t have had to intimidate anybody

Genocide Joe? 🙄

People are really working to rob that word of all meaning