tikitaki

it's good in the short term but realistically this news is a canary in the coal mine moment

we are decoupling our economies from the global system - increasing the chances for cold and/or hot war

at least they're honest about it

i'd imagine they have the same ability here in the states they're just gonna advertise the fact

instead of making an effort to change our way of life.

the unfortunate reality is the only way to significantly change carbon emissions in a fast enough time period would essentially mean throwing all of humanity back a couple of centuries in tech and standard of living

you try being a politician who advocates for this. you're not gonna get elected

even worse, convince all the 3rd world countries who are currently developing trying to get their people out of poverty. the chinese have finally gotten the taste for a little bit of meat with their dinner. of course that comes at the cost of mountains of coal being burned.

you tell those hundreds of millions of people that they need to go back to the farms and eat rice for the climate - meanwhile we got our chance to burn as much coal as we wanted to last century.

the reality is that we won't be able to stop climate change. the reality is that we're going to have to learn to live with it. and we will. climate change will not destroy us. it will destroy many species, will destroy many habitable zones. but we will survive.

i'm more worried about nuclear war & AI - which i think has a much more acute danger

zizek talks about this a lot. who are trump's most loyal fans? sure, there are the harvard educated elitists who like that he lowers taxes on the rich and the business magnates and whatnot. but the bulk of it in terms of absolute numbers is the redneck poor people

why do they support trump? because their jobs were lost to outsourcing, their wages aren't going up so housing is more expensive, their towns are slowly rotting away. they see these things and feel a (in my opinion, justified) anger towards the establishment.

someone like Trump and the GOP in general comes around, blames the gays and immigrants and tells them they will fight for them. we all know it's a lie and that they are voting against their interests - but the MAGA propaganda has gotten to them first

these same triggers (stagnant wages, anger towards the establishment/elites, erosion of infrastructure, inaccessible healthcare) also causes people to become leftists

these people could have easily flipped one way or the other and the only different is propaganda. we need to reach out to these people and convince them that the left has viable solutions for their problems. if you're interested, i can find a zizek bit where he talks about this but I've seen it myself talking to a lot of trump-supporting conservatives.

some of them are racist bigots and whatnot, but others are just really ignorant old folk who genuinely want the best for most people and have been misled by propaganda

yes, of course. it's indicative of that type of worldview and it's demeaning

however the key important part is that it isn't hate speech. being pro-hate speech and using hate speech are two different things

as much as i hate trump we should hate the sin and not the sinner

lots of trump supporters could easily be leftists

i think it's dangerous to be too broad with this definition

harmful in my mind is saying explicitly racist, homophobic, promoting violent, etc type of stuff

i think freedom of expression is something we should not give up easily. in actually harmful speech, i think the pros outweigh the cons. but him saying the word "triggered" is not harmful

i think you need to disconnect your ideology from the analysis. you will never see beyond your nose if you take ideology too seriously in these types of affairs

It is literally impossible for "independent organizations" to objectively "study China".

there have been many smarter people than you or I doing analysis of CCP approval rating and it's always much much higher than our democratic countries in the west. read the article i sent you from harvard. look up more on google. or put your fingers in your ears, close your eyes, whatever. again - doesn't change the reality of the situation

people are pleased that their economic position is much better than their grandparents. and as long as economic growth keeps happening, that will remain true.

No you don't. Let's be real here. You are an apologist for the Communist tyranny. You do not understand how obvious it is but no American would ever say what you said.

i don't like to put my head in the sand and pretend like ideology trumps reality. no matter how much i prefer a free open society i have read the research. i have seen the news. i know CCP has higher approval rating than any democratic country. this isn't one or two studies. this is the consensus for decades.

chinese people are happy with CCP. same thing with Putin in Russia. just because a country is authoritarian and brutal does not mean they cannot have high approval ratings. the difference is they are contingent on a few very important things

china is economic growth. putin is not appearing weak - making russians feel strong. if CCP cannot guarantee that economic growth for too long a period of time, it will fall apart. they lose the "heavenly mandate"

Your stance that only white people want and are capable of having freedom and democracy is totally obsurd.

no it's "obsurd" that you totally ignore the opinions of 1.4 billion people in China. read some chinese history. the emperor had the mandate and everything ran smoothly or he didn't and there was civil war.

government legitimacy means different things for different forms of government

having said all that, you are not truly wanting to discuss geopolitics here. you want to larp and play a game of alt-history and that's fine i guess but at least put a disclaimer

the study by the FDOT needs to be done within the year, then it triggers the EPA part

I support this with the caveat that it's safe. I'm not really sure what the controversial thing about that statement is. Of course I don't fully trust the EPA. the FCC had a public comment period for the killing of net neutrality and we all know how much BS happened there. but having said that I've worked with the FDOT professionally for a long time and they have decent people working for them.

florida's not some backwards shit hole there are open minded progressive people in places of power. it's just taken a swing towards the loonies with desantis

again - if it's safe i support it. if our checks and balances work out, this isn't a bad bill. if you're right and the EPA just floats this thing regardless of the damage then OK you're right I'm wrong

taiwanese government could be extremely useful in helping China convert to democracy in a stable manner

there are 10 million bureaucrats in china

that's already half of the population of taiwan alone. the city of shanghai has a bigger population than taiwan

So what? None of that is relevant to what I said.

yes, it is. it's logistically impossible. i tried to elaborate on why because to hold a belief like you do someone must not know all of the obvious facts

It is totally impossible for Taiwan to unify with China unless China becomes democratic like Taiwan

it's very possible. it's happening right now in Hong Kong. China just takes over and slowly integrates it and removes the democracy bit by bit. I think it's so strange how you make a comment pretending reality is some way when it isn't. I get it - I support Taiwan too. I prefer Democracies over authoritarian regimes. But let's be real here

First of all NEVER EVER believe that a dictatorship has a "very high approval rating".

independent organizations have done studies in China. they really do support the CCP. https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2020/07/long-term-survey-reveals-chinese-government-satisfaction/

it's sort of a side effect from the "heavenly mandate" idea in China. they've always had authoritarian leaders. as long as the economy is doing well the people tolerate anything. and china has been growing fast for decades now

it's a common byproduct of certain industries like fertilizer production

basically you're turning a waste product into building material so it'd be pretty cheap. you can build cheaper roads, so the state government can in theory save money

in addition, it's more or less a handout to the companies that produce this waste product because they will now have a brand new product to sell whereas before they would be paying to get rid of it

obviously it's dangerous - the EPA only allows the use of it with approval. although the law states that the florida department of transportation needs to be a study to make sure it's safe and they have until april 1st, 2024

then after that it would need to be approved by the EPA, which includes all sorts of technical analysis and study that needs to be publicly released and there's also a period of public comment

personally? i'm a floridian and hate desantis and i don't think this bill is that big of a deal. it's not like they're gonna start using this stuff tomorrow. they're going to try and see if they can find a safe way to use it. in my opinion, if there's a waste product we can use as building material and we can determine it won't cause harm to people or the environment.. why shouldn't we use it?

it's cheaper for the taxpayers and we send less shit to the waste dump

of course, this is all assuming that the checks and balances of the FDOT study & EPA approval are all in good faith. if that's hijacked by corporate interest then I don't know anymore

was in the article i linked

between 2009 and 2019, children being referred for transitioning treatment in the United Kingdom increased 1,000% among biological males and 4,400% among biological females.

i guess it's too much to expect people to read things