I had a substitute teacher who saw the Swift Boat Veterans For Truth ads against John Kerry and repeated it to the class like it was 100% fact.

Laws do not need to be moral, logical, rational, or even reasonable

They do to be legitimate, which is what I thought this conversation is about. The flexing of power is many things, but not something that testifies to legal legitimacy in ways that motivate the creation of laws as distinguished from the ordinary structures that arise from blind power in the first place. This is actually something I remember from Philosophy 101, where Socrates talked to the rage filled Thrasymachus who said what’s “right” is the same as “the advantage of the stronger” and the whole point of the conversation is that there was more to it than that.

Or, perhaps more to the point, I recall one of the mini-skits in a play called Too Much Light Makes The Baby Go Blind, which had a lion talking about power to a monkey talking about intelligence. The point of the skit is that they were talking past each other, with the lion thinking that drawing a distinction between power and intelligence meant they were missing the lion’s point about power.

This whole comment simply doubles down on might makes right and has nothing to do with legitimacy.

It sounds like for you the signature of legitimacy is not the soundness of legal judgments as developed within consensus and consent and principle based deliberation, but their enforceability with weapons. And so I think we probably have diametrically opposite ideas of what renders laws legitimate.

Aren’t the ICJ, ICC and UNSC institutions of international law? And haven’t they ruled over and over again that the settlements, occupations, blockades, and blocking of humanitarian aid to Palestine have been violations of international law?

I think that’s a low effort cheap shot but because there’s sympathetic dogpiling voting patterns you get to evade criticism for doing the same thing.

Great point, Holodomor was fabricated by Hollywood on the same fake sets as the moon landing. There’s literally no reasonable good faith charitable interpretation that could possibility be referencing a legitimate criticism. This elevates the quality of communication and is an indication of good faith participation in conversations sincerely directed at cultivating shared understanding.

Regardless of your opinion on the current war

“Other than that, how was the play?”

If Russia so wished, they could level Kyiv overnight

AKA the “Jeffrey Dahmer could have been worse” argument lol

Relevant SMBC:

Lawyer: Okay, let’s say my client killed his wife. What about the people he didn’t kill?! That’s six billion people! Don’t they matter? Don’t they matter?!

Caption: In an alternate universe, Jeffrey Dahmer has a thank you parade every year.

https://smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=299

their proxy war

Meanwhile Russia did the war-war. I think you should do two posts about war-war accountability for every one post about proxy-war accountability.

Thankfully Russia has taken great care to avoid civilian deaths, which is why we thankfully never have to include it as context.

basic facts of the situation

I think it’s more the selective emphasis than the ‘basic facts’.

Love Rhythmbox! I used it way way back when I first installed Ubuntu (back when it was good) and it was part of a special nostalgic feeling of having been ushered into this new linux world, and I think it lets you rate your songs 1-5 stars (if you want) and I had a lot of fun doing that.

That was… honestly a great explanation. Thank you.

But goodness what a deep and context specific cut.

Removed by mod

so basically what he’s saying is that he’ll cling on to power.

I find this to be a disingenuous framing. He clearly made that comment in service to the greater good of Ukraine, and I don’t know how being the leader of a nation facing imperial domination and constant war and death is something anyone would want to ‘cling’ to other than out of a sense of duty to the people he is representing.

Okay fair enough, but if that’s the case, do you know what this meme is about?

I must be out of the loop. Are Linux apologists and tankies at cross purposes for some reason?

You said not a high budget, and yet everyone here is saying Framework even though the they are $900 to $1,000 at the low end. To me that is not budget.

Pine64 is affordable but maybe too slow to be a daily driver, unless you feel confident finding your way through ultralightweight software and the command line and can do most of your problem solving that way.

For other pre-built options, there’s Starlabs and System76 but those are similarly priced to Librem and Framework.

Beyond that I might just research Windows laptops that are agreeable to being formatted.

A great way of re-framing it. A lot of how we tease out whatever intelligence an animal has is with some incentive. And sometimes we’re comparing apples and oranges if we’re making a comparison where one side has more of an incentive.