Senior Chief Petty Officer. Starfleet is in my blood, and I’ve spent my entire adult life in service to boldly going.

Keiko and Molly are my favorite humans, but Transporter Room 3 will always be my favorite.

Just don’t ask who what’s in the pattern buffer.

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Joined 2 years ago
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Cake day: August 27th, 2024

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  • The Budapest memorandum of 1994 ensured that the US and UK would "Seek immediate Security Council action to provide assistance to the signatory if they “should become a victim of an act of aggression or an object of a threat of aggression in which nuclear weapons are used”

    That happened. It’s a promise to bring the issue to the UN security council for a vote on action. Not a promise to invade any attacking country.

    What also happened is that Russia, a seat on the security council, has the power to veto, and a conflicting interest here that the UN decided couldn’t possibly be a problem in the future.

    I’m not saying we have done enough.

    I am, however, saying that we have held up our end of the agreement, as written on paper.

    As far as I’m concerned, my country is 1/3 of the reason they’re in this mess, so we need to step in and directly protect them at the bare minimum. Ukraine isn’t safe until their borders are restored to pre-2014, their infrastructure is repaired and improved, and they have enough to defend themselves from Russia AND the US. And also the government stooges of Russia get put to death for forcing their population to fight and die against an opponent who never wanted a fight to begin with.





  • it was a guarantee to:

    respect Ukraine’s territory (which Russia vialoted, the US didn’t)
    
    bring any violations to the UN security council (which was done, but with Russia having veto power, useless)
    

    Most people I speak to have the impression that any attack on Ukraine meant the US would jump into full scale war mode to defend them. Honestly I wish it were. At least then it would have been harder for the Biden administration to essentially ignore.

    “here’s a bunch of old equipment, good luck buddy” was technically more than required, but grossly inadequate.









  • I’ve only interacted with two dementia/alzheimer’s patients, so I’ll admit I don’t know much about the conditions.

    While yes, they could get belligerent and uncooperative, but largely would agree with pretty much whatever you were saying, as long as you weren’t using a mean tone. Basically they were thought sponges that had no problem agreeing with whatever you said, and even repeating it for a short time before losing it.

    Trump is clearly a thought sponge for whoever he last spoke to that wasn’t immediately adversarial to him.


  • I think most genuinely don’t understand what it’s like living in a country the size of a continent, with hundreds of millions of people scattered all over, with a heavily militarized police force that has been trained to see anyone but themselves as a threat, surrounded by a significant portion of the population that would love the opportunity to murder you without legal consequences and the tools to do so, with your healthcare, shelter, food, and basically everything tied to your employment that could end on a whim, in a system designed to keep you perpetually exhausted so you can’t even begin to imagine a world where you are fairly treated, let alone have the energy to fight for it in any meaningful way.

    I mean most Europeans live in countries the size of a single state, with relatively high population densities (comparatively speaking). “Americans think 100 years is a long time, Europeans think 100km is a long distance” and all that. I’ve traveled daily for work what some of my UK friends won’t travel to see family on holidays. The US is insanelt large, and any sort of organization is already an uphill battle from that alone. Get into the fact that most people can’t take a day off work without risking their livelihoods, and that opposition is armed and begging to be let loose, and protesting alone is hard to do.

    Historically, any left-leaning organization that arms themselves gets heavily targeted by the Alphabet Squad (FBI, NSA, BATFE, etc) and individuals get harassed and tossed into prisons for the smallest infractions simply due to association with the leftist group.

    Anyone who doesn’t look at the history of government opposition in the US when they demand action, all while saying we aren’t doing enough because protesting isn’t enough, is (hopefully ignorantly) telling you to go kill yourself.



  • I fully expect oil companies to convince governments to tax their citizens 150% to subsidize their new oil wells, just so they can continue looking for and opening new ones LONG after it ceases to be profitable.

    It’s like conservatives and democracy. They’re okay with it as long as they can keep “winning” but when they can’t win anymore, they won’t change their behavior, they’ll stop using democracy.

    I’d argue we already passed that point for both conservatives (in most major countries) AND oil company profits.

    The cost of dealing with fossil fuels has been far outweighing the cost of using them, and has been for many many decades. If our species makes it that long, our grandchildren’s grandchildren’s great great great grandchildren will still be dealing with our mistakes.