Boris Johnson also knows a thing or two about homoerotic stuff, UK good schools and all.

Either Armenia or Azerbaijan could host it, Armenia endorsed Azerbaijan in exchange for them releasing another portion of hostages (the 2020 ceasefire agreement says that all PoWs must be released, so they are hostages ; and of course people captured after that are).

So in this particular case, apparently, kickbacks did not play a significant role. Which is actually rare for Azerbaijan.

Maybe they’re hoping for a “This is what your country will look like if everyone continues to ignore this problem” reaction from the attendees?

Not necessarily hoping, but this is a useful effect actually.

COP29 is held in Azerbaijan. People are talking as if Taliban going there were weird, but holding any such event in a country culturally and ecologically most similar to Mordor seems weirder.

Nobody is going to really talk about preserving climate in Baku of all places. The only areas not similar to Mordor polluted wasteland in Azerbaijan are not Azerbaijan, they are occupied Artsakh and sparsely populated mountains, villages with sheep and all, to the north of it. And the main reason they remained kinda green is that they were not controlled by Azeris.

It’s only called a climate conference, in fact it’s a meeting for Azeris to make deals on selling their oil or something.

The conference is in Baku and compared to Azeris Taliban is almost normal.

He doesn’t seem very bad from what I’ve just read in Wikipedia. Which parts are delusional?

a single delusional libertarian

That being who?

That happens when much of citizenry can be characterized as “rich blokes who will take coke at some point with no shadow of doubt”. When everyone involved knows that, including the voters, it’s an easy decision.

However, in many other countries the general population mostly forms their opinion on drugs, weapons and even political freedoms based on fear of what will happen.

They don’t look at all this critically, thus don’t understand that the worst things happening because of the current state of things they don’t know anything about, because information is not and will never be as available as their thought process requires.

That involves said current state of things funding things like cartels, criminal groups in governments involved in drug trade (it’s much more profitable when you ban all the competition), creating a vector of control over addicted people. These all have ugly consequences - violence abroad, strong (and rich) mafia groups in governments.

The correct thought process would be comparing abstract mechanisms. In abstract no consumable substance should be illegal, provided the buyer knows its contents and effects.

BTW, in abstract the right policy about weapons ownership would be opt out, not opt in, - mandatory mental examination of every adult citizen, but also mandatory weapons ownership for those who pass it! Perhaps except felons. With other exceptions being a process involving some justification being filed - as in pacifist views, religious reasons, bad atmosphere in family thus inability to keep it secure, something like that. It’s not about “good guy with a gun”, it’s about distributing real power. People who should own weapons are not the same people who want to own weapons generally. Thus mandatory.

the soviets could never get to work

No, just what was in progress.

“A few western chips” for military grade applications would be not too easy to get for some time, and USSR and then Russia could produce them, and the process of plants producing such closing was very slow and lasted till late 00s. It’s not the difference between a project stalling and moving further.

It’s the most recent stuff we hear about relying on Western components.

to do the math and control they could never manage

USSR with all its shortcomings did have functional nuclear shield, a space station, domestically produced computers (clones of Western things, yes, but that was a strategic decision, a stupid one though), a space shuttle analog that was arguably better. So “never manage” is usually not the reason for its failures. Economic inefficiency and administrative rot are.

This may be off topic, but I absolutely loved reading about Minuteman III guidance system.

And unlike all those “missiles by subscription and good behavior” that many big countries sell to smaller countries, it doesn’t rely on any satellite system or external corrections after launch.

BTW, I wonder what’s inside Russian ICBMs. People often say that all the Russian big cool projects in defense after breakup of the USSR are just finished Soviet projects. If that is true, there must be an awfully complex, but geek-porn-ish thing inside, possibly with analog and maybe even mechanical elements. If that is not, it’s still interesting. Right now yes, Russian military engineering relies on many foreign (NATO countries produced in fact) components. But that didn’t become a thing immediately, so I wonder how did they solve problems.

Drones randomly dropping anthrax are simpler.

They are openly showing that they can do whatever they want.

All the rest is gaslighting so that you’d not be completely sure that that’s what they are saying, thus not so confident in yourself. Another kind of attacking other’s morale.

They don’t have to, the supply chain is friendlier to them than to Lebanese.

And they whined about a fucking bus exploding.

About some pipe rockets killing a random bloke or two.

And this

against a Lebanese political organization

appears to be wrong since their attack wasn’t at all this targeted. It’s a mass terror campaign against whole Lebanese population in order to saturate its attention and reduce morale before an invasion.

We all got complacent relying on big nations with big militaries for punishing such behavior, and they are all in bed with the criminal.

Despite this not being Hezbollah’s best moment, I think they and similar guerrillas are the exact kind of people we should learn from for solutions to Israel and the rest of the problem.

Ye-es, but nobody in the West said so. Maybe if in that one moment things went differently, Russia would be at least a very flawed democracy today.

Russian Supreme Court in 1993 when ruling that Yeltsin and the parliament should both resign and have new presidential and parliament elections. Yeltsin’s opposition agreed, Yeltsin said he’s the president and it’s democratic and legal that he decides everything and sent tanks.

Since the US was friendly with Yeltsin, this was considered business as usual.

Judges are not supposed to work for the majority. They are supposed to work for justice.

Justice in most cases means opposing political power (formal in this case).

Thus they should be selected in some way radically different from how political power is formed.

Sortition is one way, if you don’t want some entrenched faction reproducing itself. Would be better than US too. But still sortition from the pool of qualified people, that is, judges, and not just every random bloke who applies, of course.

There are both much safer (than Chernobyl or Fukushima or whatever) reactor models and fast-neutron reactors that can reduce the amount of spent fuel to be stored.

About reasonable and cost-effective alternatives - with bigger storage expenses and grid losses.

IMHO a good grid has at the same time a few nuclear stations (no, not those which will be inevitably shut down, but those which are being prolonged or replaced as the time passes), a huge amount of renewable sources, storage to alleviate spikes\falls of said renewable sources and backup coal stations.

And German grid is connected to a few others, so that they themselves have gotten rid of nuclear energy doesn’t matter much, with unified grids.

And we are shutting down — not building — … nuclear plants.

Morons. Managed to almost descend to his level. No, that’s not sportsmanship.

Hates - no. But giving off the impression of being weird is not that hard. I’m certain quite a few people would believe something like this about me purely due to being a sunlight-avoiding wimp bad with words (in verbal conversations).

So due process is a good thing. For each Andrew Tate there are a few dozens at least of people whom “the society” would eagerly accuse simply because of being asocial and weird. Like that folk psychology with red flags, manipulations and other shit. People practicing it can wound an autist. But I seriously doubt those would help them avoid a serial maniac.