That must be nice. My company does a lot of work for one of the world’s largest chip manufacturers and getting access to some of their facilities is like pulling teeth. Somebody forgot to submit the right paperwork, it didn’t go to the correct department or project manager, this facility is always locked down on the third Tuesday of every month, for reasons, you name it I’ve encountered it.

You have to wonder if they’ve ever actually met any Taiwanese people.

So by your logic it’s not OK to criticize the CCP unless one also lists off all the other governments that failed to rise to the occasion? WTF is wrong with you? You are trying way too hard. It’s obvious that for whatever reason you can’t abide criticism of the CCP.

If they were critical of the US government’s response you and I know very well that you would never feel the need to comment about how the CCP also fucked up. You wouldn’t because you’re poisoned by an ideology that doesn’t allow you to see the world from an objective solutions-based perspective. Everything is black and white with you, either in keeping with your cornball little ideology, or not, in which case it’s evil.

It’s bullshit and people are getting sick of you and people like you. Grow the fuck up.

This place is swarming with idiots. I think it’s an age thing. There are a lot of young people on Lemmy and they tend to be very wedded to viewing the world in strictly ideological terms with little nuance and no real appreciation for how complex the real world actually is. As a result, it’s almost impossible to be critical of anything without being subjected to pointless and condescending whataboutism.

And your point is what, exactly?

When you appoint yourself as some kind of arbiter of traffic rules you basically grant yourself a kind of superiority that’s neither earned nor wanted by your fellow motorists.

How about you just shut the fuck up and drive like the rest of us?

I mean, you just described driving like an asshole, what more do you want?

Merlin is similar but for birds. Also feeds all of the data you give it back to Cornell’s ornithology lab, which I’d normally be against, but in this case it’s for a great cause.

You can also troll various bird species by playing their calls back to them. Most will at least come in for a closer look, some will straight up strafe your ass depending on the season.

“Most of the world”? Really? Maybe in the developed world I guess, but definitely not in “most of the world.” In most of the world law enforcement is very much a pay for service business like any other. Well, in a lot of the world anyway.

The selective outrage is also very telling. Palestinian civilians killed by indiscriminate bombing? Apoplectic red-faced spittle-flying fury!

Ukrainian civilians or even Syrian civilians killed by the same? Relative silence even though in both cases it was even less provoked. What’s really going on here? And I don’t mean that as a rhetorical question either; I honestly don’t know. I have a theory, but I’m not entirely confident in it just yet.

Terrorism is a tactic, so no, not all “freedom fighters” are terrorists. There are and have been throughout history many guerrilla groups that don’t use terrorism tactics but that could still be called “freedom fighters.”

Also, even though it was set in Korea, it was really about Vietnam, which seems obvious now, but never occurred to me watching it as a kid.

They did a little more than simply “fight back.” They also engaged in widespread and utterly gratuitous acts of violence and torture in ways that can only have been calculated to trigger an overreaction on the part of Israel. They knew exactly what they were doing and what would happen. They obviously don’t give a fuck about their own people.

It’s also because Hamas has its origins in the Muslim Brotherhood which for obvious reasons means that Egypt is very leery of accepting Palestinians from Gaza.

I’m not defending their position, just explaining it; Egypt is basically a military dictatorship at this point and the Muslim Brotherhood is enemy number one for them.

Objectivity isn’t meant to be a destination in the sense that it’s a place that one’s reporting can arrive at. It’s meant to be a process, one that can never be executed perfectly, but one that has the effect of improving the final product over what it would otherwise be.

As for your question, “when did WWII start?” The answer is that it’s an objective fact that there are a number of events that arguably mark the beginning of the war, all of which have varying degrees of merit. Complexity, or the fact that there is no one right answer to a given question, doesn’t mean that we have to throw out any effort at objectivity. It just means that we have to dig deeper.

This is also what nearly killed off local newspapers. It’s a huge problem and journalism as a profession is still in the process of adjusting to the new realities.

In my experience living in Ireland and traveling to other English-speaking countries you're at least as likely to be called an "American" as you are "yank."

The reason why is that it dates back to the British Empire and the fact that British subjects lived in the "American" colonies for at least 200 years before they gained independence. By that time the usage in the British Empire, of referring to people from the "American" colonies as "Americans," was pretty well baked into informal English usage and it never really died out.

Linguistics doesn't tell us how language should work in a prescriptive sense, it just tells us why it works and how it's used and why every language we know of is full of logical inconsistencies, especially English.

Only in the US. In the rest of the English-speaking world many people don't know or don't care about these differences and it's just a blanket term for all Americans.

No, it's the entire English-speaking world, which actually makes sense since the practice originated with the British Empire long before American independence.

It goes back to the colonies. In the British Empire the continental colonies were "the American colonies," so British subjects from said colonies were called "Americans" for upwards of 200 years prior to the revolution. After the revolution, since Halifax was the only major continental port that remained in British hands, it made sense to call its colonists something else, while those to the south retained the name "Americans."

Conversely, the Caribbean possessions were called "The West Indies" or "The West Indies Station."

Wyoming is absolutely beautiful, it's main downside is that for much of the year its weather wants you dead.