And yet you have not explained in any of your posts why I don't know anything about psychology despite being challenged to do so in EVERY SINGLE POST I HAVE DIRECTED AT YOUR STUPID ASS... which is interesting because the burden has always been upon you to back your stupid position up with so much a fucking argument.
And you won't because you know I'll pull your balls out by your throat if you even TRY it. You can't win this argument. You're defending a pseudo science.
You won't present an argument though... because you're an intellectual coward. You say some bullshit and then when called on it run away. fuckwit.
Right with you on the javascript thing. I use noscript passively everywhere. The internet is just a nicer place when random javascript has to have permission to run at all.
I only run what I have to run.
I do the same thing with cookies. If a site doesn't need cookies then I don't let it store them on my machine. And third party cookies? ha. Basically never. I go through most of the internet like a ghost. They can track my IP I guess but that is a far cry from loading me up with tracking cookies or insane amounts of nested javascripts.
Have you ever seen how they're set up? They put one inside another inside another inside another. They're like those fucking russian dolls only worse. You'll have five or six nested inside of one script and then each of those could have two or three scripts inside of it and so on. It is insane. There needs to be some sort of passive standard that limits scripts to the host domain. I don't understand why you'd run foreign scripts. There's no reason for it. ANd if you REALLY need to, then fine... let people right click something to add an exception but if most people don't do that the web admins will craft less retarded sites... and hopefully the ad people will be less obnoxious.
Causation and correlation. What they have here is CORRELATION... not causation. They have nothing that suggests being richer makes your brain bigger. The very idea that they have misinterpreted their data this badly makes me not want to live on this planet in and of itself.
What complete fucking idiots. Seriously. Retards. I suppose they're probably poor, which is why they're stupid.
What their "study" found was some correlation between brain size and wealth. First, brain size doesn't actually correlate with intelligence. There are some people with giant brains that are complete idiots. Literally retarded. And there are some people with abnormally little brains for humans that are quite intelligent. In gross terms having a chipmunk brain is going to require a similarly limited intelligence but small variances in brain size do not infer greater intelligence. Male brains for example are almost all larger than female brains yet we wouldn't say women are less intelligent.
In any case, even if we are talking about intelligence, the issue is correlation and not causation. And in that case, it is possible that the wealthier bloodlines are wealthier because they're more intelligent not more intelligent because they're wealthier.
As to these people presuming to suggest social policy on this basis... allow me to laugh derisively in their stupid faces.
The good news is that the public are becoming more educated on the subject. I've noticed it over the years. They're getting more mindful about not sticking their dicks in electrical sockets... even if the buzzing sensation is momentarily enjoyable.
You're just saying I'm a rhinoceros over and over again. And I ask for some evidence or logic to support that position and you say "because you are"... again and again.
That is not how you have a constructive conversation. How can you be literate enough to form sentences but be so ignorant that you don't know how to form "thoughts"... I mean... this is fundamental. You are ignorant of things that should have been educated before you were taught to read.
I have nothing but respect for those that go through a PhD program and I have nothing but respect for the education and the disciplines involved... so long as the people involved in them have respect for them as well. There are examples of fraud and I have no respect for them.
The mere fact that I am arguing against you so strenuously here proves that you misunderstood my intentions. If I did feel that way, then I would agree with your position... right? And yet I don't... which means that clearly wasn't the message I was trying to send which means you're wrong.
I know I know... you like strawmen... but they're logically unsupportable so that's just too bad.
In any case, you're not interested in a constructive discussion but in some little emotional crusade. You are neither informed nor interesting. And lacking both I can't see why anyone would want to talk to you about anything.
conflating not wanting to do a business deal for religious reasons with being permitted to murder people is the sort of association a complete fucking moron makes.
No where in any of your posts did you once support the point that I don't know anything about psychology. You just SAY I don't.
that is as valid as me saying you're a rhinoceros over and over and over again.
You're too fucking stupid to have this discussion. You were repeatedly challenged to answer a very simple question and you've refused to do it because you know I'll rip your argument apart if you so much as dare to make a falsifiable argument.
There is even a fucking wikipedia article. Don't waste my time asking for citations that the sun is hot. It is annoying.
As to unconscious bias, there is a theory for anything. Psychology itself is one of the weakest sciences and unconscious bias is a weak theory in quasi science. You're half way into astrology with that garbage.
As to you being able to associate one small study with everything, no you can't. Everyone knows that. Its basic to statistical science.
As to what goes on in magic karmashock land, wages tend to change rapidly after hire. There is an orientation phase where new workers are tested and trained. And after that they tend to get wage bumps.
My personal income tends to go up between 20 and 50 percent within the first few months on a new job. So yeah. that happens.
As to rigorous auditing... I WAS DOING THE FUCKING AUDITING. How can you apply MY auditing to anything I'm not auditing? What I required was that I be ABLE to audit them. You are of course very welcome to audit any statistics I offer. And I am perfectly willing to only show you stats that you can audit. But the auditing and standards must be enforced by YOU just as my standards are enforced by ME.
Now, do you want the statistics or should I not bother because we both know my stats are valid?
Because you know my stats are valid. You know it and I know you know it. But if you'd like me to cite them anyway, I'm happy to do that.
Why would I bother to make a company if my reward is getting hassled by fucking retards that say I have to give over 150 percent of all my profits?
You say there is no natural law, but there is... supply and demand are natural laws.
My interest in building a company, hiring people, expanding, making new products etc is based on the profit motive.
IF you take all the profit away then I have no incentive to do any of these things.
An employer pays a worker what it costs to get a worker to show up and work. Just as when I go to the store to buy a jug of milk, I pay the store what I must to facilitate that exchange.
What you are attempting to do is negotiate after the fact. It would be like the man from the store calling me up two weeks after I bought the milk and said "you should give me more money because my cows are sick."
Your sick cows are not my responsibility. Now what you can do is charge me more for the subsequent jugs of milk. And if you ask for too much money, then I'll look to see if I can get that same jug of milk for a lower price. And if I can, then I will just stop doing business with you because your prices are not competitive.
It is a natural force. That is why communism lost and why it will never win. Because for all of Marx's knowledge of capitalism, he apparently didn't appreciate that the system is not something someone just came up with yesterday for fun. It is a system modeled around the natural forces of supply and demand. You can't fight it.
You can either learn to manage it or get crushed by it. Your choice.
Why would a company have workers not work when they're willing to work?
And how is that fair to the men that want to work? If I can work and I want to work... then who are you to say I can't?
What is more, your concept is unfair to WOMEN that don't have children. Lets say you are a career woman that doesn't want to have kids. You're going to put her on the same level as the woman that took 10 years off to take care of her kids?
That's unreasonable.
The wage gap is a myth. It is merely the price of having children. And that isn't the company's fault.
Do I really have to explain the point of marriage and the financial benefits of having a two parent household?
When the woman takes that time off, the man keeps working. And everything he makes is shared property. She gets the benefit of his labor.
Here you might say "but what about single mothers?!"... I don't really understand why we'd want to encourage single motherhood. The statistics on it are horrific. A large portion of the male prison population came almost exclusively from single mother households. Really... it isn't working out very well.
Just saying.
This is going to make me sound horribly regressive and conservative but I'm neither. I'm merely pointing out an idealistic notion that turned out to not make any sense. Get a husband or someone in your life... a female partner if you're a lesbian... someone that will help you raise the child. Women with children do poorly without a social support network. They tend to raise their child poorly and then rather than her contributing another useful citizen to society, we tend to get some hooligan that has to be kept in jail at the expense of everyone else.
It isn't working. Get a husband or have some kind of support network to help you. The government welfare checks are never going to substitute for that.
In regards to natural responses... do the windows of people that live in bad neighborhoods have bars on them?
Yes they do.
Why is that?
Natural response.
People respond to threats.
Action leads to reaction. Invade people's privacy, show that you unbound by due process, that you'll do whatever you can do, and that the limits of your power are literally whatever anyone allows you to do... then you have created a situation where everyone does what they can to limit your capabilities by locking down the encryption and otherwise increasing the security.
The NSA will continue to do whatever it "can" but what it can do will shrink over time because it simply won't be possible for them to gain access without consent.
That will continue until such time as the NSA starts abiding by some rules. Until that happens, the security is going to ramp up until everyone is pretty sure the NSA can't get in.
I'm not suggesting they'll surrender anything. I'm saying they'll be too weak to hold it.
Their population is declining, their economy is declining, their neighbors are becoming wealthier and more technologically sophisticated...
Russia is the sick man of Asia. It is headed for the same crack up that the Ottoman empire went through.
We offered them a way out of that. A way to keep everything they have and become wealthier and more powerful than they've ever been. And they spat in our faces...
They're idiots.
Russia must ally with the west. It cannot survive another cold war with the west. The last one crushed Stalin's empire... What Putin has is a remnant... the end game is unavoidable.
This is a game of attrition. We will grab them by the throat economically and squeeze. And in 30 years... what is left will either be ignorable or more pliable.
The Russians have asked the west a very dangerous question "oh yeah, what will you do to make me, huh?"... We are not without resources. If the Russians were wise, they'd stop this stupidity, sue for peace, and try to patch relations. Then the isolation might only last 5 or 10 years. If they don't stop... the isolation could last 30 years or more.
Which Americans would you say have committed war crimes?
And in what court would you try them?
The underlying fallacy of your position is these two concepts:
1. World court. 2. International law.
Neither one exists. There is no such thing.
For there to be a world court, you'd need a supreme international authority was above every nation.
No such entity exists.
For there to be international law, you'd need an international senate or law making body that every nation on earth was responsible to and then you'd need to empower that law making body with an executive capable of overwhelming any nation on earth. No such senate or executive exists.
You are basically presuming that there is a world government when there clearly isn't one.
That there is international law at all is due to nations like the US enforcing treaties and punishing people it feels need to be punished. Absent the US's military might... exactly who is gong to enforce your rules, little one? No one.
You're spitting into the wind. Every little bit of phlegm you tried to speckle on my face is rust running down your own stupid cheeks.
Given the arrogance of the NSA and other national security agencies, they can expect encryption to increase radically. This is a natural consequence of their refusal to abide by due process as well as generally doing whatever the hell they want because they "can".
That attitude is a double edged sword. And they are just now feeling the bite of the other edge as the global community responds to their behavior.
Not only will the sophistication of encryption spread by it will go from being an option to being a default status quo. In the not too distant future, if they want access to data, they will need to get the cooperation of the owner of that data... or get nothing at all.
In regards to human transport to space, do you have examples of the US monopolizing a good? What exactly are you referring to. I asked you to be specific. You cited something the RUSSIANS attempted to exploit. Not something the US has attempted to exploit. We want more nations in space and we make an effort to share such technology.
As to your opinion of me and my nation changing because of an internet post... That frankly speaks poorly of you. The "way" you speak about anything will not cause me to change my opinion about a thing.
I am not a child that is moved by emotion. I am a rational adult. That is not arrogance. It is hard won and earned maturity. I make no appologies for it, offer no excuses, and find any notion that I must misrepresent myself to make thin skinned people feel comfortable a little tedious.
I do not say this with any wish to offend you. I merely don't care if I do or do not offend you. I am focused purely on being honest and accurate.
As to your claims that I am being hypocritical... you are going to have to be specific about that. Absent specificity, your comment will have to be assumed to be a baseless insult rather than any attempt at rational discourse.
As to Putin being a fool... we agree on that at least. Let us try to focus on our shared perspectives and opinions.
Diplomacy requires a meeting of minds. I am prepared to meet you half way. But do not expect me to meet you farther than that.
I am not your enemy unless you want me to be your enemy. Do not make the same mistake that so many people from different cultures make... to assume that not abiding by your culture that i mean any offense to you. I mean you no offense. This is my culture. I am not your enemy but neither am I obligated to make you comfortable.
... We will need substantive evidence of their change of character before we commit to further projects.
If the Russians are determined to be enemies of the West, then it is in our interests to see that they are as technologically regressed as possible. That means not sharing computer or rocketry technology that they can use to make weapons etc.
It is very sad. We tried so hard to be their friends. The Chinese broke with the Russians in large part because they understood the stupidity of this pointless hostility between our people's.
China has prospered from that realization. All the wealth and power that is now China's could have been Russia's. That and more. They could have remained a super power and then some. They could have been incredibly wealthy.
But they pissed it all away for nothing... just as Putin is pissing away Russia's second chance for nothing.
Whether Russia gets a third chance is entirely speculative. The Russians are profoundly pigheaded. And given that they are unlikely to even admit they're doing stupid things it is unlikely that their position can be salvaged.
What they are forcing the west to do is cut them off. Isolate them. Starve them of trade. Surround them with strong military defenses that they cannot breach... and wait until after a generation of poverty and isolation they crack.
Last time Russia gave up a big portion of their territory. The next surrender of territory will probably be in their east. Siberia etc are all likely forfeit. The US won't take these things. The west won't take them. We'll just make the Russians too weak to stop their eastern neighbors from taking it.
Hopefully whatever is left of Russia when this is concluded is wiser.
Slashdot Mirror
And yet you have not explained in any of your posts why I don't know anything about psychology despite being challenged to do so in EVERY SINGLE POST I HAVE DIRECTED AT YOUR STUPID ASS... which is interesting because the burden has always been upon you to back your stupid position up with so much a fucking argument.
And you won't because you know I'll pull your balls out by your throat if you even TRY it. You can't win this argument. You're defending a pseudo science.
You won't present an argument though... because you're an intellectual coward. You say some bullshit and then when called on it run away. fuckwit.
Good.
The title lead me to believe they had done the same thing I've seen done ACTUALLY many many times. Thank you for the correction.
Right with you on the javascript thing. I use noscript passively everywhere. The internet is just a nicer place when random javascript has to have permission to run at all.
I only run what I have to run.
I do the same thing with cookies. If a site doesn't need cookies then I don't let it store them on my machine. And third party cookies? ha. Basically never. I go through most of the internet like a ghost. They can track my IP I guess but that is a far cry from loading me up with tracking cookies or insane amounts of nested javascripts.
Have you ever seen how they're set up? They put one inside another inside another inside another. They're like those fucking russian dolls only worse. You'll have five or six nested inside of one script and then each of those could have two or three scripts inside of it and so on. It is insane. There needs to be some sort of passive standard that limits scripts to the host domain. I don't understand why you'd run foreign scripts. There's no reason for it. ANd if you REALLY need to, then fine... let people right click something to add an exception but if most people don't do that the web admins will craft less retarded sites... and hopefully the ad people will be less obnoxious.
Valid for okay programmers. The great ones don't need to draw within the lines. You don't innovate by hashing together someone else's crap.
why
is
this
so
fucking
hard
to
grasp?
Causation and correlation. What they have here is CORRELATION... not causation. They have nothing that suggests being richer makes your brain bigger. The very idea that they have misinterpreted their data this badly makes me not want to live on this planet in and of itself.
What complete fucking idiots. Seriously. Retards. I suppose they're probably poor, which is why they're stupid.
What their "study" found was some correlation between brain size and wealth. First, brain size doesn't actually correlate with intelligence. There are some people with giant brains that are complete idiots. Literally retarded. And there are some people with abnormally little brains for humans that are quite intelligent. In gross terms having a chipmunk brain is going to require a similarly limited intelligence but small variances in brain size do not infer greater intelligence. Male brains for example are almost all larger than female brains yet we wouldn't say women are less intelligent.
In any case, even if we are talking about intelligence, the issue is correlation and not causation. And in that case, it is possible that the wealthier bloodlines are wealthier because they're more intelligent not more intelligent because they're wealthier.
As to these people presuming to suggest social policy on this basis... allow me to laugh derisively in their stupid faces.
*rolls eyes*
that's all we can be certain of really.
The good news is that the public are becoming more educated on the subject. I've noticed it over the years. They're getting more mindful about not sticking their dicks in electrical sockets... even if the buzzing sensation is momentarily enjoyable.
still waiting for you to cite a good the US monopolized.
So again, you're not explaining your position.
You're just saying I'm a rhinoceros over and over again. And I ask for some evidence or logic to support that position and you say "because you are"... again and again.
That is not how you have a constructive conversation. How can you be literate enough to form sentences but be so ignorant that you don't know how to form "thoughts"... I mean... this is fundamental. You are ignorant of things that should have been educated before you were taught to read.
It exists only in your mind.
I have nothing but respect for those that go through a PhD program and I have nothing but respect for the education and the disciplines involved... so long as the people involved in them have respect for them as well. There are examples of fraud and I have no respect for them.
The mere fact that I am arguing against you so strenuously here proves that you misunderstood my intentions. If I did feel that way, then I would agree with your position... right? And yet I don't... which means that clearly wasn't the message I was trying to send which means you're wrong.
I know I know... you like strawmen... but they're logically unsupportable so that's just too bad.
In any case, you're not interested in a constructive discussion but in some little emotional crusade. You are neither informed nor interesting. And lacking both I can't see why anyone would want to talk to you about anything.
Good day.
conflating not wanting to do a business deal for religious reasons with being permitted to murder people is the sort of association a complete fucking moron makes.
You just made that association.
Ergo... you are a complete fucking moron.
Good day.
I didn't trivialize anything.
You're pushing a strawman and I'm tired of indulging your deceit.
We're done.
No where in any of your posts did you once support the point that I don't know anything about psychology. You just SAY I don't.
that is as valid as me saying you're a rhinoceros over and over and over again.
You're too fucking stupid to have this discussion. You were repeatedly challenged to answer a very simple question and you've refused to do it because you know I'll rip your argument apart if you so much as dare to make a falsifiable argument.
Your admission of weakness is noted.
Fuck off.
I actually do know how AC works. You chose to not use your fake name on the site because you're a weasel or too lazy to log on.
As to your request for citation that we are told all the time about how hard it is for women to be in stem... you must be fucking kidding me:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W...
There is even a fucking wikipedia article. Don't waste my time asking for citations that the sun is hot. It is annoying.
As to unconscious bias, there is a theory for anything. Psychology itself is one of the weakest sciences and unconscious bias is a weak theory in quasi science. You're half way into astrology with that garbage.
As to you being able to associate one small study with everything, no you can't. Everyone knows that. Its basic to statistical science.
As to what goes on in magic karmashock land, wages tend to change rapidly after hire. There is an orientation phase where new workers are tested and trained. And after that they tend to get wage bumps.
My personal income tends to go up between 20 and 50 percent within the first few months on a new job. So yeah. that happens.
As to rigorous auditing... I WAS DOING THE FUCKING AUDITING. How can you apply MY auditing to anything I'm not auditing? What I required was that I be ABLE to audit them. You are of course very welcome to audit any statistics I offer. And I am perfectly willing to only show you stats that you can audit. But the auditing and standards must be enforced by YOU just as my standards are enforced by ME.
Now, do you want the statistics or should I not bother because we both know my stats are valid?
Because you know my stats are valid. You know it and I know you know it. But if you'd like me to cite them anyway, I'm happy to do that.
Why would I bother to make a company if my reward is getting hassled by fucking retards that say I have to give over 150 percent of all my profits?
You say there is no natural law, but there is... supply and demand are natural laws.
My interest in building a company, hiring people, expanding, making new products etc is based on the profit motive.
IF you take all the profit away then I have no incentive to do any of these things.
An employer pays a worker what it costs to get a worker to show up and work. Just as when I go to the store to buy a jug of milk, I pay the store what I must to facilitate that exchange.
What you are attempting to do is negotiate after the fact. It would be like the man from the store calling me up two weeks after I bought the milk and said "you should give me more money because my cows are sick."
Your sick cows are not my responsibility. Now what you can do is charge me more for the subsequent jugs of milk. And if you ask for too much money, then I'll look to see if I can get that same jug of milk for a lower price. And if I can, then I will just stop doing business with you because your prices are not competitive.
It is a natural force. That is why communism lost and why it will never win. Because for all of Marx's knowledge of capitalism, he apparently didn't appreciate that the system is not something someone just came up with yesterday for fun. It is a system modeled around the natural forces of supply and demand. You can't fight it.
You can either learn to manage it or get crushed by it. Your choice.
I see, so anyone that doesn't buy into crypto communist claptrap is a a big ayn rand supporter?
Fuck you.
We're done. I'm not going to make an effort to have a discussion with someone that drops into ad hominem whenever they get backed into a corner.
Why would a company have workers not work when they're willing to work?
And how is that fair to the men that want to work? If I can work and I want to work... then who are you to say I can't?
What is more, your concept is unfair to WOMEN that don't have children. Lets say you are a career woman that doesn't want to have kids. You're going to put her on the same level as the woman that took 10 years off to take care of her kids?
That's unreasonable.
The wage gap is a myth. It is merely the price of having children. And that isn't the company's fault.
Do I really have to explain the point of marriage and the financial benefits of having a two parent household?
When the woman takes that time off, the man keeps working. And everything he makes is shared property. She gets the benefit of his labor.
Here you might say "but what about single mothers?!"... I don't really understand why we'd want to encourage single motherhood. The statistics on it are horrific. A large portion of the male prison population came almost exclusively from single mother households. Really... it isn't working out very well.
Just saying.
This is going to make me sound horribly regressive and conservative but I'm neither. I'm merely pointing out an idealistic notion that turned out to not make any sense. Get a husband or someone in your life... a female partner if you're a lesbian... someone that will help you raise the child. Women with children do poorly without a social support network. They tend to raise their child poorly and then rather than her contributing another useful citizen to society, we tend to get some hooligan that has to be kept in jail at the expense of everyone else.
It isn't working. Get a husband or have some kind of support network to help you. The government welfare checks are never going to substitute for that.
If an individual has a religious objection to doing something... who is anyone to say they have to do that thing?
Leave people alone.
There's no robophobia. next issue.
In regards to natural responses... do the windows of people that live in bad neighborhoods have bars on them?
Yes they do.
Why is that?
Natural response.
People respond to threats.
Action leads to reaction. Invade people's privacy, show that you unbound by due process, that you'll do whatever you can do, and that the limits of your power are literally whatever anyone allows you to do... then you have created a situation where everyone does what they can to limit your capabilities by locking down the encryption and otherwise increasing the security.
The NSA will continue to do whatever it "can" but what it can do will shrink over time because it simply won't be possible for them to gain access without consent.
That will continue until such time as the NSA starts abiding by some rules. Until that happens, the security is going to ramp up until everyone is pretty sure the NSA can't get in.
I'm not suggesting they'll surrender anything. I'm saying they'll be too weak to hold it.
Their population is declining, their economy is declining, their neighbors are becoming wealthier and more technologically sophisticated...
Russia is the sick man of Asia. It is headed for the same crack up that the Ottoman empire went through.
We offered them a way out of that. A way to keep everything they have and become wealthier and more powerful than they've ever been. And they spat in our faces...
They're idiots.
Russia must ally with the west. It cannot survive another cold war with the west. The last one crushed Stalin's empire... What Putin has is a remnant... the end game is unavoidable.
This is a game of attrition. We will grab them by the throat economically and squeeze. And in 30 years... what is left will either be ignorable or more pliable.
The Russians have asked the west a very dangerous question "oh yeah, what will you do to make me, huh?"... We are not without resources. If the Russians were wise, they'd stop this stupidity, sue for peace, and try to patch relations. Then the isolation might only last 5 or 10 years. If they don't stop... the isolation could last 30 years or more.
Which Americans would you say have committed war crimes?
And in what court would you try them?
The underlying fallacy of your position is these two concepts:
1. World court.
2. International law.
Neither one exists. There is no such thing.
For there to be a world court, you'd need a supreme international authority was above every nation.
No such entity exists.
For there to be international law, you'd need an international senate or law making body that every nation on earth was responsible to and then you'd need to empower that law making body with an executive capable of overwhelming any nation on earth. No such senate or executive exists.
You are basically presuming that there is a world government when there clearly isn't one.
That there is international law at all is due to nations like the US enforcing treaties and punishing people it feels need to be punished. Absent the US's military might... exactly who is gong to enforce your rules, little one? No one.
You're spitting into the wind. Every little bit of phlegm you tried to speckle on my face is rust running down your own stupid cheeks.
Given the arrogance of the NSA and other national security agencies, they can expect encryption to increase radically. This is a natural consequence of their refusal to abide by due process as well as generally doing whatever the hell they want because they "can".
That attitude is a double edged sword. And they are just now feeling the bite of the other edge as the global community responds to their behavior.
Not only will the sophistication of encryption spread by it will go from being an option to being a default status quo. In the not too distant future, if they want access to data, they will need to get the cooperation of the owner of that data... or get nothing at all.
In regards to human transport to space, do you have examples of the US monopolizing a good? What exactly are you referring to. I asked you to be specific. You cited something the RUSSIANS attempted to exploit. Not something the US has attempted to exploit. We want more nations in space and we make an effort to share such technology.
As to your opinion of me and my nation changing because of an internet post... That frankly speaks poorly of you. The "way" you speak about anything will not cause me to change my opinion about a thing.
I am not a child that is moved by emotion. I am a rational adult. That is not arrogance. It is hard won and earned maturity. I make no appologies for it, offer no excuses, and find any notion that I must misrepresent myself to make thin skinned people feel comfortable a little tedious.
I do not say this with any wish to offend you. I merely don't care if I do or do not offend you. I am focused purely on being honest and accurate.
As to your claims that I am being hypocritical... you are going to have to be specific about that. Absent specificity, your comment will have to be assumed to be a baseless insult rather than any attempt at rational discourse.
As to Putin being a fool... we agree on that at least. Let us try to focus on our shared perspectives and opinions.
Diplomacy requires a meeting of minds. I am prepared to meet you half way. But do not expect me to meet you farther than that.
I am not your enemy unless you want me to be your enemy. Do not make the same mistake that so many people from different cultures make... to assume that not abiding by your culture that i mean any offense to you. I mean you no offense. This is my culture. I am not your enemy but neither am I obligated to make you comfortable.
... We will need substantive evidence of their change of character before we commit to further projects.
If the Russians are determined to be enemies of the West, then it is in our interests to see that they are as technologically regressed as possible. That means not sharing computer or rocketry technology that they can use to make weapons etc.
It is very sad. We tried so hard to be their friends. The Chinese broke with the Russians in large part because they understood the stupidity of this pointless hostility between our people's.
China has prospered from that realization. All the wealth and power that is now China's could have been Russia's. That and more. They could have remained a super power and then some. They could have been incredibly wealthy.
But they pissed it all away for nothing... just as Putin is pissing away Russia's second chance for nothing.
Whether Russia gets a third chance is entirely speculative. The Russians are profoundly pigheaded. And given that they are unlikely to even admit they're doing stupid things it is unlikely that their position can be salvaged.
What they are forcing the west to do is cut them off. Isolate them. Starve them of trade. Surround them with strong military defenses that they cannot breach... and wait until after a generation of poverty and isolation they crack.
Last time Russia gave up a big portion of their territory. The next surrender of territory will probably be in their east. Siberia etc are all likely forfeit. The US won't take these things. The west won't take them. We'll just make the Russians too weak to stop their eastern neighbors from taking it.
Hopefully whatever is left of Russia when this is concluded is wiser.