It’s a pretty common dogswhistle. The problem is the literal statement itself, that is not wrong in a vacuum.

The problem is that people who think trans women deserve zero rights keep using phrases like this to justify discrimination and hatred, and to funnel people into a position of hatred.

The words, just as defined in the dictionary, are true. But with all the social cargo they carry, it becomes a very insulting and hateful thing.

And that itself helps the haters, because people like you will say “but… This is true, why are you acting like this?”. The answer is because the other 99% of people who make these claims absolutely deserve such a reaction.

If I screw up my visa to El Salvador, they send me home. If I screw up my visa to the US, they send me to El Salvador…

Yeah, but that’s mostly because it’s lumpsum. Over time, it’s not much at all.

Russia even did something completely new. They’re letting new recruits write off private debt!

As in, you owe me 76.000 euros for, I dunno, a fancy car. You join the military, and suddenly, you don’t owe me anything anymore. Yay for you (and sucks to be me. Good thing I can always enlist if I get into financial trouble)

Dutch people already fucking hate animal feed producers, because they’re the ones actively backing cattle farmers in their opposition of nitrogen regulation.

The nitrogen issue is a huge problem for basically every last bit of nature we have, and thanks to the cattle farmers lobbying, it’s limiting the building of roads and houses.

The animal food industry is directly and indirectly costing the Dutch people billions of euros.

This just further confirms they’re fucking assholes.

When I calculate the “time of fun per euro spent” I’m always shocked how cheap videogames are. Even something like the new Doom, which is 70 euros for 16 hours of play, comes down to €4.40 per hour (or just under 14 minutes per euro). And we consider that ridiculously expensive for a “short” game.

Try doing anything for < €5 per hour.

Then I look at something like Warhammer total war, and I’m up to 132 minutes per euro spent

Signed, and why the hell isn’t this already a law?

BoTh SiDeS!

All of your points are great, but if you looked beyond monetary value, many industries that used to produce things that increase the welfare of your citizens are now used to wage war.

Exactly! that’s the entire point. On page 2 of the summary it looks great on paper, but if you actually start looking at the reports, you’re going to see it’s actually getting worse and worse.

I love your example, and it’s a great way to show the difference between spending and investing. Buying a an expensive gun is spending money looks good right now but it doesn’t DO anything. Buying a cheap sewing machine is investing, maybe not much, but over time you’ll add value to the entire economy.

Every gun that is made, every warship launched, every rocket fired signifies, in the final sense, a theft from those who hunger and are not fed, those who are cold and are not clothed. This world in arms is not spending money alone. It is spending the sweat of its laborers, the genius of its scientists, the hopes of its children.

And the sanctions make the numbers bigger. Russia needs to spend more to get the same, which means they’re getting less for the same amount of money, sweat, genius and hopes.

And that’s a win.

It’s normal for a war economy to “grow”. When a government is buying all the tanks, guns and bullets it can, that’s absolutely amazing for the economy as a whole. Government spending increases generally drive growth (never mind that this just drives debt up and can send your country into a spiral)

Inflation, usually as a result from the former, also makes numbers go up. And if you intentionally undercount accidentally underestimate inflation, it goes up even more! You can always increase interest to keep up (if you dont have massive debt from the former).

You reduce exports of cheap raw materials and start using them yourself to make expensive war materials that look great on your books (but which don’t actually make your country any money, unlike the raw materials).

Getting more soldiers is great for employment numbers, and industry will also need more people. Governments competing with industry drives wages up (and government reserves down).

War generally requires new infrastructure, which is great for countries that have neglected it for decades (unfortunately getting bombed tends to make said improvements rather short term, and only to places nobody wants to go).

So as long as you’re not collapsing under debt (and if you can steal from private citizens, you can keep going for a bit) and your civilian industry hasn’t quite collapsed yet (Russians excel at suffering) and you haven’t undergone population collapse (15 and 70 make for great soldiers, right?) your economy looks great to anyone not looking too closely.

Same nose, same eye-shape, similar chin, and rapidly rushing towards similar hairlines. If these two aren’t related, that’s a huge coincidence.

Also, childhood malnutrition is a bitch and will absolutely cause something like this.

If Russia never ends up invading Lithuania then this will only harm Lithuanians, either people who step on it by accident or while trying to remove them

Wait, I think there’s a big disconnect here. Nobody is suggesting they scatter a million landmines around Vilnius, or even emplacing them along the border right now. You can have landmines ready, but not place them until you notice troop buildups. You can even pre-place basic fences to keep civilians out of the zones you plan to use, it still works.

The time to place landmines is when you’re (about to be) at war. Not just for humanitarian reasons, landmines don’t actually work reliably forever.

It has been proven far and wide these things kill long after a conflict has been resolved.

And, very harshly, you can weigh those deaths against immediate deaths when you’re at war. Against an enemy that has repeatedly demonstrated that losing a war will mean you stop existing as a people, the equation becomes a lot less complex.

But, those factories can obviously operate just fine inside Europe, as they are currently doing so. They just make more profit under the lax Chinese regulations, which are set that way by the Chinese government.

Europe can’t legislate China.

Its not a total dichotomy, but one absolutely contributes to not having the other.

How is it Europe fault’s that China is still happily building new coal plants and not regulating industry?

I’m a big fan of Amesty, but their point is stupid. Look how much Ukrainians have suffered at the hands of Russia. Russia is literally comitting genocide right fucking now, kidnapping children and forcefully displacing adults and moving Russians into the occupied territory.

Now, landmines are bad, true. But genocide is a whole lot fucking worse. You can remove landmines, and the ones you miss will not kill tens of thousands of people every year.

The great weakness of a true democracy is that it allows skilled, well-intentioned politicians and corrupt assholes to run just as easily. And the corrupt assholes tend to be better funded.

1997 is not I IX IX VII, for 1 9 9 7

It’s MCMXCVII for 1000+(1000-100)+(100-10)+7

massive choices on where the story goes based on your responses,

Really? What massive choices do you make? Hunter or emissary? That just changes the last 20 minutes of the game. Before then, you have no major impact on the plot.

the capabilities to befriend or antagonize any enemy whether a human, alien, or these strange pirates

But you don’t. You can’t befriend the pirates, there arent really any strange aliens, and you can’t antagonize most friends.

You deal with politics, survival,

Do you? There’s some minor “deal with this for me” stuff from the factions, but that’s hardly politics.

And survival isn’t an issue in the game at all, even though you can see the scrapped leftovers from it.

attempting to save the galaxy while trying to discover the hidden story.

The “hidden story” is spelled out and telegraphed in the main questline. It’s not a souls like where you piece it together, they literally tell you to your face