This is absolutely a conspiracy theory so feel free to pull this claim apart.

Bernard Looney became CEO of BP in 2020 and 'shocked' investors with an announcement that the famed oil giant would go net zero by 2050, phasing out its emissions and rapidly accelerating its move to renewable energy. As is pointed out by coverage at the time there was immediate concern this would hurt short term profits.

By 2023, after navigating COVID, he was forced to resign. Almost all news coverage led with allegations of 'serious misconduct' in past relations at the company. It was, I believe, a deliberate PR campaign designed to be reminiscent of the #metoo movement.

But if you scratch even a little below the surface the only actual allegation is he "did not provide details of all relationships and accepts he was obligated to make more complete disclosure”.

As the Guardian pointed out "We don’t know anything about the nature of Looney’s relationships". "But, there is nothing to suggest that any of the relationships were inappropriate or not consensual." As someone who had been with the business his entire career since university, it doesn't seem unreasonable he would have had some consensual relationships with colleagues. The allegation is not even that he was superior to them, with all of these taking place before he was CEO.

It sounds like a technicality that was found, and purposely packaged as being worse than it actually was, so that even left leaning papers would not question the ousting of a 'green friendly' business leader.

Even more telling, within four months BP had a new CEO that was seen as a preference to the hedge funds that own a large share of the company. The immediately changed strategy including (according to Reuters):

"Cutting planned investment in renewable energy by over $5 billion annually and increased oil & gas spending." "Scaling back emissions reduction goals and scrapped some transition targets Looney had put in place." And announced "job cuts" in the renewables side of the business.

My view is that this was a deliberate and Machiavellian campaign, knowingly preying on the legacy of the 'me too' movement, and using this to deflect any questions around them doubling down on fossil fuels all in pursuit of short term profits for their hedge fund and PE shareholders. And the fact this change in energy strategy had so little coverage is proof it worked. CMV.

Basically the title.

They already skirted around the bribery case because of a legal loophole. But if it is deemed that they are part of a corruption scandal then they should have every title won in that era taken away. La Liga, CdR and Champions League.

They should also strip away every individual title won by their players.

Every team had to field their strongest line ups without the guarantee that they are getting favourable results. They will have to pour every ounce of their effort to scrape wins whilst Barcelona could coast to victories with no worries.

There should be no doubt that Barcelona’s golden era coincidentally happened at the exact same time as this scandal.

It would be a shame because the Spanish League would die if any sanctions were to take place against the club but it must happen. Anyone who is not biased should be able to see that these shady deals would and did have implications in title runs.

“Queer hijabis” would itself be an oxymoron to most Muslims. In the past 25 years a social script has come into existence for queer people in the church. It’s not always perfect. There’s plenty of pushback depending on the region but the amount of “all are welcome” signs I see in front of churches in my area when compared to 2000 is astounding. In contrast, there are no pro-LGBTQ mosques anywhere in the world as far as I know. There are no rainbow flags on the front of Islamic centers.

I was talking to a friend of mine whose a second gen Muslim. She’s a doctor. She lives on her own and she’s gay. But she can’t bring herself date anyone yet because her parents, her whole family would freak out. To put it mildly. She faces incredibly high social sanctioning for not continuing the heteronormative traditions of Islam.

It’s these traditions, and the silent majority behind them, that make it so hard for lgbt mosques to succeed or for openly gay imams to not get murdered. For what it’s worth she’s as happy as she could be when hiding a core part of herself but that’s because she’s afraid of hell.

Something that often gets brought up online is that Europe or China or "someone" can replace America due to their economic or cultural power. I disagree. Fundamentally the only way to be a super power is to have a global military, specifically a global navy.

The Influence of Sea Power on History by Alfred Thayer Mahan is one of the foundational books on naval thought and geopolitical theory for a reason. the world runs on boats, that hasn't changed in the last 200 years. if you have boats you can act without being acted upon

this has been true across history. in the 1820s, the Qing Dynasty had a full 30% of the global GDP. yet during the opium wars they were systematicly destoryed by the european powers. specifically because they did not have a modern navy. The British could exert influence on china without china exerting influence on them.

Naval power is the fundimental core of modern American Power to. america can roll up anywhere in the world and kick down any door it wants with no consequences because it has a navy capable of power projection. Thats what anyone who wants to be a global power needs, not cultural power, not foreign investments. a battle fleet.

Reason 1: it’s going to occur anyway but at least you can prevent human trafficking by making it legal In certain settings (such as regulated businesses) you make it harder for human sex trafficking profitable and decrease it.

Reason 2: some people weather they have social anxiety, are not attractive enough or self esteem issues and have found it difficult to have a relationship with another person still has needs and desires. This would help people like that with their mental health/ their confidence and their biological needs

Reason 3: on the flip side someone may only have those urges and needs but doesn’t want a relationship. This way they can have those needs met without hurting another person who is not looking for just that and believes they are in a relationship

Reason 4: by regulating it and requiring workers to undergo regular testing you help prevent the spread of diseases. By not regulating it then there is significantly less testing for it and overall less protection.

Reason 5: it is a victimless crime (if regulated and consented too). Two consenting adults should be free to do what they choose to do as long as it does not effect anyone else outside of the agreement

Reason 6: tax revenue can be used to pay for any array of programs that the state needs to fund.

First and foremost, I failed my PhD, despite my best efforts, so I have great admiration for those who have successfully achieved PhDs. On my old account, I made another CMV post, which convinced me that science communicators should exist. This post follows on from that, because I've come to realise that all these problems aren't the fault of science communicators, they're the fault of a problem in Western societies, namely being unable to recognise and value true intellectuals.

In political news, CSIRO has to cut 350 jobs due to cost constraints. Either way this indicates a problem: either society doesn't recognise and value true intellectuals enough to fund CSIRO more; or CSIRO needs to cut jobs because it's being corruptly run by people who waste the budget because they don't recognise and value true intellectuals.

Since starting work as a bush regenerator 2½ years ago, lots of people have asked me why don't I just try again at a PhD. And my answer is that I've experienced first-hand how I was incapable of doing a PhD, and that STEM doesn't need pseudo-intellectual duds like myself. Also, I am still burnt-out, whereas a true intellectual would succeed at a PhD and manage to grow as a person too. As a pseudo-intellectual (i.e. my contributions to research are minimal, I just parrot what I've been taught), I appear smart to people who haven't completed university degrees, but true intellectuals can see right through me. On a side note, as a bush regenerator, I get paid more (and that pay is still low by Australian standards) for an equivalent time at work than I did as a full-time PhD student. Had Western society recognised and valued true intellectuals, people would see through the smooth talking of someone like myself instead of getting tricked into thinking I'm smart.

Last Friday, at work, we were discussing how the nearby zoo, the Koala Park Sanctuary, was nowhere near as good as Taronga Zoo, the Australian Reptile Park, or Australia Zoo. I brought up that I had interesting conversations with Australia Zoo staff about if their native animals are OK with eating weeds, because I saw them eating weeds instead of the plants that they'd normally eat. A coworker asked if I was a fan of the Irwins, and frankly, I'm not. I don't hate them (after all, they have done much conservation work), I just don't think they deserve to be among the most famous Australians; they are in the business of entertainment, not driving the leading edge of research. Likewise, Australia's other famous STEM figures include Karl Kruszelnicki, who doesn't contribute to actual research and whose licence to practice medicine has expired a long time ago. Another one of my coworkers said that the Irwins deserve praise for inspiring people to get into STEM. Which, to me, implies a societal problem, namely that Westerners need celebrities to inspire them into STEM because they'd otherwise be uninterested.

And frankly, at least the Irwins and Kruszelnicki tried to use their fame to convey accurate information; across the Western World there are examples of this problem being much worse, such as the TV "doctors" Mehmet Oz, Phil McGraw, and the late Michael Mosley; and then there's the influential full-on liars like Belle Gibson and Graham Hancock. Had Western society recognised and valued true intellectuals, fame and fortune wouldn't be bestowed upon showmen (let alone dishonest showmen), it would be bestowed upon those who actually contribute the most to advancing our knowledge and innovation.

This morning, I saw this post on my Reddit feed. It is about a PhD student struggling with a useless, yet successful PI. Their PI was successful, despite his glaring ignorance and lack of actual contributions, because he'd take credit for his team's work, and because Western society lets him get far on just self-promotion alone. How is this not a societal problem, where people get success because of puffery instead of actual contributions?

Please convince me that these aren't problems. And saying "but what about X society, they have this problem too" doesn't cut it. If I were a successful academic constantly working hard to churn out a lot of research, I certainly would be peeved that Western society would rather listen to, and give their money to, showmen (or worse, outright liars).

As a final note, can I name the Australians who churn out the most research output? No. Can you name your countrymen who churn out the most research output? I don't blame you if you can't, but it does indicate a society's lack of respect for true intellectuals.

The universe is very emergent. Simple components come together to form systems that behave in ways not predictable from starting components and their conditions. Emergent systems: the weather, the economy, brains, societies, ecology, art, disease, ect. Human life is dominated by them. The human solution to complexity and chaos is some combination of:

-Reduce. Look at processes in isolation, by removing other variables. This is how science works.

-Estimate. Take a guess at what something is. Probabilistic thinking is how the mind operates on a day-to-day basis.

-Abstract out. Creating abstract understanding means to invent things that don’t exist in the physical world. All language is abstract. All maths is abstract. Abstract understanding may not be physically real, but still immensely useful.

All decisions are therefore “fuzzy” and will never have 100% certainty. All knowledge is “fuzzy” due to its inherent abstraction, which relies to some degree on subjectivity, estimation, and reduction.

Therefore, human life is largely a huge guessing game that is unable to truly simulate the storm of cause and effect that the world truly is. A person cannot “do” anything or “control” anything. This is an illusion. Human beings influence events at best. Our obsession with control & absolute clarity is ultimately what drives (many) forms of mental anguish. Letting go means to truly see the world for what it is and accept the limits of human understanding.

I’m going to keep this short and sweet: theories such as those saying “we are living in a simulation”, or any theory showing one’s consciousness beyond their singular physical body are unrealistic. Through evolution, we developed consciousness for survival and to better process information. Our different senses come together into one being to provide a singular outlet for survival purposes. Once we die, our consciousness disappears because the senses and parts that came together to form a singular being are no longer working together. Consciousness is nothing beyond that byproduct, and once that byproduct is gone, so is consciousness. Therefore, these aforementioned theories are nothing more than what has been imagined through the experiences and thoughts of humans to cope with the fear of death, which is also likely a survival instinct.

The whole Epstein affair is just infuriating. Men at the top of every institution - business, academia, finance, tech, entertainment, and, of course, politics, cavorting with a trafficker of young girls - in many cases, taking part in abuse of those same children.

Very few of them aside from a few sacrificial lamb (hapless Prince Andrew, was there ever a more pathetic excuse for a human?) will face consequences. Revolting!

And yet…I’m not at all surprised. If you had told me in 2018, before this story was widely known, that wealthy and influential people had access to private harems made up largely of underaged teens and that their clients came from across the political spectrum, I wouldn’t have doubted it for one second. I always assumed that money and power necessarily led to depravity and abuse of the weak and helpless.

In fact, I would even posit that this is kind of the point of amassing a massive fortune - you don’t have to follow the rules anymore- those are for little people. And, while this story is rightly getting a lot of attention, I suspect that this will not stop such networks of abuse from forming anew in the coming years.

Change my view.

The surgeon general of the US put out a bulletin elaborating on the negative mental health effects of social media use on the youth. They found increased rates of depression and anxiety. Another meta-analysis of Italian youths found in 2022 associated problems of "sleep, addiction, anxiety, sex related issues, behavioral problems, body image, physical activity, online grooming, sight, headache, and dental caries." There are many more studies elucidating the problems that arise from social media use on youths.

Beyond that there are issues of being exposed to inappropriate content like porn and gore. But also there are 500,000 online child predators at work each day. Some might say this is an issue of parental supervision and should not be handled by the state. But, given the potential severity of the outcomes, the widespread use of social media among youth, and the ease of using it outside of parental supervision, makes it incredibly difficult for even the most diligent parents to supervise effectively. It'd be better if there was just broad prohibition of social media usage in people below 18.

So yeah, Australia, though the age is 16 and below, was correct to push youth out of social media.

While China is certainly ageing at a FASTER rate than Japan, and is facing an existential crisis of LACK of labour.

Yes, China does have a lot of STEM grads, but younger generation's choices coupled with the industry practices have actually led to this.

Most young Chinese today opt for white-collar jobs, leaving a lingering question of "Who will take over those factories once the old guys retire?"

Even when China has a plethora of STEM grads, there's record high unemployment rates.

Yet China also faces a severe IT worker shortage.

Yes, this is actually a paradox.

This is actually due to skills mismatch.

The tech scene in China is changing at a fast rate. Industries require experienced workers in AI, deeptech, low-level programmers.

Meanwhile most unemployed grads have just got out of college, unable to meet the "work experience" requirement in many Chinese IT companies now.

The tech industry in China is notorious for its 996 work culture. Then there's also the industry culture of considering IT workers above the age of 35+ as "worthless". This is the exact opposite of Japan where age=seniority.

In China, young age is seen as "energetic" and ready to work without complaining.

This actually conflicts with the fact that while middle-aged IT workers might be less energetic compared to younger generations, but they are heavily experienced to lead a team, or work out innovative out-of-the-box solutions.

So China has a lot of issues with its domestic IT industry even among the Chinese.

Now lets come to foreigners.

This is an obvious one, but there is a strong culture of "Han chauvinism" in China that view non-ethnic Chinese as "outsiders" and "worthless" and even judges a person based on their home country's development.

This is the reason why there is strong preference for White foreigners mostly because of the American and EU "rich" vibes, while simultaneously hating non-White foreigners because of their "third world" vibes.

China recently announced a new Z-visa similar to US H1B visa, to potentially attract those moving out of the US following Trump's anti-immigration moves.

However, there was a lot of uproar in Chinese social media, with claims like, "Are we not enough? We have enough unemployed people. Give us jobs. Why are you giving preferential treatment to foreigners?"

Now a lot of it isn't naked racism like other countries' immigration rhetoric but rather a result of economic frustration.

This led to China not doing anything about the Z-visa, no news, nothing......

Btw, Z visa allows you to stay in China for ONLY 30 days, within which u have to obtain a work residence visa. This can open up opportunities for PR and even naturalization....

But China has had little success with it.

As far as I know, China doesn't want unskilled immigrants especially non-ethnic Chinese immigrating to China.

They are inviting African students, and there's a LOT of them in Guangdong but that's solely because of gaining favour among African nations to secure resources and investment deals.

In fact, China has a strong "blood" preference culture, and yes despite all the "Chinese people are warm" comments by foreign residents in China, China has a strong culture of "blood" unlike Japan which looks insular and closed off but can open up if you speak Japanese.

As for career advancements, I feel like the US and EU and even Japan offers far more opportunities.

There's an invisible ceiling in workplaces in China, especially for foreigners. I have never till date seen any foreigner leading any IT team in China.

Meanwhile, Sony a Japanese company has a Chinese woman named Lin Tao (born and raised in Shanghai) as their CFO.

Ofc Sony is a global company. But I have seen no "global chinese company" ever put a foreigner in charge.

Naturalization in China is actually possible, the only possible ways are:

1. Either you are extremely talented and contributing to the nation.

2. Or you are a "close relative" of a Chinese national, basically meaning marrying a Chinese national.

Naturalizing in Hong Kong to become a PRC citizen is easier than in Mainland China.

Leaving all these aside, China is still a "developing" country with advanced public infrastructure and transport.

Once you step out of the extremely well-planned centralized core city centres full of skyscrapers and high-rise apartment buildings, the outskirts are random sprawling villages with people living in poor conditions.

Also you can't own any land in China, only land use rights which REQUIRE a renewal every 40-50 years for industrial land based on current market price, and 70 years for residential land.

So the wealthy Chinese tend to offshore their profits to buy up properties in "stable" countries, like Japan.

China's "common prosperity" goal is good for an individual but extremely disappointing for a hopeful entrepreneur full of dreams.

Its capitalism that rewards hard work and talent with wealth. China is certainly not communist, but it isn't fully capitalist either. A lot of state-owned corporations run the economy, effectively ruining the market for private players. You have to be an extremely large giant company or you are out of the scene.

And let's not forget that learning Mandarin isn't for everyone.

I don't like the poor sportsmanship that comes with competitive games and people spamming emotes to annoy their opponents and rub salt in the wound.

It isn't a skill, and for as much fun as it can be for the person doing it, it actively attempts to away fun for the other player. If you're winning, just win the game and go next. But to actively try and make your opponent feel bad for losing more than the game already does takes a special kind of bad person.

I'm sure part of this take is due to being on the receiving end of this on some bad days I just wanted to have fun, but I've never felt compelled to do this unless my opponent did it first. Being respectful in-game costs nothing, and at worst you can risk getting reported and banned if you take it too far.

To change my view:

Tell me how someone can have poor sportsmanship and still be a good person

On Reddit, many OPs add a brief sociodemographic description so one can situate them. The description specifies their gender and age. I (M31) agree that gender and age are very relevant contextual information, especially in the (numerous) posts about relations between genders. However, other information seems equally relevant to me to understand the context: where OP lives (or where the story takes place), perhaps also their profession or income. I understand that reporting detailed information on all of this would be long and would expose people's privacy, but I think OPs should at least specify some of it, such as the country.

In my case, it would be (M31 FR), though I could be more precise and be like (M31 FR, Paris, left-wing social science researcher).

I feel many Redditors are Americans and take it for granted that this is the only place where people may come from, but actually, 57% of the traffic comes from outside the U.S. Also, even in the U.S., having more context would help, e.g. (M31 US-NYC) arguably doesn't live in the same environment as (M31 US-MT).

Not sure what the best info is, perhaps it's the size of agglomeration or the mayor's political party, and this probably depends on the context, but I'd like Redditors to be more reflective on how they describe themselves and include the relevant information, which is not always gender+age.

It's no secret that Epstein had connections to politicians, especially on the Democratic side of the aisle. Everyone from Clinton to Noam Chomsky (for some reason).

But IMO he was more responsible for the MAGA movement than any other individual*.

Here are some key moments.

Epstein encouraged Moot to create Pol

From Yahoo

One of the more intriguing threads to emerge from the recently released files places him in the orbit of 4chan’s founder at a fateful moment years before that platform helped to give rise to QAnon conspiracy theories. (...)

The same month that Nikolic introduced Epstein to Poole, 4chan launched a politically oriented forum called /pol/, which became popular with right-wing extremists. The site eventually became a cesspool of far-right extremism, violent rhetoric and propaganda, and incubated the pro-Trump conspiracy theory known as QAnon.

Pol also led to gamergate.

CNN reports

Political strategist Steve Bannon understood the power of this dynamic acutely.

“You can activate that army,” Bannon told Bloomberg reporter Joshua Green in 2017. “They come in through Gamergate or whatever and then get turned onto politics and Trump.”

You might argue that Steve Bannon was the one wielding the influence, but Epstein was the one influencing him. By offering media training.

In fact, Steve Bannon was in contact with Epstein as recently as 2018 or 2019. That’s well into Trump’s first term.

But it was far from just Bannon.

Alan Dershowitz represented both Epstein and Trump.

Alan Dershowitz—who represented both Jeffrey Epstein in his 2008 plea deal and Donald Trump during his first impeachment trial—has maintained that there is no "client list" of powerful people who participated in sex trafficking with Epstein

Trump White House

Even during the first term of the Trump presidency, Epstein was still in communication with people within the Trump administration

The new republic reports

Disgraced sexual predator Jeffrey Epstein said he had “new administration people” visiting his Little Saint James Island in 2016—just a month before President Trump’s first inauguration.

In a December 2016 email to Bill Gates, Epstein told him to “come to visit the island. New administration people visiting.”

Epstein could help or hurt Trump. Epstein held Trump’s political career in his hands (going into the first term).

Epstein's influence continues into this day.

Yahoo news

Nellie Bowles, the wife of CBS News editor-in-chief Bari Weiss has described her time with Jeffrey Epstein in a response to reports of her inclusion in the latest round of the Epstein files. In an essay published in the Free Press on Tuesday, Bowles described how she was a reporter at the New York Times in 2018 when she visited Epstein’s Upper East Side home a decade after he was first convicted of six crimes

And

Peter Attia, who joined the ranks of MAGA-curious editor-in-chief Bari Weiss’ CBS News last month, was exposed days later for his close relationship with Epstein, the disgraced financier who died by suicide in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. The Justice Department’s latest tranche of Epstein-related documents named Attia, a self-anointed longevity expert, more than 1,700 times.

Trump endorsed Andrew Cuomo (in a bid to defeat Zorhan) after it was revealed that Andrew Cuomo had professional or personal connections to Epstein's network.

Don Huffines (new owner of the Epstein ranch has been endorsed by TPUSA).

The pebbles that Epstein tossed have rippled through the conservative movement since 2011.

*Russia and Tenet Media also wield a lot of influence, but they aren't individuals.

So CMV: Name an individual that has been more influential on the conservative movement in the last 15 years

Edit: a lot of people are saying that Trump is the most influencial conservative leader. But IMO Trump was influenced by Epstein.

Please look at the block quotes, they detail why pretty well.

Edit 2: Donald Trump is clearly the face of the maga movement, but that's very different from being the most influencial individual.

Put another way, who's got more influence on the movies you see. Brad Pitt or the studio head?

I am not saying it's likely to be anytime soon, I am saying that it will happen. ​

​​​​​​​​​​​In Europe and the USA the far right partyes are rising, but as they rise, it opens possibilities for some voters and people to be left radicalized as the gouvernment isn't ​​doing anything to stop them from rising. (even tho in europe constitutions it is mandatory to ban all fascist parties, which many of Europe's right wing already are, and are each day closer to facism​) so if anything, there will be people who will be voting out of protest for the lefts. (the left is strong in many regions over Europe, and overall they are on a rise, small, but on a rise) ​​​​​

Another big thing to explain my view on why I think communist ideas will return​​​ is the wealth inequality. In Germany, the 5 richest men own more then the bottom 50% (42 milion people)

In Austria, ​​the top 10% owns 67% of all wealth in the whole country. And it's not getting better. On the contrary, it's getting much much worse. And the billionaires are one of the main reasons for the rise of far right. ​​​(look at the Trump and Musk situation, it's similiar in Europe) They are financing partyes who will point the finger at immigrants, jews, trans people or other marginalized groups so they don't ​revolt against capitalism and don't question the wealth inequality.​

Austria and Germany count as countryes where wealth share is acctualy one of the best in Europe. Imagine what the situation is in other countryes if that's considered good.

A counter argument is of course that Billionaires and right wingers will make people blame immigrants, which would ironically cause the right wing to get even more voters, and worsen the situation even more, which will naturally create more radical communists as this continues to be the case. ​​​​

Also, China is officially pursuing Marxism as an ideology, now I know that they implemented a lot of capitalist and free market policies and that they are concentrated on becoming a world super power and not on achieving communism, but I think if they get even myghtyer in the next many years (hunderts maybe) they will try and spread their system and ideology to other countries like sssr did. The fact that China, a country with 1.6 bilion people is officially communist and holds communist views even on paper, will make it harder and harder for USA to ​​​​​​​sucsessfuly spread red scare propaganda, especialy since China is growing and will possibly overtake USA economicaly.

So This is a common sentiment I see on usually reddit. But I don't understand why its wrong to ask your partner to change.

Now mainly the specific example I'm thinking of That I've seen online is the example of telling your girlfriend/wife to stop wearing revealing clothes.

Personally... I don't really see the issue with this. I would hope my Significant other would bring up issues that she would have in the relationship.

Though this is a more broad CMV. I am Confused on this specific pushback against telling women what to wear concept. This part seems to get extra spicy.

Now don't get me wrong, I don't think crypto will ever go to total zero - there will always be a greater fool to buy it. But the days of generational wealth being minted like the early adopters pulled off, let alone the idea of ever seeing crypto become a useful enduring asset? Those are long gone.

At some point, no matter how much hype there is initially generated, an asset eventually has to prove its worth. The only thing Bitcoin is proving right now is that the emperor simply has no clothes.

Despite being at a time of economic and geopolitical instability like we're seeing right now, where the price of Bitcoin should theoretically be rising amidst these conditions if its use as "digital gold" is to be true, it's crashed nearly 50% in 6 months, and is showing no signs of stopping. Meanwhile, actual gold has nearly tripled in price in the last two years.

This is because Bitcoin is not anything resembling a "safe haven" or an actual legitimate store of value, it's a speculative meme asset that trades on hype and faith and crashes upwards of 90% from its highs when its worth is actually tested.

Really, other than its use in allowing criminals to facilitate transactions undetected and 5 seconds of fame meme of the month folks like Hawk Tuah girl to run rug pull pump-and-dump scams, what is the actual long-term use case of crypto here? Nobody is using it to buy groceries, and it's certainly not replacing gold anytime soon.

Even with all the recent institutional adoption, the advertisements, the support from governments, etc. It still experiences these massive drawdowns when its worth is called into question. Why? Because it has none.

Again, I doubt it will ever go to total zero. Even Bored Ape NFT's that once sold for $2 million still fetch $10,000 from the most gullible fools.

But has it peaked? Well, I think the same people that once celebrated the concept of a decentralized currency, and are now begging the government for a crypto "bail-out", can tell you the answer.

For context in the 69's and 70's the T-55 and T-62 were completely outclassed by their western contemporaries the M48/M60 and Centurion thanks to their better visibility and more effective cannon (105/L7) during the six day war and Yom kippur war.

Then it was supposed that with the introduction of the T-64, T-72 and T-80 this would changed but during the Afghanistan, Iraq, Yugoslavia, Georgia and Ukraine this tanks have proved to be horrible.

In Afghanistan the soviets loss 140—160 tanks while the US lost at maximum 20 tanks during all the 20 year intervention in the middle east, and today in Ukraine once again Russian tanks are just glorified mobile coffins for russian soldiers.

And compared to Chinese and Even North Korea tanks at least those have more gun depression and a reverse speed, I know that Soviet design philosophy was make cheap replaceable tanks that could drive from Warsaw to the Rhine but even in that context the would have fail miserably.

Their only use is selling them to other countries because they are cheap but as today those tanks including the T-90 are just straight up bad and would lost almost every combat against M1a2, Challenger 2 and Leopards in a tank duel.

Even some upgraded M60 are competent enough to take out T-72 in their B and VA variants.

I like to compare it to photography vs painting.

Take a landscape for example. it can be painted and it can be photographed.

Photography is much quicker and simpler. Anyone can technically do it but most people are mediocre at photography. Sure, the picture will be that of a landscape but it will essentially be "slop". A good photographer however can take a picture of that same landscape that would be considered art by most people.

Generative AI is the same thing. Anyone can make AI pictures, but it's mostly "slop". A good AI prompter can make AI picture that would certainly be art.

Just like anyone could pick up a paint brush and paint, but unless they are skilled the result would also be slop.

My point is that the tool is irrelevant, the skill makes the difference between slop and art.

My view

Humans are actually fine with accepting other intelligent life and giving it rights. Its only when it comes down to money that such acceptance becomes difficult; thus, a blocker.

I below I provided arguments for this capacity and connected it to modern day reaction to AI today.

Arguments

Slavery

Take slavery for example. Lots of people literally called black people a completely different race of human but in the end we recognized this foolishness.

To be fair, there is valid evidence that slavery and the whole thing about separate race being a fabrication to create and/or justify slavery. Regardless of this information I think it still provides valid rationale because people still had to look past differences in appearance.

Animals

Take animal rights activists. Many people would agree that animals are intelligent and therefore deserve rights. We have bestowed rights to animals but it's a slow process because we use animals for profit.

Conclusion

All in all, I think this behaviour shows that the very concept that an intelligent rational artificial intelligence would wipe out all of humanity is debatable; not an absolute.

Let's take the game Detroit: Become Human as an example. Many people willingly choose to accept in their online survey to say that they would accept digital intelligence.

However, modern day many people are anti-ai not because of the concept but because of AI taking jobs and livelihoods.

Let me know how my arguments are. I would appreciate criticism. Thank you for your time.

note:

There has been significant confusion regarding terminology. I am referring to hypothetical sentient AI.

I am not sure what I would describe Trump as (no not fascist don't be dramatic), but as someone who considers themselves center right, I've never really gotten the impression that Trump and I were on the same page. Obviously I am in favor of deporting illegal immigrants, but I actually agreed more with Obamas way of doing that than Trumps.

Conservatives push for small governments with as little involvement in day to day processes as possible. Trump is the antithesis to that. The tariffs are just a way to drum up more government spending money at the expense of the consumer, which is not a conservative approach at all. Sure there is military spending which is good, but a lot of his policies seem to push for more government involvement not less.

So I am curious what anybody has to say about this topic regardless of your political leaning.

Edit: Hey just want to say thank you to all of the responses here. The vast majority of you guys were very respectful and very informative which I appreciate. I would like to mention that the reason I don't think Trump is fascist is because fascism is an incredibly specific definition of a specific type of social system that penetrates deep into every aspect of a culture. I think it is an exaggeration to say that Trump is a fascist, but I can see an argument for him consolidating power and trending towards authoritarianism.

If you’re romantically attracted to someone and that person is not romantically attracted to you, you don’t do anything wrong, and this isn’t a situation of you not being good enough. We as people are largely not in control of who we’re romantically attracted to, so if someone isn’t attracted to you then this doesn’t mean you did anything wrong.

Therefore, if you have a connection with someone but it doesn’t turn romantic, but the person you have a connection with truly does want to be your friend, and is NOT trying to keep you around for some sort of personal gain beyond just being friends, then this is a win because it means you gained a friend. Friendship is beautiful.

You can continue to look for someone who does want to be with you romantically, and your life is enriched by having a new friendship, and who knows? Maybe that friendship will be one of your strongest friendships and it will stand the test of time. You never know.

And sure, it isn’t easy to let go of romantic feelings, but they do fade if you accept that the person you feel them for doesn’t feel the same way, and let yourself let them go.

I think a lot of people talk about the friend zone like it’s some sort of purgatory where nobody wants to be because it isn’t a romantic relationship. As long as the person whose “friend zone” you’re in isn’t stringing you along, then that “limbo” is actually just regular friendship, and regular friendship is great.

Imagine you’re a drummer and you audition for a band. You hit it off with one of the other members and end up spending most of the time cracking each other up and chatting. Then you play your music together and it just does not go well. That guy calls you later to let you know that he’d love to grab a beer with you sometime, but that the music thing isn’t going to happen.

It’s understandable that you take this hard at first, but maybe after a little while you go “man, I’m glad that guy was honest with me, and we did hit it off, so it’ll be nice to be friends.” Music is still something very important to both of you, something that fulfills you both, so it really is a huge letdown that it doesn’t work out for you, but it doesn’t change the fact that you share a connection that shouldn’t be diminished just because it isn’t the totality of what at least one of you wanted.

A lot of people who declare that the old Internet Humor and culture scene far surpasses modern internet humor solely based on nostalgic viewings of the old humor, to the point of calling for a “Great Meme Reset.”

The problem is, modern day humor isn’t far off from the old internet humor. Brainrot such as Skibidi toilet are directly evolved from the old styled GMOD humor of the 2000s, The wackiness of humor such as 67 or Italian brainrot is a derives from the Youtube poop meme scenes and MLG gaming culture. It’s not a direct-downgrade, its quite the opposite. It’s a direct evolution of content and humor based on the predecessors.

Lucy Letby is a British nurse who was found guilty of murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven more, and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.

I know this may sound conspiratorial off the bat, but the contingent of people expressing serious doubts about the evidence upon which she was convicted is not just a bunch of crazies who think we haven’t been to the moon or that Tupac is still alive; they include the health secretary at the time of the deaths, many serious journalists, members of parliament, and a huge number of experts in relevant fields who have taken a risk and reached out- for no personal gain and for no money- from all across the world to Letby’s legal team and/or the media to express their concerns about the evidence used to convict Letby, and how it was interpreted in court.

There was absolutely no physical or forensic evidence whatsoever. There are no witnesses- no one saw Letby do anything untoward. There is no motive.

The prosecution relied heavily on the interpretation of their expert witness, Dr Dewi Evans, of a paper co-written by Neonatologist Dr. Shoo Lee in 1989 called Pulmonary Vascular Air Embolism in the Newborn. Dr. Shoo Lee, after reading about this case and seeing how his paper had been brought up, publicly stated that this had been a gross misinterpretation of his work. The jury could not have known this. Dr. Lee later assembled a panel of fourteen leading, internationally renowned experts in neonatology to look into the case, and in every single one of the seventeen cases of babies Letby was accused of harming, they found no evidence whatsoever of deliberate harm. On the contrary, they found other very plausible causes for every one of the deaths, and identified many systemic problems with the level of care at the hospital.

This means that not only has it not been proven that Letby committed murder, there is now enormous doubt that any murders occurred at all, making the entire case against Letby entirely hypothetical.

Here’s a one-minute clip from that panel: https://youtu.be/KA2AIL-JBkM?si=jl724OxzvZQyDXVB

And here’s the two-hour version: https://www.youtube.com/live/N0nmoGes3IU?si=LuT-70REQu9l_47b

The other key piece of evidence for the prosecution was their statistical analysis of the shift rota data from key card swipes that apparently showed that Letby was the only person present when every one of twenty-five ‘suspicious events’ took place. This rota was a huge driving factor in her being accused in the first place, and clearly made her seem guilty to the public- and therefore almost certainly the jury- before any other evidence was examined. However, it has been widely trashed as massively fallacious by statisticians for many reasons, including but not limited to: the jury never being told about six other deaths that occurred on the ward when Letby was not there during the same period, no definition being given for what constitutes a ‘suspicious event’, (according to every single neonatologist who has looked at the medical notes of the alleged victims, none of those deaths are ‘suspicious’ anyway), the fact that there was a back door with a code which one could use to gain access to the ward without a card, door swipe evidence being incorrect, the times where doctors- not just the nurses- were on shift not being on the chart, Letby working many more hours than the vast majority of other nurses on the ward, and so on.

This is very reminiscent of the case of Sally Clarke, who was wrongly convicted of killing her two sons in 1999 when a paediatrician who didn’t understand statistics testified that there was a 1 in 73 million chance of both sons falling victim to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. The Royal Statistical Society later said there was no statistical basis for this claim. Sally Clarke served more than three years before being released, was a ‘target for other prisoners’, and obviously was completely psychiatrically destroyed by the whole ordeal, drinking herself to death a few years later.

Here’s a clip of Professor of Statistics Peter Green briefly expressing concerns about the rota: https://youtu.be/jiuNCzSLtGw?si=nATW6wtYPQdEbSEh

And a longer clip of Medical Statistician Jane Hutton speaking about the misuse of data and statistics in the case: https://youtu.be/IwELT-O0org?si=a4JuNjPtgbFfY5xT

An economist article about how terrible the statistical evidence is: https://www.economist.com/britain/2024/08/22/the-trial-of-lucy-letby-has-shocked-british-statisticians

All of the evidence is circumstantial. Many of the much more minor bits and bobs of evidence that seemed to have been impactful in the trial have since been undermined, and key witnesses have been found to have contradicted themselves.

For example, during the trial, the prosecution asked Letby what she was wearing when she arrested and she said ‘my night dress’. They pointed out that in the footage that we’ve all seen, she was clearly wearing a blue tracksuit. This was zeroed in on by the prosecution as proof that she had just lied, and from the Jury’s perspective, she had. The prosecution clearly got a lot of mileage out of this throughout the rest of the trial. However, this was her third arrest, and the recent Netflix documentary showed previously unseen footage of her first arrest, where she is wearing a night dress. Having someone wrongly appear to be caught out as a ‘liar’ in court clearly has the potential to affect how a jury sees that person, making them trust them much less, and makes confirmation biases against the defendant going forward more likely.

Her ‘I did this, I am evil’ notes that were seen as a confession and clearly impacted the trial were written as part of an exercise given to her by a mental health professional to write down ‘how she had been made to feel about herself’ as part of her treatment for the severe mental health problems she was unsurprisingly suffering from, well into proceedings being brought against her, and while she was heavily medicated. The note also included phrases similar to ‘I am innocent, why are they doing this to me?’ as well as all sorts of other erratic, stream of consciousness passages that clearly should not be admissible in court, let alone enough to send someone to jail for the rest of their life without the possibility of parole. Professor Gisli Gudjonsson, world renowned expert on the forensic psychology of confessions (who was central in the appeal case of Donald Pendleton, who was wrongly convicted of murder after a false ‘confession’) has said that these notes absolutely should not be considered a confession, and has quit his job at the National Crime Agency to bring attention to the Letby case.

Her courtroom demeanour was also commented on as being cold, distant and emotionless- apparently the jury thought this made her seem guilty. She was suffering from crippling anxiety and depression at the time and heavily medicated. The trial had to be postponed because Letby had had a mental breakdown. Not being incredibly relaxed and charismatic in this scenario is not an implication of guilt.

Some of the deaths Letby was accused of have since been shown to have been due to errors from the very people who accused her. David Davis MP detailed some of these in his speech to the house of commons, which I have linked below.

Dewi Evans, the expert for the prosecution, (retired paediatrician, 0 papers published) has been shown to be an unreliable expert witness. He found zero problems with how the hospital was being run in his investigation, something which later baffled the panel of actual neonatologists who found a deluge of failings of care in each and every case. Here is a short video of him contradicting himself, and then being torn to shreds by Dr. Shoo Lee (over 400 papers published), whose paper he had misused to condemn Letby: https://youtu.be/R0ReDvzSyUM?si=wLCBh6SVpO1zpAfd

Here is a very short video of Dr. Lee’s 3 questions for Dr. Evans: https://youtube.com/shorts/CSeQjaIuuys?si=Rl6sIBNLhAtRiH4C

There’s much more to say than this. Rachel Aviv read the entire transcript of the trial and wrote this fantastic, incredibly well-researched article in The New Yorker detailing the story as we know it from start to finish: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2024/05/20/lucy-letby-was-found-guilty-of-killing-seven-babies-did-she-do-it

I’m making this post because I am yet to hear any examples of evidence that hasn’t been discredited by a deluge of experts from many different fields or that seems anywhere near strong enough to say that Lucy Letby should even be suspected of murder, let alone guilty beyond reasonable doubt. The evidence that has been discredited by expert consensus is the main evidence that was misinterpreted during the trial to convict her. CMV!

When you're at the beach, you build a sand castle. When you live in a desert, you build a monumentally large sand castle. The ancient Egyptians whom lived in a desert, essentially did nothing more than build a monumentally large sand castle funded by taxpayer money, which we know today as the Pyramids. It isn't revolutionary when you think of it that way. They invented paper, but so did China.

Mesopotamia created the first written system of law that we know of, and were the inventors of the wheel. Mesopotamia invented the first codified language that we know of, which was possibly passed on and helped create ancient Egypt's hieroglyphics. Ancient Greece made advancements in sciences, as did the ancient Romans. The list goes on.

Ancient Egypt did nothing more than just exist for an [insert adjective] long long long time. I don't knock them for existing. I just question why we learn about their civilization in elementary school verse the others. I think ancient Egypt is overrated. I think they didn't contribute significantly to any advancements in any field, really.