fugacity

Hence my apology for the imprecise language. I meant what you said by social democracy, not a social economic system. Anyways, if we’re being pedants, there are no true socialists or capitalists in today’s markets. They’re all mixed-market economies.

When I say socialist (and what is more accurately social democracy), I first think of healthcare, then I think of transit, then of education, and then of utilities. These are things that the US certainly could do better.

I think the reason is important. If you stick to something because you think it is the right thing to do, that is conviction. If you stick to something because you think you must continue as you have already invested effort into, that is sunk cost. The point that I’m trying to make, that perhaps I have not worded well, is that you must act with conviction, because if you do not do what you think is right, you either not do anything, or do what you think is wrong. Sure, you may be wrong at the time, and you should be open to reflection, and not be prey to sunk cost.

But coming up with convenient excuses to avoid doing what you think is inconvenient but right is not how leaders behave.

And in this context (if that is what you mean), it is definitely not evident that supporting Ukraine is a strategy that won’t work.

Forgive my previous imprecise language, but isn’t this merely a matter of semantics? I was under the impression that the major countries in Europe are socialist (or if you prefer, social democracies, hence what I meant but European “socialism”), and they drive policy in the EU. But as the top comment said, they have agency to do things on their own behalfs.

See but that’s the problem. Instead of pointing out specifics and being clear you’ve said a whole lot of nothing and just gone back to your echo chamber. Shame on you, not for disgreeing with me, but acting holier-than-thou, walking away in arrogance with your nose held high.

Call me delusional, but despite electing an agent of Russia the previous election cycle, I think the US still managed to give more aid to Ukraine when they needed it. Don’t tell me that the EU pledged more aid than the US has after the fact. If the US didn’t put its foot forward in the first place I have a real hard time believing the EU would have done anything. And yeah, maybe we shouldn’t be giving Isreal weapons to bomb the living shit out of Palestinian civilians. And Europe is entirely right when they call us out on it. But since when is Europe willing to accept refugees from Palestine? Their words don’t mean much to me. It’s always posturing and NIMBY and hoping someone else does it while acting superior.

For the record, the fact that Trump didn’t overthrow the government means that it’s not a dictatorship - need I remind you that Trump was 3 years ago? And anyways, despite how horrible of a person and leader Trump is, he somehow still had better foreign policy regarding China than Europe did.

If China invades Taiwan, what will Europe do? I have a hard time they’ll do anything but thank the heavens they had TSMC build a fab in Europe while conveniently waiting to see what happens: if Japan and the US are able to help Taiwan hold, they’ll open the floodgates, but otherwise they’ll turn the other way.

Yeah, moving forward might be the wrong way to put it. But I’m not impressed at all with bystanders that point fingers at people going the wrong way when they’re at least trying. And if the world wants to literally put their money where their mouth is, maybe they should be adopting the Euro instead of the US Dollar as their world reserve currency (why, if other countries hate our capitalism so much, are they so willing to eat our shit when we print money on their dime?)

If you move without conviction, then does it matter if you are right or wrong? You will never learn from your mistakes.

As an American, growing up I used to think so highly of Europe and their better socialist policies (I even wanted to move there), but honestly their spinelessness when dealing with dictatorships has really disillusioned me. Say what you will about the US military-industrial complex, or even how capricious our current aid situation is with Ukraine, but even when our international policy is clearly wrong or misguided, I do think we move forward with real conviction unlike Europe…

Having personally played Rocket League, (1800 hours), Valorant (500? hours), CSGO (2000 hours), League of Legends (2000? hours) and a variety of coop multiplayer games, I can tell you that the most toxic communities tend to be the competitive ones. Something about competitive games draws out the most hardcore crowd and that crowd tends to be a lot less friendly. Maybe it’s because people who play ranked games care about their ladder MMR, and the ones who are able to keep playing must have some kind of ego - you have to understand that a lot of people get fun out of winning, not from just participating in the game.

Regardless, the mechanism that rewards players is skill. And in these games, being polite, being nice to your teammates, none of it really matters if you aren’t skilled. Inherently there is a pecking order because higher ranked players are better than lower ranked players. Most games don’t reward direct toxicity of higher ranked players towards lower ranked players, but they don’t forbid it. Smurfing, for instance, allows a player to assert their superiority over lower skilled players. A carry on a team can be significantly more toxic towards their teammates since their teammates want the MMR from a win and will be willing to put up with being bullied or harassed. Just like another commenter mentioned, players compete against each other, and you will not really be friendly with your opponents in most ranked settings. But additionally, players also rely on their teammates. I think this is where a lot of the toxicity comes from.

When your friend dies to the enemy and gets t-bagged, your teammates aren’t pitying your friend for getting t-bagged. They’re mentally rolling their eyes that your friend was outplayed by their opponent and that’s why when you post on a forum the result is usually “git gud” and not “we should be more friendly”. I don’t think being toxic is positive to the health of a game. I could go into detail, but this post is already pretty long. But I want to point out, if the setting is a competitive game, merit is usually the driving factor regardless of toxicity or kindness. If you don’t gain that dopamine hit out of outsmarting or beating your opponents but rather simply from playing the game or socializing with other players, you probably should not bother touching these games - you aren’t the core audience for these games and you’ll find more enjoyment in other settings.

For the record, if you get t-bagged in a competitive game, the recourse is to either not look at the kill cam (CS:GO lets you turn it off), or try to improve so you don’t get t-bagged as often. Ragequitting, or going to complain that it should be turned off will get you nowhere. BMing your opponent is a popular thing in most competitive games, and it’s part of the reward for outplaying them. In many eyes, it’s not really all that different from a giant defeat screen when you lose. If you’re sensitive to this kind of stuff, I think you should find more friendly communities. Coop games generally tend to be better, as do more casual games, or FFXIV if you’re looking for an MMO. I would say most players (me included) consider the option to t-bag a feature and not a bug, because really the thing that upsets me the most is not getting t-bagged; it’s getting outplayed by my opponent so they’re able to do it in the first place.

I don’t know if I would see it as a pure money grab. Pretty sure game consoles, just like inkjet printers and the like are sold with zero or near zero profit (or even at a loss). The benefit the console manufacturer gains from the platform lock-in far outweighs whatever greed they might have trying to reap gains from the hardware. 10 year old hardware is roughly 30x slower in FLOPs, so we might be looking at a desire for better games or easier software development - I for sure would not envy the developer needing to target 10 year old hardware, though it’s not exactly unheard of.

That’s mostly correct but I don’t think it’s entirely accurate. Distillation is useless at the azeotropic point but ternary mixtures are used to break the azeotrope. Once you move past the azeotrope you can continue distillation to high purity. You could also do pressure swing distillation but my guess (even though I’m not exactly a chemical engineer doing unit operations for a living) is that it wouldn’t be economical. Of course, getting “100%” pure anything is really a different story…