u/MintyFresh

At a certain point it just becomes an additional poor person tax.

Tax it enough to offset the additional healthcare costs. Enact strict laws on where and when you may smoke, but not so strict it becomes impossible for a smoker to smoke. Then be done.

I don't think there's a person on earth who doesn't know it's bad for you. This punitive tax increase after increase is just making people miserable for no reason other than so legislators have something to point at to justify their salaries.

Superpowers fighting one another directly across multiple continents. A substantial share of the world population directly involved.

As terrible as Palestine, sudan, Congo, Yemen, and Ukraine are (I'm sure I missed a few hotspots), they're rounding errors in terms of percentage of world population.

I for one welcome our new scorpion overlords!

China will fuck with Taiwan just enough to get them to melt their chip foundries, then blockade the fuck out of them till they say uncle. Give china another five years or so to get their own chip industry to something approaching parity, then they'll strike. Once Taiwan loses their best export, support for them will plummet.

I was wondering about that. Like these people are being deported, but instead they're just in a gulag for how long.... Are they actually being repatriated to their country of origin?

A river died

Just one example of their bad acting. No worse really than the western world has done, but certainly no better

Y'all better start learning Chinese

It's a fucking depressing state of affairs....

Lol have you seen kids these days? I'd be surprised if more than 15 percent are fit for service, and of that 15% maybe half would pass a drug screen.

So their options are to stay and be killed, or leave? I'm not sure the exact terminology to use here, but "voluntarily" ain't it.

Fuck!!! Can we stop wrecking the planet for like 15mins? This may be the most tedious extinction event yet. At least with a comet you get a good show and it's over relatively quickly. Fucking dinosaurs don't know how good they got it.

Or maybe he thought that was the wisest thing to tell a group of 18-20somthings. Not a demographic known for cool deliberation or self preservation. There's a reason the draft starts at 18 but you can't rent a car til you're 25.

Unless it was some third party testing it out for no other reason than a large crowd presented itself. Or a third party who just wants to fan the flames. Maybe both. I probably read too many spy novels.

Putting the shoe on the other foot isn't justice. Have trials for specific crimes for sure. But random extrajudicial killings are just more of the same shit. The trick is to be better.

Never heard of it before now. Just looked it up, and wow. So nice to see a beacon of hope and civility break out. Would be real nice to see that spread. For those as ignorant as I was

Looks real good on paper. Here's hoping!

Edit: just learned about Jineology. Really cool and definitely worth a read!

It would be awesome if some of those refugees go back home with capital, know how, and firsthand knowledge of how great a free and representative democracy can be. I can't help but feel there's a real opportunity to give people the tools they need to build a country they can love living in.

I'm sure humans being what we are though there will just be more violence, greed and hate. Seems to be the theme.

Not in this life anyways

Basically that foreign aid often props up and legitimizes shit head dictators. Here's a summary..

Edit: I just realized that was a paywall, sry. But they're right in that pdf's are easily found. It's an interesting read, definitely recommend reading even if I don't think it's the most useful brush with which to paint

Where are the Jewish communities that existed for millennia in these countries? Ask the coptics how they feel, ask the Kurds. I'm not trying to defend Israel by any means, but it's disingenuous af to claim the region was some bastion of tolerance and understanding.