Gsus4

The rest of my comment addresses that. The "good king" father figure does a lot of heavy lifting for autocracy in people's subconscious (even Plato's haha), but it is inevitable for a "benevolent monarch" with the mandate to "fix everything" to turn sour and abuse power, the variance of one single individual's performance and world iew is too high. Aristotle writes about some of this too.

Sure, a good autocracy will always be more effective and fairer than a good democracy. The greek already knew that.

They also knew that a bad autocracy will always be worse than a bad democracy.

And you have no idea what you will get with an autocrat, they change over time, they make new enemies out of you, what is good for some is bad for others...

So democracy is not just about giving people what they want or representing their views, it is about damage limitation between all the established "mafias" vying for power and a ruleset for peaceful evolution.

To make it worse, some modern societies hide de facto autocracy or oligarchy under democracy, which may sour you towards democracy.

Jumping spiders are the tigers of the mm scale. They jump and pounce, they stare at you and stalk their prey, they carefully plan their attack from a strategic vantage point, they are cute, furry and pettable...so long as you are at least twice as large.

Thanks, good to be reminded.

But I disagree that all intelligence agencies are the same around the world (or at least how they use the legal system to punish dissent)

e.g. https://edition.cnn.com/2024/08/15/europe/ksenia-karelina-russia-america-sentence-treason-intl/index.html

or

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wu

or

https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/journalist-ryanair-plane-diverted-by-belarus-jailed-8-years-state-media-2023-05-03/

If you have equivalent situations in western countries (besides Assange) where people were denied habeas corpus, please share

Best. Buds. Having a parade together in Brest, 1939. Getting betrayed is what you get for making deals with nazis. #leopardsatemyface

If I understand you correctly, read more history. the nazis invaded Poland together with the USSR on two fronts (as, you know, best buds), hard to botch that.

When the nazis invaded France...it was the French who fucked up...the nazis didn't.

Yes, starting stupid wars and botching them in front of the whole world makes you vulnerable.

I realized like you that it is not the content or the actions, it is a brand that appeals to their emotions (and the grown-ups too who got conditioned to react to a type of branding over the years). It's just like selling an Adidas.

And it's tragic, because he stands against everything they could ever gain...like an opioid...which reminds me of the Shady Vance quote:

In 2016 and 2017, Vance, then best-known for penning the best-selling book “Hillbilly Elegy” said Trump was “cultural heroin” and “just another opioid” for Middle America.

https://edition.cnn.com/2024/07/15/politics/kfile-jd-vance-comments-trump/index.html

and this olympic gold for spinelessness (a posteriori):

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/07/opioid-of-the-masses/489911/

lol

This is not like reading a book from a library...unless you want to force the LLM to only train one book per day and keep no copies after that day.

"Buy high, sell low" is a great way to launder money, along with real estate (and the art market). Things Donny is an expert in. You don't bankrupt a casino without wanting to.

Some may see him as a "counterculture"...thumbing the nose at establised rules youngsters naturally want to rebel against through causing outrage and stupid jokes. It's like any other stupid manufactured fad in that respect.

This 20-year-old documentary about marketing to teens sort of reminds me of it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=0tYRoiJvhJ4&list=PL_pPc6-qR9ZwlDyyk6o-X_gib47lpqlGP&index=15&pp=iAQB but now applied to ideas in the internet instead of products.