You remember how agreements like this used to be called a cartel and how a country should have a functioning and independent government body to prevent these?
This is the correct response. Small-scale hobbyist beekeeping is awesome for humans, bees, and nature, and we absolutely positively need it. Industrial beekeeping, in which bees are carted across the continent to pollinate the fields of the highest paying industrial farmer may still be tolerable to the bee but far less so for nature. Many people don't appreciate the nuance. Apis mellifera almost certainly won't go extinct as long as beekeepers are around. But that's not what we talk about when we say the bees are dying...
Tell me about Alice
The number of comments on this post dodging the question is frustrating. From a Utilitarian standpoint, pulling the lever is good. It doesn't decrease the collective good but at least one person (you) benefits. I'm not too firm on Kantian ethics, but I can't see how either action would consider the victims as a means or a goal in this constructed scenario. Accordingly, by Kantian ethics, it should be ethically neutral for you to pull the lever, though someone certainly is to blame for setting up this situation. However, I could also see a Kantian argument that one should never benefit from human suffering, even if one is not the cause of that suffering (based on the maxime of the action). Someone with a better understanding of Kant will have to resolve that one.
Great. I also don't love any country having nukes, so there's already two of us. I was well aware that your point was not about Iran, that's why I made the cynical counterpoint I made.
I'm also aware of the history of the Cuban missile crisis and fully agree with your analysis of who's to blame for escalating and for de-esalating the situation. Serious question 1: Can you point me to any credible sources that the US was about to place nukes in Ukraine in 2022? I can only find statements by some Ukrainian government officials in 2021-2022 that they want NATO membership or develop their own nukes, but no affirmation by any of the Western nuclear powers and no indication that they wanted both. That also happened long after Russia had invaded Ukrainian territory in 2014 and under continued intimidation of Ukraine by Russia. Serious question 2: Can you point me to statements by NATO officials indicating they want to nuke Russia or Russian positions on occupied Ukrainian territory? Because Putin has made several rather thinly veiled nuclear threats over the last 4 years.
Edit: Iran is far away from the US, but it's very close to many US allies. Russia, too, has nukes outside its borders (Belarus), and was openly considering to expand that list, though the US is admittedly way bigger in that regard.
Iran had a fatwa against nuclear weapons
That part is entirely true! However, as you are certainly aware, given your immense knowledge about world events, many country leaders have previously said one thing and done a different thing. From the publicly available data I can gather, Iran was not complying with international agreements they had ratified regarding enrichment limits up to about 2015. Given the publicly available information, I am willing to believe that Iran actually did not further their nuclear weapons program under JCPOA between 2015 and 2018. I don't believe there is much doubt that they have since picked their nuclear weapons program back up; at the very least after the US re-introduced sanctions.
On a side note tying this back to the original discussion: Ukraine did have nuclear weapons and gave them up only under broad guarantees of continued independence... so... yeah.
no matter the cost
I did not expect to find a supporter of the US bombing of Iran in this discussion.
Ukraine is also a significant wheat exporter and invading it in a war of aggression didn't really help with that tbh:
- https://www.csis.org/analysis/war-ukraine-and-global-food-security-impacts-four-years-later
- https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-024-01915-5
Remember the wheat shortage in Northern Africa that almost turned into a famine in 2022... yeah. Maybe we should blame the side that started the war more than the side that is defending against an aggressor, even if the latter uses some shady tactics, like targeting non-military targets. It's not like the other side were above that.
Not The Onion?
https://www.instagram.com/mygumsarebleeding/
Just switch out a few words.
Oooooh, cool meme template!
I came here smiling, yet you made me chuckle.
Reddit has begun rolling out mandatory age verification for any NSFW content, as well as for some social media functions, if the AI determines you might be under a certain age.
Another good day to be on Lemmy... until the surveillance capitalist tech overlords lobby enough to get their great firewall of the West, anyway.
Further reading:
- https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/50368431806484-European-Union-Digital-Services-Act-DSA
- https://cybernews.com/security/eu-age-verification-app-hack/
- https://piunikaweb.com/2026/02/19/persona-age-verification-surveillance-allegations/
- https://support.reddithelp.com/hc/en-us/articles/23595536875796-Digital-Services-Act-DSA-Information-for-EU-users
I was recently web searching for the EFF tool that checks how unique your fingerprint is. During that search, I stumbled upon the URL linked below. It was such a weird experience to see all the things that privacy advocates, like people in this community, complain / warn about from the other side of the aisle: How do you prevent people from exerting their right to privacy because you have dollar signs tattooed into your eyeballs. Gave me a spooky feeling I wanted to share. This relates to my previous vent about a hostile web, specifically how it gets harder and harder to use big parts of the web that used to be free and accessible if you are privacy conscious. Companies like Abstract, together with their attention merchant customers, are responsible for that. Of course their services are not perfect but it's a cat and mouse of big corpo vs small users and a handful of non-profits.
A quote from the 2023 movie "The Pope's Exorcist" comes to mind, even though it might be a little fatalistic:
"Ah, the other two percent,” Father Amorth replies solemnly. “That is something that has confounded all of science and all of medicine for a very long time. I call it…evil." (cited via).
Link to the tracking enabling company proudly advertising their services. Take a look at their services in the attached photo and despair.
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