It seems giving ultimatums in a relationship has a bad connotation, but boundaries have a good, healthy connotation. I find that odd because i believe they ultimately function the same way. When people point out the difference between them, I find that it’s usually just semantics. “I will not be in a relationship with someone who sleeps with other people” functions the same way as “if you sleep with that person we are breaking up.“

I don’t think many would argue against that particular ultimatum but in general ultimatums seem to have a bad connotation that you should avoid in relationship conflict whereas boundaries are considered healthy. In both cases you’re making it clear to your partner that if they take an action there will be consequences.

To change my view I think I’d need you to show how they fundamentally differ in function beyond semantics. Maybe I’d change it with an outlier case but I’d prefer an explanation as to how they are all inherently functionally different.

Edit: At the gym right so only reading the smaller replies at the moment while I rest between sets. However I skimmed some longer ones that look like theyd had good points so I’ll try to really digest them and dole out some deltas later.

For context, I am Australian and recognise that I am speaking from a fairly limited perspective.

There is a lot of talk on Reddit about how Trump is just a symptom of a deeper problem in America that has now been uncovered, and that getting him out of office won’t restore that lost trust, with all the allies moving away from the US, and how this damage to America’s reputation and soft power will last for generations.

Call me cynical, but I don’t really agree.

My view is that once Trump is voted out of office, political relations with the US will be normalised pretty quickly, regardless of whether deeper structural or cultural issues remain in America, provided that the new administration is not gunning to be Trump 3.0 and is actively taking steps to make amends.

Even now, countries around the world including from Europe and Australia, are more or less trying their best to keep to business as usual with the US, with the occasional inconvenience of waiting out another tariff announcement (that may or may not be reversed next week). Just this morning I saw that EU seems to be unwilling to take a stand against Trump and would side with him over Zelenskyy. Australia is hanging on for dear life to AUKUS and is completely willing to cosy up to Trump so he won’t sink it (pun intended).

As a hypothetical, imagine that a Democrat wins the presidency in 2028. They are prioritising repairing relations, going on apology tour 2.0, reviving USAID programs cut under DOGE, removing the ridiculous tariffs, and making overtures for new trade agreements to replace the ones Trump shredded.

Yes, there will probably be some talk about ‘how will we know the US won’t tank the agreement again in four years?’ etc. But on the whole, I believe the world will welcome the US back pretty easily. I just can’t see Australia, as an example, refusing to engage with the US if they come to us to negotiate a trade deal or a security pact because they are now ‘unreliable’.

Even Canada — despite the sense of betrayal they must be feeling at US’s threats against their sovereignty and Carney’s strong stance against the Trump administration — would probably recognise that it would be in their best interest to normalise relations with the US as quickly as possible, due to geographic and economic reasons. Again, I have trouble picturing Carney refusing to engage with a hypothetical new US admin if they come bearing apologies and offers for new trade deals, until the US abolishes their electoral college or break up Fox News or whatever other structural problem needs addressing to prevent another Trump.

I’m focusing more on the international stage (country-to-country relations), but even ‘on the ground’ I don’t see distrust of US’s current administration stopping people from accepting them back under a new, more reasonable, administration.

People have short memories, and politics in most countries go through 3-5 year election cycles. People are more concerned with cost of living and fuel prices, and won’t care too much about whether the US is expanding the number of their Supreme Court judges or prosecuting former ICE agents. If the new US president ends the Iran war, negotiates and restores access to the Strait of Hormuz, and comes looking for a free trade agreement to lower costs of doing business with the US — well, I reckon that most people will accept that pretty easily.

Change my view!

——-
Edit: Thanks for the engagement so far!

I have awarded deltas to two commenters who shifted my view. It sounds like I have underestimated the ‘momentum’ (away from US) that is building, which would require a fair bit of time and effort to reintegrate US back into the fold — so relations won’t be normalised “pretty quickly” even if there was willingness to engage.

I also saw countries striving to continue their BAU engagement with the US as a tactic to “outlast” the chaos of the Trump admin until a new admin is elected and relations can be normalised again. But if this is instead a strategy to more carefully decouple their security and economy from the US for the long-term, I can see how a new US admin won’t be able to jump back into good relations quickly.

There are some other comments I’ve been reading and am considering, and I will award more deltas as I make my way through the thread.

I heard of a controversy some time ago on the Grindr dating app; many users' bios expressed strong racial dating preferences, demanding, for example, that "no Asians" message them. Grindr has subsequently been denounced as a cesspool of racism.

I don't think there's anything wrong with having a racial dating preference, though! These kinds of preferences are very common. Some people only date white guys. Some people really like black guys. Some people find most races attractive, but one or two don't do it for them. What's the issue?

Of course, when preferences extend beyond dating, it becomes a problem. If your racial dating preferences lie downstream of broader value judgments about a given race, then you might be a little bit racist. And, of course, you shouldn't really have racial preferences in terms of, say, who you hire. For me personally, I do have some racial dating preferences, but they're 100% about how people look. Different races have different features, bone structures, etc, and different people arbitrarily find different looks attractive. No biggie.

A common concern with these kinds of dating preferences is the idea of fetishization. I think I more or less get that; if you're a black guy on Grindr, and every message you receive is going on about BBC this, BBC that, you might end up feeling like your racial identity is a) all that matters about you, and b) just something others want to use for their own pleasure.

I don't think the core of the issue there is about race, though. It's more about basic respect and not being an oversexual pervert with someone you've just met. I am a racial minority myself, and I really wouldn't mind someone getting off on my racial identity - if they were someone I was comfortable with and attracted to. Random people catcalling me and mentioning my race, on the other hand, would be uncomfortable. But catcalling is uncomfortable even without specific identity-based comments. Seeking relationships with, say, lots of black people because you find that type of person attractive is fine, as long as you treat them like people first.

In summary, I think that when it comes to dating, people are generally allowed to prefer what they prefer and dislike what they dislike. They're allowed to express these preferences privately and publicly as long as they remain respectful. We generally shouldn't ask people to change or repress their dating preferences to make other people feel more comfortable.

To change my view, highlight the potential harms of these kinds of preferences or their expression that I might've overlooked, either through a personal lens, or an objective, utilitarian lens.

I'm not trying to discount how significant of a victory this is for gun rights advocates.

But I think that the political capital used to accomplish this feat might have been better used to adjust the Pittman-Robertson Act.

For those who don't know, the Pittman-Robertson Act was passed in the late 1930's and levies an 11% tax on firearms, ammunition and archery equipment in order to fund wildlife conservation efforts. As a result, about $1 billion a year is taxed and used for wildlife conservation efforts.

I believe that we should be able to either reduce budgetary expenditures in the federal budget and use those budget savings to contribute a similar amount of money to wildlife conservation, we could also place taxes on other items instead like luxury items or we could do a combination of both.

Almost every gun owner buys firearms and ammunition while only a small minority of gun owners own NFA items. Ammunition in particular has significantly increased in price in the past few years and while firearms haven't seen a similar and lasting price increase, guns can still be a significant expense for the poorest of Americans.

Pistol braces have not been legally classified as stocks recently and they're a lot like stocks and are used a lot like stocks, so SBR's are kinda pointless with that in mind. Shotguns themselves have become a pretty niche category of firearms, and short barrel shotguns are an even more niche category within that. According to some estimates, there are about 6.5 million registered suppressors, 1.2 million SBR's, and 210,000 SBS's. That is still a lot of NFA items in use, but considering how almost 100 million Americans own a gun, NFA items are not owned by a significant majority of American gun owners.

I understand that reducing the tax stamp for $0 has opened up the possibility of certain NFA items being deregulated all together. For suppressors, this could be huge as it could possibly allow a valuable piece of noise reducing personal protective equipment to become more widely used and affordable.

But I feel like my previously mentioned points are worth seriously considering.

TL;DR

Making guns, ammo and archery equipment cheaper for everyone would have been a better move to make first than making SBS's, SBR's, AOW's and suppressors cheaper.

Rather than trying to benefit all gun owners, Congress threw a bone to the more passionate and well to do gun owners to keep single issue gun rights voters satisfied.

I’ll start off by saying I’m very pro Palestinian but that I would like to create this post as it Israel is 100% in the right today. It’s a debate on the efficacy of pro Israeli PR strategy, not morality.

I think we can all agree that Israel has gone way down in popularity over the years. Zionists will essentially blame what they deem "blood libel." Pro Palestinians will blame the IDF's actions in Gaza and treatment of Palestinians in the WB.

I lean pro Palesitnian but the truth is that it's neither. I'd love it if Americans were able to get angry about the suffering of Gazans and WB residents, but in reality, I don't think there's anything the IDF could do that has caused or would cause a serious drop in popularity for that alone. And alone is the key word there, so what do I think Israel did that caused such a precipitous drop in their favorability?

I think it more has to do with the way they opinion policed Americans with such an iron fist.

The one thing about Zionists is they love to claim they don‘t care what people who oppose them think but it’s horrifically untrue. If they didn’t care, the ability to accept our disagreements and move on was and is there.

And what I’ll say is that I do think all things equal, if you de-identified Israel and Palestine and just discussed the situation as is, most would indeed support Israel. The logic here is that most people support an overwhelming defensive response to an attack.

Now, if you add the history to it, I think that a huge portion of people switch, but it would remain as most people in favor of Israel.

I think what happened is that the fact Israel cared this much about perception alone started to cause the massive drop in perception. I think it’s important to think about our own culture, which is one of an exceptional free speech.

We (from an American perspective) have one of the world’s broadest, if not the broadest, free speech protections and also free speech cultures in the world.

And the fatal mistake of Israel’s official and unofficial PR team is that they underestimated that. On top of that, regardless of if one thinks the focus on Israel is fair or not or the criticisms of Israel are unfair or not, people are much, much less willing to entertain the idea that criticism of a foreign nation is either “unfair” and/or “bigotry.”

People at a baseline just have a very high bar, if not insurmountable, to being open to the idea that being against a country is bigoted, which is a huge issue when Zionists’ claim, and Israel itself’s claim, is that being against the country is bigoted.

A lot of it comes down to the fact words are just that, words. Me or anyone else wanting anything from no new settlements to one state solution isn’t actually changing Israel’s capabilities. Therefore, if Zionists come down hard on words, it’s very hard to find a reason for this except their own insecurity.

A good example of this could be Tom Brady. If Tom Brady started going after randoms and tabloids that insulted and name called him, he’d rightfully look insane 99% of the time. Sure, there’s that 1% of the time where Brady might sue you if it’s demonstrably false, but a) it’s an exceptionally high bar and b) we all know even the most conservative of justices aren’t going to take the case of “Nation of Israel vs random tabloid.”

So, then, the question becomes “why do Israel and Zionists care if we accuse them of apartheid and/or genocide?”

Literally, that’s all you have to do.

If Israel and Zionists truly believed it was not a genocide, they would just ignore us. Israel is already very powerful militarily. There’s no reason they should care about whether you or I think it’s a genocide or whether the WB and settlements are a form of apartheid. But, they very much do care, like a lot, so we have to ask why.

And while I can’t mind read Zionists, the likeliest reason is that they know we’re right, so they lash out at us in a form of moral insecurity. Because remember, ignoring us = them genuinely not believing it’s genocide and apartheid (even if they’d be very wrong about that from our perspective). And they are doing just about the opposite, so you can do the math.

To be clear, Israel can use their own microphones and they tend to have stable PR when they do that. It’s when they start taking/trying to take others’ microphones away that their PR suffers.

It’s essentially a perfect Streisand effect. You have this pro Palestinian minority that are somewhat silenced, but generally left alone in an “agree to disagree” manner. Then, Zionists use an acute increase in intensity of the conflict to try and end that “agree to disagree” attitude people had towards pro Palestinians, and you have a rebound effect where people actually start agreeing with some pro Palestinian points.

In terms of what I think the actual conflict has done for Israeli PR, I’d say the war in Gaza has probably had minimal effect and the WB settlements probably have a “somewhat noticeably negative” effect, but nowhere near the effect Zionists’ direct treatment of Western dissenters has caused. The settlements cause some negative PR but ultimately, much like how gas prices and elections work, many people look at Zionists’ treatment of Western dissenters first and foremost in terms of having an opinion on Israel itself.

This is not about AI's merits as a technology. This is about the current financial environment surrounding it.

To the best of my knowledge, currently AI buildouts are being funded by circular debt.

AI Circular Deals: How Microsoft, OpenAI and Nvidia Keep Paying Each Other

Which will only work if there is never a break in the chain of "I invest in your buildout of a data center, you buy my chips to build it."

Even ignoring that, the companies do not appear to be making enough money to cover their debts.

CoreWeave's slump puts spotlight on debt behind AI boom | Reuters

There are some companies like Microsoft that seem to be funding things with less debt:

Why Alphabet and Microsoft Suffer Less If AI CapEx Goes Wrong

But they are still spending a lot more than the AI seems to produce for it in revenue.

PYMNTS | AI Is Fueling Microsoft’s Growth. Can It Sustain the Costs?

Put this all together and it seems financially that the technology has potential value, but not as much as it costs.

(I'm not 90 I promise.)

It seems to me like modern youth Internet memes (like "six seven", "italian brainrot," etc) are popular and viral purely because they don't make sense and are weird. Nobody actually knows what they mean, they just pass it around because everyone else is doing it and when asked what it is they just shrug. Occasionally, things have very vague meanings, like "skibidi" generally meaning something... good? But it can also mean something bad. And generally the meanings of these words don't really get more specific than that.

I feel like this is actually the purpose of these memes. People like them because they're incomprehensible. Obviously group psychology 101 plays into this too, and that's been true since the dawn of time - if everyone else likes this, I do too. But as for how these start, and why some perpetuate while some die, I think kids just equate weird = good these days. In earlier times, jokes (and often people) would become popular because they're witty and funny, and slang would become popular because it filled a common and important role in speech. "Rad" meant something was cool. That's already 900% more specific than "tung tung tung sahur", which literally means nothing.

I know the immediate response is that it's like this for every generation, we are all doomed just to not get it. I think that's probably true to some extent, but I really think especially due to Internet, AI, and social media culture, plus just people growing up on iPads and not recognizing good humor anymore, memes actually are worse in this way.

Change my view that the reason people like "six seven" and friends isn't just because they make no sense and that's the point, or that making no sense is good enough to pass as comedy.

I was born in 2000, so relatively young, but I still remember experiencing blockbuster as a kid, and I know the cultural significance of it. I know how memorable it was to take a trip to that store, sift through movies and video games, and spend that time with family or friends. And I know how back then it was a nice date idea or otherwise something fun to do for couples.

But people saying blockbuster needs to come back and how going to blockbuster is way better than using streaming services or on-demand services now? I don’t believe that at all. That to me is just nostalgia blinding people as it frequently does.

There are still video stores. There are still libraries that have a strong collection of films and video games. You can still buy DVDs at Walmart and other grocery stores. But who tf is doing that? Definitely not as many people as there used to be. Because streaming and on-demand is simply better, more cost effective (usually) and more convenient.

If blockbuster actually came back it would probably be a popular fad for like a month and then die out. It was fun for the time it existed, but we now have much better options. Again, if you truly think blockbuster is more ideal than what we have now, I think that’s just nostalgia talking.

This does not apply to criminal law or civil law. I'm not saying you can't sue a senator for slander, or that the government shouldn't be able to arraign a representative for robbery. But when it comes to administrative suits, where there's no victim per se, without impeachment proceedings there should really be no government action taken. For example, if a representative were discovered to have committed immigration fraud in such a way as to potentially invalidate their citizenship, the government should have to just ignore it completely as long as they remain in office. Newspapers could report on it and embarrass them, as long as they aren't papers that take any government money which could plausibly make them state actors. Congress could choose to impeach, although in practice Congress rarely impeaches Congresscritters. But if Congress doesn't impeach, then the remainder of the government should have zero power to do anything to a sitting Congresscritter if the basis is administrative.