Connections
Puzzle #1033
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Dang, missed the perfect reverse on the last one.

He just went out for a pack of smokes, he’ll be back any minute now…

Given that the rest of our annual training refreshers are 15 - 30 minutes, and that I can boil down the training to 2-3 bullet points here - yes, 2+ hours is (relatively) extensive.

Pretty unsurprised, I imagine - our training pretty much instructs us to not take anything it produces as gospel already.

Though given how much the company is getting charged for it, I think there may be some reconsideration in the budget for next financial year - given Microsoft have all but confirmed that it’s not much more than an overly verbose Magic 8 Ball

The company I work for (publicly listed) has granted company-wide access to Copilot, but requires users to complete a pretty extensive (2+ hour) training module before you’re able to use it.

Pretty obvious stuff like, don’t upload sensitive data, validate output etc. I just use it as a glorified search engine usually - validating function syntaxes etc., and also cot rewriting email to be less blunt.

Really comes down to whether companies have; no tech departments to stop employees from using AI, small departments that don’t want to deal with the headache, large departments capable of managing the rollout.

Nah, I put that argument in the same camp as “if you tax them, they will move” in New York; pure bluster and ultimately an empty threat of Mutually Assured Destruction.

If a billionaire takes out a loan against their stock portfolio (as they so often do); force that to be treated as a Capital Gains taxable event. L

The US military is also arguably not at it’s prime now either - but I’d say Iran is much better equipped now than it was a decade ago (when Trump nixed Obama’s nuclear agreement).

0.1% still equates to 8.1m people; instead, if we we’re to focus focus on the Top 1%, of the Top 1% of the Top 1% - that is only ~8,100 people.

Holding their feet to the fire, and getting them to co tribute their fair share - despite their dragon’s hoard of wealth - would quickly bring those below them with less wealth in line.

e.g. Make an example out of Elon Musk, and the Ellison’s would quickly fall in line.

Correct me if I’m wrong, but US prices for some stupid reason tend to be quoted in pre-tax, whereas in Australia ours is including GST.

So in your example, it’s pretty much spot on currently?

…and mine told me exactly what the Red Army did to hers, while guaranteeing you her experience was worse.

You can continue to call the Marshall Plan „colonisation” all you want, but doing so doesn’t make it so.

Either way, as much fun as this back and forth has been - it’s 1am here and bed is calling.

Hope you enjoy the rest of your day, wherever you are.

It’s not a contradiction to want to see Afghanistan restored to how it was pre-Soviet invasion; the US is arguably just as responsible as the USSR was for Afghanistan’s fall into religious fundamentalism, due to abandoning its reconstruction following the fall of the Soviet Union.

Undoing that level of cultural damage takes a long time, in order to ensure subsequent generations aren’t radicalised. So while it does suck, it would have taken at least another generation of occupation to shape a more democratic and progressive future for Afghanistan.

Unfortunately, the US isn’t as good at nation building as it once was - it’s actually not as good at a lot of things, as it once was.

As pointed out earlier in the chain: Occupation ≠ Colonisation

See,I live in an area of Australia that has a large proportion of Afghani refugees; these people are my friends, neighbours and colleagues. Our children go to the same schools, play the same sports, and spend their free time together. We regularly catch up on weekends for birthday parties and barbecues.

These people did not arrive here because the US was occupying Afghanistan - they all fled just as the US pulled out. All they want is to live in a country where their sisters, wives and daughters were free to express themselves, for everyone to be free from persecution by religious zealots, and a chance of freedom to experience the sort of life their grandparents had up until the USSR invaded in 1979.

The US had already let down their parents generation once before, abandoning those „gallant people of Afghanistan” following the fall of the Soviet Union, by failing to follow through with their own Marshall Plan style reconstruction.

So when it comes to the US militarily occupying that same nation just some ~12 years later - yes, I think that seeing through the reconstruction of said nation to its pre-1979 state is the least the US should be responsible for. That the US quit and failed in this task, should be a black mark against the soul of the nation.

More gish-gallop.

„Opening a new market” in this case means funding and rebuilding an otherwise war obliterated continent with next to no means of housing or feeding its people; or are you seriously arguing that they should have just left it all to the Soviet army to rape, pillage and plunder like they did to Eastern Europe?

I’m not being naive, you’re just being obstinate.

The US is capable of some vehemently abhorrent action, but the Marshall Plan was not one of them.

Of course the US should foot the bill. In kind. They certainly shouldn’t be allowed anywhere near Iran nor anywhere else they destroyed.

Finally we can agree on something.

Gish-gallop.

The topic of debate was whether US colonised West Germany and Japan following WW2.

I’ll take your pivot as your concession.

I want to colonise Iran? Be careful you don’t pull a hamstring jumping to those sorts of conclusions!

While I have no love for the Ayatollah and the IRGC, the US and Israel are the unprovoked aggressors in this conflict, and I look forward to their defeat and inevitable retreat from this war. I just hope that they are made to pay for the death and destruction they have caused over the past month.

The guy who destroy houses shouldn’t be the one getting contracted to reconstruct them afterward, idiot. It just gives him more incentive to destroy more houses.

Sticks and stones make break my bones, but words will never hurt me.

Firstly, sticking with the original analogy - the construction company that does the damage doesn’t need to be the one contracted to rebuild, but it should definitely should be held accountable and foot the bill - reparations are a thing for a reason.

Secondly, the US made money as a result of the Marshall Plan (which was largely grants, not loans) - because rebuilding Europe meant additional friendly markets for which to trade with, but also because it would serve to prevent the same dire economic circumstances that befell Europe in the aftermath of WW1, leading to the rise of the Nazi Party, and ultimately WW2.

Doing an ostensibly good thing, even for purely selfish reasons, where one stands to benefit from others also doing well, is not inherently a bad thing. The phrase “a rising tide lifts all boats” is fitting - or maybe I’m just a Consequentialist at heart.

“Obviously”? No. Especially given that most academic discussion on the subject is most coached in nuance - it more reflects your black and white worldview more than the complex truth of the matter.

Military occupation of a conquered adversary? Sure, that one a definite tick.
Cultural and ideological domination? Hardly, both nations have their own distinct cultural and ideological identities.
Economic exploitation? Japan was one of the biggest economic forces through to the mid-90s, and Germany has the largest GDP in Europe. One can’t argue with a straight face they were exploited - especially given how vanquished adversaries were treated prior to WW2.
Political control and loss of sovereignty? Strike three, unless you’re seriously going to try and insinuate that somehow neither Germany nor Japan have sovereignty?

True, the US has deployed military bases all over the globe, but that in and of itself is not “colonisation”. These bases exist with express permission from host nations - usually as part of a mutual defence pact.

Don’t believe that? Look at what happened in Afghanistan following the collapse of the provisional government.

Given their most recent acts of war (and war crimes) in Iran, inability to sufficiently defend their Gulf state “allies” from retaliatory strikes, and going fanatical support of the Zionist regime in Israel, I wouldn’t be surprised to see a few more nations evict US military bases from their territories in the near future.

TL;DR - just because you don’t like something, doesn’t automatically make it “colonisation”. The world is a million shades of grey, so stop trying to call half of it black.

…so anyone who owns a construction yard in this analogy has carte blanche to demolish as many houses as they want without any penalty or repercussions?

That’s overly reductive, and not very accurate - would you describe West Germany and Japan as colonised post-WW2?

While an imperfect comparison, I’d liken it more to reparations; if someone were to drive a bulldozer through your house, should they not be responsible for ensuring that the property is fully repaired and you as the homeowner made whole?

Afghanistan pre-Soviet invasion was not too dissimilar to Iran pre-Revolution; it was only once the US abandoned the reconstruction following the collapse of the USSR, that Afghanistan found itself under the despotic rule of the Taliban.

This directly lead to the 9/11 attacks, and the Afghanistan war. Now, by again abandoning their allies in the fledgling Afghan Government and allowing it to fall back into radicalised hands - it has ultimately devalued all of the hard work the US had spent for the prior 20 years.

Can they just fucking not?

We have to persevere with US corporations remaining completely and totally unregulated for the next 2.5 years at least - but we should resist any more enshittification for as long as possible - until someone _competent _ like Lina Khan can resume control of the FTC.