That is, until the Mexican president started contradicting Trump.

Man, Trump managed to not look entirely bad in Mexico, then he just ****ed it all up and doubled down again on his past rhetoric. He went from a moderate shift to going full stupid in just hours.

Clinton said that she's willing to use military force in response to Russia's cyber attacks on the United States, you know, the ones there's no evidence for by admission of US intelligence.

I don't even comprehend it anymore. Why does Clinton hate Russia so much? Is she actively trying to spark another cold war?

Everybody's probably bored by terrorists so we need a new enemy.

Putin has been rather proactive in Russia becoming an enemy again.

Crimea and Syria?

Crimea, certainly. I can't speak to Syria as I don't know a whole lot on what's going on there. If you've been following his presidency (which in practice has been ongoing since 2000, [SUP][/SUP]despite the stint as prime minister with a puppet as president to circumvent the Russian constitution) since the start, he's a despot who steered Russia away from a path of freedom and democracy in favor of persecuting and murdering certain groups of his own people and terrorizing neighboring countries he considers an extension of Russia, all to consolidate his power and vision of returning Russia to what he views as its former glory. He's a dangerous man and as such a definite enemy of "the west". Putin's Russia is also currently the only real threat to the security of a number of countries, including my own.

Your country? You mean Russia West 1?

We all know it's called Nikumubekistan.

Putin is a terrible, totalitarian *******, but I don't see him and his Russia as an existential threat to the world. They will get destroyed if they attempt to attack a NATO ally, so I think you're safe in Finland, but I do get the concern given history.

The thing is, while Putin is ****ty, part of the problem I have is a good portion of the criticism leveraged at him is because he opposes US/western imperialistic ambition. Obama admitted that the United States played an active role in Ukraine. The leaked cables show the United States wanted to topple the Assad regime. So while there's plenty to criticize Putin about, most of this criticism is fueled by a hypocritical imperialistic militarist state who don't want opposition.

Also, virtually every foreign policy expert ever agreed that Russia would respond to any situation in Crimea with military force. Poking that situation is like poking a bear with a stick.

So yeah, if by "making himself an enemy to the west" you mean "Putin does what the west does on a smaller scale in opposition to the west", yeah, and his domestic totalitarianism is bad, but using Putin as an excuse to ignore the west's **** is not okay.

Basically

Russia attacking Finland is among the last things I'm concerned about in my life, I just meant to say that there was a period in time following the collapse of the Soviet Union where we didn't really have any sort of threat by another country, and that's changed with Putin. I agree he has very little to gain and very much to lose by attacking Finland. Not because of NATO, though, since we're not a member state.

Yeah, Boris Yeltsin was a weak leader who complied with the west.

I'm averse to all this rhetoric about Putin being a strong leader in contrast with the weaklings of the west. I see it a lot under youtube videos and such. Putin's regime has promoted that image for so many years that I guess it's sort of cool all that work is paying off across borders.

Of course, America's leaders are not weak compared to Russia's. Only right-wing twats idolize Putin in that way.

My bad, I thought you might have been one of those people when I read the comment on Yeltsin.

I miss the old drunkard.

How dumb are people that they can't tell the difference between strength and insecurity?

Putin isn't necessarily insecure, but he is marketing himself to people who respond well to traditional demonstrations of strength and paternalism. That is attractive to conservative people (roughly half the population of any country, regardless of how they would otherwise vote). A short, bookish government bureaucrat isn't normally going to be popular among the kinds of international fans he wants to have.

Some of those were legit hilarious, like when Putin went swimming in the Baltic (I think) sea and found "ancient Greek pottery" that s scholars immediately noted was in the wrong place and from the wrong era.

http://www.today.com/news/bush-putin-dissed-our-pet-said-his-dog-was-bigger-2D79484676

He probably is, but I think Russia as a nation is insecure. What a bunch of weird cynical national supremacists.

Feelings of national inferiority are pretty much central to the Russian culture, historically speaking.

AMERICANS ARE AT- you know the rest.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/17/russia-says-us-led-airstrikes-hit-syrian-troops-killing-62-and-wounding-dozens

Of course, having an ISIS exist is always far more financially benefical for the U.S. military, than getting rid of it.

That's an interesting interpretation of a story that says nothing of the sort.

So Russia's over there to protect Assad, a brutal dictator who has ordered his soldiers to use chemical weapons to massacre civilians. And in the course of doing so, has themselves been killing pro-democracy, US-supported rebel groups.

And then the US accidentally bombs Syrian government soldiers. Who are also the bad guys here, even if they are fractionally less bad than Daesh.

Cry me a ****ing river.

Good

This is political, and it is an American, so...


http://kotaku.com/oculus-rift-founder-funding-trump-****posters-1786977098

It turns out that Palmer Luckey is a ****head. Not that anybody who followed Oculus is surprised.

I don't understand why people are upset that he supports Trump. That's his right, really. What's far more alarming is that he thinks he's worked for his success.

"I started with nothing and worked my way to the top"

Actually he started with reneging on a contract he signed to work on another company's VR headset. Then he was the beneficiary of massive charity via Kickstarter, the success of which he used to convince Valve to loan him a Vive prototype. He then showed Mark Zuckerberg the Vive prototype while misrepresenting it as his own work.

Basically he is a nothing con artist who has accomplished nothing, and no amount of money or nominal success is ever going to change the fact that he is a crass loser who lucked a pot of gold out from under the second-dumbest lucky billionaire.

Like, the lawsuits aren't the usual "new money gets sued by everybody" thing. We're talking credible evidence that he has stolen intellectual property from multiple sources, accounting for basically all innovations of his startup and Facebook division.

https://mobile.twitter.com/ironicaccount/status/779140756665540608?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw

"That Oculus Rift kickstarter sure had weird stretch goals"

Blimey, I didn't even know there was an alt-right until now.

Immagonna call them #VanillaISIS* from now on. Hoo-haw!

* = Yet another term I wish I had come up with. Boh!

Is there even a market anymore for VR head-mounted displays?

There never was one. The HMD craze was Wall Street's reaction to Google Glass, basically. Investors saw wearables as a new platform with the same growth potential as smartphones, not really understanding the long run up to portable computing or what made smartphones enough better than existing PCs.

Central finance being the ineffective joke that it is, a less capable version of Soviet style central planning, institutional investors threw a ****fit at any tech CEO who called the market like it is. So Facebook invested in Oculus as a wearable computing platform. And Apple made Apple Watch, a terrible flop, but it wasn't for you; it was for the kinds of out of touch greyhair central planners who think people still wear watches.

I do love watching corporations flail when trying to expand markets, Amazon trying phones and food delivery, ^Google Glass and Apple watch, every phone ever made by Microsoft. This is what exponential growth in a consumer economy looks like

In election news, it's interesting watching the Bush family cozy up to Hillary and the Obamas

Also how patent certain actions are, Snapchat has now added a 1-minute voter registration, well now we know Snapchat fully endorses Hillary and wants her to win.

I actually find the whole smart watch thing pretty funny. People stopped wearing watches because they could just look at their phone. Then I guess the phones got too big that people wanted smart watches. At least some people do. I've never, nor do I ever really intend to jump on the Apple bandwagon for anything. I did have a use for a specific version of Quicktime Pro for awhile and I could see using an Apple computer if I ever get into doing something where Apple software is still considered the best. Doubt it though. I still would like an Apple IIc, though.



Have they really? I know that a Kennedy is alleging that a 90+ year old former president said he was going to vote for her but beyond that I hadn't heard anything. I do remember being absolutely disgusted with the notion that Jeb Bush was going the Republican nominee but then a debate happened. He still would not be my preferred candidate but my respect level went way up for Jeb in this exchange and shows Donald Trump at (or for him, near) his worst. Absolutely repulsive that he is the nominee. Clip is doubled, no need to watch past the half way point.





Facebook Mobile has a Register to Vote deal right up at the top when you open. It appears that you have to register or share in order to make it go away. I don't want to do either so I guess it's just going to sit there for the next month and a half.

Nobody wants smart watches or other wearables. They aren't status symbols like actual watches, and they aren't better enough to justify the limitations of the form factor (like smartphones did). The only enthusiastic segment are the biometrics nerds but the simpler devices like cheap fitbits are good enough for that purpose.

You get early adopters and B consumers but otherwise it's a dead market.

I'm still a watch guy. If for some reason I forget my watch, I still have my phone so it's okay. If for some reason I forget my phone, screw it. Besides, I still have my watch. There hasn't been a day I've forgotten both yet. I'll probably just say screw it then too but a few years ago it would have really bothered me. Smart watch? What ever. Although it's kind of funny that after years of pining for such a thing it's so irrelevant when it happens!

A good mechanical watch is timeless, it's something you can leave to your kids and
grandkids. $20k for an omega chronograph, whatever - they're still making the same model they gave to the Apollo astronauts, and it looks and works just as good as it did back then.

A smart watch? Think anybody is going to care about a 50 year old smart watch? It won't even turn on.

Poor choice of words, but good post. This is why I prefer gifts like wool rugs instead of consumer ****, I'd rather have objects that retain any sort of value past a year.

Smartphones have practical value. I have a GPS, timeteller, email, phone, messaging device and boredom-reducer in my pocket. Smart watches were a gimmick from start to end.



Laura Bush met up with Michelle Obama and discussed their work together in a friendly environment. The nonendorsement of Trump speaks volumes as well.



The demographics of Facebook are less obvious, but high voter turnout helps the Democrats. Snapchat is dominated by 20-something smartphone users, I guess they're hoping to get an extra couple thousand people to register in swing states. Which if they vote means more votes for Hillary.

The Bushes and Clintons bombed slightly different brown people, and the share of GDP that finance took was slightly higher under the Bushes than under Clinton. Clearly those families are blood enemies.