Imagine a girl you like putting a hand on your shoulder, looking into your eyes, saying some gentle word I don’t quite remember due to being mesmerized by those eyes, and you know what I did? I just looked back uneasily for a few seconds, then nervously took her hand off my shoulder, shook it a bit, released it and awkwardly smiled. (That even wasn’t her last attempt to make me happy against my best efforts ; ended bad anyway.)

There are many things further down the road to go wrong with attractive popular girls. 2 most catastrophic cases in my life are with those such as them.

Admittedly I’m the one who mainly failed them due to misunderstandings and passiveness, but when a girl (being all that popular) is used to boys being rather active and competitive and social, and then you are here just cause she happened to like your looks, this may end painfully, for you more than for her.

There are also cases from the post, only I may have noticed, just wouldn’t risk losing an existing good friendship for possible romance.

Which specific part is hard for you to understand? I’ve made a few shortcuts.

That’s not about just O, T and E etc really.

It’s about the average Westerner just loving to blabber about realpolitik and subjective interests on the subject of enabling richer and stronger cannibals against poorer and weaker humans.

And also about democratic countries having no immunity against foreign states buying their politicians and officials and the general population not really caring.

Jailing for life a few people who’ve been paid by Qatar, Azerbaijan, Russia, Israel etc would do wonders as an example to the rest.

Bombing their infrastructures when they start wars would also be nice. Most don’t have WMD. Not for the realpolitikers, of course, that would have negative strategic and economical effect, but if your goal is preserving democracy and civilization, then there are plenty of places to be bombed right now without dancing all the quadrilles.

Exactly.

Yes, the thing is - it’s a choice.

I’d be using Gentoo if not for installing software being something you have to plan for.

In some sense this would even seem an advantage of Windows. (I know it’s the fundamental reason for many hangs and freezes, but the idea that a file is a lockable resource doesn’t seem that bad.)

Some even Paradox ones. One can waste many-many hours in CK:DV with Mappa Regnorum mod, for example. Though CK2 is more complex, it lacks the relative simplicity and clarity.

How so? You don’t have to have empathy to see the non-human costs. Or do I not understand what you’re saying?

For humans, including sociopaths, costs are subjective. Wiping out their enemy completely may be preferable to having some economic gain simply due to satisfaction.

I could agree, in theory, if we were still fighting with sticks and blades.

Pay attention to what they use now in actual war zones. These are definitely not sticks and blades, but in many cases commodity hardware.

Also, to be honest, typical Soviet field artillery pieces and ammunition for them are not so expensive and complex to produce or even buy. They’d still have uses.

However it seems like you’re claiming that making modern weapons of war accessible as notebooks and pens is the solution to large-scale violence?

Yes, because of the weaker side always being able to inflict some damage on the attacker.

Notebooks and pens were an exaggeration, of course, and I meant not things like tanks and jets, but, again, small drones, small mortars, dumb MLRS like Soviet M-8 (“mountain Katyusha”) and similar guerilla stuff.

It’s hideously expensive to wage war, that’s why it’s not for individuals.

You haven’t been paying attention in the last few years. Most effective innovations of modern war (and that’s not what Northrop-Grumman or IAI advertise, that’s what Shia combatants in Syria, Ukrainian military in, well, Ukraine, etc actually use to fight their enemies) are very cheap.

Anyway, it’s not unheard of in history of wars for a completely outclassed economically side to emerge victorious.

Weapons are what you fall back on after all the other options have failed.

Again you may, others may not think this way. It takes only one side to start a war.

Education and tolerance are the tools of peace.

Because real education and real tolerance make you stronger in war.

If your leaders are extremists who can’t compromise, pointing fingers for who you should hate more, jump to labels and teams, and issue ultimatums rather than dialogue, then you are on a road to war.

You are also on a road to war indefinitely if this is how the neighboring society’s leaders are.

Which is irrelevant, because USA is not an illustration of my proposition. #2

And I think

That’s where you’re mistaken.

I’ve described what the other side attacking you might think of your “we’ll have to sit and talk eventually” ideas.

I think you’ve just demonstrated inability to read. I literally said that there’ll be more crime with such instruments involved, but fewer large-scale wars.

And I wasn’t talking about small arms, I was talking about FPV drones, small mortars and other such things.

Serbia agreed to almost every point of the AH ultimatum regarding the investigation of FF’s murder. The one they rejected was about Serbian police working under AH supervision or something like that. Something no nation would accept, both extremely humiliating and dangerous.

Anyway, rejecting an ultimatum doesn’t give you right to invade. It may be polite and civilized to give ultimatums in general, as compared to outright invasion without warning, but see the previous sentence.

Actually much easier and Israelis have been very successful in this.

It’s just that they got complacent. Why - because they are possibly the first state to abuse that media ecosystem on strategic levels, so they considered themselves invincible.

Or maybe they didn’t get complacent, just the world is changing and they no longer see value in that old architecture of propaganda.

Say, they also really honestly know a lot of modern warfare and contributed a lot to it. And what’s being used against them by Hamas and Hezbollah is in many things their own science. They simply forgot that others can improve on what they’ve been taught and not just blindly copy stuff.

Or maybe they see value in having Hamas and Hezbollah existent and with such military architecture. Better the devil you know and all that.

No, if you kill everybody on the other side, you don’t have to sit and talk. Or if you can kill enough so that they’ll themselves guess what you want and give it to you so that you wouldn’t kill the rest.

This quote ignores the issue of sociopaths, which may constitute up to 10% of people in every group.

So to prevent bloodshed you have to be strong enough to defend yourself. No other way.

Weapons usable in war should be as easy to get as notebooks and pens. Or at least as smartphones. Then we’ll see some kind of peace (the medieval way, there’ll be more small-scale violence, but less large-scale violence as in war, and less death all things considered).

Germans were a victim of WW1.

That’s … an interesting way to describe the power which practically controlled Ottoman empire’s state apparatus so that it wouldn’t crumble through the years which cleansed Asia Minor and Western Armenia of civilized presence by murdering and breaking people constituting that presence in every way possible.

Which was also allied to Austria-Hungary which started the war in the first place, and also committed plenty of war crimes in Serbia and Western Ukraine.

Obviously Germans themselves did plenty of that too.

It’s just that the war wasn’t on German territory mostly.

Well, sometimes you can replace “villain” with “a miserable thieving creature that may not be a villain, but can’t even die with dignity”.

That’s about a certain subset of Armenians who aren’t anything like heroes themselves and eagerly betray others who are. Who happen to control Armenia’s government.

This is off topic, of course. I’m just confused whether to envy Israelis who seem to lack this particular problem.