Moonbox

Sure. Actions speak louder than words. What I think you're struggling with is what those actions are speaking to. I'm just thinking if you're so interested in what Buffet said and what he's doing, you may have read (or listened to the transcript) of his annual letter to Berkshire Hathaway shareholders explaining why. It's out there for the public to see. 🤷‍♂️

You can take any poll with a grain of salt, of course, but I don't know why you keep talking about 1500 Canadians. There have been quite a few of these surveys, both very recent and back over the years, and they've all told the same story. When you survey thousands of people over multiple polls, from numerous different polling companies, and your margin is 70:30 in favor of Biden, we're not guessing anymore. I would say that if I'm skeptical of someone's specific claims and want to challenge them (especially on a topic I don't know much about), I'll take a minute or two to actually look it up before posting. Maybe, but I think you need to pick a lane. You were arguing how popular you figured Trump would be in Canada among Canada's conservatives. Polls show he'd barely get 50% of their votes. You poo-poo the polling showing that, but then happily point to polls showing Trump's popularity in the US, or Trudeau's unpopularity in Canada. Do polls matter, or not? Or is it just the polls that support the narrative you follow that count? That's really not a good thing.

Spending more money doesn't automatically make you stronger. It will be a decade or more before Russia can replace what they've already lost. Their economy is smaller than Canada's, and everything they're doing (and mostly struggling at) is being done at the expense of their civilian and consumer industries, and by piling up debt. The Soviet Union tried a decades-long experiment with this sort of economy. It didn't work out. They may have more influence in certain parts of Africa, but they definitely don't have "better" relations with China. They're just dependent on them. India, for example, is quietly pivoting away from Russian arms manufacturing, given how poorly their equipment has performed and how they can't even sustain and maintain their own domestic needs, let alone those of export partners. They are grinding down Ukrainian defenses in battles of attrition. Russia has a 4:1 manpower advantage. In the last yar and a half Russia has nothing but two small towns to show for how many dead peasant-soldiers? As for their economic growth, that's all based on government spending (mostly on the military). That's not economic expansion. That's just going into debt to buy things that explode somewhere else. The shell or missile that blows up in Ukraine does not improve the productivity or living standards of the average Russian. Yes, that's where the Russians are at. They needed import them from Iran of all places and copy their designs, because they couldn't do it properly themselves. Not caring about how many of their own servile donkey soldiers die.

Warren Buffet also just explained why he has a huge pot of cash on the sidelines. Did you read what he said?

I don't know. I don't care. Like I said earlier, reading this dumb thread was the only reason I even knew it was black history month.

What's more powerful about them now? The fact that they've lost most of their professionally trained army and most of their modern armor and vehicles? Are they stronger now rolling around in tanks from the 1960's, and selling their oil at a discount to a limited list of buyers? Their quickly dwindling currency reserves? Is their need for garbage-tech from Iran and North Korea a sign of strength? I don't get that take.

Is that what I said, or did I say this? 😑

No, it really, really doesn't. 🤣 The tools already exist, and a search engine can comb through and compare images from databases of billions of images in seconds. Basic off-the-shelf software exists today that only costs $25-30/m and can match images of people from copy/pasted photo captures from all over the internet. That's just the small scale stuff that's been released, nevermind the tools that Google and Meta have developed but refused to release because of privacy concerns. https://www.npr.org/2023/10/11/1204822946/facial-recognition-search-engine-ai-pim-eyes-google As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about.

There are no contradictions. You can be weak and rotten, but still dangerous. 🙄

I didn't say either, so I guess the better question is what game are you playing at?

That's the beauty of computers and AI, genius. Scale doesn't matter anymore. A search engine can scour through billions of images in mere moments.

I think early on the hesitancy was around the belief that Ukraine wouldn't last more than a few weeks, and that giving modern NATO weapons to a country that would be quickly overrun was a bad idea. Some of what you're saying is probably also true. At this stage, most of the hesitancy is coming from Republicans (and especially Trump) holding up any funding. Not too very strong countries. One very strong country, and one weak and rotten one pretending to be. Russia being subservient to China isn't a good thing for us, but letting them overrun Ukraine would have been worse. Everyone has to make the best of the mess Russia made.

Which poll are you referring to? Did I post one? Nevermind that 1500 Canadians surveyed is actually a decent and statistically significant sample size, there have been lots of other similar polls, both larger and smaller, taken across Canada. Most of them show Trump wouldn't even win Alberta, let alone anywhere else. I mean that you come to these topics with your mind already made up, before you do any research on them. You find it "hard to believe" that all of the polling going back years and up to today show Trump is consistently and wildly unpopular in Canada. That's only because you never bothered looking. You have a lot to say about Biden's gaff's, but somehow miss how Trump makes the same sort of mistakes all the time, with the added bonus of his deranged ranting and the parade of former colleagues, appointees and friends warning he's unfit for office. You say the thing you hate the most about Justin are his lies, but figure that Trump is better than Biden, despite Trump's record of compulsive, brazen and absurdly easy-to-disprove lies? We're talking truly ridiculous stuff, and that doesn't even touch on all of the court cases demonstrating and proving his pathological lying. These are just a couple examples pulled from one thread. You're not a dumb guy and can put things together when you try. Unfortunately your scrutiny and skepticism only seems to point in one direction.

Wrong dumb-dumb. That's exactly the sort of thing an AI can already do, and someone could program it to happen automatically, with every single person who showed their face to the camera for porn sites. All they need is a face. Once they have that, AI image recognition can find your ugly mug on any photo that might have ever been posted publicly online. If you have a Linkedin profile, a facebook profile, twitter, insta, you name it. All of that can be located and linked quickly by image recognition AI and search. Dumb dumb dumb.

How many derailed threads does this make today, do you figure? 🙄

1. Engines can do image searches. 2. AI can recognize faces. Can he put this grand mystery together? 😑

I have. It's vague. Strictly interpreted, it'd be frightening if it was enforced.

No, they'll have your face, and with basic AI they can use that to search the net and easily locate your name, where you live, who your relationships are, where you work etc... There it is. You can't keep a debate going for more than a couple of posts without projecting. 🥱

So...like a porn blocker, that already exists for parents who want them? But sure, it's probably better to get the government involved and have them tracking and verifying the privacy policy compliance of sketchy porn sites both in Canada and abroad. 🤡 Who ever argued that data/privacy breaches never happened? Those stores didn't build up large customer databases from people just buying things at stores. They did so when clients signed up for store-credit, rewards programs, promotions etc. Just swiping your credit card or your debit card gives a vendor almost zero information on you. The same goes for card-skimming. Thieves are duplicating card info and copying passwords to make fraudulent transactions. They're not even going to have your birthday. I have to give you some credit though. You shockingly at least tried to support your opinion for a change. You failed miserably, but at least you tried. 🫡

I think it could have been broken up into different parts. The sexual assault, revenge porn etc stuff I doubt anyone would disagree with. The free speech and the criminalization of "hate speech" (whatever it means) is something that I think deserves more debate and clarification.

Yeah, lock them up! We'll get the RCMP chasing after sketchy Russian/Brazilian porn site operators we have no way of monitoring. So easy! 🙄 As for Interact, stores don't get any of your personal data from it. The banks knows who you are, but the vendor doesn't know anything about you unless the billing somehow requires it. You can buy a $5000 computer on order and they never get anything but your name and maybe your address. As usual, you have no idea what you're talking about.

Sadly yes. Well-trained infantry, no equipment or support. It stops people from trying to invade Russia. It is not an effective threat for bullying your neighbours. "Give us your territory or we nuke you" is a one-way ticket to the end of the world. Whatever threats Russia makes around that, you have to assume even the servile donkeys in the Russian military wouldn't trigger Armageddon and consign their families to fiery deaths for the sake of one man's vanity. He already has no global standing. Russia's a pariah state and quickly becoming a client of China.

The "law requires" means very little to the people who would abuse it. You are a fraudster's dream. "I need your credit card CCV# to complete your pizza order ser. I promise I'll forget it afterwards." 🤣

I love the irony of you talking about brainwashing.

There's no difference between a 19 year old cashier "scanning" my face and ID, and a camera with AI-driven facial recognition and data processing doing the same? Thanks for proving your mental disability....again! 🤡