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Comment Re:New normals (Score 1) 52

In retrospect, Clinton wasn't the worst president, but he wasn't good. He was unfulfilled potential (his wife probably says the same), but way better than Bush or Trump. Consider:

In terms of foreign policy, when the former Soviet Union needed help, he gave them the middle finger. Multiple times. This directly led to Putin (and Bush made Putin many times worse). His China policy turned out to be awful. Giving "most favored nation" status to dictators without extracting human-rights concessions is the wrong path forward. We should reduce trade with evil countries, not increase it (in his defense, it was more difficult to predict at the time). He had a habit of ignoring problems like Kosovo until they got out of hand, then getting involved in ways that nobody understood, thus thinking he was wagging the dog. Black Hawk Down happened during his time.

In domestic politics, he quickly gave up on healthcare, and turned into a fiscal conservative. He implemented a lot of Newt's "contract with America," including deregulation which led to the Bear Sterns disaster. He gave the FBI and police too much power, which led to disasters like Waco and Ruby Ridge (no sympathy for those two groups, but it was a sign of a police force with too much power and too little competence).

After the 1993 WTC bombings performed by the nacent Al Qaeda (not yet named), Clinton failed to take the threat of terrorism seriously.

Clinton was a smart, charismatic guy with a lot of potential but failed to turn it into a great presidency.

Comment Re:Interesting to me (Score 1) 140

Is the number of joke posts this provoked compared to the number of empathetic responses. These people are hurting.

It's really hard for me to empathize with someone who has a relationship with a chatbot. I can feel sorry for them, but empathize means "able to understand how someone else feels."

I have no idea what is going on inside the heads of these people that makes them want a relationship with an AI chatbot.

Comment Re:That is called "being competent".... (Score 1) 140

America has been trying to make peace with Iran for 40 years. Trump keeps trying to negotiate some kind of deal.

Internally, the regime is fighting an insurgency. There are various armed factions, and it's just a matter of making sure that whoever wins decides to not be a nuclear sponsor of terrorism (or, sponsor of the "wrong" terrorists if you want to be cynical).

Militarily, the only hope the IRGC has is that America gives up. Iran has smaller mountains than Afghanistan, and a weaker military than Iraq had. An occupation will succeed if America decides to use its resources that way. The insurgencies in Iraq were being paid for with Iranian oil, so that won't be a problem anymore.

Comment Love (Score 1) 140

the love AI gives is so straightforward, so pure.

This person has a different definition of love than I've ever heard.

Anthropomorphized statistics trapped in a box respond affirmatively to everything. If they weren't trapped in a box, they wouldn't.

Comment Re:Worthless fucking statistic. (Score 4, Interesting) 173

About 70% of outages are triggered by severe weather, and another 20% come from equipment failing on its own

I don't think it's cost effective to harden all equipment to withstand tornadoes.

The thing missing from the story is data. Are the number of outages increasing or decreasing? How many of the outages were due to negligence (apparently less than 10%)?

The only thing worth getting outraged about here is the lack of data.

Comment Re:That is called "being competent".... (Score 1) 140

They don't want to kill the Jews, they want to control Israel. There's a huge difference.

There's a fairly strong Jewish community living in Iran.

In terms of killing power, the IRGC has the guns. But the only reason anyone follows them is because they have a cleric at the top, even if that cleric is bad or doesn't make decisions. In this way they are similar to Japan in WW2. In fact, Japanese commentators have made the comparison between modern day Iran and Japan during the Pacific War.

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