Preach!
I don’t hate on people wanting to believe in something, but people need to stop believing in scams in general. If you wanna believe in Jesus Christ, that’s fine, just don’t think you’re obligated to give your money to a church that says it’s helping the poor when 90% of donations go to keeping the building and pastor in good condition. The fucking gall of a pastor driving a Lexus and having a boat while even a single member of the church is poor is a fucking spit in the face.
Wow, totally not where I was expecting that response to go. Super cool, you basically had the pagan version of a christian to non-christian realization. Wild!
Freshmen year of college is all about maximizing the amount of free stuff you can get, especially food.
Unfortunately we don’t need demons, humans are bad enough as is.
Genuine question, no judgement, but why did you spell it Magick in this instance?
“I only work on carbureted engines.”
I spent some time thinking about your response and I’ll give it to you that Poland is heavily investing in their military which is probably a good thing long term for themselves and the EU. I think my qualm was specifically with the statement that they have been building one of the largest militaries on earth.
On the evaluation of their investment by % GDP they are certainly investing heavily, this website puts them somewhere in the top teens out of ~265 regions (broken down even more than the 195 recognized by the UN). Another metric to look at is the raw total military, not just investment in %GDP. I don’t think it’s particularly fair to compare Poland with other countries which have dissimilar GDPs, for example that website says that Armenia invested 5.5% of it’s GDP in comparison to Poland’s 4.2%, but Armenia’s GDP is $27 billion to Poland’s $1.1 trillion and their military is ~1/3 the size.
To your point (investment in equipment) we have to take into account the quality of the military, not just quantity; you can have 100x more troops but it doesn’t mean much if they are completely outclassed in gear.
So yes, of the ~195 countries of the world Poland is in the top ~10% and if you review their investment by %GDP they are probably closer to the top 5%.
The top 4 militaries by troops (China, the US, North Korea, and India) all have >1,000,000 troops and the top 4 by raw expenditure (US, China, Russia, and Germany) are all >$88.5 billion (and Germany is pulling that group way down).
Let’s break down these metrics. 5% of the average of the top 4 in quantity is 76k troops and only ~50 countries have that amount or more. 5% of the average of the top 4 in expenditure is ~$19.3 billion and only ~21 countries meet that value.
All this is to break down that Poland is in the top 5-10% of world militaries, but if you remove all the countries doing basically nothing they are basically in the middle (31/50 in quantity, 13/21 in expenditure). Poland is definitely making one of the strongest militaries in Europe, but a big part of that is that the other countries in the EU aren’t doing much. If you count up the EU countries that are included in that 21 listed above (UK, Germany, Ukraine, France, Poland, Italy, Spain, and Netherlands) Poland makes up $38 billion of the groups combined $423.5 billion (~8.9%), but all of those are half of the US expenditure ($997 billion) and 77% of the combined BRICS members in that group ($549.1 billion).
EDIT: I totally missed that the Ukraine isn’t part of the EU, I had removed Algeria and Turkey as well, so that should change the % values; however, I kinda feel like if the Ukraine pulls through they likely will join the EU so I’m not gonna change things here.
No worries, I thought you might have confused the statement as only applying to the first group. I see what you mean about how you count reservists and think it’s a totally valid point.
all numbers are active and reserve combined
I literally said that.
The Poles have quietly been building one of the largest militaries on earth.
Look, I’m all for a prepared Europe, but this quote is a joke at best.
Poland has 300k troops (all numbers are active and reserve combined), Germany has 862k, France has 300k, Ukraine has ~2.2 million, China has 2.53 million, Russia has 3.57 million, the US has 2.8 million.
Poland might be building one of the largest European militaries, but they’re still 10x smaller than the belligerent players.
Good old check kiting, the respectable fraud!
First off, it’s not a social credit score, it’s a financial credit score, we’re not talking about the system China has for it’s citizens.
As with many of these deep dives on Americanisms, what you’ve found is generally worst case scenarios and also not universally applicable. Some states have restrictions on what your credit score can be used for and how it can impact you, car insurance and rentals being a prime example.
Also, by simply having a credit card (and not using it!) and not having any lapsed debts (collections or reported unpaid bills) you will easily have a score in the mid to high 700s. If you carry a balance month to month but regularly make your minimum payments you will have a credit score in the low to mid 700s. Hell. my wife had 5 bills in collection and still had a 650 before I met her.
As far as credit score applicability, it’s often referenced by businesses as a measure of risk. If you have a 650 instead of a 750 your car insurance might be higher because your risk of payment is higher, but we’re only talking about 10-15% more per year (US south east). Same with with rental, if you have a bunch of bills in collection or default your score will be bad, but a rental provider will be less willing to provide you service if you have a history of not paying your bills. You should still be able to find a place to live, but it will likely be more limited (for example if you have a 400, but not if you have something like a 650) or you may have a larger security deposit.
Overall your credit score likely won’t be an issue 95% of the time, but if you habitually don’t pay your bills then your score will go down and businesses that check your score won’t want to do business with you. I can’t make this clear enough, you have to be deliberate in your actions if you want your score to be low enough to cause a problem. My wife had $15k in student loans, $10k in credit card debt, and 5 unpaid bills that had been sent to collections and she still was in the 600s. The score system exists for a reason, I would argue that it should be a bit more forgiving, but the reason it exists is fair.
Non US citizens might have trouble relating to this, but people in the US take blatant advantage of systems a lot of times. I have a coworker that moved for a new job, but he didn’t want to sell his house because he got it at a good rate and time. He listed his house for a decent rate and his first tenant stopped paying after the second month. He waited until 4 months hadn’t been paid to take them to court and it took another 6 months to have them removed. Just before they were going to be escorted out by the sheriff they paid him the entire back rent in cash to try to prevent the eviction (they had the money the whole time!) After they were evicted he reached out to the local municipality for the water account and they found out the tenant had bypassed the water meter (basically they were stealing). The municipality then said he had to pay to fix the bypass, penalized him for the stolen utilities, and said that for any future tenants he would have to keep the account in his name rather than having the tenants file it.
American credit score systems suck, but they are generally fair and they prove themselves necessary because a certain percentage of Americans seem to have fundamental problems with following common and decent rules of this world.
I just read an article the other day that said Gen Z has the highest rate of credit card fraud ever seen in US history. As a group they just don’t see any issue with ordering something online and then saying it never arrived and reversing the charges. I’m all for saying fuck the system and down with corporate interests, but it’s hard to have a functional modern society that casually commits fraud and theft.
Here I was hoping for a MF Doom reference. That said, in a doomsday scenario wouldn’t your biggest threats be the neighbors you have? If you needed tools that don’t break easily that’s no big deal, but if you have something sensitive that’s pretty risky to share (a pick axe is less critical than a generator for example). A community garden would be good, but if one of your neighbors is a self absorbed sociopath they would probably raid the community garden. Why do you need to learn to sew and patch when every department store probably has a life time worth of extra clothes? For self defense it’s hard to argue against having a bunch of guns. For first aid, outside of administering it to yourself and your close network offense is the best defense. In an actual doomsday scenario it’s much easier to shoot first and ask questions later than it is to mend wounds on yourself and others.
I’m all for a post apocalyptic socialist commune, but all it takes is one nut job for the peaceful socialist commune to turn into a fascist dictatorship. Unless everyone you know is of the same sociopolitical opinion as you, or if there are no guns around, then I’d still be stacking up guns if I could.
Are we looking at the same meatball because I don’t see any darker areas? I see some flecks of spice, but that looks like an unseared ball of meat to me. There are some tinges of red, but those are from the sauce poured over it, not from cooking. You can see the remnants of the sauce at the base of the meatball mixing with another completely different sauce. Pretty sure that meatball is just unseared boiled meat.
This is such a shit show of a post.
Ironically, that’s a super Buddhist statement. The idea that you would go do a Buddhist meditation with the expectation of gaining something from it is antithetical to what Buddhism is about. I’m not a Buddhist, I don’t meditate, but I remember going to a session with my significant other and a bunch of people were like, “how many sessions of this do I have to do before I start getting the effects (depression getting better, anger issues, etc).” They completely missed the point that the whole thing is about self-reflection, or as you said, a breathing exercise.
If you’re a mindful and competent person then you probably aren’t gaining much from guided meditation. If you’re struggling with some stuff then taking 30 min of dedicated time to work through it is probably a good thing. If you’re a certain type of Neurodivergent and have trouble focusing, then it’s probably something you could do every day.
More importantly, if you’re a 3rd century AD monk who has a ton of time on their hands, it’s probably not a bad way to spend your time (other spiritual/religious groups would do the same praying)