but i won the super bowl seven times. i'm a winner. i won.

right.

tell it to the hand your dick is in, pal.

the longer the americans operate forces in the gulf area, the certainty of something getting shot down approaches 1. 

as t--->∞, p(something getting shot down)--->1.

in that sense, trump's stubbornness in trying to force the iranians to sign an agreement rather than enforce regime change with violence is making the same mistake that putin has been making in ukraine for years. the russians have overwhelming dominance and should have won years ago, but they are refusing to win the war because they fear the outcome and, by refusing to win the war, they are guaranteeing they will eventually lose. the barbarian management strategy made sense for byzantium, precisely because they were in a position of structural weakness. it's a losing strategy in the long run, but it drags the process on and, in byzantium's case, bought them centuries of life past their death. there was always some possibility that the east would suffer a bought of the plague, or the west would slowly hellenize. it didn't happen. it could have happened; it was their only chance. they had to literally hold the fort and wait it out, but their chance never came (but, you might note that this is what the crusades were about). they really ought to have collapsed some time around the year 750, but the barbarian management strategy kept them going until the mid fifteenth century. russia may fear the outcome of winning the war in ukraine more than it fears the consequences of prolonging it into perpetuity, but it is not in a position of structural weakness. it's a strategy rooted in cultural association with orthodox christianity, rather than in an accurate analysis of the facts on the ground. i hate sports, but it's the most intuitive way i know to explain this probabilistic argument: the more often a team plays, the more likely they are to lose a game (because they are not truly independent events). if you keep playing over and over, you're eventually going to lose a few games. i actually won my dad's office football pool in 2007 by picking the giants, on the argument that the patriots were extremely unlikely to win, because they hadn't lost a game in months; the patriots would have been more likely to win the super bowl if they had lost a game in the regular season. my smart mathematical analysis won me almost $1000 that spring, along with snickers and guffaws from my dad's friends for years afterwards. because everybody else picked the patriots.

do you get it? do you understand the mathematical argument? even if you're overwhelmingly favoured, the math says that, the longer you fight the war, the more likely you eventually lose. you can't win repeatedly indefinitely, no matter how dominant you are. 

"that's why they play the games."

another intuitive argument comes from legal litigation. if you ask the average lawyer, they'll tell you they hate going to court. smart lawyers do everything they can to avoid getting things in front of judges, because they know that all bets are off once you actually put it in front of a judge. even if you have the best argument, and your opponent has no chance, you still try to settle, because you just never know what judicial whim of fancy you'll have thrust on you. and, the more cases you fight, the more often you are to lose. lawyers understand this; they're taught this, and they learn it the hard way if they don't listen.

by using a tactic intended for a position of weakness to fight a war from a position of strength, putin is doing tremendous long term damage to the russian state. he understands that, but has calculated it's less bad than the alternative. we can't truly know if he's right or wrong, we can only see the conseqeunces of refusing to win the war, and insisting on dragging it on, instead.

trump's stubbornness in refusing to fight and win in iran is causing similar damage to the united states, but it's in terms of it's reputation rather than it's strategic dominance. trump has never really appeared to understand the importance of american projection. he's gone on the news and stubbornly insisted that he'll take his time, he won't be rushed in, etc. because this is about him, apparently, rather than about the united states.

if the americans continue to drag the process on by insisting on signing an agreement with a psychotic and delusionally insane terrorist death cult without carrying out the necessary regime change action first, more and more things are going to get shot down. it will not change america's dominance in the region, but it will embolden the lunatics in iran to deny it. and, it's important to remember a dictate of the last war: it doesn't matter what the truth is, it matter what people think the truth is. the americans need to be refocusing on their projection of power by hurrying up and getting this job done, in addition to enforcing the reality of it. otherwise, they're eventually going to lose, and be left with their dick in their hand, like a divorced tom brady in the boston cold.

the israeli government should be using eminent domain to expropriate and annex the west bank, not just "stealing it back from the thieves that stole it from them" using bulldozers and guns. i'm not interested in morality. but, too much time has passed to claim that just driving them out is some process of justice. 

there is a better way to carry out annexation (which i support) than this.

however, that kind of criticism of israeli policy is really not a good excuse to place sanctions on israeli cabinet ministers, which is a political action. canada has no business deciding that there should be two states in the region, which is clearly a delusional policy to project that will never actualize on the ground. that's none of our business, and we have no business interfering in the affairs of the area on those grounds. the israelis are right to point out that it's a political act intended for an anti-semitic liberal voting domestic audience because it has no possibility of successfully altering policy on the ground in israel, and it might even be a reaction to the massive pro-israel street protests in toronto over the weekend.

i once again condemn the anti-semitic behaviour of the liberal government in canada, which has demonstrated a pattern recently of outright fascist and nazi-sympathizing policy. canadians should be extremely uncomfortable with the policy direction by the government on this file and this topic.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/article/pushback-from-israel-as-canada-sanctions-more-extremist-west-bank-settlers/

152.0

it's also long overdue that the primary role that confessional religions play in the cause of almost all mental health problems be acknowledged and addressed by the state institutions, who should be taking a greater role n stepping in between children and their parents to prevent parents from enforcing their cultural values and religious beliefs on their children. religion is a disease and mental illness that is at the root cause of virtually all problems in society. children need to have their right to say "no" to their parents strengthened by the state, who should be stepping in to enforce those rights.

social media has incalculable social, political and economic benefits for people of all ages.

video games are a completely worthless brain-rotting waste of time with no redeemable qualities whatsoever, and which should not exist at all.

banning young people from social media will severely stunt their social development in the modern world and put them at a severe competitive disadvantage in the global economy. it will also eliminate a means for them to organize against state institutions, in order to demonstrate against government policies that they can't vote against, in addition to it being petty and draconian and tyrannical. it's a severe attack on the democratic, social, economic and political rights of young people.

there is no scientific evidence at all whatsoever that social media causes anything it's being scapegoated for. this fear of social media is a classic moral panic rooted in conservative ignorance that should be resisted by all liberals and all socialists and everybody else on the left. rising conservative technophobia is a serious social problem that needs to be addressed and resisted.

i would rather see a focus on root causes than an attack on symptoms, which would mean a ban on video games, a dramatic change in culture around competitive activities like sports and a crack down on drug use and drug culture.

we haven't had a good round of civil disobedience and legal non-compliance in canada for a long time. our governments, and our courts, are getting arrogant and complacent. they need to be reminded that we tell them what to do, they don't tell us what to do. that is our legacy as a northern european society, based in germanic legal traditions.

it is up to young people to disobey this law with force and it is up to the companies to empower them to disobey it. and then it's up to canadians to vote this fascist government out of power.

when governments intentionally restrict individual freedoms, they break the constitutional social contract and lose the right to govern. if they don't resign, they must be torn down, and violence becomes justified as a means to an end in achieving that outcome.

the correct way to respond to this is with mass protest, general strikes and civil disobedience, using the protests in iran against the iranian government as a model.

canada is no longer a democratic society and can no longer be treated as one.

https://globalnews.ca/news/11894610/canada-social-media-ban-teens-online-harms-bill/