Even worse, you’re usually seeing the Venezuelans in exile who showed up to whatever rally. It doesn’t matter what the rally is for, only weird people spend their free time that way, and a random sample of the population will tell a very different story.

Except Cuba also has massive brain drain…

when the reality is that, although they are autocratic, their country is far better off today than it was under Batista.

That was the better part of a century ago, though. People who set that as the bar for success are hoping for a certain conclusion.

You can find Venezuelans that are happy, and most Venezuelans don’t like Chavismo and Maduro (at least anymore). Whether most are positive about the situation is another question, though.

My random guess, based on how much people enjoy foreign meddling and how ominous this actually is, is that most don’t, but I have no hard data and I’m not sure how much even exists.

Yes.

Why not? We’ve survived pretty crazy things using sticks and stones. Now we have so much more, and there’s so many more of us to act as redundancy.

Because I would have to go do that.

I’m not even sure being recognised is a plus.

they are probably not Americans

No, it’s worse. They’re Americans that think this is a football game, and who have chosen the edgier team. They shitpost about Deng and Marx, so that makes them honourary Chinese, right? /s

Lemmy likes to push a certain conspiratorial worldview about these things. That’s the point.

Mmm, no. This isn’t a disarmed nation building up like Germany, this is an existing hyperpower that’s weakening. Going early won’t help. And, then there’s the whole nuclear thing.

If we weren’t already.

I worry replacing oilsands oil is part of the goal. It’s the exact same stuff down there.

Except there’s a lot of other, very independent nuclear powers that have also propped it up. Not all of them are even US friends.

Yep, that’s the big question for sure.

They could have a plan, or it could just be Trump’s internal fantasy world.

This usually does that.

Venezuela already has guerillas, is largely jungle and twice the size of Iraq, and the military is the part of the country that was loyal all along. I’m pretty curious if he actually has a plan to “run Venezuela” or if he just thinks you automatically “own” a place once you topple their government.

Nobody’s going to start WWIII over Venezuela, though.

It’s chemically the same as Canadian oil. I do worry this dovetails with his earlier expansion plans and ability to economically coerce.

Post-Trump, I fear that’s the truth.

Yes, I’m thinking this was the real issue.

Maybe put up a nice instagrammable leaderboard to gamify it, and so people will be driven to virtue signal, and anyone who can’t looks as bad as they’re being.

How much do you earn compared to the average rural Nepali, and do you ever do anything bad for the climate?

This isn’t even a climate change issue, it’s just garbage that can be picked back up, and which is only ever seen by other climbers.

Most European languages have no equivalent, since everything is gendered, not just pronouns. Efforts to embed equality in those languages go the other way - adding female gendered terms for male-dominated professions and vice-verse, as opposed to removing gender which is just too hard.

Russian in particular is spoken in places where they’re hostile to the whole idea. They have a neuter gender, and you might see it used in a mocking “it” kind of way for queer people of all kinds.

For languages outside the Indo-European and Afro-Asiatic families it’s usually a moot issue; 3/4 have no grammatical gender features at all.

Which open source projects have large expenses? Buying the creator a coffee is nice, but if money is actually required for something to exist I’d rather give there.

Right now I’m poor, but maybe someday I’ll be in the same boat as OP. My Lemmy instance and Tor come to mind, and then maybe Wikipedia, although I know their aggressive fundraising has already worked.

Edit: Oh shit, the Invidious instance I use should probably go first.