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[Lord Shonus]

They don't have the muscle to threaten the US. Lots of NATO countries are another story, as are neighboring nations that we do technically have a treaty commitment with.

I don't see "eh, they can't hurt us, but they can eat Latvia (a NATO member) despite us promising Latvia we wouldn't allow that" being very good for US credibility.

And that is what it comes down to. Letting Russia do too much now in exchange for absurd demands is the same a saying "go ahead and eat Latvia".

[pisskop]

That’s exactly what I’m afraid of though. They’re going to eventually eat somebody, like the rest of Ukraine, and then we’re just gonna whack our finger at them and tell them that we’re not gonna ship it anymore US steel or something.

And, it wouldn’t be the first time that “the allies “let an authoritarian ruler devour its neighbors under the auspices of keeping a treaty

[Lord Shonus]

If you're referring to Chamberlain, the future Allied Powers didn't have the muscle tomdo anything about Czechlosovakia. He was stalling for time to rearm as much as anything else.

The US situation is just a bit different.

[Loud Whispers]

Well technically France did have the muscle to do something about Czechoslovakia, they just didn't know it / weren't confident to go without the British. Meanwhile the British were confident that in any great power conflict France would last long enough to allow Britain to rearm a proper big army. Couple that with American isolation; I heard it best described that America dislocated Britain's diplomatic strategy, whilst Britain dislocated France's diplomatic strategy, leading to the three allies being unable to present any united democratic front to the Poleetus deletus friends. Add it all to the fact that USA, UK, Germany, France, Japan and Russia were all of comparable strength back then (like seriously, there's something innately dark and funny about allying with the guys who annexed Poland to stop the other guys annexing Poland), the allies didn't have as many options as the USA did from the 90s to the 00s where they basically had no realistic peer competition.

[McTraveller]

I honestly don't understand modern philosophies behind trying to take over other geographic regions.

Does it really boil down to "this region has resources we want, so we're just going to take it by force because we don't want to be bothered with having to produce something that region wants in trade?"  Or is it worse than that, is it just leaders saying "I want to have a power trip, why not try to subjugate this people"? Maybe mixed in with "we're afraid that group is going to try to do something we won't like, so we'll forcibly prevent it"?

I can't help but think it all really boils down to some form of selfishness...

[martinuzz]

It's mostly fear. Putin is pissing-pants-terrified of his population rising up against the horrible state he's gotten Russia into, so he needs enemies and conflict to stay in power.

[Mathel]

A Czech here, and I am still salty about the France and Britain just feeding us to Germany. Germans, well, they were the enemy. But the French and the British were supposed to be our allies. Instead they betrayed us.

And yes, I worry it's going to happen again. Because western powers (NATO,EU,UN) do not want to fight. Nobody wants to be the guy that says: "We declare war. Military service is now mandatory". It would ruin their chance at being reelected.

So yes, Russia is going to gobble up Ukraine. Then they might turn to Latvia. But if Putin is clever, and I suspect he is, they will have a decent pause between. At least 5 years, maybe more. Enough that there is a change in leadership in most western countries.

[MaxTheFox]

Whatever happens, I don't want to die in nuclear fire and I hope Putin is smart enough to not commit suicide (and consequently mass murder of the Russian people and 90% of the Earth's population).

[martinuzz]

I did not know

1) that Roblox was such a big thing (they are apparently bigger than Nintendo now). I thought it was just another random game among thousands.

2) holy shit wtf they should be made illegal by law

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY

[Loud Whispers]

Tbf it's easy to excoriate the Anglo-French with hindsight, but the governments at the time had enough strength to face Germany or the USSR, and they were still making up their minds which was the more pressing threat - especially since they were concerned that any grand commitment of forces would spur opportunistic attacks from Italy and Japan, which history shows... They did

[hector13]

They did negotiate with the Germans (and Italians) to grant them the Sudetenland (which was also heavily fortified with, I think, French-supplied weapons, which the Germans were happy to take) without having Czechoslovakia at the table, which is a bit scummy.

[heydude6]

I did not know

1) that Roblox was such a big thing (they are apparently bigger than Nintendo now). I thought it was just another random game among thousands.

2) holy shit wtf they should be made illegal by law

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTMF6xEiAaY

I think the first vid in that series had more to say than the second one, which I found to be a bit sensationalist. Besides the title being a little clickbaity (I wouldn't really call what Roblox did "pressuring"), a lot of the problems mentioned here are not exclusive to Roblox, but universal to most platforms. That story about the 11-year old girl being sexually harassed on Discord has a Youtube equivalent with the Pyrocynical scandal. Both are awful, but both scummy perps ultimately got away with it because nobody has figured out how to properly police a platform yet. As a result, that alone doesn't make me angry enough to want to cancel Roblox.

Same with the item market and the third party websites*. Steam has had a virtual market place for years, and its inevitable for 3rd party websites to pop up in any multiplayer game with tradable goods. Team fortress 2 has one. WoW has one. I'm pretty sure Runescape's got one too. Unless you want to ban in-game trading entirely, you can't really blame the companies for it. That's why people aren't usually up in arms about it.

The only things about that video I found poignant were the terrible customer support/fraud prevention (Kids get scammed easily) and the Child corporations. Child corporations are rotten. It's cute when strangers on the internet band together to make a mod or a Yandere-simulator clone, but once real money comes into play, it becomes very unlikely for people to get their fair share.


To your points I want to say:

1) Roblox is definitely more popular among kids than Nintendo (say hello F2P business model), but it doesn't make as much money as you think, in spite of how scummy the business model is. It's only bigger than Nintendo in terms of stock price and market cap, but that's mostly just hype. It only went public a couple of years ago which is why the stock is so !HOT!

2) Definitely. If you're going to offer to pay kids for their work, either go all the way and pay them a fair well-regulated wage or don't bother. This revival of 19th century labour practices should be squashed, just like it was last time. And frankly, it's quite tragic that our youth are being corrupted by the profit motive at such a young age. I remember how greed infested the modding scene became during the brief time paid mods were a thing.

If you haven't yet, you really should watch the first video. It does a better job of breaking down what modern Roblox actually is, and shows you what a rotten foundation the company is built on.



*Roblox's biggest crime in that regard is obfuscating the real world value of the items through Robux. Kids are likely to literally have no idea what they're spending when they buy an $800 virtual hat.

[None]

i got misgendered again today

perhaps i am a little more queer than i thought

I'm sure the mask I was wearing quite well concealed tell-tale facial foliage, but still. Not that I'm particularly fussed- 'Den Mother' was my in-group nickname for the longest time, after all. Just might need to reflect a little bit on how I present myself and how others see it, y'know?

[Frumple]

Or not. If you're comfortable and it's not causing problems otherwise, why care? Trust frumple, after the number of misgenderings breaches three digits it becomes easier to just go "eh". No skin off my bones if the person on the other end of the phone can't quite tell what they're talking to, y'know?

[MrRoboto75]

People have misgendered me often at work; seems the mask, man tits, and general soft spoken-ness makes me a woman.

Either that or just boomers trying to get a reaction out of anything to get attention.