Speak for yourself. A majority of Eastern Europeans see the US as a key strategic ally, and for good reason.

They’ll be sending their first satellite into orbit soon. You’d think they’d need basic utilities to do that but no - its all held together by duct tape and wishful thinking.

No doubt, there is a clear and unmistakable trend toward demilitirazation and reducing nuclear tensions on the Korean Peninsula these past few years.

The real issue is Serbia testing ICBMs and threatening Romania with nuclear warfare. Apparently the secret biological experiments the US has been conducting on Vucic are making him go crazy. Textbook example of a strategy of tension.

Reality truly is stranger than fiction.

Of course. Here’s hoping the ongoing war in the Balkans ends soon and peoples in the region can have peaceful relations. You know, like North and South Korea. Or Ukraine and Russia. Or Israel and Palestine.

And if any of this doesn’t make sense, I suggest you look up the history of the Yugoslavian automotive industry before and after the fall of the SFRY. Then it’ll all fall into place. Unless you’re in the Balkans, in which case you wouldn’t be reading this because you don’t have access to the internet. Unironically.

Yeah, its too bad Balkan countries stopped producing cars after 1990 due to the sudden and mysterious lack of electricity, water, sewage and waste disposal. Then again, there’s barely any roads or highways in Southeastern Europe to drive them on anyway. And the ones that do exist are barely usable because of the violent radical gangs patrolling them.

But hopefully one day the locals will be better off. Maybe even have basic utilities. Like North Koreans.

Nope, you just don’t know the characteristics of the infrastructure you’re talking about. Because if you did you would know a lot of those plants and manufacturing capacity were ineffective and propped up by a authoritarian systems. They were always a lost cause.

I haven’t just been to the Balkans. I’ve lived there. I have work partners from all over the region and we talk everyday of every week about the.political and economic situation of the region.

That is how I know you are not versed in these matters.

And its obvious you are just grasping at straws at this point because you’ve made no attempt to refute my specific claims in the same.manner I refute yours. Because how could you - any basic desk research would clearly demonstrate you are wrong.

My friend, you are trying to argue that there are no basic utilities in the Balkans in 2024. Some basic research or even just contacting literally anyone who lives there will prove you wrong. It’s so rudimentary and ridiculous - I have no idea how you have the gall to continue arguing something so absurd. Not to mention your ludicrous claim that North Koreans are better off than people in Southeastern Europe.

ridiculous

You’re demonstrably wrong about most everything you claim and anyone can do a quick google search to see for themsevles (including you). Yes, there are interstate grids - you can go see them now if you wanted to. The highway systemS (there is more than one) are not “littered with checkpoints and violence”. You can literally go and see for yourself. And the biggest problems with debt have little to do with the “liberal capital” you mention previously but they do have a lot to do with large-scale Chinese infrastructure projects. And even then, no Balkan country has adebt to GDP ratio of anything close to 100%. Do tell me again about this hedge fund you worked for - did you use numbers?

Any self-respecting expert from the region would call you out for being either delusional or simply trying to push an ideology regardless of facts. You are clearly regurgitating information about countries you’ve never been to and know nothing about. Where you got that information - well frankly, who cares. But it does resemble the propaganda of the old school socialist parties in the region who keep prattling off about how good things were before 1990 and how bad things are now when in fact the vast majority of politco-economic metrics clearly show the opposite is true.

In conclusion: you have no idea what you’re talking about and anyone with an internet connection can confirm that.

Edit: Oh, and about that book. I don’t write books of my personal experiences but I am a co-author of multiple books with comparative analysis in the region alonside other independent experts. Based on a lot of fieldwork. That is how I know you are spouting nonsense.

My dude, what are you even saying.

Of course they have basic utilities in the Balkans. They most definitely have access to the same basic utilities we are used to in the EU and the US. Newsflash - the Western Balkans are no longer part of the “undeveloped third world”. Contrary to what you say, “extremist violence” at the borders between these countries is extremely rare and border crossings are entirely peaceful 99.999% of the time. We can talk about border scuffles between Kosovo and Serbia, or inter-ethnic tensions throughout the region, but even that is nothing compared to the level of militarization and animosity at the 38th parallel.

I should know - I’ve travelled to every single Balkan country this past year, including Kosovo and Montenegro, as part of a border police exchange program, and enjoyed my stay at all of them.

The two Koreas haven’t exhanged fire in over 70 years? Go read the list of border incidents on Wikipedia and tell me again how they haven’t exhanged fire. Just this tear alone there has been artillery shelling in the border zone. For god sake, one country is actively testing nuclear ICBMs over the skies of the other one, and you want to compare that to the Western Balkans?! Ridiculous.

At this point I’m convinced you’ve never travelled to or studied the history and national policies of the countries you’re talking about. In other words - you’re quite obviously talking out of your arse.

Most of those are some wild comparisons. With all due respect, but the average North Korean “lay resident” is most def not “reasonably well off” compared to their counterpart in most of the places you listed (if that is indeed what you’re claiming). Obviously Gaza is a hellhole right now, but saying that North Koreans are better off than people in Argentina, Croatia, Albania, or even Haiti, is just pure nonsense. And there is no active war zone in the Western Balkans while North and South Korea are still technically at war. The historical comparison to colonized and oppressed peoples also seems arbitrary and illogical.

Yeah, just saw all of his “Ukrainians are Nazis” and “Russia great” comments. Talk about irony and self-contradiction - blames the US for censorship, but glorifies the Kremlin which maintains strict control over the internet and legacy outlets in Russia.

It seems I am “absolutely biased” whereas you are clearly absolutely objective. My mistake!

Its much more complicated than that, and yes contemporart information sources (i.e., the internet) have absolutely been weaponized by both state (Russia should come to mind) and non-state (say, ISIL, energy companies, etc) actors, as has been detailed in tens of thousands of pages of research and independent analysis focused on digital forensics. And its not just about the content (i.e., the ideological, cognitive apsects). It’s also about control of the infrastructure - think media capture by oligarchs such as Musk or the reverse enginering of social media algorithms by countries like Russia to reach as many people as possible.

I would argue it’s disingenuous to equate the activities of the two American parties in this field. If you were to take a comprehensive look at what they’ve been doing, there is a clear difference in their approach and intent. Where the Democratic Party wants to curtail the influence of foreign authoritarian states and local oligarchs by limiting their ability to spread disinformation, Republicans have been actively undermining these efforts, including by going after US agencies (such as the GEC) and independent researchers at NGOs. Why? Because these agencies and NGOs are exposing their lies and labeling their messages as misleading and dangerous. They are also exposing how aligned the Republics are with foreign authoritarian states.

Granted, I’m a bit biased. I’m one of those researchers. And dealing with SLAPPs and other measures by Republicans and their proxies has been undermining information integrity significantly in the last two years, within and without the US.

The uncle has a confederate flag, indicating that he subscribes to racist ideas.

What don’t you understand?

This level of ignorance and spite is obscene and absolutely terrifying. This person is basically willing to let the whole world burn in the name of preventing a genocide that obviously won’t be prevented but made even worse when the world starts burning. Out of spite.

Absolutely terrifying.

I absolutely agree that propaganda and misleading information in general has a significant impact and most people don’t have the neccessary literacy skills to navigate conteporary information environments. And to be fair - they’re not easy to navigate. However, I do not agree that “they [people] are not to blame” in that ultimately adults must take responsibility (and blame) for their own actions and words, even if they are victims of disinformation or other types of misleading content. Because to argue the opposite would basically take away any responsibility from wrongdoing (intentional or otherwise) and would also mean that justice systems based on rule of law are meaningless and unnessary. Which is obviously not true.

We can’t have a stable system of governance where nobody can be blamed because everyone is some manner of stupid, ignorant, misled, uneducated about something, etc. Such a system simply wouldn’t be able to work in practice for the reasons I mention above.

Mind you, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t study or aknowledge the power that conditioning and misleading information have on collective political perceptions, and try to counter that as far as possible. But that is very different from saying “they are not to blame” and absolving people of their decisions and actions. It is a catch-22 but that is what the human condition ultimately is.

Your logic completely nullifies human capacity for agency and thus makes no sense whatsoever. Conditioning is important but it does not negate responsibility. Not yet anyway…

Thank you, I will take this into consideration. It sure is tempting to use LLMs but I will always trust experts in the field over LLMs.

The limitations didn’t target a nationality, they targetted sanctioned entities. And you know this because it has been made clear throughout this thread, including in numerous replies to your own comments. So you are demonstrably and obviously disingenious, not engaging in good faith or have yourself been misled. This behavior logically leads people to the conclusion that you are either being deliberately manipulative or you are confused and have been deliberately manipulated. Sadly, the end result is the same in both cases and regardless of your intention.

I wish you the best. We should all be a lot more dedicated to intellectual honesty.

As someone without a computer science background and who started learning Python for data science shortly before LLMs became mainstream, I gotta say it’s been pretty useful for the learning process. I don’t mean I just use it to write scripts for me but rather it can be a useful sorta of guide the way a scripted advisor mihht be in a game. Seems to me that one of the good sides of LLMs is that they can make technically dofficult fields more accessible as long as you understand its limits and know what it can and cant do._ i would never use it for any sort of subjective issue but I find it great for logical tasks. And this is not to say that’s its perfect for that either but it has increased my efficiency for certain work tasks tremendously.