Piero Scaruffi

> Thus, the war happened because Vladimir Putin wanted it to happen and he wanted it to happen to overthrow the democratically elected government of Ukraine; it is as yet unclear if he then intends to annex the country or place a puppet government in charge of it (which given the diminished independence of Belarus, might amount to the same thing in the end).

This is a little bit of a let down. "It happened because Putin wanted it to happen".

Looking at the way Putin talks and behaves, his actions are like actions of a child who has a tantrum. He's very emotional, probably someone pissed him off very much on an inner child level. Maybe someone threatened taking his toys away. The man seems to be very irrational, he says words that to him are reasonable, but they're so shallow that someone with half a brain can read through it in a split-second.

I think this is all personal. There could be things happening within a very small circle of people causing his childish reaction. We have to remember that those at the top of world politics know each other for decades. Putin ain't a superhuman, he's simply like a 12 year old bully but unfortunately he has 850k active military personnel, a fuck-ton of tanks, artillery and air force.

Without justifying anything Putin has done, let's consider an alternative narrative. Let's accept that what American intelligence is saying, that he was preparing this for 15 or 20 years. Putin once before the invasion said something along the lines that…

https://www.scaruffi.com/news/opin0712.html

Caveat emptor: Scaruffi doesn't hesitate to let his imagination far surpass his apparent handle on the facts, but hey they are just opinions, so let's not ruin the fun too easily.

"I reached the conclusion that the meat diet started with cannibalism: we ate humans before we ate animals. And cannibalism started with women eating their own children, and children eating their grandparents.

Cats do it all the time: when they cannot afford too many kittens, the mom eats some of them. If she didn't, it would reduce the chances that the others survive. Since they are YOUR children, you don't feel too bad eating them: they are flesh of your flesh, aren't they?

You have to think like a woman of two million years ago, who was pregnant all the time, did not know how to prevent pregnancy nor how to perform abortion, and had to feed many children, often with no male partner to help out.

The tradition of eating old people is documented in many cultures: nothing was wasted, and it would have been silly to waste the flesh of a dead person.

Once you start eating your own family members, it becomes natural to start eating other humans. In prehistory (and even not too long ago) humans from other tribes were not perceived as belonging to the same species: they don't speak my language, their customs are different, they smell different, therefore they are not the same species as me. Killing them and eating them was not any more morally wrong than…

It's an opinion. It would be very tedious to preface everything with "I think". It seem very common here to ask that everything be backed up if you don't agree with it, but don't ask the same thing if you do. Instead of dismissing comments, it would be better to ask for clarification or state why you are disagreeing. Especially as a moderator.

The accusation that my comment is "made up" is unfair, not only because it's only as made up as any opinion, but because you make that conclusion based on your disagreement with one of my statements. That is a fallacy if anything.

My opinions both about copying and commercialization in SV is well founded on texts like "A General History of Silicon Valley" [0]. That China is doing the same thing SV did in the beginning, is based on my experiences in Shenzhen. The example of drones is based on the great interests in drones in the US[1] and the success of DJI[2]. My last opinion is based on conversations I've had with people from SV, who quite often judge China by very different standards than the US. "ageek123" made a fair argument opposing this.

If there's anything that is frustrating on HN, it's not accepting that people have a difference of opinion, background and experiences. Things aren't given the benefit of the doubt to the extent they should, but instead downvoted, flagged, spammed into "controversy" or moderated. This creates an environment where discussions end up being about the "lowest common denominator".

I also find it…

Pax Americana started in WWII (which killed over 55 million people) and since then, there has been no global conflict of a similar scale. Cf http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/massacre.html (top result in DDG).

Whether you consider that global relatively free trade is not beneficial to the rest of the world is up to you, but as a citizen of the rest of the world who did benefit I'm quite glad the US did not go isolationist after WWII.

Regarding schools, whether the taxpayer's money is used appropriately is another discussion, irrelevant here since Americans, through their elected representatives, chose to spent the money in this way.

Funding-wise, last year's budget spent $100bn and this year wants $117bn on the Federal end for "Education, Training, Employment and Social Services" (see link above) of which $69bn in 2015 is for Education (see: http://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/obama-administration-2015-budget-prioritizes-key-education-investments-provide-opportunities-all-americans).

I strongly want to know what someone that would have experienced almost exhaustively all of the music universe, would qualify as the best songs (the criterion being potency on qualias).
The closest I could find are the lists of Scaruffi which is a man that has for his life full time job since decades the goal of refining its list.
https://www.scaruffi.com/ratings/10.html
While there are some gems I feel like the results would be very different had they been generated contemporaneously by someone with a younger brain, for example I am in much bigger intersection with lukeprog or David Dean Burkhart.

There are websites like rateyourmusic.com but I still can't find a platform of recommendations made by passionated experts.

>Has nationalism really killed more people?

It's certainly plausible. Top 10 genocides of the 20'th century:

1: Great Leap Forward (Communist)

2: Soviet Purges/Ukrainian Famine (Communist)

3: Nazis (Nationalist)

3 (Roughly Tied): Congo Wars (Nationalist)

4: Imperial Japanese (Nationalist)

5: Pol Pot (Communist)

6: Kim (Communist)

7: Mengistu in Ethiopia (Mix of Communist and Nationalist)

8: Armenian Genocide by Turks (Nationalist)

9: Igbo genocide of Nigeria (Nationalist)

http://www.scaruffi.com/politics/dictat.html

(Note: some of these numbers are sketchy, especially towards the bottom of the list. The list also missed the Congo (WTF!), which I added.)