Surprised grok hasn’t been tied to any deaths yet. I guess that’s one good thing about attaching it to a social media, someone can see your chat and tell you that drinking Clorox isn’t going to teleport you to an alien paradise.

Is this anything like og cube world, before the official release?

Yeah, this is why every article that mentions Venezuelas huge oil reserves needs to also mention it is the costliest/ lowest margin oil too. Not all oil reserves are the same, the Saudis being able to pull a barrel out for $15 and sell it for $80 is a way different position then Venezuela pulling a barrel out for $60 and selling it for $70.

It is probably just part of the media manufacturing consent for regime change: “look how resource rich Venezuela is and how poor the people are, it must be because the evil Maduro regime” completely ignoring sanctions. Yeah mismanagement is part of the reason Venezuela is doing poorly but even if they were run perfectly with no corruption they still wouldn’t be living like the Saudis.

Trump’s just trying to juice the betting markets on whether we’ll bomb Iran or Mexico next.

This won’t solve that though, “strategic” bombing campaigns never work. The best they can do is occasionally knock out a leader which causes more immediate violence as the underlings fight for control afterward. This will only cause more chaos and violence.

The only thing that will stop the cartels is getting rid of the constant flow of money and guns flowing south from the US for drugs. Until that happens there will always be someone willing to perpetrate violence if the money is good enough.

Wasnt even that adversarial, rumor is that Maduro was willing to take a deal to leave with some guarantees but Rubio shot it down because he wanted Maduros head to show all his rabid anti-communist constituents in south florida.

So the U.S. government telling the U.S. population they can’t do dealings with Cuba

That is not what the embargo on Cuba is, the embargo on Cuba is the US telling the world population that they can’t deal with Cuba. The US embargo says not only that we won’t trade with Cuba, we won’t trade with anyone who trades with Cuba. The US uses extraterritorial means to force third parties to stop trade with Cuba.

Don’t take my word for it take it from the UN general assembly, in the resolution GA/12650 in 2024:

Concerned about the continued promulgation and application by Member States of laws and regulations, such as that promulgated on 12 March 1996 known as “the Helms-Burton Act”, the extraterritorial effects of which affect the sovereignty of other States, the legitimate interests of entities or persons under their jurisdiction and the freedom of trade and navigation,

This resolution was passed with 187 in favour and 2 against ( US and Israel) and a resolution like this has been passed by nearly every UN session in the past couple decades . Everyone voted yes not because they necessarily want to trade with Cuba but because they don’t want to set the precedent that the US can unilaterally blockade a country from the global economy. A precedent that is being exercised now to say Venezuela can’t sell its own oil. They’ll probably even cite the Cuba embargo laws as justification for this when/if they ever get dragged into court for this.

This is what we get for normalizing the blatantly illegal embargo of Cuba. Now the US thinks it can say who can trade in the Caribbean.

Venezuela would definitely fight back an occupation, that’s why they’re not invading. There are already Communist guerillas on the border with Colombia. Recruitment would shoot up under the banner of “stop the empire from bombing us and taking our oil”.

I don’t think MAGA is more informed on this, they just have a different myopic view. They’re only listening to the Venezuelan diaspora in the US who are almost entirely happy about Maduros ousting.

The reality is Maduro is a controversial figure in Venezuela, just like trump is here. A majority don’t like him, a smaller percentage hate him and some people like him. Ignoring any of these factions and flattening all Venezuelans down to one opinion is why we got here. Trump was buying everything the diaspora was telling him about how everyone over there hates Maduro and we just need to take him out and his whole regime will fall down like a house of cards. Maduros regime wasn’t a house of cards like they were told though and it does have some base that will require a lot more than I think trump is willing to do to topple it.

Never said they were all millionaires, only that they tend to be wealthier. In general immigrants from developing countries are on the higher end of income from the country they emigrate from.

Also 7.9 million Venezuelans did not cross the Darien gap, most Venezuelan migrants stayed in South America in neighboring countries like Colombia, Brazil and Ecuador. Those that could afford it did make their way to the US but not all of them crossed the Darien gap and could’ve taken alternate safer and more expensive routes, if not legal routes including hopping on a plane.

I fail to see how it’s any of those things you just mentioned, I didn’t say don’t listen to Venezuelans or even don’t listen to the Venezuelans in the US, I’m pointing out the biases that that group possess and telling people not to overgeneralize and think “all the Venezuelans here are cheering, so every Venezuelan must love this” . Saying that emigre Venezuelans are representative of Venezuelans as a whole would be racist, classist, xenophobic etc.

Point to me which statement I made was ill informed or propagandistic. I never said Maduro has majority support, I said the opposite in fact, or that everyone over there loves Maduro. Just that they don’t to a person hate him like the Venezuelans do over here and warning people not to take their opinions as representative of Venezuelans as a whole.

Many news outlets are showing cheering crowds in south Florida as a sign Venezuelans are happy for this. Like I said in the original post, yes they do represent a large chunk of Venezuelans who hate Maduro and left. The opinions of Venezuelans who like Maduro and stayed are noticeably absent though and they represent another large chunk of the population.

I never said to outright dismiss there opinions, just to know that it’s biased and to be aware that there are differing opinions, how is that propaganda?

I guarantee the green party, PSL etc. will be way more against this and more present at anti-war rallies than the democrats. Odds are the democrats cave and just fall into the “he’s doing the imperial war the wrong way” stance that they had during the last bombing of Iran or during Iraq.

I think you underestimate Maduros support, this was not an Assad style house of cards with no civilian support. Maduro may have not won the last election but he definitely didn’t lose by the margins the opposition was saying either, the fact that he allowed for elections in the first place shows he thought he could win, so he probably has 30-40% support. Combine that with the opposition being backed by the US and being forced to accept oil privatization which will anger the poor Venezuelans who rely on oil revenues for what’s left of the Chavez welfare state, and the opposition to whatever US regime is put in will probably be greater than 50% which combined with the landscape of Venezuela is a recipe for Vietnam 2.

China isn’t AS imperial as the US or Russia. They’re focused on domestic issues and spiking the price of consumer electronics by bombing fabs and spiking the price of everything else through western sanctions is not good for the domestic economy.

Not to bomb there allies, this only “makes sense” if the country is getting invaded and they want to punish there allies for not defending them. The US cannot be invaded and even if they were they aren’t dependent on there allies to defend them, same with USSR/Russia.

Maybe France or the UK mulled over bombing dc if the Russians invaded but they probably didn’t look too far as that would take away any chance for a d-day 2 that could free them. It also may bring about a counterattack by the US, and France has shown in WWII they would rather surrender to the enemy then see Paris burn.

Assuming your talking about the top line players making millions, because your median professional athlete is barely covering there costs if you include athletes outside of the big 5 sports in the US and those outside of the top flight leagues. Then like any performer embedded in the monoculture it happened when mass media became a thing.

Once your able to sell discs, tapes, TV ads on a mass scale with extremely low marginal cost anyone with a claim to that media property can make millions off of it.

A doctor can’t treat millions of people at the same time. A teacher can’t effectively teach millions of people a day. Taylor Swift and shohei ohtani can entertain 10s of thousands of people in a stadium at a time and millions at any moment through streaming.

I guess one good thing will come of this porn panic in England.

Still think there’s a lot better things the labour government could be doing with their massive majority.

Especially with titties, you think your five year old can’t deduce that those bumps on women’s chest have a nipple on it just like theres. Even if they can’t I doubt that revelation will be traumatic or earth shattering.

Would be funny if Russia turned Venezuela into the US Ukraine. Flood the country with weapons and aid and make them slowly bleed in a quagmire that their pride won’t let them leave.

Doesn’t look like Russia has the spare production capacity though because of the quagmire.