Sometimes, sadly, giving up is the right thing to do.

I get it, but if you are just trying to make the point that, if a country thinks they’ll eventually lose, it’s better for everyone if they give up quickly … then this historical example doesn’t seem relevant.

Given that Ukraine already gave up quickly once (in Crimea) and that Russia simply waited until it was convenient to invade them again, I’m sure you can understand why Ukrainians think it’s necessary to fight this one out.

Now, the war of the Triple Alliance is often held up as an example of how a minority of belligerents can create massive devastation by continuing a guerilla war after losing the conventional war; if Ukraine seems in danger of losing the conventional war, I’ll admit it’s a relevant parallel, otherwise it isn’t terribly relevant.

Well, they’re separated by the Panama canal, so by the same token that Africa and Asia aren’t the same land mass, neither are the Americas.

No… generally, it is the salary of the lowest paid worker

I’m OK with that, the housing market is in a giant bubble and it needs to crash. I say that as someone who bought a house at the lowest price point right at the start of the pandemic, combined with an incredibly low interest rate. Theoretically my home is worth almost 50% more now, 4 years later.

Thaaaaat’s a bubble.

“If you want to restore this, like, ‘primordial’ forest, don’t you also want to restore our relationship with that forest?” he asked. “Like — what’s your relationship to a transgenic chestnut?”

This is a quote by Patterson in the article, and it basically sums up this whole article.

No, no one is trying to restore a “primordial forest”, they’re trying to restore a tree that was the most common tree in America 50 years ago, which produces nutritious food that anyone can eat.

People don’t need to have an indigenous relationship with a plant to benefit from it or want to see it in place; you do not have to be Georgian or Armenian to love apple trees.

This story was such nonsense, because of how hard it tried to make this a story about indigenous peoples.

Every town I’ve ever visited on the eastern seaboard has chestnut streets and chestnut lanes because these trees were everywhere. My dad grew up when the blight had finally reached a tipping point and was quickly changing that; it wasn’t that long ago.

I respect everything Patterson is saying in this article, but not reintroducing the American Chestnut because it fails to right colonial wrongs is like not brushing your teeth because it doesn’t stop you from getting cancer.

In any event, if they’re reintroducing chestnuts I’m getting a couple for my property. I ate my first chestnut in my 40s (in Spain) and I’d love to have some in my retirement.

I’d recommend it! I have a lovely Japanese chestnut in my yard that I harvest every fall, I make chestnut puree and that shit is to die for.

For some of us at some times in our lives, having a relationship with two people is less work. It requires much more communication, better scheduling, and much more attention to your partners’ feelings … but that might be a good investment of time anyhow, and often gets overlooked.

I find that having multiple partners helps me appreciate each partner much more, for themselves – it’s easy to mix up how much you love just having a partner and being loved, with how you actually feel about that person. Poly gives you the distance and contrast to see your partners clearly, and that can be really special.

Yeah, this is my dynamic as well. My partner and I have been together for a decade and poly from the beginning. It’s not at all a secret, but people are so used to monogamy as a norm that they often just think our other partners are super close friends that hang out at our house a lot.

I’ve been in poly relationships most of my adult life, around 15 years now. I’m certainly familiar with the type of relationship you describe, but the long term, stable poly relationships are the ones that have been poly from the get go.

I don’t tend to date people who are “opening things up” in a previously monogamous relationship, because being someone’s learning experience is a bummer.

I’ve been in poly relationships for years. They work really well for me and my significant others, but we are pretty discreet about it because folks tend to be huge assholes about it.

Generally, you don’t see the poly relationships that work great; mostly, people see the type of scenario one of your other commenters described because the stable relationships are less visible.

We don’t! That’s the joy of it, just like people do, our algorithm will constantly waffle back and forth and argue with itself over whether these things are salads

I know, I was being humorous but it is in fact the way most categorization works. Very seldom is it a taxonomy; the way we recognize faces, voices, shapes, etc … it’s all probabilistic.

What we need is a salad categorizing multilayer neural network

So teeeeechnically, a salad is a dish composed of mixed ingredients. You could make the argument that you mix any two set of chopped ingredients and bingo bongo, it’s a salad.

However, I like to think that dishes’ ingredients aren’t a taxonomic thing, they’re a probabilistic thing. In other words, there’s no such thing as “not salad” or “salad”, only shades of saladness.

• Serve it cold? Ok it’s saladier

• It’s made up of chopped ingredients? Saladier still

• Those ingredients are mostly vegetables? Getting pretty saladish

• They’re mixed together? Even more salad like

• They’ve got some sort of dressing mixed in? Now it’s very likely a salad!

… and so on. To me, your SO’a dish has a pretty high Salad Probability^tm

I sure haven’t

Like every ceasefire.

Probably the reason Ukraine doesn’t want a ceasefire…

Yeah, unironically it does in this instance.

The US negotiated with the Japanese.

The allies negotiated with the Nazis.

You know both these groups surrendered unconditionally, right?

Weirdly specific

They are, mate. You act like the West is standing behind Ukraine threatening to shoot anyone that retreats. We’re sending em guns and money, if they wanted to stop fighting they could make that decision tomorrow.