The article itself claims that 87% of news outlets are avoiding the phrase “ethnic cleansing”. There are those that are calling it for what it is.

If you want an example: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/feb/05/un-chief-warns-against-ethnic-cleansing-after-donald-trump-gaza-proposal

This was pointed out in another comment but I will basically echo it to just give that call a boost: Point your instructor to well-regarded sources for introversion and extroversion, and let them know that the labelling in their note is not only inaccurate, it falsely attaches a wrongly defined word onto problematic behaviours that have nothing to do with what introversion and extroversion is, which is not good because it propagates a false narrative.

If your instructor doesn’t seem cooperative and insists on being correct, talk to other instructors that you trust, or even go to those with more authority to tell them about the issue. If you can’t get anyone to actually do something, I suggest you change schools immediately, and call the school out for what they did.

Maybe it’s just one of those days, but I have no tolerance for this sort of false narrative being spread, even if the original intention is innocuous, and especially in a school. Being forced to act in a certain way that deviates from one’s personality to not be perceived as a problematic person, especially over a badly-informed opinion, can have lasting negative consequences to children and adolescents. I’m tired of seeing introverted friends and family members suffer over the fact that they’re introverts, to the point where they will deny being an introvert and even echo these sorts of statements in order to blend in.

I wish there’s some kind of follow up to news like this.

Did the police report go anywhere? Or is it just sitting in some paper pile, or trashed? Follow it up, or call it out.

And lemme guess what we’ll hear in the next couple of weeks or months:

“I’ve made the best deals with Canada and Mexico. They’ve been rude and uncooperative in helping us secure the borders, but now look, they had to.”

And then there’d be the the suckers and ass-kissers:

“Fentanyl’s not a thing anymore in the USA because of Trump.” (says a person who lives in a neighbourhood never affected by fentanyl abuse)

“President Trump has made our country more secure than ever, preventing illegal immigrants and drugs coming in from Canada and Mexico, while making them pay for it.” (vixen news or something)

“Illegal immigration was at an all time low under President Trump.” (says a person who’s never looked at the stats)

Given what was actually realized, Trump did not have to play coy and use tariffs as threats, and it would’ve been a rather easy call to ask for what he wanted. He’s essentially sent US allies on a wild episode to essentially bully them to show off his regained powers.

Oh, and of course he only “pauses” the damn thing. He could re-use it after all. Classic bully behaviour.

I don’t think I’ve known of a “designated tourist area” in Japan. I lived there for a month in some town that I doubt there’d be any foreign tourist and nobody harassed me and my friends. We were even helped by the locals and police when one of my friends lost their wallet, and they were super patient about it too.

I’ve read (in Japanese, written by Japanese people) that those places will actually welcome you in if speak Japanese and is respectful of the place and other patrons, the latter 2 conditions just like any respectable human should. It could be that they’ve put those up due to xenophobia, but there are also those that just don’t want to deal with people who don’t respect their culture.

For some, human pride and dignity have literally no value, or is something they will hold simply to trade it off whenever convenient, especially in a world that can value it, so it’s just like a commodity.

It’s the 21st century. Many of us are educated enough and have a strong enough image of what a country is. Any country may try to annex any land, but they’ll almost always face resistance. Even in the event of a full annexation, you can’t stop the people from revolting, essentially making your country look as miserable as possible to everyone. Heck, even the full cleansing of an entire population won’t guarantee you’ll reach long-lasting stability on annexed lands; people will hide, repopulate, teach their descendants about their past and forever torture your nation and its people, however horrifying of a worldview it may sound like.

I remember reading somewhere that some department in the US gov have a paper on their inability to annex or even control foreign lands and their people. Essentially, it doesn’t matter if the USA has the most powerful military in the history of humanity; it cannot conquer the minds of people today, and will suffer from instability for a very long time.

Didn’t something similar happen just a couple months ago?

Most of us can’t help but feel powerless while trying to change the world. That’s normal, because the reality is, no one can change the world as quickly as we can make a turn at the next junction. Not Donald Trump, not Elon Musk, not Vladimir Putin, not Xi JinPing. They’ve spent decades getting to where they are today, but the best they can do is do big strokes to sway the world to some extent. And these people just look so lonely; nobody seems to really understand them, neither do they seem to truly understand people, aside from knowing enough to take advantage of them, and they put up some sort of distance between themselves and others, distance in various ways you can measure. Meanwhile, most of us spend our times to be close to those we love and care, trying to be a part of a larger society in a healthy and responsible way.

If the alternative is to give up and watch this beautiful world burn and die, watch wonderful people suffer and I turn a blind eye to their pain, I would rather continue trying, and one day die knowing that I tried, instead of regretting alone.

The world? Or just many world governments that have the power to do so? There are many people out there doing what they can to dissuade governments from supporting the genocide, and they make up a fair size of “society”. Do you no longer care about them then?

You care. You’re just tired of seeing that nothing’s changed despite people’s efforts. But that’s totally okay. Great powers don’t and won’t immediately change to what we desire it to be, and there is a vested interest for some to keep the status quo, so it’s hard. We get it, and so do you.

Go take a rest.

Note: the linked video was from 9 years ago

Take that info with what you will

I wasn’t saying that my reasonings are exactly it, and hence the “plausible”. But fair.

Sorry, I just didn’t really understand what your point was, at least not from reading your reply.

I believe I’m confused by where your understanding is.

Apart from Xi beginning this shit before Covid and the economic slowdown, I agree completely.

This replied led me to believe that you don’t think the CCP has been ramping up their military pre-COVID, and hence my reply.

But you’re now telling me that what I said was exactly your point? I’m confused.

My point about the economy slowing down was that it has led to Xi / CCP being unable to further stomach the current situation, and thus they’ve gotten much more aggressive post-COVID. That, of course, I should preface, is just one plausible reason. Others may include general weakness in alliances across the globe, especially amongst NATO members, especially with Trump going back into the WH, and for the years where Trump will be in office, China is expected by many to reach peak population growth and start seeing a collapse at the level of that of Japan.

To clarify, the economic slowdown is not dissuading the CCP from becoming more aggressive; it’s doing the opposite.

You don’t believe Xi’s been sharpening his claws even before Covid? I find that misinformed or under-informed. The Taiwan Problem has been ongoing for decades at this point, and the drills didn’t just start recently. There were drills from at least 2016 from a preliminary search, and I wouldn’t be surprised to find more earlier than that.

China has been known to have invested heavily in their military capabilities over many years at this point, growing at near linear pace from 2005 and only slowing down last year or so (likely due to economic pressures), at least according to World Bank, which is likely taken from official figures, and many countries have estimates that the actual spending is far higher than reported (though take those with consideration of their relationship with China). You can certainly chalk it up to their somewhat unfriendly relationship with many of their neighbours: they have territorial disputes with Japan, India, Russia, and almost all of the South East Asian countries, but a figure triple that of Russia against Russia and India (who’s also increased spending to currently at around 80Bn) just for territorial disputes is too much of an overkill.

China’s patience isn’t based just on personal virtues. Their at-the-moment economic standing and population trend plays into them being able to tell themselves that a conflict is better played out at a later time. However, signs are now showing that the waiting time is almost over. Their economy has slowed down for various reasons (both external and at home), domestic economy has been stagnant at low levels without signs of growth despite government intervention, and their population growth is showing signs of decline, if not already declining.

I’ve not seen other more practical reasons for wanting to take Taiwan other than to show off their potential for imperialism. The TSMC may be valuable to the world, which, if taken, would further enrich the Chinese elites, but both the Taiwanese government and TSMC have signalled that they will willingly destroy their fabs to render the Chinese takeover meaningless economically and financially.

If the Chinese government has no intention to play as an imperial force, or to just show off their ability to be a superpower, more peaceful options definitely seem like the wiser choices: build those relationships and it’ll be stable, if not stabler than you taking full control of that supply chain, and will possibly outlive the lives whatever power there can be controlling it. But that is not the option they chose. The short-term benefits for a few people wins over the long term ones for literally everyone here.

Those are meaningless questions to ask someone like Trump. It doesn’t matter and never will matter where he gets the statement. He just needs to never admit that he pulled that out of his ass, and accuse every fact checker of political bias or lying. Those are the rules in his playbook.

I can currently think of two reasons why you say so. Your statement either implies that you think Musk is of a higher power, or that you’re just trying to say that these bastards believe in Musk in jest and wrongly quoted the statement about believing “something”. If it was the first one, then I would have an issue with your statement. I’m going to assume that the second is why I’m seeing your comment.

But even with the second reason, I’m not sure if I find it funny. I don’t think they believe in him at all, and instead think that they are simply using each other to further their goals, and will gladly cut each other off or even throw each other under the bus the moment doing so outweighs their continued alliance. If that counts as “believing” to you though, then I can see that being funny, though I would fail to see how it fits into this egoistic and maniacal image I have of them.

I’m writing this as a quarter-part reply, and 3-quarter-part rant, and it’ll probably hang in the middle of somewhere, as I always do when I rant. Forgive me.

Fact checks are important and useful, but can only go so far. Truth, laws, norms, and everything really, has no meaning in Trumpism. They are just tools to drive towards some goal, or are avenues for exploitation.

They’ll say whatever tf they want regardless of facts, because they have enough people that will believe them, and enough people to further spread these disinformation to those who don’t know or care to know about the truth for themselves, and that bolsters their numbers. There’s a quote that goes something like if someone says something false, it’s untrue, but if tens of thousands of people say the same, it becomes ‘true’ to the minds of these people.

They’ll sue whomever their target is over some batshit crazy claim with no care of the outcome, and only to use the legal process to delay or divert, or simply to cripple someone financially, especially individuals with no access to immense wealth.

They don’t believe in any higher power, but will use it to further gather support, which is particularly effective in a world where the religious feel like the world is moving away from religion and thus stripping away their legitimacy.

Trumpism doesn’t play by harmonious social norms. Humans values and emotions are simply tools to them, and they will continue to trample on human dignity as long as it serves their purposes. They’ve learned how to fully utilize the weaknesses and blind spots of our institutions to attack everyone else and keeping themselves safe.

How do we fight and protect ourselves against a force like this? I don’t know. All I can think of is proper education on critical thinking and instilling people with the will and equipped with the knowledge to seek facts, but that would take decades, and will easily be disrupted by those who are on Trump’s side, and there’s also no guarantee that the process would be effective, given how underfunded our education system is, and how there’s also little to no political will to do anything, as they are more incentivized to seek short-term solutions.