Joke is going over my head can you explain?

It is, eg lidocaine patches. It has to be injected to really do much. Not aware of any injectables that are over the counter.

Its part of wada rules to which the ioc is compliant? Drug test results for these organization are often published, at least they are for my powerlifting org

Taiwan next!

This guy could have gone trach/vent 60 years ago and been mobile on wheelchair.

Death to America.

Winning hearts and minds!

+1 for obsidian! Have you tried out text generator plugin? Uses GPT api’s. Haven’t gotten into D&D but seems like it’d be a great tool for DMs to help make content.

Looks like it just matches long term inflation, beats 2023 inflation. Win for workers.

During the observation period from 1960 to 2022, the average inflation rate was 19.0% per year. Overall, the price increase was 1.36 million percent. An item that cost 100 pesos in 1960 costs 1.36 million pesos at the beginning of 2023. For October 2023, the year-over-year inflation rate was 4.3%.

The author did a poor job of explaining that. He’s referencing the thought experiment of a businessman instructing a super effective AI to make paperclips. Given a terse enough objective and an effective enough AI, one can imagine a scenario in which the businessman and the whole world in fact are turned into paperclips. This is obviously not the businessman’s goal, but it was the instruction he gave the AI. The implication of the thought experiment is that AI needs guardrails, perhaps even ethics, or else it can unintentionally result in a doomsday scenario.

“unable to exercise its sovereignty” is falling a bit short so if you’ll allow me to put words in your mouth:

Palestine is not a sovereign state.

• barrbaric

I think most of the hex bear posters in this thread would not make this statement so kudos to you for being consistent, we agree to disagree on the meaning of sovereign and whether Taiwan and Palestine meet that mark.

The dispute at this point is over how we define a country, especially because Taiwan clearly falls in a grey area within that definition. I claim that they are fundamentally unable to exercise their sovereignty given they aren’t formally recognized as a country by even their greatest allies and benefactors, thus they fail. You claim that they can fulfill the roles of the state, have a national identity, and have various semantic work-arounds for that fundamental illegitimacy, thus they pass.

I am willing to agree with you (albeit with some rephrasing there) if you were at least consistent. So, do you consider Palestine to be sovereign or not. I consider them sovereign. I am consistent. For you to be consistent in your views would require you to view Palestine to lack sovereignty. Mind you China recognizes Palestine as sovereign. If you say yes they have sovereignty then it demonstrates you’re just trying to bring politics into semantics which in truth is what’s going on in this whole thread. A political faction is attempting to coop the language to suit their narrative whether it requires logical consistency or not.

So crimes of our fathers then, Americans deserve to die. Pardon me, I don’t find this discussion constructive. May your keyboard warrior spirit never falter, good luck.

I commend you for recognizing to dispute the sovereignty of Taiwan it helps to start with a definition. Unfortunately for you the definition you provided is vague and at ends with more formal definitions. I’ll reference you to the indisputable democratic source of knowledge wikipedia (feel free to edit the page if you it can be improved):

Sovereignty can generally be defined as supreme authority.[1] Sovereignty entails hierarchy within the state, as well as external autonomy for states.[2] In any state, sovereignty is assigned to the person, body or institution that has the ultimate authority over other people in order to establish a law or change existing laws.

The PRC and the USA do not pass and enforce laws in Taiwan. The Taiwan government, elected by the people of Taiwan does. They are self sovereign.

You’ve brought a lot of good points which I ought to go through in detail, but briefly: Vietnam great analysis but different country. Military - is Japan sovereign based on reliance on US? Are there only a handful of actually sovereign states (the superpowes) in your schema? Regarding not provoking PRC no shit they don’t want to get slaughtered. As has been pointed out they have organizations and relationships that are de facto diplomatic if they are not called that because of the gun to their head.

Curious, what’s your stance on Palestine’s sovereignty? I think they can be considered sovereign, I don’t see that spectre of other powers potential influence as taking that away. I don’t see why all you guys need to make the bar seem so high, if you individualize it this much the word changes its meaning. A nation doesn’t need to be uncontested among all other nations to be sovereign. If its not the Taiwan government who is sovereign there? Your position would require there be an “unsovereign” condition, unless you actually believe its the PRC sovereign there. Unless its contested within the borders I don’t see how you could make the argument a nation is unsoverneign.

If your views can only be propagated through violence, don’t you think they should be reconsidered?

Bring it loser.

How do you go from there - economic dependence and decreasing recognition - to not being self sovereign? They run a government and have elections. As another hexbear pointed out

true enough a lot of that works out to semantics, such as their having “Economic, Trade, and Cultural Offices” instead of formal embassies despite them doing largely the same thing

This is without contending your points about their economic situation and degree to which the mainland coerces the language of the relationship held between Taiwan and other nations.

I appreciate this last comment in contrast to the former which glibly compares 24 million peoples national identity beliefs to religious views. Belief in a national identity manifests the identity whereas the other are supernatural sky fairies.

and true enough a lot of that works out to semantics

Not sure what the dispute is then. As things stand, a much more powerful nation uses its influence to deny another representation on a world stage. That doesn’t make them “not a country.” They rule within their borders and those that live there by and large consider themselves Taiwanese. The OP I replied to was denying this, I think you and I made good points that they are self sovereign.

that doesn’t even consider itself independent

How does it not consider itself independent?

Haha you got me there! Guess that settles it.

Question - do you know if they include Taiwan’s gold medal count with mainland China’s?

I agree the polling is a bit different, I don’t think it contradicts the DPP study though. Setting aside the question of national identity (not addressed in the NCU study) vs national policy goals, NCU went 32/28/21 for status quo maintain/decide later/move toward independence. 1.6 wanted status quo + move toward unification. 21 > 1.6. Thanks for providing further evidence!