effingjoe

I did?

I assumed you didn't read it because the criticism is also that it didn't actually help. That is to say, countries that got the money didn't recover faster than those that didn't. So what would you call something that benefits just yourself?

I was arguing that compared to other powers of the era(and now) the Marshall plan was lacking harm.

Is "lacking harm" something to be proud of?

If you say “we did x” you are taking responsibility for x- but I didn’t do x and I will not take responsibility for it.

I try not to take an aggressive stance, but this is 100% Grade-A bullshit. Where is this stance of yours when it comes to the Marshall Plan? The entire topic is about taking pride in the collective actions of the country. If "we" did things to be proud of, then "we" did things you should be ashamed of. You have to pick one mode of thought-- you can't claim pride in just the good things while refusing responsibility for the bad.

One, it doesn’t seem like they’re comparable products for most uses.

ChatGPT, the user-facing website, is not comparable to google, but the technology itself is directly comparable. I am using Google's own brand of chatbot-in-search (not bard, but probably is bard in the background) and it really does a good job taking the information from the top couple search results and compiling it together in one place for me to get the answer to my question. It seems (seems) less likely to hallucinate since it seems to be pulling information specifically from the search results; I obviously don't accept what it outputs without clicking through to the source websites, but I could see that becoming unnecessary in the future, since so far I haven't seen anything misrepresented or made up.

It's like Google's thing where they pull short answers to questions from popular websites (like wikipedia) but dialed to 11.

I do not mean to be dense but I don't follow how your comment applies to mine.

From the wikipedia article you didn't read:

The Marshall Plan's role in the rapid recovery of Western Europe has been debated. Most reject the idea that it alone miraculously revived Europe since the evidence shows that a general recovery was already underway. The Marshall Plan grants were provided at a rate that was not much higher in terms of flow than the previous UNRRA aid and represented less than 3% of the combined national income of the recipient countries between 1948 and 1951,[110] which would mean an increase in GDP growth of only 0.3%.[7] In addition, there is no correlation between the amount of aid received and the speed of recovery: both France and the United Kingdom received more aid, but West Germany recovered significantly faster.[7]

Criticism of the Marshall Plan became prominent among historians of the revisionist school, such as Walter LaFeber, during the 1960s and 1970s. They argued that the plan was American economic imperialism and that it was an attempt to gain control over Western Europe just as the Soviets controlled Eastern Europe economically through the Comecon. In a review of West Germany's economy from 1945 to 1951, German analyst Werner Abelshauser concluded that "foreign aid was not crucial in starting the recovery or in keeping it going". The economic recoveries of France, Italy, and Belgium, Cowen argues, began a few months before the flow of US money. Belgium, the country that relied earliest and most heavily on free-market economic policies after its liberation in 1944, experienced swift recovery and avoided the severe housing and food shortages seen in the rest of continental Europe.[132]

Former US Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank Alan Greenspan gives most credit to German Chancellor Ludwig Erhard for Europe's economic recovery. Greenspan writes in his memoir The Age of Turbulence that Erhard's economic policies were the most important aspect of postwar Western European recovery, even outweighing the contributions of the Marshall Plan. He states that it was Erhard's reductions in economic regulations that permitted Germany's miraculous recovery, and that these policies also contributed to the recoveries of many other European countries. Its recovery is attributed to traditional economic stimuli, such as increases in investment, fueled by a high savings rate and low taxes. Japan saw a large infusion of US investment during the Korean War.[133]

compare the US to what France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Portugal did trying to hang on to their colonies and extract as much wealth from them as possible. Not to mention how many citizens of those countries are proud of that!

I was not suggesting the people can't be proud of the not-good things their country does-- only that they shouldn't. Also: whataboutism never defends any given position or stance; don't rely on it too much, if at all.

I see you’re speaking for yourself.

I don't know what you mean. Are you saying that the United States isn't generally pretty racist and that I'm just projecting? Or was this just a halfhearted attempt at an ad hominem attack? Elaborate please.

Link to a similar story: https://www.cnn.com/2023/07/25/politics/hunter-biden-house-republicans-amicus-brief/

Since the OP's link is dead.

You cheeky bastard; you got me.

Trademark infringement, as opposed to copyright infringement, is all about customer confusion. If my vacuum repair shop is called 𝕏, then it's not likely to cause customer confusion if a sandwich shop opens up and brands themselves as 𝕏.

This may be why there are so many different X trademarks, and why none of them "went after" each other.

If I remember correctly, Meta's does pertain to social media, but as far as I know they're not using it, so it might get messy there.

Also, in case it's not clear. The 𝕏 is just a normal unicode character. Dude couldn't even be bothered to pay someone to make a logo for him.

Abolishing slavery, ending Jim Crow, giving women the vote, becoming one of the first dozen countries on the planet to legalize gay marriage, helping win WW2, helping support Ukraine, donating more to foreign aid than any other country on the planet, the Marshall Plan, everything about NASA, best national parks on the planet, entertainment capital of the world, first country to land a man on the moon, the whole "nation of immigrants" things making us one of the most diverse countries on the planet.

• Slavery isn't abolished; it can still, per the constitution, be used as punishment.
• Jim Crow may be ended, but the racism that enables it has always been alive and well
• Gave women the right to vote way later than it should have
• Same as above
• Only after being directly attacked
• Only because we spend so obscenely much on war. A billionaire that gives $1000 is not as generous as someone making min-wage that give $10.
• Self-serving imperialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan#Modern_criticism
• like defunding it to where we have to privatize space flight now? Elon Musk approves!
• I... guess? Arguably has nothing to do with being an American. Lots of countries were throwing money at this-- we just randomly got there first.
• We're openly and emphatically racist, as a country. We simultaneously reject immigration while requiring immigrants to be used as borderline slave labor to ensure our produce doesn't get too expensive.

We've never been the shining city on the hill, but we sure want to pretend we are.

It's conceivable that one would be proud of their country for the actions their country takes, both domestic and/or world stage. Like I'm sure the people living in those Scandinavian where a vast majority of their country is healthy, happy, and even their criminals are treated with dignity and respect can be proud of how their country has turned out.

I don't think it's a common interpretation to feel self-directed pride due to one's country. Unless, maybe, you're the president or someone who makes actual decisions for the country.

There's still a self-sorting selection bias, I imagine. The kind of batshit insane person that both will answer their phone when it's an unknown number, and will then go on to answer a survey after they pick up the call.

I'm only kind of joking here.

It's mostly true, but not entirely. The data "on the internet" has to live somewhere. For instance, when you DM someone on a social media network-- would you consider that private? I assure you the content of those messages can be read by the website's admin-users.

If you're hosting your own non-social web service (like, personal cloud storage or something), then that is arguably private for you, but if you let someone else also use it, then it is not private for them, because you can almost certainly see their file content, having access to the server directly.

Encryption can throw all of this off; a service like Signal is private-- the admin-users of Signal can't see your messages. Generally speaking any service that warns you that all your data will be lost if you forget your password is probably private. If they can recover your data, they have access to your data.

Edit: Better word choices.

If you spent $1 million a day since 0AD, you would not have spent $886 billion yet.