Curious how people really spend flights. On your last flight, did you bring a book? If you did, did you read it, and how much did you get through? If you didn't read, what got in the way (lighting, seat, tired, phone, something else)?
Also wondering if anyone has bought a book at the airport recently and what made you grab it.
As an avid reader and traveler I'd love to hear about yalls experiences!
Voice typed this so it’s all just me spitballing and obviously no ai.
Pretty much what I said. I see all these comments about how the war was a failure lost it’s all over and to be honest I understand where people are coming from. I understand how it currently looks, but and I know this is just a picture of online discourse. I think people are far too quick to make their final judgment and I think it’s honestly too soon to tell who won or lost. I apply this logic to a lot of other situations where people make conclusions but I think that politics and geopolitics really need to play out before you can make a conclusive statements about the lasting effects and in this case, we are very close to seeing the conclusion and so people who make statements such as we won or lost our premature and they should wait until the deal comes out and that is when I would respect their opinion and treat it as a valuable take on a situation that has been resolved as of right now everything you say is irrelevant because you haven’t seen a deal and you don’t know what’s gonna happen and I say this as someone who has for a very long time studied political science all related shit, and so I guess this really only annoys me perhaps because I am thinking about the verifiably of statements and how accurate they are regarding the entire conflict as it will be viewed by historians.
Many of these comments are just offhand or general conversation which I understand and participate in myself.I talk about theee things more verbally in my conversations but at the end of the day if you’re having a serious debate about a situation and you’re making these types of judgments about the conclusion of the war and the decline of United States power and influence as a result of this conflict you can’t be taken seriously if you say well they did all this for nothing when you don’t know what we did it for.
I’m saying this because I just saw a clip of PM Kearney talking about how he says the deal is a game changer. I don’t know what that means. I haven’t seen the deal. I don’t know any details other than what’s being parroted online by different people, but it’s prompting me to say this because I feel like well if people had just waited to see the deal maybe discourse would be a lot different. Maybe the internet would feel more positive and actually intelligent if people said okay well it’s an ongoing situation, as of right now it seems like the US has failed strategically and will end up with a shittier JCPOA, and while I’m sure people say that, most people just jump straight to conclusions. Maybe opinions would be a lot different if they waited a bit. And so if you think that people making these types of comments before they even see a deal about winning or losing the war is appropriate and that they shouldn’t wait until they hear the details to make their to make their conclusions on it. Feel free to change my view.
Quick edit: this applies to many things, and in general I think discourse would be a lot more constructive and in general better if people viewed evtns as having a fan of outcomes, rather than using their personal biases to shape their opinion to be based on whatever they saw that fits their view/was most recent
Has your perspective on the Venezuela situation changed?
First of all, I have plenty of views that align with both liberal and conservative policies/positions. One that I find myself aligning with conservatives on is that our intervention in Venezuela was important, positive, and good for the security and prosperity of both the United States, Venezuela, and Latin America.
Maduro is an evil bastard, and he ran Venezuela ruthlessly. \~80 percent of Venezuelans have an optimistic view of where their country is heading, and millions of people that fled the nation are thinking about and actually are returning.
In Colombia, one of the most important political debates has been “what do we do about the Venezuelans” simply because of the sheer number of them that fled to
Colombia. After maduro? Hundreds of thousands of people in the streets of bogota cheering as they can now return home to a safe country.
A big argument I see is that the US is exploiting Venezuela and we should feel bad for them because of that. Well, before us, it was China and Russia who controlled their country’s economy. Now, with our help, we are rebuilding their oil industry to levels they haven’t seen in literally decades with the incredible skill and expertise of companies like Chevron. With that help, yes, the United States will undoubtably see some significant tangible benefits whether that be low gas prices, taxes from drilling, or any number of other ways. I think it’s stupid to expect us to not try to gain something from this. However, I also think it’s unfair to say we are exploiting Venezuelans because, if all goes according to plan, their country should start seeing incredible amounts of money pouring in. Without the US this money would’ve gone to holding up maduro regimes and secret police, but with our guidance that money is going to go to a democratically elected government that will hopefully serve its people.
A lot of this is not guaranteed, and nobody can see the future. What we do KNOW is that the situation in Venezuela, on the ground, is far better than it was a year ago, and that there are a number of signs and indicators that point to a positive trend for the country whether that be economically, socially, or politically.
I know many liberals (and plenty of conservatives) were very against this from the beginning due to the question of legality, general anti violence sentiment, a hate for trump, or a fundamental misunderstanding of Maduros regime.
Has your opinion on our intervention changed?
Have your beliefs been reaffirmed or changed?
Can you acknowledge that your concerns at first were perhaps outweighed by the benefits of the intervention?
Was your initial criticism perhaps too harsh and emotional?
I get some of these sound like asshole questions or like a subtle dig but I promise they aren’t.