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No.

That was easy.

I’d suggest guns, missiles, and militarized drones. Maybe some tanks and stuff. I’m just spit balling here though.

Yeah but counts aren’t. :)

At the time there was widespread reliable reporting that Trump was contemplating going to actual (boots on the ground) war with Iran because of the bump a President usually gets in approval when we go to war.

If Trump had been contemplating (or doing) retaliatory strikes against Iran-supported terrorists, Biden would’ve been wrong to criticize Trump for thinking about bombing legitimate military targets.

We’ve unfortunately cultivated both a very strong and mostly unaccountable (to the rest of the world) military and a lot of enmity from Shia Muslims (not that the Sunnis love us or anything).

All that being said, Biden is a serious person who takes the job of President seriously, who takes the deployment of military power seriously, who definitely understands and considers the danger of escalation seriously. He took this action with the active participation of one ally (the UK) and probably in consultation with most of our closer allies. It was done in response to months of active attacks which could’ve hurt people and has diverted a lot of global trade traffic to go around South Africa.

Trump is not and never was serious about anything to do with the Presidency, he wanted to bomb Iran for his poll numbers, and wanted to leave NATO.

hope that helps.

The number of bad assumptions behind this meme approaches infinity

I dunno it seems like there’s a pretty solid “type” for mass shooters - young, white, male - that means something is left out of your evaluation. Economic oppression (by the owner class) and easy access to guns (enabled by the owner class!) makes it easy for these disaffected people to commit mass violence on the rest of us.

I’m sure if people had more economic security there would be fewer shootings but I don’t expect they’d go away. But a lot of these shooters talk about feeling alienated or disrespected. In my estimation that comes from expectations not being met. Probably unrealistic expectations.

(Yes I know “not every shooter is a young white male”)

It’s literally impossible for them to not be “analyzing” all the sounds they (perhaps briefly) record.

[Sound] --> [Record] --> [Analyze for keyword] --> [Perform keyword action] OR [Delete recording]

Literally all sounds, literally all the time. And we just trust that they delete them and don’t send them “anonymized” to be used for training the audio recognition algorithms or LLMs.

I get and agree with your point about health insurance in the US, but it’s such a vastly and purposefully evil construct that it ends up being cartoonish when you start trying to compare it to other “financial institutions” out there. Like, we could just do away with health insurance and have national healthcare, and it wouldn’t really disrupt daily life except for the people working in and adjacent to that industry.

The same can’t be said for banks, for example. So it’s important not to generalize too broadly.

As far as LTV goes, I’ve been a proponent of that for a relatively long time (in Internet time). But “mainstream” economists are still very much opposed to it. I think because they (purposely?) misinterpret it as a forward looking valuation. In other words, if the value of labor is $X/hr, then LTV says the price will only ever be materials + labor. But they see in the market that prices move by supply and demand. They can’t reconcile it.

But LTV should be applied backward. You find the price in the market via supply and demand, then subtract the cost of materials (this should include transport, warehousing, everything not labor). What’s left is the “value added.”

Most economists want that “value added” to be a magical property inherent to the finished product. But it’s not. We know it’s not, and not just because magic isn’t real. We know it’s not because without the labor the added value wouldn’t be there. It’s both necessary and sufficient to explain the value added.

The other problem obviously is the owners. They pay the economists to maintain the position that value is magical.

As far as leftism… Anarchism probably isn’t practical in the short or medium term. Power is too concentrated. And assholes still exist. Democratic, representative government that empowers some armed authorities to protect people from violence will be necessary for a long time with humans as we are. So laws and regulations will be required. Oversight will be required.

In the short term we should pursue more and more socialism in our government. Socialize medicine, food, housing. Make sure the people who do work get the majority of the value created by their labor (determined by the market price of the finished good). This will be best accomplished by strong unions, preferably just as international as the corporations they’re bargaining against.

I can see the most extreme leftist paradise as a potential outcome in a few thousand years, but it will take steps to get there.

I mean Serling and Sterling are so close it seems stupid to me to call it Mandela effect. More like humans gonna human.

Tipping points for human habitation. Obviously some other species, too. Maybe one that will evolve into a technological species that can NOT wreck whatever climate has enabled their advancement.

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What is MR Online? If WaPo did the original reporting, why not a link to the WaPo story…?

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I think if I find myself with extra money and a desire to donate I would just give it all to John and Hank Green at DFTBA.

I’m sure they would maximize its effectiveness.

Now all I need is some extra money…

Olive brine goes in dirty martinis. Pickle brine can go in savory mixed drinks like Bloody Marys.

I bet aboriginal Australians, the peoples of most isolated island nations, and maybe a fair number of the farther flung American native peoples (Innuit, far South Americans…) have a fairly strong claim to living on “found” land, not stolen land.

Depending on how we define “stolen” one could argue that there are pockets of land all over Earth that’s inhabited by people with ancestral claims going back to time immemorial that don’t involve violent taking.

The First Peoples of North America definitely didn’t have such sharp, well defined border lines. It’s not as of they had a bunch of written treaties establishing hard borders.

It’s fun taking 40 year old quotes and putting them on modern pictures. I’m sure his stance isn’t different at all today.

Another goal should be to increase the number of unions throughout the economy (not just auto industry). Including white collar brothers and sisters.