I’m hopeful that this attack on Iran will have the long-term beneficial outcome of accelerating the move to renewables in the Global South. What’s happening to Cuba right now should be a warning to everyone: if your country relies on fossil fuels, the US can and will cut you off from those fuels if it doesn’t like the cut of your jib. I think that’s the real reason Trump is going so hard against things like windmills. He wants to see everyone dependent on oil - and is positioning the US to control global oil flows in order to force the world to bend to the US’ will. Any country that wants to preserve its sovereignty needs to be looking into getting off oil dependency yesterday. And thankfully, China is building out the capacity now to satisfy that demand for renewable energy.

deleted by creator

I needed a Bluetooth speaker for my work PC (I work from home). I got one with a radio tuner as well. I’m fortunate that I have several radio stations in my area that play music I like. I prefer having some music on in the background while I work, but I was getting tired of having to actually think about what I wanted to listen to next. So I’ve been listening to OTA radio quite a bit, and it’s a nice change of pace from streaming music. And it’s not like the radio bits added much to the cost of the speaker.

Edit: also eyeglasses (sure, I’ll count that as a “gadget”). I hadn’t been to the eye doctor in probably 20 years. Hadn’t really noticed any problems but wanted to get my eyes checked since I had just gotten insurance. Doc recommended a prescription and now it’s like seeing the world in HD instead of standard def. If you’re in your late 30s/early 40s and haven’t gotten your eyes checked, it’s possible your vision has slowly degraded over time and eyeglasses will help more than you realize.

The bill is sponsored by Elise Stefanik and Josh Gottheimer, two of the more notable Zionists in Congress (and that’s saying something). If that doesn’t point to the real intention of these laws I don’t know what does.

Portal 2, Stephen Merchant provides most of the humor with his voice acting for Wheatley.

Trump is objectively a greater threat to attack another NATO country than Putin is.

I feel like it’s well known that kissing up to Trump is the wrong move. Deep down he hates that and doesn’t respect it. He might bluster at first but eventually he respects people who stand up to him or at least don’t give in and kiss his ass (Kim, Sheinbaum, Xi).

Gorbachev sending a letter to George H. W. Bush (which he would not respond to) practically begging to tell what kind of government he would like to see in the USSR is my #1 all time pathetic boot-licking given to a US president by a foreign leader. But Rutte’s “daddy” comment is a close second.

Schumer is a hardcore Zionist and always has been. He won’t publicly express it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s delighted to see what Trump is trying to do to Iran.

I for one am very thankful for our beautiful Democratic Party, which while all this craziness has entered a fever pitch, they have been loudly and boldly speaking out against this every minute of the day and not focusing on unimportant matters like trying to trash talk Hasan Piker and taking personal vacations to the beach.

But when you dig into the history of the US in the 20th and 21st centuries, you start to notice this isn’t just a “Trump” thing. Outside of WW1 and WW2 (though the US has spurious reasons for joining WW1), the US has been the bad guys in every other instance.

The US is the imperialist hegemon, Trump has just been more open about it.

Thank you everyone for the ideas. Based on these suggestions, I will likely go with hanging the bike on a couple hooks by the frame, then cover it with a tarp that does a reasonably good job covering it up without being too bulky.

In addition to what others have said, you have to run very large, very persistent trade deficits for your currency to become a reserve currency (in addition to obviously needing to be a highly stable currency). Of the only currency issuers that could potentially fill reserve currency role (US, EU, China), only the US is interested in persistent trade deficits in order to pump the globe full of their currency.

Americans look around at all the cheap commodities around them and think “yes, capitalism is the best system for organizing an economy”. What they don’t realize is just how much this lifestyle has been the direct result of exploitation of workers and resources in the global south, destruction of the environment, consuming at a level ~5x what the earth can sustain, not to mention US dollar hegemony and a military with 800+ bases around the world that can impose the will of capital (which realizes cheap stuff is needed to pay off the working class in the global north. When capital is no longer able to maintain this, I genuine believe workers will question this whole “capitalism is the best system ever” thing.

Entirely anecdotal of course, but in my experience people of all political stripes who make in the ballpark of $50k are fine with higher taxes on the 1%. It tends to be people I know who are in that comfortable upper-middle class bracket (let’s say earning over $100k - earning enough to feel superior to working class folks) who get worked up over higher taxes rates on those who still make a lot more than they do.

Nah this guy sucks. Obviously death threats are over the line but making his life uncomfortable is the least the Judas Iscariot of Linux deserves. We don’t need devs like this anyways, I hope he steps away from the project forever.

The DPRK has nothing to do with this.

Yes

Castro and Khrushchev were feeling very positive towards JFK in the period just before he was assassinated. Castro never wanted hostile relations with the US in the first place (which makes sense for a very small country positioned just off the coast of the US). Likewise the USSR never wanted to just annihilate the US and in fact one of the causes of the Sino-Soviet split was that Khrushchev was interested in peaceful co-existence with the US. My own theory is that the Cuban Missile Crisis had a profound impact on JFK and Khrushchev. These were the only two men in human history who were both just a button push away from potentially destroying humanity. I think they both stood on the brink together and left that conflict with an understanding that things couldn’t go on like they had up to that point.

The idea that Cuba or the USSR had anything to do with assassinating JFK is absurd, IMO.

There numerous solutions to addressing child safety online that do not violate personal privacy. This is one example, there are others. Solving the problem when you want to address this specific problem isn’t difficult. But the reality is that all of these measures being pushed are not meant to provide real safety to children, but rather to be able to de-anonymize the internet, so governments can better identify “dissenters” (i.e. people who criticize Israel) and provide higher quality information to AI and online marketing firms.