sheikhnbake

If I end up in the massive email history of one of the most vile men in US history, please flush me down the toilet assuming I haven't already heavily invested in the Remington retirement plan

Nah, anyone associating with Epstein can get flushed down the toilet. Maybe it's a generational thing.

Hamdullah

Same for me with buproprion. Night and day difference. Made me wonder how different my life would be if I had been diagnosed appropriately when I was a kid.

I think the line is the same as vapes/cigarettes. It's less about the product itself and more how its advertised and marketed. Internal memos from Meta are pretty damning in that they know they're actively harming kids and not adjusting their product for harm reduction. I imagine TikTok has the same problem, prompting them to settle out early.

We in the US have been so propagandized against China that even relatively progressive people that are completely against the Trump admin think China is an authoritarian hellscape. And while China is obviously not a utopia, I'd be hard pressed to find a metric there that hasn't surpassed our own.

Idk man, i dont keep a list of China's breakthroughs handy. You can find the same results on google that I can.

And I wasn't aware that breakthroughs needed to be nobel laureate worthy at a minimum to still be considered breakthroughs.

Sigh.

The US is in a weird spot. The electorate does not generally want education and research cut.

Republicans here have convinced their base that education and the educated are bad, which has fed their desire to cut academic funding and research at all levels.

That is to say, the federal government doesn't have a popular mandate to do any of this. They simply hold all levers of power through a slim majority of the voting populace.

It also flies in the face of China's currently accelerating pace of research and breakthroughs by producing insane numbers of STEM majors and PhDs

Every protester and registered democrat has been labelled a domestic terrorist already in both rhetoric and policy.

The true problem is that it happens no matter who is in charge. It's like that old phrase about weapons that are invented are going to be used at some point. The same thing has turned out to be true for intelligence tools. And the worst part is that the tools have become so capable, that malicious intent isn't even required anymore for privacy to be infringed.

The trend has been bucked by the fascists currently in power.

I'd be surprised if Walz has the spine to deploy the Guard in response.

People keep citing law as if this administration has ever respected them. Realize that laws are just pieces of paper with words that are useless without enforcement.

The administration has systematically removed leadership in both the military and the DoJ that aren't ideologues. Case in point: SOUTHCOM

Further, internal DoJ and military checks and balances have been eviscerated for the last 12 months. Specifically military lawyers and inspectors general that are concerned with lawful conduct.

That's great on paper, but we saw what happened in international waters and Venezuela after the SOUTHCOM shake up

We need a new Smedley Butler

Based on your reply, I suspect you've never served in the US military. I have. The majority of the US military is comprised of the poor or persons who otherwise have nothing going for them. There's a lot of internal jokes about US servicemembers being uniformed criminals.

Further, under the current regime, you have to remember that military leadership and checks and balances has been systematically eroded for the last 12 months. Military leaders that would oppose trump are/have been removed or retired. Holsey is the latest/biggest example I can think of. Look what happened in Venezuela almost immediately after.

Also, recall the address Hegseth and Trump gave to the gathering of generals in Quantico. They explicitly said if you aren't an ideologue aligned with the administration, there is no place for you in the military. Which is to say that the time of the US military being non-partisan is over.

Lastly, I'd consider the kind of leadership Hegseth and Trump want leading that occupying unit. It's going to be somebody that will be receptive to their orders, legal or not.

This is cool, but I'm waiting for the announcements for datacenters to start establishing on-site geothermal power for baseload power supply.

He is a democratic socialist. I didn't say he was liberal. I said he wasn't extreme left.

*To expand, Mamdani is moderate left. Extreme left, at least here in the states, would be actual communists and anarchists.

MAGA and their ilk love to claim a warrior/strong man identity while simultaneously whining about censorship and persecution and accusing their political opponents of being overly sensitive snowflakes.

This is a logically self-contradictory statement or a statement that runs contrary to one's expectation, ergo, paradoxical.

Fascists are defined by their constant paradox of claiming to be the strongest while always playing* the victim of anything and everything.

Bernie/Mamdani are not extreme left. Further left than liberals for sure, but no where close to extreme left.

The comment you replied to was calling out gun propaganda. When I said prohibition doesn't work, i'm talking about removing whatever the contraband is has been empirically proven to not work. Guns, drugs, and booze are too proliferated in the US to be effectively prohibited. Unless we can get every state on the same page with equivalent laws across the country, the debate is moot.

Invade, none. Continue to occupy to this day? Several. Edit: Although we did take a small chunk of Syria without asking.

Bump stocks are also extremely rare when it comes to violent crime. I would also say they're the tip of the ice berg when it comes to modifying AR's. I'm gonna take a guess that you aren't overly familiar with firearms, but I say bump stocks being legal are a non-issue because a much simpler and cheaper modification to 90% of AR-15's will make them automatic rifles. The modification can be accomplished with a bit of wire coat hanger, or about 15 cents worth of plastic.

And I say draconian in the context of existing American gun laws.

But real talk, I'm not a gun nut. I'm a leftist that believes the working class should be armed and as a society we need to move towards a system that does mitigate violence. Gun laws alone won't and can't do that. And unless we have a national divorce, I don't see effective gun legislation happening.

I suspect geothermal is going to quickly replace Nuclear as the most viable option for base load stabilization. Tech has come a long way towards letting us access it away from hot zones and it uses a lot of the same infrastructure and expertise that the oil industry has already developed.

Prohibition has historically been proven to not work. Even so, the effectiveness of gun laws can't be measured when neighboring states don't have equivalent restrictions. Saying we have 20,000 gun laws and that they don't inherently work is somewhat misleading.

Automatic weapons aren't being sold en masse and are rarely used in violent crime. The most common culprits are regular hand guns. The banning of which would require draconian laws. Laws that would need to be enforced, failing a massive culture shift resulting in the vast majority of gun owners voluntarily turning in their arsenals.

At least part of this is a lie. A transferable M240 is like $400k-600k. And in order to sell those, they have to run a background check as an FFL which requires some form of identification.