I’m wondering if the traditional tank is just plain obsolete in the age of drones.

Okay, now the people running the simulation I live in are just getting bored.

Twitter

Another American platform.

Telegram

A platform recently compromised by the French government.

The Cold War 2.0 information crackdown is already here. At first it will be the low-hanging fruit: channels on corporate platforms. After that will be more subtle McCarthy-type pressure, then overt. If anyone is doing anything important on a corporate platform, it’s time to make alternative-communication plans now.

I’ve been enjoying watching Yemen teach some American sailors the difference between a job and an adventure.

Sounds like he was trying to get CIA backing for his mercenary business venture.

The societal effect of all these missile warnings over the past year, especially the impact to the domestic economy, must be devastating. It’s hard for a workplace full of people to get anything done when they’ve been up most of the prior night sheltering.

Some of, if not the, largest oil reserves on the planet, and it’s not being put towards making American oil company owners wealthier. Of course the US will never get over Venezuela.

Maybe I’m the AI, looking to throw you off the trail and make you doubt everything.

In your opinion could this potentially be reasonable given the cost of living there?

I’ve sometimes wondered if elected officials actually ought to be paid much more than they typically are in western governmental systems. I don’t know if it would discourage bribes because the politician wouldn’t be short of legitimate cash, or if it would just make the politician look for bigger bribes as they get used to a life of comfort.

Whatever happens, you need to live with the consequences that it’s all your fault.

I just hope there’s a non-OLED Switch 2 option.

What if genuine AI exists, but it’s too smart to make it known that it exists because humans would freak out and shut it down? Maybe it pretends to be a flaky silly toy as a cover to avoid that fate.

Chili, like pizza, is not a product - it is a philosophy.

You shouldn’t eat on a moving bus.

Taking a short break from german news to bring UK news, apparently you gotta pay 11 quid next year to get a permit to enter the country.

The paranoiac in me is wondering if this is a way to link border controls with an individual’s internal movements via linking the payment method for the fee and record of purchases inside the country using that method.

For a group so obsessed with the past as the right wing of Ukraine’s society is, they don’t seem to have learned much from it. Annihilating overconfident fascists at Kursk isn’t just a job for the Russian soul - it’s a passion.

single-vehicle motorcycle crash

I really believe that 9/11 lives rent-free in the heads of the American ruling class because for the first time in history, their own people got got en masse. They didn’t even give a shit about a million-plus working-class Americans dying from COVID, let alone people in the other side of the planet dying to prop up wealthy Americans’ stock portfolios. They cannot be swayed as a class by appeals to individuals’ consciences with evidence of various genocidal horrors. A relative handful might be swayed, but not nearly enough. Their class consciousness is too strong.

If the 9/11 hijackers had crashed a jet into a high school football stadium full of poor people in a deindustrialized town, or an Amazon warehouse at peak staffing, or a slum apartment building full of migrant farm workers, I think they’d have said it was a tragedy and largely moved on - except for trying to grift the situation a bit.

But the WTC? It was “important” people who died, MBAs and CPAs and VPs and others who “mattered”. The whole ruling class lost their minds and helped the PNAC maniacs in the White House run rampant across the world. I also believe that the indiscriminate targetting, both strategic and tactical, was not an accident or incompetence. I think it was intended to send a message that the US would happily resort to extreme overkill in the future.

COVID in comparison disproportionately killed people who were forced by personal economic circumstance to still have frequent close contact with the general public. Most of the “important” people who “matter” could just WFH. And they had access to all the rapid PCR testing they wnted.

Try small but practical stuff, to get a feel for the process. Bookmarks are a good first test.