flipht

Our entire society is set up to wring out anyone who is unfortunate enough to find themselves buying anything.

And as resources get squeezed, more and more people are trying to claw at smaller and smaller pieces of the overall economic pie.

The breaking point will be catastrophic.

Could be other factions trying to isolate Putin.

The issue is that you can’t guarantee there won’t be harm, and by doing it and not stopping it in the future, you are inviting others to do similar stuff. And probably to one up each other.

And eventually there will be an accident and something important will be lost forever.

Y’all are really out here acting like “no harm no foul” like you’d be fine with your toddler running into the street because “nothing happened!” This time. Next time, a semi could be speeding by.

Exactly. A broken clock is right twice a day. If “idiot” rich people can monetize their mistakes, consistently do so, and manage to do it almost as if by using the same playbook as each other…they’re not idiots, it is on purpose, and they just want enough plausible deniability that they don’t get strung up from a Michelin star restaurant.

I mean, you’re kind of seeing this with Donald Trump’s legal issues. He can’t get anyone with real clout, so he’s actually facing consequences in that arena now.

That assumes all things are equal.

They rely on you repeating this adage to get away with this shit. It’s too consistent. If he were actually stupid, he’d face negative consequences, which is something these folks very rarely have to do.

He does not have to do it himself. He has accountants and lawyers who can take his stupid decisions and turn them into money.

At a certain point the economies of scale of being a billionaire just keep you rich. What I’ve said is pretty standard tax bullshit that they grow up pulling.

No one will convince me he isn’t doing this on purpose to tank the brand.

He and his buddies were mad that they couldn’t compete. So he made the offer in a manic moment, and then was forced to go through with it. Now that he’s got it, he’s going to destroy it, and use the loss to reduce his taxes from all his government contracts.

And he simultaneously gets to platform fascists and silence people calling out the powerful. Wins all around.

For a normal person, this looks like failing. I totally get that. But rich people can derive massive benefits from stuff that would ruin us, and every single thing Musk is doing benefits him in some way.

Help them locate resources that are working on solutions.

Energy grid storage news, low emission building, DIY stuff have all been mood savers for me.

At the end of the day, we are all going to die. Our species is going to die. If it’s next year because Yellowstone erupts and blots out the sun, or next week because Russia decides to go full MAD, or millions of years from now because interstellar travel lanes collapse…all we can do is the best we can with what’s in front of us.

For me, now, that means thinking about what I can do without. It means having a bug out bag to know I can tough out a day or two away from home. It means having emergency plans in place and other options for rolling with the punches. It also means looking out for the others around me and trying to build networks that look out for each other.

I believe the world is falling apart, but I think we have an opportunity to fall gracefully and maybe, if we are lucky, we can pass something on to the future that might grow into something new. The end likely won’t be worldwide cataclysm, so imo the best thing to do is to prepare to be mobile in a crisis.

Sure, burn pits and other crap will help.

But this kind of ammo, kids will find and hang on to. They bring it home, add it to their collection of other cool shit they’ve scavenged…and then their brothers and sisters are born with malformed limbs, mishaped heads, etc.

There have been a lot of stories written about it over the years. The one I read was specifically about Iraq I believe, but it was a while ago.

It’s not about them. It’s the children who find the spent ammo later.

This crap is the reason that there are birth defects spikes anywhere the US military operates.

It also drives home the point to anyone in a position of authority and responsibility: you will be asked to make compromises. You will be asked to make sacrifices. You must be willing to accept your own responsibility in that decision making, because you put yourself in position to do so.

Sometimes, when faced with only negative choices, you have to be willing to accept the stain of the least evil of them.

Kind of like every American president is an unindicted war criminal. We can imagine that most, if not all, of them didn’t go into it to commit evil acts, but they had to be ready to do so if the other options were worse based on whatever calculus they were able to do at the time.

Also included are MX-20 Multi-Spectral Targeting Systems and spares; SeaVue Maritime Multi-Role Patrol Radars; SAGE 750 Electronic Surveillance Measures (ESM) Systems; C-Band Line-of-Sight (LOS) Ground Data Terminals; Ku-Band SATCOM GA-ASI Transportable Earth Stations (GATES); AN/DPX-7 IFF Transponders; Honeywell TPE-331-10GD Turboprop Engines; M6000 UHF/VHF Radios; KIV-77 Mode 5 IFF cryptographic appliques; AN/PYQ-10C Simple Key Loaders; secure communications, cryptographic and Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) equipment; initial spare and repair parts; hard points, power, and data connections for weapons integration; support and test equipment; publications and technical documentation; personnel training and training equipment; U.S. Government and contractor engineering, technical, and logistics support services; and other related elements of logistical and program support.

Training and support is a wide category that very likely accounts for the price tag.

I think it’s safe to assume that OP is venting frustration.

But you know what? If you used this kind of energy to attack the monied interstate that are bleeding is all dry, instead of the frustrated not to no normal person who doesn’t want to keep paying someone else’s inflated mortgage, maybe things would get better.

Honestly, I agree with the antiboomer sentiment.

But at the same time, it is annoying when you’ve had an included service for decades that will now be worse or cost money.

People will keep saying stupid shit if you keep acting like they are arguing in good faith.

Laugh in these peoples’ faces, and you’ll find out real quick what their actual agenda is. They’ll scream it at you in between spitting.

This. The US has been doing social credit for decades. We just call it regular credit because we don’t care about your antisocial personality tendencies as long as you can keep a job and spend the money you earn. Just a question of priorities.

Social credit is a terrible system. But we have similar stuff - job references, landlords checking your history, etc. The US often has the things we deride others for - we just obfuscat and abstract it. Bread lines -> EBT, etc.

I loved mine, but eventually they started rejecting. But instead of being pushed out, it was like my skin was repeatedly cracking while trying to absorb them. Sucks, because they looked great.

Citation for the drama around betamax recording, including Mr. Rogers testifying to Congress: https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/29686/how-mister-rogers-saved-vcr

Lack of a draft is almost directly and solely responsible for the current quagmire of the US military - when we had a draft, normal people were pulled and had to serve with other normal people. They had real lives to go back to. They had family and friends who would listen to them and write their representatives to complain if the use of those human resources was inappropriate. Seeing body bags flying home and a televised razing of a foreign jungle turned a lot of people off from war. And they made their voices heard.

Now, the only people being asked to pay attention are career military professionals. They often do not have a job or life outside of the military to tie them to normal life. They’ve also gotten smarter about where they fly corpses in, so the news can’t provide a solid day-by-day count of the wasted lives. These folks aren’t pushing back against the worst excesses of the military, because their college benefit or their pension require them to shut up and just do what they’re told.

There’s a great documentary called Sir! No, Sir! about the vibrant protest movement from within the military, driven mostly by draftees during Vietnam.

I don’t disagree with your initial reasoning, but there’s a different take that says that what we have allowed is for the worst of us to control the policy for all of us, with nearly no external oversight.