Posts by Mike VandeVelde 411 publicly visible posts • joined 9 Mar 2007
There is the original code. And then there is an enormous and growing block of if... then... else... statements to cover up all the issues that are constantly being discovered.
If $Response includes "Nazis good" then Abort!!!
If $Response includes "fake book exists" then $Response = "fake book does not exist"
etc
Trick themselves into thinking that style and fashion and adornment is in order to attract a mate. It's to establish hierarchy among competitors, utterly useless otherwise. The prey will be prey regardless, predators will predate regardless, hair is not the trick, clothes is not the trick, stimulating small talk is not the trick. You can easily get some without any of that crap. Everybody wants to, that is the only trick.
Social status is a pointless illusion. It's a religion. It can make people feel comfortable. It can make people feel too comfortable. People should be comfortable, take that mask right off. Minimizing this and emphasizing that just delays the inevitable. Do you want to get to know a person or not?
It's not incomprehensible. It's not dislikable. Knowing the other person's inner thoughts can absolutely be helpful but is not required. Be kind whenever possible. That is the easy part. The hard part is: IT IS ALWAYS POSSIBLE TO BE KIND. That is the message of all of the world's religions, minor or major, forgotten or ongoing. Do you have a conscience? It may be damaged.Which wolf do you feed? It's a muscle. Maybe your conscience has rotted away, in modern medical parlance that is psychopathy. Humanity is not out there, you are a member whether you like it or not.
Other monkeys. As if any of us are superior. We are all swimming in the same pool. Poke your head up further than others, it is so temporary. The bulk of humanity is no different from you in any lasting way.
Come on people now smile on your brother everybody get together and try to love one another right now.
Not 100% humidity, above 40c 100% of the time. I worry about days above natural human internal body temperature. No relief even at night. Not crops, not dewpoints. Here in my local area a couple thousand kms north of Texas we smashed all kinds of high temperature records today and it's not even summer yet. The now regular fire bans start this weekend and water restrictions will follow. Once upon a time for unusual circumstances, now a regular part of life every year. Hopefully you can get inside to air conditioning at least some of the time, but the air conditioners just exacerbate the wider problem. Uninhabitable zones are already starting - I mean there was always the Sahara and the Gobi and Death Valley but... When billions of people start to migrate north not for "freedom and democracy" or "the pursuit of happiness" but for for plain old literal survivability, I shudder to think. Preppers: I'm sorry but there just isn't enough ammunition.
"I understand that you can't just place them in the arctic or on an old oil platform somewhere cold because supplying 1.2 GW to remote locations is not trivial and having to build a power plant along with the data center is a big undertaking."
They are thinking about the size of a seacan right now, perfect thing for an abandoned oil platform, or maybe an old naval fort what is it called The Principality of Sealand?
As soon as they can get them down to about the size of a natural gas furnace I will be near the front of the line to get one for my house. Can you imagine the salvage operations all around the world digging up all those dangerously explosive gas pipes? Collecting all those power lines and pelletizing all those poles? What a beautiful world it will be.
Get them even smaller and put them in cars, lighter than an internal combustion engine, way lighter than a massive battery pack. Forget plugging in every night, just drop in a fresh marble of plutonium every few years.
Engage!
Will this facility deal well with a tornado strike? How about a direct hurricane hit? How about days not going below 40C creeping towards 100%? A Venn diagram, how much overlap between this location and the growing global warming uninhabitable zones? Better than the UAE I guess! But global warming is just a scam, co2 is plant food not pollution, so no problem. There is no such thing really as an uninhabitable zone, we have an orbital space station after all. We can frack our way to energy superabundance to power away any concerns about a little extra summer! Oh that reminds me, how about seismic activity? We learned everything we could possible need to know from Fukushima, right?! What, me worry? Bring on the golden age!!
A 25% tariff on all Canadian goods. Not on day 1. Not in January. Not in February. In March, and then the next day the tariffs on energy, which are our biggest export to them, are lowered to 10% - because they need that. An extra 25% on steel and aluminum never materialized - because they need that. An extra 25% on the auto industry DOA - because they need that. Well, maybe in the future, but meanwhile nothing on "USMCA compliant goods", which is basically everything. Now maybe a 100% tariff on movies? Except nobody can even start to imagine how exactly that would be supposed to work. Canada doesn't need to say a word to Mr. Trump, because every time he says "Tariffs!!! What a beautiful word!! Big fat beautiful tariffs will fix everything!" every businessman in his country says "NO YOU DUMMY!!! FACTORIES WILL SHUT DOWN!! THE PEOPLE WILL HATE YOU!" and he caves.
Meanwhile in Canada you basically can't get USA liquor. Nobody is buying their agricultural output. There are retaliatory tariffs on most of the few things that are actually made in the USA. Most of what Canada buys from the USA is just USA companies selling on things that they got from China, and we are quickly figuring out how to route around that middleman. Plus nobody is taking the risk of trying to cross that border. There is an international bidding war on doctors and nurses and teachers and students who are reconsidering being located in the USA.
What I said about a $1200 iPhone is that I wouldn't be surprised if it costed as little as $100 to actually manufacture. From your link the manufacturing cost for an $800 iPhone is somewhere between $400-600. Not exactly out of the ballpark of the 50% profit I assumed?? Plus is that the cost to you and me? I imagine the cost to Apple might be somewhat lower than $400. Let's go with $400, Let's say I could get the components for an $800 iPhone for $400 and put them together in my garage and sell them for $600 - I don't think I would put a very big dent in their sales. A "yPhone" from buddy down the road just wouldn't have enough prestige to convince enough punters to be seen with one even for $200 left in their pocket. But other people are successful at it, Apple has the biggest share of the global smart phone market but not by much and nowhere near a majority.
So yes there are tariffs on Canadian goods going to the USA, but nothing even remotely like the across the board 25% plus plus plus that he keeps banging on about. And yes a $1200 iPhone probably costs more than $100 to manufacture, but a 50% profit margin is not the ravings of a lunatic. Interesting times.
"Trump said stuff about tariffs" - that should be the headline.
The body of the article should just be screen shots of his deranged social media postings. Why waste time on anything more.
If and when any of the myriad import tariffs he has constantly mused about actually come into effect, the only response from the rest of the world should be matching export tariffs. Double plus good.
He started with us in Canada (and Mexico). The meandering story so far would be a decent sized book. What has actually happened? "Tariffs first day in office!" Nope. "Tariffs in Feb!" Nope. "Tariffs in Mar!" Nope. "Tariffs in Apr!" Nope. Tariffs on this and that and the other thing coming this week, this month, next month, in the fall, blah blah blah. "There has been yet another magnanimous extension!" Whoop dee do. Why engage at all.
$1200 iPhone, how does that break down exactly? It wouldn't surprise me if actual production cost was around $100. So double it who cares. It also wouldn't surprise me if at least $500 was for marketing, lawyers, accountants, consultants, patent licensing, IP transfers, interest on debts, stockholder dividends, executive golden parachutes, a bunch of new art for the corporate palace, etc etc etc. And $600 for profit, where there is plenty of room for triple digit increases in production costs, due to tariffs, or due to wages for some token assemblers in the USA. Even if passed on to the consumer I have a hard time seeing how massive increases in production costs would lead to massive increases in retail prices since retail prices are almost entirely composed of completely unrelated other bullshit. Please correct my cynicism.
Free markets are an incredibly useful tool. The best way to get innovation and efficiency.
Only applicable where competition is possible.
Privatized infrastructure is an abomination. The roads are public, they are used by private vehicles. The wires are public, they are communicated over by private entities. The airports and seaports are public, the planes and boats are private.
Could multiple companies build roads to your neighbourhood for you to connect your driveway to? Or multiple watermains for you to connect your plumbing to? Or multiple electrical grids to power your home? That's ridiculous.
Even in a well functioning free market - if it gets consolidated to the point where it would be ridiculous for a new entrant to even try starting up, then obviously intervention is required. Or there will be no new entrants and stagnation is the only possible result, worse than any government entity could ever get. This must be avoided.
Research and development - don't let's get started on patents and copyright! ;)
"One of the many benefits is the end of children going without."
That depends on how the UBI is spent.
Better than depending on multiple bottom end jobs with employers who can feel free to treat employees poorly because losing employment is catastrophic.
We can't give everyone the opportunity to stay out of poverty because some might waste it. Is a poor excuse.
It could also reduce or even eliminate the need for minimum wage laws and overtime regulations, if that helps the hesitant.
You put out a universal basic income. Every citizen gets the cheque.
It's efficient because you get rid of the welfare department. You get rid of the disabilities department. You get rid of the employment insurance department. You get rid of the seniors department. Etc.
The only economic downside is in the capital cities. So many empty office towers that used to be full of paper pushers who spent their lives deciding eligibility for myriad inadequate benefits.
One of the many benefits is the end of children going without. What more needs to be said.
Correct.
But you Thomh, and John Doe and Joe Schmoe and Larry the Cableguy and Joe the Plumber etc, are not doing a significant amount of the buying from China. An item from China sent in a package to your house where it lives until it's buried in a landfill is not what international trade is all about.
International trade is about distribution companies acquiring boatloads of items from abroad. Trucked to warehouses. Sold to intermediaries. Trucked to other warehouses. Sold to retailers. Trucked to other warehouses. Etc. That's just the finished items. Commodities shipped in bulk and sold on to be assembled and/or processed and so on and so on. So many steps. AT EVERY STEP SOMEONE IN YOUR COUNTRY IS MAKING PROFIT. WHEN THE IMPORTS ARE IMPEDED ALL THAT PROFIT IS DAMAGED.
Jobs. Even if every single factory is "reshored", this isn't 1970 anymore. ALL THE JOBS PEOPLE ARE DREAMING ABOUT HAVE BEEN AUTOMATED IN THE LAST 50 YEARS. Where will the money even come from to set up any of that without all of that profit generated from all of those cheap imports.
Even if all those supposed jobs still existed and even if unemployment wasn't at historic lows and even if a labour shortage wasn't the real problem, WHO WOULD FILL ALL THESE FANTASY NEW JOBS WHEN THE PLAN IS ALSO TO DEPORT MILLIONS AND MILLIONS OF CURRENT RESIDENTS.
It's all obviously a fool's errand to anyone who gives it half a minute of lucid thought. Interesting times indeed.
I can listen to people talk about their religious beliefs all day long. It's fascinating.
But when they start mocking other people's religious beliefs I become quite hostile.
"Of course Jonah survived in the belly of a whale for multiple days and then emerged just fine to tell the tale."
OK, tell me more, I'm all ears.
"I believe in Jonah because the Bible tells me so, so it is true."
OK that's fine, I find it quite interesting and would like to hear more.
"But I'm not one of those Buddhist idiots who believe in something stupid like reincarnation!"
We're done, have a dumb life you stupid idiotic dummy goodbye.
If someone calls themselves a shaman I'd be interested in hearing them tell me more about that.
If someone else dismisses anyone who calls themselves a shaman, I would have less than zero interest in hearing anything further and would suggest with extreme prejudice an immediate vacating of my vicinity. Cheers!
"I agree he's an unlikeable autocrat at this point, but.."
I also agree. I signed up for Twitter/X for the first time just recently (last year) and quickly had to mute his constantly promoted stream of excrement. I wonder if there is something like Roman lead lined drinking water pipes (pb for plumbum) that drives all fantastically rich people completely insane. Maybe it's a 2 part poison, like maybe ozempic plus viagra, more likely something much more obscure, but something is making obscenely wealthy people lose their god damned minds.
But. So many buts. I love everything he has done. But I hate everything he says. Like Twitter banned him, so he bought the whole thing and fired all those fools. Isn't that everybody's fantasy? He's setting the pace for launching rockets into space. He's developing neural interfaces. He watched "who killed the electric car" and he commoditized luxury electric cars built in totally automated gigafactories in response. He's building androids. You must be able to hear my raging childhood boner for all of that from all over the planet. BUT HE'S SUCH A PALEOCONSERVATIVE RIGHT WINGNUT DOUCHECANOE. It's cognitive dissonance.
"Jeff Bezos..." is the prototypical villain, Amazon is The Borg. "Bill Gates..." is a bumbling nerd who happened into millions and hired the most ruthless mercenaries to turn it into billions and is now focused on giving it all away, almost neutralizing all of his crimes against humanity. "Steve Jobs..." was just a celebrity, it was Wozniak and all the victims who came after him who made the name Jobs at all memorable. Evil, Neutral, and Chaotic. Elon seemed like he could have been Good.
He must be putting everything he has into supporting Trump and Trump like people all around the world because he can see something I'm not smart enough to see, right? Right? RIGHT?? Deep breath.
"If it's as easy as just "hiring" someone else to do the work..." - he did do that, simply hire the people to do the work. But it really seemed like he was easily capable of doing any of the work.
"Nikola Telsa had a plan..." an apt comparison. Elon has already gone much further than Nikola ever did. Debatable which one was the more impressive mind, I would lean heavily towards Nikola, but Elon has been quite impressive. But in the end, they will both have died utterly alone with people pontificating after the fact about what might have been if either of them had just been a little bit more comfortable in the world.
Hand me trillions of dollars and watch my bright light put them all in the shade ;)
Glancing at the headline I somehow got the impression that Meta capex could be somewhere between $7B and $72B, and it was one of the greatest things I have ever read. I had to look into the details and am somewhat disappointed to find out that it's more "reasonable" than that. So, not an expertly predicted range of dozens and dozens of billions of dollars then. This whole emotional process has really put me in touch with the fact that I am a tiny tiny mote in a vast vast universe. Need a sobbing in search of an exotic emotional support animal icon.
These are the fallacies:
1. China can't accomplish anything without stealing IP/technogoly from the west.
2. ...
That's it. It's false.
This is the corollary fallacy:
1. Western schools can continue to lead innovation without Chinese foreign students.
https://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202403/16/WS65f4e78ba31082fc043bcf71.html
China will lead in innovation. That's it. It's true.
Going through another "encryption algorithms are akin to military arms" export controls fiasco with AI technology is just that, a fiasco.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Export_of_cryptography_from_the_United_States
It can't be stopped, math is math, tech is tech. "This is ours and we are keeping it ours" only works if you have an idea and don't tell anyone about it, and then it's worthless.
You have to COMPETE. That's the whole point of capitalism. It's the ultimate irony that communism can and will dominate at it.
If you hobble your leading AI pioneers, guess what THEY WILL NO LONGER LEAD. It doesn't take an Adam Smith level mind to tell you that.
If you want to be ahead in AI or in anything, then you have to invest in it. Look to China to learn how to do that. Or try export controls and tariffs and see how that goes. I'm betting on not at all well.
Do any of the individuals involved in this leaking of classified information have even the beginning of the faintest hope of understanding how any of this digital security stuff works? Could any one of them tell you one single difference between Signal and Facebook Messenger and Google Chat? Maybe they have been made aware of what is available to them through other instant messaging platforms, I withdraw the question.
"I'm looking forward to the annual Corruption index, pretty sure the US is going to dropping down quite rapidly"
Could you imagine any of them caring any less about that, if they have ever even heard of it?
"The greater problem is the schoolboy enthusiasm the group had for deliberately murdering civilians."
Can you imagine what else is going on? What is the statistical probability of a colossal cock up like this ever happening, how big of a sample size of other flippant discussions of inflicting horror on "those people" would be required?
"China is shipping low cost drugs to the US to destroy it from the inside. The whole country is becoming dependent on another drug of cheap stuff. You're in horrendous debt from consumerism gone crazy. The country is reaching the point of total dependence on that other country which means they will control you. You've tried talking to them and they smile sweetly and continue shipping drugs. You tried exporting to them but they do everything to block you."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opium_Wars
The Summer Palace was looted and destroyed. The world got Pekingese dogs. What does the USA have for booty?
Hong Kong and Macau have been peacefully reclaimed. Taiwan is next. The best that can be hoped for is that time is allowed for it to be just as peaceful. Who could actually stop them otherwise, even today? It's already too late.
Is there anyone in the USA who can strategize in a triple digit amount of years time frame? They can't even imagine managing a triple digit amount of months, their constitution absolutely disallows it, never mind myopic fiduciary duty to capitalist quarterly corporate reports.
Donald Trump is almost 80 years old, but he is a ridiculous toddler in this long running game, no matter what all his fawning sycophants will giddily tell you. Own goals and stepping on rakes and sacrificing his queen for nothing but some social media likes and stock market swings. Chinese leadership are laughing all the way to the bank and beyond.
Circa 2050 I hope that when The First Emperor of The Final Chinese Empire claims the Mandate of Heaven over all of humanity that he/she and his/her descendants are mostly benevolent. Everything the USA under Trump is doing is only making this more inevitable. The United Nations is sabotaged from every direction so what other option is there. Idiots think that their local area can come out on top or even with any, ANY advantages through continued internecine bullshit. UFO revelations and discoveries of AT LEAST bacteria on far off planets and all of a sudden we may all feel a lot more brotherly to one another.
Happy Easter!
You eliminate your trade deficit with the supermarket by making the goods at the supermarket so expensive that you need to become a subsistence farmer. Quit letting the supermarket rip you off and get your groceries out of your own garden instead. When you and everyone around you are no longer getting ripped off by the supermarket and are all full time subsistence farmers instead in order to survive, THAT'S WINNING!! TRADE DEFICITS ELIMINATED!! WINNING THAT NEVER ENDS!! NO MORE FOREIGN GOODS FROM OUTSIDE THE HOUSEHOLD, EVERYTHING MADE DOMESTICALLY!! SO MUCH WINNING THAT YOU WILL GET SICK OF WINNING!!! IT'S GENIUS!!
"The farming base, such a modest portion of the population, ignored while factory farms gobble up their farms, he neither wins or loses there, save a modest fraction of points."
CORN.
Ethanol. High fructose corn syrup. Bourbon. Things the rest of the world can absolutely live without, or if not then easily make on their own. Not the USA. They are totally completely addicted to the stuff. Climate change and things like aflatoxin remind me of the Maya or the Chaco. Maybe genetic modifications can save them, or...
"The Great State of Canada" where Trump would graciously allow us to keep singing our anthem, would be the biggest state by population (and obviously by land area). We have more people than California.
Canada has 10 provinces, so we would actually be the 51st thru 60th states (accepting that they would not grant statehood to our 3 northern territories, or Puerto Rico or DC). Ontario would be the 5th largest state by population. That would add 20 Canadians to their senate. (plus I have no idea how many members to their house, 1 state or 10). You could almost chuckle at how much fun that could be, but no thank you. Would they expect the 5 parties currently in our parliament to join one of their 2 parties? That would absolutely be the hardest part of the annexation.
Not to mention that Canada is a proud member of The British Commonwealth. There were rumblings of the USA kicking Canada out of the 5 Eyes spy club, I think without much consideration for the fact that it is actually The British Commonwealth plus an honourary membership for the USA.
Not to mention that Canada (thru Quebec (and New Brunswick)) is also a proud member of la Francophonie. Like say hello to my leetle friend The French Foreign Legion.
Not to mention that Canada has the world's largest Sikh diaspora population, and that Hinduism is our 3rd largest religion. Like say hello to my other leetle friend the Gurkhas.
Not to mention our Nederlandse Canadezen, whose homeland still vividly remembers Canada's hand in their liberation from the Nazis (and our hospitality for their royal family). Maybe you can tell by my name that this holds special significance for me, out of all of Canada's many close friends throughout the entire world. I can't find anything about it but I remember hearing a story about the king of Germany bragging that "My royal guards are all 8 feet tall!!" and the queen of The Netherlands replying "well if I have the dykes opened the waters will be 10 feet deep".
Long story short, bring it on America. We may not have as many guns as you do (nobody does), but we have more than most. We could make you wish you were still in Iraq, or Afghanistan, or Vietnam, or Korea, or etc.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/gun-ownership-by-country
Don't make us burn down your whitehouse again. It would be better for the USA to become Canada's 11th province ;)
https://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.ca/en/article/the-burning-of-washington
Where exactly is the racism in a war between Russia and Ukraine??
There are far right militias in eastern Unkraine, like faaaaar far far right, like totally overlapping with and looking back fondly on Nazism, and adorning themselves with all the symbols. Committing war crimes. Yes absolutely correct. You accuse me of supporting them??? I would not shed a single tear if they were all hanged by the neck until dead just like their heroes were 80 years ago. So Putin fires hypersonic missiles at apartment buildings and hospitals and shopping malls and power plants hundreds and hundreds of kilometers away. A surprise invasion that is now even more of a quagmire than any of the fantastic failures that have been all of the USAs worldwide military operations since they mopped up what remained of the German army after it had its back broken by Russia in World War 2. NATO gets to use Ukrainian conscripts to test out NATO weapons and tactics. There is nothing for a reasonable person to support in any of that.
Russia could no more allow NATO to expand right up to its border than the USA could allow Soviet missiles in Cuba. That's what this is about. Everything else is blah blah blah. Russia said don't do it, NATO openly said sure we will do it, and here we are. NATO should have been disbanded when the Warsaw pact collapsed. From Yugoslavia onward it has only been a tool for western exceptionalism. It is the fact that it still exists that makes the United Nations a joke. Just exactly what in the flying fuck does Turkey have to do with the North Atlantic??? DO I WANT TO GET CONSCRIPTED AND CALLED UP TO THE FRONT IF ROMANIA HAPPENS TO GET INTO IT WITH MOLDOVA?? I fucking do not. That's the exact same script as The War To End All Wars. The continuing existence of NATO, especially now in its current bloated form, practically guarantees a World War 3 at some point, which future historians may say has already started..
Israel/Palestine - there is the racism. I say build the greatest wall ever around them all. Have gates where anyone can leave. Nothing and nobody goes in. For 1,000 years. When everyone has forgotten everything the world will have that tiny pointless piece of land back and it can be tiny and pointless like it should be.
American groceries have been a recent boon for food banks here in Canada :) Temporary though, as nobody is ordering more :(
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/food-bank-u-s-produce-1.7489428
Some sort of North American Union has long seemed an inevitable far future destiny. We had passport free border crossings pre 9-11, that could have come back eventually. There has long been talk in the fringes of a common currency. Agriculture and automotive and defence could hardly be more tightly integrated. That has all now been turned around 180 degrees and set back by decades, maybe centuries. Barring a post apocalyptic military death spasm of actual invasions it likely will never happen now. Maybe the several splinters of the former USA will enter negotiations for something like that circa 2150 or so.
GNU SedGawk - you're not wrong (well not entirely wrong), you're just an asshole.
Raving about people who slaughter some people out of one side of your mouth, while out of the other side of your mouth rabidly listing the other people who need to be slaughtered.
It's people like you who drain the hope out of society. People like you who are in every nook and cranny of the entire globe. It doesn't matter who wins whatever battle, people like you will ensure that everything remains a nightmare.
Go take up arms against your bugbears. Kind of like the toxic drug overdose crisis, a self solving problem. A kind of Darwin Award competition, a cleansing with eugenic outcomes.
In BC they started with removing "red state" liquor in February:
The idea was that California did not vote for Trump and they make decent wine so we will keep that flowing. But Trump got more idiotic and so in March we got less discriminating and banned all US alcohol:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-bans-all-u-s-acohol-1.7479629
The best quote from the BC Premier:
"Now the reaction of many British Columbians, myself included, is if the president so interested in Canadian water, then we're gonna help him out by letting him keep his watery beer."
All a side show really. The actual consequences include possibilities like this:
"Eby also said his government was working with Ottawa over possible tariffs or an outright ban on U.S. thermal coal that is transported through British Columbia."
West coast ports in the USA will not handle gross dirty coal, so it all goes through Canada to Asia. We should absolutely be making a *lot* more money doing that for them, if we even want to do it at all.
Musk is worth what 400 billion. How much of that is the current value of the shares he is holding? If he sold 10 billion worth of shares today, what would that do to the value of the remaining shares? If he sold another 10 billion tomorrow, then what would happen? And another 10 billion the day after that? Today he is "worth" 400 billion, but does he have an actual bank account anywhere with an actual balance of anywhere near even 1 one single billion cold hard cash? If he started to try to actually cash in, what chance would he have of actually realizing anywhere near 400 billion? It's a house of cards. But as long as nobody shakes the table he can say "400 billion" and get any loan he wants to do anything he wants, like buy Twitter when they have the gall to ban his lunacy. The opposite of someone who bought a house decades ago and worked their ass off to pay it off. Try taking an assessment down to the grocery store and see how many carts full of goods they will let you walk out the door with. Sure you could leverage it for another loan, if you want to keep working to pay it off well past your retirement and death and deep into your grandchildren's children's lives. Keeping finance bros going from the interest the whole time with hot and cold running hookers and scarface amounts of cocaine and mega yachts where you can park regular yacht runabouts in the hold and penisrocket rides into space and private islands crawling with nubile young desperate drug addicted women. Where's the problem???
That is exactly it. The USA buys lumber and oil and electricity and steal and aluminum and potash AND PLUTONIUM from Canada because they are abundantly available and at a good price and reliable and stable. That's not a rip off, it's a good deal. Everything the USA obtains from Canada is used in the USA to make money in the USA. With 1/10th as many consumers, <h1><blink><u>OF COURSE CANADA BUYS LESS FROM THE USA</u></blink></h1>.
The USA does not produce enough aluminum for their needs. They could tariff Canadian aluminum at 500%, they would still need to buy Canadian aluminum. Especially since they are putting tariffs on aluminum from the rest of the world as well, there is nowhere cheaper to go. Even if the USA decided last year to immediately start building 20 new aluminum smelters, it would still be years from now before a single extra ounce of domestic aluminum would be available to them.
Meanwhile, lay off hundreds of thousands of USA government workers (rising unemployment), increase the price of EVERYTHING with tariffs (skyrocketing inflation), and zero out global demand for products from the USA with the inevitable counter tariffs (tank the stock market). Maybe the largest deportation operation in history will counter the effects of the rising unemployment?? But then where will the workforce come from to power the supposed Golden (neo-gilded) Age?? I know!! Cheap labour from privatised prisons!! Let's make crime have consequences again!!!
A few years from now the choice may be between the hermit kingdom of the USA with a North Korea style society cut off from global tade with no tourism and no foreign students making their schools look good, or another civil war that will make the horrors of the first one seem like an exchange of sternly worded letters.
We pray to God that She doesn't let any of that be anything but hyperbole. Instinct is to say what can the world do, he is incapable of understanding, the only way is to let him touch the hot stove. I would say that if the USA puts import tariffs on foreign products, that instead of responding by putting import tariffs on goods from the USA, that the rest of the world should match them by putting corresponding export tariffs. The USA thinks 25% import tariffs are a good idea?? WE AGREE!! 25% MATCHING EXPORT TARIFFS!! DOUBLE PLUS GOOD!! Why drag this out. Let's see the result much sooner. Why make anything any more expensive outside of the USA??
If only he wasn't in charge of the elephant in the room. Even if the brunt of his decisions will be borne by his people, when the USA sneezes...
I was a totally happy Thunderbird user for years and years and years for personal email. Now I'm a happy Proton Mail user. Not sure what Mozilla could do to pry me away.
I was spoiled with Lotus Notes email for most of my work life. I considered Outlook a steaming pile of burnt garbage that I wouldn't touch with someone else's barge pole. Gmail was like Hotmail or any of the hundreds of other free webmail accounts that have been available over the decades, and I always snickered at anyone who used any of them for anything serious. These days I guess I am behind the times as they have pretty much taken over.
Loved Thunderbird, overjoyed that it still survives, hope it never dies. Would be happy to try out anything they come up with even just for nostalgia.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2405471224003119
Nothing tech bro about chaos and emergence. Makes the tech bros easy to discern tho.
An AI can know everything. But we can hobble it to only tell us about the things that won't disturb us. Result.
Do what we want or we will put tariffs on you!!!
But you already put tariffs on us.
Do what we want or we will cut off aid!!!
But you already cut off aid.
Do what we want or we will expel your people!!!
But you already deported everyone.
Sorry but we are disinclined to acquiesce to your request. Have a nice day.
https://doctorow.medium.com/canada-shouldnt-retaliate-with-us-tariffs-a0e32042fec8
And then look at tariffs on Chinese EVs. Why pay $100k for one from Elon when you could get one for $20k from China. Do you want to save the planet or not why make it artificially more expensive.
And then take a hard look at how much money various governments spend advertising on American social media platforms. What a waste maybe cut that out entirely.
And then take a look at how many pension funds etc are holding American bonds. Maybe stop buying more and let the ones on hand run out.
Many things could be done that would actually damage the USA without making it more expensive for the average Joe to get some bourbon or whatever.
No mention of GEOS so not worth reading.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/GEOS_(8-bit_operating_system)
Yes, Quebec, a province of Canada. Canadian water bombers like I said. Built in Canada. Owned by Canada. USA may make use of them in the winter. Please try not to damage them as we need them the rest of the year. You're welcome.
Why would I worry about China hacking me. What is China going to do to me?
Meanwhile it's fine for much more local entities to constantly hack everything about my life. If we get that under any sort of control then as a bonus it also makes it that much harder for entities on the other side of the planet such as China.
And now I am posting this comment after having read it. Should I be executed for copyright infringement? I was "trained" on mountains of data which includes this article in order to create this response which I am not paying the author anything for.
How do I know that the author never read anything that I have posted on the internet? If I can prove it then should I have the author be executed for infringing my copyright, reading my internet postings and having them contribute more or less in some way to this article for which I am not being paid anything??
"Whah, I posted something on the internet and it was responded to!!1!!!!!111!!!!"
It's definitely not just the Hong Kong Chinese from decades ago. Maybe they aren't hung go about dealing with China, but they are supremely capable of it and they are very available in Vancouver. Vancouver also has the largest Sikh diaspora population outside of the Punjab region. Out of a population of 2.6m, 1.1m are Asian of all sorts according to wikipedia:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metro_Vancouver_Regional_District
There is also a fairly large container port up in Prince Rupert which is quite a bit closer to asia.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2025
