Jul (they/she)

Yeah, also price doesn’t really slow demand very quickly since people rely on transportation. Especially in the US where electric charging station funding was canceled and most people need to drive at least an hour a day for commutes because of the “return to work” policies to revitalize commercial real estate that collapsed during COVID. Not many people can survive without right now. And if prices were to rise to their actual market driven prices right now, the Republican party would lose a ton of their flock with midterm elections not too far off. Of course, then again it’s always possible gasoline riots are the way the Republican party intends to stay in power. Good excuse to cancel elections I suppose. Their flock has taken every other loss of rights without complaining as long as they crack down harder on the enemy of the day, immigrants or trans people probably, or maybe the supreme court will finally get around to ending legal gay marriage as they’ve been threatening to do.

But look at all the profit that General Atomics is making right now making more. That’s great for the US economy, right? /s

When I first read that headline I thought this was going to be a Zionist extremist kind of thing blaming Irish people for supporting Palestinian “terrorists”. Glad I was wrong. 🙂

UN needs to relocate at this point, unfortunately. If the US is going to threaten its independence, then it shouldn’t stay here.

I wish it was possible in the US. The western portions of the west coast states have been talking about separation from the US for ages to escape the fact that they fund a majority of a country they have very little political power in, and end up paying ridiculous prices for necessities compared to the rest of the country on top of paying so much in taxes anf being denied subsidies for things like infrastructure that other, more conservative states get. But unfortunately there’s no legal way to do it here.

It was always a temporary measure and few tourists besides very rich people can vacation for more than a week or two much less more than 30 days. So it was mostly targeting the wealthy to visit more to boost revenue after COVID did so much damage to tourism economies. Not really a surprise.

Nah, with the US so broken and at the whim of the oligarchs controlling the parties, Isreal would have no issue starting more incidents or wars, even with traditional US allies. Trump has already proven time and again he would happily abandon the US’s allies to pursue his boss’s ambitions for destabilization leading to far reaching fascism.

Yep, unfortunately, his minions have to enact it until the next time. So, if while the US is no longer willing to support Taiwan, China decides to finally use military force to invade (or to them to quash the rebellion or whatever), it will be too late by the time someone else tells him why the US and much of the rest of the world need Taiwan to remain independent.

Unlike Hong Kong, there’s not really a globally recognized agreement with Taiwan that they owned by China and just temporarily independent. China has been wanting their tech industry for ages and with their recent decisions to stop exporting certain raw materials, they may be on that path and using Trump’s senile state to keep the US from intervening until it’s too late.

Well if you listen to Trump after he met with Xi, sounds like it’s not US policy anymore. At least not from the executive branch who have to follow his every whim. LOL

Usually it’s the scalpers and investment collectors looking to keep the future supply low for when they want to sell at a huge profit.

Yeah, same with production when talking about solar, wind, and other green energy sources that depend on weather, time, and/or location. I never understood why they state kW when that’s just the max the device can produce under perfect conditions which dont exist in the real world. More valuable is to list the average kWh production for the location where it’s installed. Put the same panel in Seattle or Miami, and it’s going to produce significantly different amounts of power which while unpredictable, can be estimated and is way more useful overall.

Yeah I just mean, if you’re being forced out of your home and have to find another one anyway, why bother tearing it down. There must be a consequence or reward that’s not clear from the article, like help relocating or that they’ll hunt you down wherever you end up and punish you.

Seems if it was me and I had no hope of keeping my home and I’d have to start over elsewhere, I wouldn’t spend the money on tearing it down at all, just abandon it. Since I’d need that money to start over anyway. Just curious what the pressure is to tear down vs abandon if there’s no chance of staying either way.

Including that kind of info would hell to make people better empathize with the overall situation rather than just the government vs self demolition part.

Maybe I missed it, but what are the rewards for tearing down your own home? I get that they’ll be forced to pay more for the government to tear it down, but it didn’t say they were getting relocated, so why not just abandon the home if you’re going to have to leave anyway? I mean other than owing money to the government that you probably can’t pay anyway. I just wish the article explained the consequences of not paying for demolition either by the government or self-demolition so we can understand why they’re pressured to do it at all.

On top of the Iran war, political/corruption issues with the Modi administration, and other issues many countries are facing, I’ve heard that the fact that many major corporations, especially in the US, have significantly been reducing staffing to reduce costs as the stock boosting effects of the last couple of years’ stock buybacks start to fade and the “AI” craze has deceived executives, offshore contracting to India, especially in tech, has taken a big hit. Maybe not in numbers of employees since those same corporations have replaced lots of local staff, but definitely in money amount. Companies are dumping their expensive, experienced staff and replacing with cheap, inexperienced staff hoping that “AI” will make less skilled staff as effective as those with actual knowledge. It’s creating a ton of issues and “AI” is definitely not living up to expectations (just as people who understand what LLMs actually are have been warning about the whole time), but companies continue to cut especially skilled workers. A lot of companies’ productivity is suffering. But without competition after many years of consolidation in many industries, it probably will be a while before it corrects, if ever. So, it’s unlikely those skilled contractor agencies will survive. So, stocks are taking big hits from that as well.

Yeah, no way they’ll want to keep him. 🤣

Yeah, fascism creates enemies that it makes their followers believe are inhuman and blames all of the harm thst the fascism is doing to the followers on the enemy. So they have as much sympathy for them as they would a gnat, plus these gnats are taking away all of their money and rights, so despite the fact that their revenge on the enemy won’t get them back their rights or money, they’re satisfied to give up even more rights and money for that revenge. And when that enemy us defeated they create a new one they’ve been cultivating all along. Whether it’s immigrants, Iran, trans people, Chinese people, or whatever other group, there’s always another to change focus to when they get tired of the prior one.