Battery farms for humans, basically.

If anyone starts smoking or vaping I'm probably done.

It feels inadequate to consider anything hopeful without the immediate return of hostages because nobody should trust Netanyahu with an agenda like that. It's practically a blank cheque to atrocity spending, and he's going to write a number and cash it. No sane party should underestimate the problem taking hostages has created.

Old people always ask: are your legs broken?

It's takeaway. You go there, and you take it away. Want a butler, then pay the wages!

Why does he always carry around this "high profile man" thing? He's nobody AFAIK. Last time it was something about "young gun tapped for greatness" or some nonsense. He's at best an amateurish Daryl Summers hopeful.

As aggressive as the US is, they don't regularly traipse over their own neighbour's borders to attack them.

China on the other hand, Tibet, India, Vietnam, ... and most of their disputes aren't even settled or beyond dispute yet.

Verdict, China can't manage stable borders and do away with further disputes.

Point out a country that the US has hostilities with that isn't destabilizing or in a border dispute?

(Disclaimer, we don't have to like America to point out the obvious.)

The USA has 157 million workers, shuffling 140,000 years of work a day. One in 4 has an idea. One in five of those is a good idea. Two thousand stakeholders can make it an innovative idea. So, they can pump 3.5 years of brute force innovation into the world every single day. That's well over a thousand years of advancement per year.

Critical mass populations that can keep up with their own development are a serious creative force to be reckoned with. And human evolution has been exceeded by innovation, dramatically.

Thanks, I hate it. It lacks safety features for tough days where mental processes are not your friend.

Facebook is reported to be using a shadow profile of non-facebook users. Mastodon stated that whenever you interact with a Threads user it will be recorded by Facebook. All they have to do is join a conversation as a lurker, and your data is sent to Facebook. Given a few more points such as time of day and topic they can start to narrow downwho you are. Add your profile picture, and manner of speech an AI, which they have a multitude of, can generate a probability of who is communicating. Over numerous interactions the law of six degrees of separation will have you nailed down. In some countries this is potentially a problem over data retention, but they'll have lawyers looking night and day for a way around those trifling laws. Willingness to federate might be seen as consent by default in some cases.

I've lived in a communist country before. It's not really an issue for me.

Fool me once. I ran away from anything redhat when they clamped out on my free OpenShift with whatever they are doing now. Too brutal for me.

~~This is the way~~

At first I thought this is an overly pretentious post, but while writing a response I thought about some of the most upvoted yet heinously circlejerky comment threads I've had to wade through to get to a rational or different comment. Good point OP'Lem!