Voroxpete

The article doesn't really address any of the reasons why a war against Venezuela would be a mistake. Instead it functions more as a review of America's history of inflating threats from minor nations to justify wars of regime change. Good summary for anyone who would find such a thing useful, but not really what I was looking for.

I think there actually does need to be more discussion of the strategic landscape of a war with Venezuela, because even on the left it seems like most people are contemplating this purely as a moral hazard - if we do this we're the bad guys - without also assessing the real human costs. The occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan cost thousands of lives, destroyed thousands more, left devastation in their wake and (by no means the most important factor, but still a significant one) ballooned the US national debt by trillions.

Americans balk at the cost of helping Ukraine, but it's pennies on the dollar compared to the cost of the "War on Terror", is doing massive damage to a major adversary, and hasn't cost a single American life. But now you all want to send your boys (I'd say "and girls" but Hegseth won't be having any of that) to die in a jungle against socialists again, because the last time that went so great?

So, they had multiplayer, and it worked very well, but then they went through a whole bunch of major reworks to underlying systems that broke multiplayer, and they basically went "Yeah, that's gonna stay broken for a while until we get all this shit done, please be patient."

This is so perfectly emblematic of right wing thinking. When science is helpful to their daily lives, it's great. When science says things they disagree with, it's bad and wrong and evil. So then they have to somehow promise to get rid of the "bad science" while keeping the "good science", but they can't because they're the same thing.

People capable of accurately assessing climate trends are going to tell you that the world is getting warmer. You don't like that, then you're gonna have to learn to live in a world where you no longer get early warnings about freak weather events (that are somehow becoming more and more common, hmm, wonder why that could be?).

Project Zomboid is a blast, especially when you really dig into the options for changing game rules. You can basically craft your own custom zombie apocalypse. You can decide how the virus works, whether zombies are slow or fast, whether they have good eyesight, good hearing, how strong they are, where they spawn. You can change loot rarities, how long it's been since the outbreak started, when the power gets shut off, etc, etc.

Where on earth did I say any of that? My dude, I am literally describing the nature of the grift.

Exactly this. Guarantee at some point down the line there's a bill or budget passed that allocates a bunch of money to fusion research ("Puuting America on the forefront of vital emerging technologies that will power this great nation throughout the 21st century!") and then this company, surprise, wins a bid to get allocated a big portion of that funding.

Two ways to read this and I think both are somewhat true.

Option one; They're OPEC now. They set the supply, and you bring the demand because you have no other choice. This lets them push prices up, which pushes margins up, and that hopefully props up their insanely inflated share price a little longer.

Option two; They're well aware that demand is going to fall off a cliff soon. We're already at "Nvidia is paying people to buy their GPUs" and have been for a while. The AI industry can't afford to keep this train running, and even financial chicanery and circular dealing will only get them so far. Companies are building out data centres with zero plan for how to make any profit from them. When the GPUs they have age out, they're not gonna buy more, they're gonna go bankrupt (allowing the banks to sieze the mountain of now worthless three year old burned out GPUs that they used as collateral). And there's not enough venture capital left for new data centre builds. The genAI financial engine is reaching its peak, and Nvidia doesn't want to be stuck with a mountain of production that no one wants to buy.

Ecofascist nonsense. Grow up.

Poe's law my dude. You can't go around saying the exact same things, verbatim, that the fascists are saying every day, and expect people to assume you're joking.

Why even have police chases? Just drone strike the car and be done with it. Same solution for everything. Suspected drug dealer? Drone strike their house. Gas station getting robbed? Drone strike it. Gotta be sure any potential suspects are dead. Traffic violation? Drone strike. Speeding? Drone strike. Why even bother having cops? Don't need em. All you need is drone strikes.

Are you... Are you somehow under the impression that the US navy doesn't operate in the Pacific?

Reminder that the US military recently seized an entire oil tanker. They are more than capable of boarding and searching these vessels. But if they did that, they'd actually have to show the drugs, and there aren't any.