What seems to be lost on most, is that money has been coming “out of thin air” for close to a century already. The problem is that every time less money gets destroyed than created, it dilutes the worth of the total… and people who still think in terms of gold nuggets, are completely unprepared to propose anything that would make sense.

Gen Beta might have more of a grasp on things.

That’s going to be a “he said, she said” case. Chances are, since she was an activist in the US, that she might’ve been labeled as an “instigator” in whatever ID database they are using.

Not really an option, when the data is being used for billing purposes (which phone, used what services, and when).

The US has no laws forcing data retention like the EU, but it would take something like anonymous micro transactions in order to have a working billing system, without collecting the data (and it being available to law enforcement).

• 1 coin = $0.012
• 2 coins = 1 Diamond
• 1 Diamond = $0.005

For every $0.024 that TikTok gets, they pay out $0.005, meaning TikTok keeps 80% of it.

With TikTok just skimming 80% off the top of all prize money… 🙄

What I’m wondering is, how is a Russia-controlled domain still working, if it’s been banned by Russia?

How is this on a .ru domain?

$2000/year per person, would be $167/year per person. It’s not $0, but sounds like a reasonable amount for anyone except the most marginalized groups

Medical procedures are indeed a problem, but my understanding is their price is artificially inflated due to intermediaries, so taking a harder approach to that, would partially solve the issue, and pave the way for further regulation.

M4A should be the goal, something most 1st World countries have already, but I also understand it would mean upending a lot of industries and their interrelationship in the US, so a step-by-step approach seems like a wise one.

Moral of the story:

1. Don’t travel to Russia
2. If you have to travel to the US, Russia, China, or any of a number of other countries that will happily invade your privacy at the border, leave your phone behind and carry a burner phone

It sounds to me like limiting spending, and reigning in those predatory intermediaries, would reduce that medical debt in the first place. Or am I missing something?

In January this year, a delivery rider in the eastern city of Qingdao was stabbed to death by a security guard for entering a building without authorisation.

WTF…

Air dominance means being able to fly anywhere anytime, without having to worry too much about the enemy. In post-WW2 wars, it meant ground troops didn’t need to worry about random bombs falling on them from the sky.

Right now, neither Russia or Ukraine have achieved that… which is kind of crazy; at the beginning of the “special operation”, everyone assumed that Russia would control the skies from day 1. And yet, Ukrainian jets and drones keep flying around, slowing Russia’s progress on the front to a crawl.

We will indeed see how things evolve, but Russia faces a problem now: if they pull troops from the front, which they’re barely holding, it can mean the difference between crawling forward, and crawling backwards.

HIMARS is a launch platform, its range depends on which rockets it launches.

ATACMS is a missile that can be launched from HIMARS, it has a way longer range, the difference between a rocket and a missile is that a missile can maneuver freely, and the ATACMS can also carry a nuclear payload.

I know about the eternal warning stuff. In this case I think it’s more about plausible deniability: it’s harder to accuse Ukraine of initiating a nuclear war, if they don’t even use nuclear-capable missiles against Russian territory. I wouldn’t be surprised if Putin was ready to nuke some small city of his own, just to have an excuse to launch some tactical nukes against Ukraine.

Russia hasn’t been able to establish air dominance for 4 years, they advance at a snails pace, fighting for every 100m of land against swarms of drones decimating their troops, while Ukraine has been conceding each 100m of land by losing drones with as few people as possible.

Now Ukraine has invaded Russia, taken over a GazProm control station, and gained control of a rail line that Russia used to supply its troops on the front. For how long will they be able to advance those 100m by 100m, without supplies?

Ukraine now also has some F16s they can use to tip the scales in air dominance.

A month or so ago, Ukraine announced plans to produce at least one million drones by end of year. That’s a thousand drones for each Km of the Russian front, or one drone per meter, organized in swarms and waves with “mothership” control drones. It’s a strategy with no historical precedent, that Russia has no clue how to respond to… or at least has been highly ineffective in responding to.

Peace talks right now are being proposed by Russia, which usually means they’re in a weaker position and they know it. They’re running out of money, to the point that they want to crack down on the rampant corruption that held the whole system together. If they really do, then all bets are off on which general will be the first one to propose sticking Putin’s head on a spike.

Suggestion: don’t use your family when discussing politics.

There are also, as they say, five levels of “truth” to any person:

• Public: the persona they project outwards
• Private: what they say when “no one is listening”
• Intimate: what they only let their closest family know
• Secret: what they don’t tell anyone
• Subjacent: what they don’t even realize about themselves

You may or may not know their secret thoughts, and you usually need to spend a lot of time with them (years, decades) to learn about why they hold them.

And following my initial suggestion, I won’t tell you how I confirmed this to be true.

Russia already has a huge manpower advantage

Manpower is not as important as training, which is not as important as technology and strategy.

Russia is already on its “4th army”: best trained forces are gone, reservists are gone, prisoners and noob recruits are gone… they’re now fighting with skeleton crews and mercenaries.

Ukraine on the other hand, has spent the time building up expertise in state of the art drone warfare strategies… which are completely novel and haven’t had a chance to get history books written about how to beat them.

It isn’t as simple as “manpower”.

The one thing that Russia has, and hasn’t used yet, is nukes… but that would open a full box of nasties.

Why? Simple: Western countries don’t feel like getting pulled into exchanging nukes with Russia. Yet.

Analysts can only work on existing data. A key to winning a war, is to keep your data secret, whether it be number of units, positioning, strategies, etc.

Maybe, just maybe, the real analysts and strategists, don’t go blabbering all they know to the media.

Well, technically… an aircraft “goes down” to touch land, otherwise it would be a submarine… 🥁🛎️

Some religions to this day decree when a female is “unclean” and should be isolated. The problem are people with that mentality.

The same “yuck” factor lies at the root of not thinking rationally about tampons, abortions, childbirth, lactation, etc. Controlling a population’s approach to inherent bodily functions, has been an effective way of brainwashing for ages. Stuff like vote of celibacy, vote of silence, vote of reclusion, fasting, and similar. Convincing people to sacrifice for a doctrine, gets them invested and pulls them into a sunken cost fallacy.

I’d call it Evil… but that is going onto their territory, so laughing it off with Weird, is probably a better strategy.