Certainly not as cute as a TF2 sentry, but looks more than capable of solving practical problems.

It’ll certainly be a nasty surprise for any invader to have just one of these in a location. And if that doesn’t work? Use more gun!

Then again, at least in C, the mantra is “declaration follows usage”. Surely you don’t write pointer dereferences as * ptr? Most likely not, you most likely write it as *ptr. The idea behind the int *ptr; syntax is basically that when you do *ptr, you get an int.

And with this idea, stuff like function pointers (int (*f)(void)), arrays of pointers (int *a[10]) versus pointers of arrays (int (*a)[10]) etc. start making sense. It’s certainly not the best way to design the syntax, and I’m as much a fan of the Pascal-styled “type follows the identifier” syntax (e.g. let x: number;) as anyone, but the C way does have a rhyme and a reason for the way it is.

Fairly sure that the USA’s main export are various hydrocarbon products like gasoline and crude petroleum alongside LNG. And things such as aeroplane parts and passenger vehicles.

But even for the war and murder, I’m fairly sure that people like pres. Zelenskyy alongside the people of Ukraine are quite happy with the “war and murder” exported to them in the form of HIMARS, Patriot and other American armaments to defend their homes against an aggressor attempting to wipe them out. Not to mention the millions of people here in the rest of Europe, or in Japan, South Korea et cetera that explicitly benefit from partnerships with the US even in the fields of “war and murder”.

But yes, as far as the Israel-Hamas conflict is concerned, I’m not even sure whether Israel even needs the help, much less that it’s morally corrupt to aid in this in such a manner.

Non-cynical answer: better integration with the service due to being a bespoke application. Maybe some perceived security.

Cynical answer: advertisement and spyware.

The best argument against democracy is a five minute conversation with the average voter, as said by someone but who probably wasn’t Winston Churchill. Dunno why it’d be any different within a workplace versus politics. (Of course there’s also the idea that democracy is the worst except for all the others, which… I suppose. It’s certainly better than what the fascists and the tankies come up with although that’s not saying much.)

Also, this has certainly been tried although admittedly not in a holistic manner. The Nordic model is basically this blended with more traditional ownership structures. A mixture of the welfare state providing major services with privately owned enterprises alongside co-ops and “democratised workplaces.” And… it’s fine. Has some nice qualities when compared with contemporary socio-economic structures but the political process can muddy the waters and make things inefficient through perverse incentives. Not that similar perverse incentives don’t exist elsewhere, but y’know…

Well, seems to work at least better than the alternatives that have been tried thus far. And, well, we’re running out of viable alternatives to try…

It’s time to nationalize Starlink & SpaceX.

I really don’t know what that would actually accomplish. How would any government benefit from doing that kind of a move, especially when the reason seems to just be that Elon is a douche, and that doesn’t seem like a valid reason to do such things.

If anything, it might just set a dangerous precedent and in general be against the very same liberal values which are exactly why we’re helping Ukraine against the foreign imperial occupier. Arbitrary nationalisation of the assets of politically inconvenient people is the kind of stuff that an autocratic regime such as the Russian Federation under Vova would do. And that’s the kind of thing it actually does do, defenestration of political rivals is a convenient way to accomplish many goals, after all.