A sort of justice served… In a funny and positive way.

The responses to Ocasio-Cortez from split-ticket voters included:

• “It’s real simple… Trump and you care for the working class”
• “Trump is going to get us the money and lets men have a voice. You’re brilliant and have amazing passion!”
• “I feel like Trump and you are both real.”
• “I know people that did this and it was bc of Gaza.”
• “You are focused on the real issues people care about. Similar to Trump populism in some ways.”
• “Because of Gaza”
• “I voted Trump and dems because he reached out to Muslims”

Anyone know how much of the oil transported is actually used for plastic, percentage wise?

The BEP can still accept them, but I’m curious if BofA is actually doing this and if it’ll stand up. More FAQ’s can be read here

What is considered mutilated currency?

Mutilated currency is currency which has been damaged – to the extent that: (1) one-half or less of the original note remains; or (2) its condition is such that its value is questionable.  Currency notes can become mutilated in any number of ways.  The most common causes are fire, water, chemicals, and explosives; animal, insect, or rodent damage; and petrification or deterioration by burying.

What is not considered mutilated currency?

Unfit currency for redemption is currency which is unfit for further circulation because of its physical condition such as dirty, defaced, limp, torn, or worn.  Unfit currency should not be forwarded to Bureau of Engraving and Printing for redemption, but may be exchanged at commercial financial institutions.

I’d be curious if that’s a confirmed kill or just knocked out of action. Looks like a solid hit, but I’m not sure if it nailed anything crucial. Makes me wonder about the switchblade 600 , as that did not look like the Javelin like explosion which I would expect from an anti-armor warhead, but maybe I was just expecting a secondary. I looked at some previous Javelin hit, and they were mixed in the armors explosions.

Not yet… Just waiting

This is great organizational recommendations.

Just as a note, the US average power generation also from the EIA is about 477 GW of power so this 20.7 is about 4% of that.

And yes the Units are ridiculous. kilowatts to megawatts to gigawatts in plus million billions and trillion. Blah. Stop switching.

Good fill-in on that. i think I’d add some context to each which is worth discussing.

• Political instability and weak governance are present.

  • No, there are some arguably elements, but when you compare to the issues you see in the countries who’ve had them “No” is good a simple distilled answer.

• There are deep ethnic, religious, or sectarian tensions.

  • Yes, with the caveat that we are seeing low level tensions as compared to the direct violent and organic engage issues you might see in Syria, Haiti, Yugoslavia, etc. There is racism with violence and tension, but not at the widespread near genocidal level which are the signs which is considered. I admit this is arguably, but worth discussing as it’s a framing issue about gun violence, police use of force, structural violence, etc.

• The economy is declining with high inequality.

  • Economy: not declining - Inequality: high, this in particular is going to be a hard sign to trip, given how widespread the middle class is in the US vs other examples. It’s just a much much larger base that needs to get squeezed so much more before you’ll likely see French like protests about the wage disparity, corruption, or other inequality challenges. It’s very relevant, but just unlikely to get a significant population to say it’s not fair enough to act on it… When they can still go out to eat, watch movies, have disposable income, and more.

• Persistent social unrest and widespread protests occur.

  • Might happen if Trump loses or steals the presidency, this I’m just going to avoid given the continuing discussion.

• External powers are interfering or supporting different factions.

  • Yes, big time, substantiated from a foreign power stand point. I’d point out that this should also describe multinational companies as much as foreign powers.

• There is significant resource scarcity and competition.

  • Not yet, but global warming might make this happen, agree. Starting to see some changes due to some globalization, pandemic, and your point of climate change.

• Militarization and proliferation of arms increase.

  • Well, it’s the USA, agreed… But we are not seeing this based on strictly ethic lines in a way.

• Systematic human rights violations and repression take place.

  • Might happen under Trump

• Society experiences strong ideological polarization.

  • Yes, I’d caveat this with the reality that although it’s perceived as half the country that is polling well for Trump, it’s closer to a third or less. Not that the ideology divide isn’t pertinent, but just that there are about 80 million people who don’t vote in the US, so voter participation in presidential election is about 60%. So perception is that we have huge divide, but it’s driven by less and more extreme voices then the masses.

• Demographic pressures such as rapid population growth or urbanization exist.

  • No, I would actually argue this might be yes. The housing crunch is driven by a rural to urban migration, which has exacerbated the housing shortage. This in addition to the US being an outlier that has kept it’s population growth rate higher than other developed countries has continued to increase the US population, which is only recently beginning to slow. This is not at the same level as other collapsed countries, but is what gives people the perception that the US is struggling.

• The rule of law and justice systems are breaking down.

  • No, agreed although the judge choices and decisions of late leave much to be desired.

• Historical grievances and unresolved conflicts resurface.

  • No, agreed with the caveat that racial tension are at play and perceptions focus this to include immigrants.

So I talked to a PhD who’s work covered civil wars across the world, and asked about this. Turns out there are several signs you need to see which makes a civil war more likely. Most of which we haven’t even gotten close to, because many of them are economic related and right now the US is still the single largest economy in the world where peoples standard of living is still very comfortable.

I asked ChatGPT to describe this and these are the highlights, in order of historical priority?

• Political instability and weak governance are present.
• There are deep ethnic, religious, or sectarian tensions.
• The economy is declining with high inequality.
• Persistent social unrest and widespread protests occur.
• External powers are interfering or supporting different factions.
• There is significant resource scarcity and competition.
• Militarization and proliferation of arms increase.
• Systematic human rights violations and repression take place.
• Society experiences strong ideological polarization.
• Demographic pressures such as rapid population growth or urbanization exist.
• The rule of law and justice systems are breaking down.
• Historical grievances and unresolved conflicts resurface.

Note that the US does have some of these, but not to the evident level that you saw in Rwanda, Sudan, Yugoslavia, Syria, Burundi, Eritrea, Somalia, Libya, Myanmar, Haiti, and others. In short, if you look at the indicators, although the US is indeed troubled, it’s not troubled enough for people to hot the streets with more than riotous intent.

For anyone who wants to support their efforts, they have an active paypal..

The order

In Ukrainian.

We need a video of this, it’s very meme-able.

Valid historical point, but I am skeptical that Russia of today and and Japan of 1940’s is a close analogy.

Infrastructure, stockpiling, allies, and manufacturing capacity difference mean Russia has a long while yet before we see a total breakdown of air control over the home territory. I won’t say they have air superiority as they seem to be inept at letting some drones through, but it goes to the very different context that Japan had with the US vs Ukraine and it’s limited war vs Russia.

Also the CovertCabal makes clear points backing up the description of not knowing how many rocket artillery are in the field, while acknowledging the various MacGyvered solution they can potentially use.

This whole DPRK troop movement could change many things. Ukraine has done incredible well, but it’s still incredibly over matched if you consider population, economy, resources, and stockpiles. The only balancing factor has been the US & Europe in money and hardware, which has been limited and scaled to the situation which has dragged this out. But war fatigue is setting in and budgets are becoming challenged with election changes. Ukraine may now be able to move militarily with less help, but it still has a huge budget deficit and can barely replace vehicle losses let alone get ahead. Don’t forget about 10 million people fled, so they have a population of about 30 million to Russia, 140ish million. Russia is an order of magnitude larger in GDP. Lots of factors at play, way beyond the morale kills we see and the daily numbers, as heartwarming as they are.

The fat lady has not even stood up to the mic.

**What they’re saying: **Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-Fla.), who represents a Hurricane-prone district in South Florida, replied to one of Greene’s posts writing, “NEW FLASH —> Humans cannot create or control hurricanes.”

• “Anyone who thinks they can, needs to have their head examined,” he added – a biting direct rebuke of a fellow House Republican.

Why yes please examine all of our Congressional heads. Also what da fk have they been ingesting? In the word of AvE, focus you f#k!

True. And that’s worth doing.

The IT guy in me wonders if they are devious enough to start using Ethernet over HDMI for other internet connected devices. ( ͡~ ͜ʖ ͡°)

Great info, we need a list of such TV which are single purposed.

To your last point, I think it still snapshots ever 10 seconds or so and hash what it has and send a it. I was trying to find the other post on this which described it and failed.

I did find this article, which makes a SmartTV look like a surveillance machine, even with the HDMI input used.

Fielding: Smart TVs gather an enormous amount of data about their usage and their immediate environment (including other devices connected to them, such as speakers, consoles and media storage), which is sent back to the manufacturer. Some of this data is used to troubleshoot and improve the device’s software or media services, but much of it is also used to profile the TV’s users—their viewing habits can be used to make inferences about their politics, professional and economic status, gender identity, sexual orientation, religion, ethnic identity, social activity, purchasing potential, values and beliefs, all of which helps advertising networks know who to target with what.

…

Lewis:* *While the concern is apparent, there currently isn’t a concrete example of a TV manufacturer snooping on its users. In 2015, Samsung landed in hot water regarding an unfortunately worded statement on monitoring living room conversations, stumbling into a communications crisis. Samsung acted quickly, cleaning up and re-wording the statement. However, the immediate outcry was a solid indication of fears around public monitoring. Any proven example of Orwellian-esque monitoring would prove catastrophic for the manufacturer involved.

Kelso: A few years ago, according to the FBI, app developers Vizio, LG, and Samsung were caught snooping on viewers. The FTC had to step in and stop them. Also, the CIA and MI5 were able to access information on smart TVs and listen in on private conversations using the camera and microphones on these devices.

Fielding: Surveillance functions and equipment are built in to almost all smart devices and marketed as “features” to make the user’s life easier. Audio recordings generated from the TV listening for its “wake word” are sent back to manufacturers so they can train their speech recognition algorithms. That’s a deliberate design choice, but it can mean that people’s private conversations are revealed to the manufacturer’s employees as a result.

The comments I come to Lemmy for!