The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
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User ID: 174
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
10hr ago
Wrong soveriegn. SDNY is a Federal court, the 39 felonies were in a New York State court.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
10hr ago
I grew up being taught the ideals of a rules-based world.
Yeah, but what were the rules? The inviolacy of embassies, as practiced by the Iranian Revolutionaries or the US in Belgrade? Respecting of sovereignty, as the USSR practiced in the Baltics, Hungary, Czechoslovokia, and indeed Afghanistan, and the US in Panama (more than once) and Grenada? The right to free and fair elections, as practiced by Maduro or the Chicago Democratic machine?
No, the objections were not about sovereignty, and I find it unlikely anyone had that much "charity".
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
10hr ago
In spite of Trump's pigheadedness, electric cars and renewables are still going to win.
Maybe. But if they were the clear win you're making them out to be, there'd be no need for the subsidies and bans.
Humanity is undergoing an energy transition from turning heat into electricity or movement (fossil fuel electricity generation and petrol cars) to one where we generate and use the energy directly.
That doesn't even make sense. Using energy directly would be something like sailing; we're certainly not doing that with cars. With electric cars and renewables we're capturing solar energy, turning it to electricity, turning it into chemical energy, then back to electricity, and then to movement. Or we're doing the same thing only turning wind to movement, then movement to electricity, then the rest.
Solar power is already the cheapest form of energy globally, followed by wind
As long as you ignore the costs of intermittency.
easier to fill up (you do it at home overnight)
So I have to upgrade my electric service (and the power company upgrade their grid) to provide myself with sufficient charging capacity for 2 cars... and even then it takes hours? I can fill up a gasoline car in minutes. Gas still wins this one. Charging at home is convenient, but the slowness of fill will cause scaling problems. Further, if most people charge at home, charging stations away from home will have less reason to exist, making them far less available than gas stations are today, thus making long-distance travel less practical.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
13hr ago
If the US is fine with Rodriguez why would anyone expect new elections to be free or fair? If she’s amenable to Trump’s demands then he has no interest in making a big deal of another questionable election result.
Because obviously fraudulent elections would make Trump look bad. She may cheat (and probably will) but she'll have to be better at hiding it than Maduro.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
13hr ago
Chile, Argentina (even before Milei; the problem isn't lack of democracy, the problem is Latin Americans tend to like commies), Panama (thanks GHWB), Uruguay, Colombia (hasn't been a narco-state for a long time), Ecuador, Costa Rica, Belize.
These countries aren't particularly wealthy, of course.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14hr ago
The Venezuelan constitution requires new elections within 30 days of the removal of the President, if the National Assembly does indeed remove him (presumably for abandonment even if involuntary). I suppose they could leave Maduro as titular head of state and let Rodriguez run things until her term runs out (in 5 years).
My guess is Rodriguez and the assembly play ball and they get elections at some point in 2026.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14hr ago
I would suggest that people who support this are not anti-war at all. They are anti-losing, anti-spending-lots-of-money-on-prolonged-conflicts, pro-US-can-do-whatever-it-wants, and they clearly do not care about the sovereignty of other countries.
OK, but why would you have thought differently about them? The objection to Afghanistan from those quarters was never that the Taliban had the sovereign right to rule.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14hr ago
The US did invade Cuba, it was just half-assed and the invaders lost.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14hr ago
No one answers it because it's a loaded question. Ukraine was not attempting to join NATO or have US or NATO military bases and missile installations when Russia invaded.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14hr ago
Oil is useful for cars, but electric car sales are going exponential.
In the US, not anymore. Without subsidies (and it seems clear that China is also subsidizing) and without bans (hello Europe), electric cars just aren't so much better than gas cars (if at all) to take over the category.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14hr ago
In the off change Venezuela goes even more to shit, there will be a "you break it you bought it" situation of bad publicity
Good news here is Venezuela doesn't have all that far to fall. It would be worse if fractured into civil war, but it doesn't look like the preconditions were there.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
14hr ago
USA being a massive rich country that refused to crack down on its own people that partook of narcotics freely flowing across the border is what crippled South America (ok fine one of many things). If US could just LOOK decisive occasionally it changes the calculus for any actors that wish to exploit.
The US is no more responsible for South American drug activity than they are for North American drug users.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
“A guy like that is vanishingly rare” Outside of white societies and some East Asians how many successful Democracies are there?
Most of Latin America is successful democracies now.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Lol, Mr. and Mrs. Maduro additionally charged with possession of machine guns and destructive devices. Apparently even foreign heads of state need a US firearms permit.
In a surprise twist, the Maduros claim a 2nd Amendment right to own them. The courts decide that machine guns and destructive devices are indeed covered by the 2nd Amendment, but rule that the Maduros as foreigners in foreign lands cannot claim the protection of the Bill of Rights, and they're convicted. The dicta about machine guns is never considered again in any court except the Fifth Circuit, which SCOTUS overrules per curiam without argument or comment.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
What defines a circuit board with a microcontroller on it as a "flight controller"? The software running on the microcontroller, and the fact that you have the thing hooked up to a radio control receiver and some motor drivers, are what actually makes it a flight controller. If the thing enters the country without software on it, and not hooked up to a radio control receiver or any motor drivers, what makes it a "flight controller"?
You have to call it something when you request your FCC authorization. You also have to have software running to do the necessary tests. Yes, you can lie, but if you're trying to do legitimate business that's not going to work.
Same thing with "ground control station." If I'm flying a hobby racing quadcopter I have a radio control transmitter and a video receiver. If I'm doing something fancier I might have... an ordinary laptop computer hooked up to the radio control transmitter and a telemetry receiver.
An aircraft radio control transmitter is pretty obviously that. Unless you're going to claim it's really for controlling muppets.
Yes, and I expect eliminating the RC aircraft hobby is intentional
I doubt the authority of the FCC to do this for devices operating in the ISM band. If you have an amateur radio license, remote control of vehicles is something that the CFR specifically lists as something your license permits you to do.
The FCC can refuse authorization of anything on the Covered List, and import or use of devices which require FCC authorization and don't have it is forbidden. And of course most of us don't have an amateur radio license; I never had the desire to get an attaboy from an amateur bureaucracy because I could tell a dit from a dah at high speed. (I know, there's no-code licenses now)
I simply cannot see how the government could legally stop me from building and flying a hobby quadrotor.
The FCC can stop you from legally buying the necessary parts; the FAA can prevent you from flying it (legally). They've been adding hoops to be legal to fly for a while now, and the way I read it most people aren't (one of the requirements to meet the recreational exception is that you need to follow the code of some "community based organization", and one of the rules of two of the CBOs is that you have to have a flight line dividing spectators from aircraft, and that implies you have a field you can control). The thing is, it's neither the FCC nor the FAA which wants to do this. The FAA wants to make it very cumbersome, but that's just what the FAA does. But DHS and the DoD want civilian drones to go away or at least be strictly controlled (i.e. in the hands of big, responsible, corporations that they can lean on), so they lean on the FAA and FCC to do things.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
A portion of the right has adopted the Chomskyite "everything that is wrong in the world is somehow due to America's actions", and it doesn't sound any better coming from them than it did from Chomsky.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Speed, brutality, decisiveness - action for the sake of action - are conflated with effectiveness by certain kinds of people, while caution, planning, and introspection are viewed with contempt. Of course, it's hardly a universal perspective. You have plenty of people with pretty much the opposite view.
Hence the term "analysis paralysis".
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
I'm not saying dedicated hobbyists can't make these things. In America, even. Of course they can; any EE can make a Betaflight/Rotorflight flight controller based on the reference designs, and full schematics and layouts for motor controllers are available. Transmitters are harder because of the mechanical elements but I wouldn't be surprised if there are designs available. I'm saying it won't be economical for an actual company to make them for profit, which means the less-dedicated hobbyists (most of them) who just want to fly will be out of luck. Which means a lot less stuff in the air to scare the three-letter-agencies.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
foreign interventions spend political capital and energy which take away from the domestic issues and effect domestic issues.
No they don't. "Political capital" is only expended if there was some sort of deal made here, which there was not; Trump did not make domestic concessions in order to gain support to attack Venezuela, because he didn't need to. The US is a large country and is able to do more than one thing at a time, and indeed pretty much always will do so.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Trump doesn't win elections with only "his supporters." Trump needs to win with his actual voters and his actual voters want him to focus on America at home. This move will make that even worse than it already was.
Those who are 100% concerned with domestic issues aren't going to be upset by this either; it just won't make them happy.
The midterms may indeed be a wipeout. This isn't going to make it one iota worse and might make it slightly better.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
I expect "run the country" will mean we let the interim government run it under US military supervision. Although apparently the VP is now demanding Maduro's return, so maybe she'll get the "#2 man in Al Queda" treatment and someone else will run the interim government.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
Venezuela's oil is ultra-heavy crude that currently (because Communism) requires them to import naphtha just to ship to somewhere it can be refined. The US has no pressing need for it. Assuming there's a stable government out of this rather than a civil war, US oil companies will improve their infrastructure enough (including their own refining capacity, at least enough that they can produce enough naphtha to ship the rest without imports) that they'll be making a lot more money from the oil, which will help the US companies some but the Venezuelans more. The oil is just a cherry on top, not a reason.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
if we can't even preserve some few rags of compassion towards children
You mean girl children, right? Because compassion towards boy children is notably absent, and contempt is its substitute.
The_Nybbler
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. But you're also still a winner.
1d ago
DNS blocks, removing them from Google search results, etc.
Should work as well as anti-piracy controls.
Yeah, that's Communism for you. The joke used to be that if the Communists took over Saudi Arabia, nothing would happen at first but there'd be an oil shortage in 5 years. Venezuela managed to make that not a joke.
(The original version is that if the Federal Government took over the Sahara, there'd be a sand shortage in 5 years. Fortunately the Feds aren't that ambitious)
I expect this is the plan. The US companies may take more than is "fair" in some ideal sense, and certainly more than various international watchdog groups will say is fair, but what remains to the Venezuelans will be more than it is now. Assuming things follow the good path... there's still plenty of room for total screwups.
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