There are many places with abundant resources. So to me the true questions is would America be as great if we had some other form of government? To me It all stems from our Constitution which lends itself to to capitalism. Each is free to do as they see fit to earn or profit. Would America be as great under Socialism? Fascism? Communism? Granted our government is corrupt but then again find a government system that isnt.

Exactly…if the militias were to be “well regulated”, it’s insanity to believe individuals aren’t.
Since there are no “well regulated militias”, the second amendment is meaningless, outdated, and moot. It needs rewriting with universal regulations enshrined in the body, codified in the constitution, to shut the ignorami up once and for all.
I also note, no where does it say citizens can OWN arms…only keep and bear them. My interpretation is that only well regulated militias may own arms, which they may lend to their members to keep and bear…under strict regulations. The founding fathers knew well the difference between ownership and possession and wrote it that way on purpose.

My intuition says this could never work, but Brian McManus lends a hell of a lot of credibility to it in my book.

If it does work out, then hopefully lots of cheap small payloads in similar orbits won't cause too much space debris.

A dollar has value if you can buy shit for a dollar.

Gold likewise has no exchange value if you cant exchange it for goods and services. Its rare and chemically stable and good for memorial coins, has many technical uses and looks cute, but otherwise it hardly matters what symbol for money you choose. There is 200 years of experience with fiat money and gold and silver standards and fiat money has been better, not just usually better or better in some scenario, universally better.

Symbolic money is practical and facilitates quicker turn around prevents deflation makes speculative runs on currency harder and smoothes the economic bumps in the road in general.

GDP is just a metric. Not a bad one but not the actual goal.

USofA is teh most developed. Should have used growing. Deflation in an economy that is growing kills growth.

Restarting countries not only get to ignore their debts, they immediatelly start borrowing again.

The only countries that dont borrow are countries no-one will lend to and countries so rich in some silly resource they can float high in the international currency system without borrowing. Borrowing is good for bussiness.

What is outrageous idiotic bullshit? Believing pegging the value of your paper note to some hoarded luxury makes it a better representation of the mean value of goods and services bought and sold? I could do without gold except for the jacks on my audio cables (just kidding). It does not matter what I exchange for food and gas, if it gets me food and gas, its good money.

Money is what you can pay taxes with. Do they take gold?

If you insist your dollar has the value of some weight of gold how does that influence the willingness of someone else to sell you shit? Unless they specifically intend to buy gold at a fixed price they dont care. They are going to use your dolar to buy some other shit from someone else. So if you take the actual currency out of the equation, when you decide on buying and selling shit you are intuitively comparing that decision with all the other decisions about buying and sellin that you know of. The currency is just a good way to count the measure of usefullness of a product or service and compare among many. Pebbles, bottletops, dollars, gold, pearls, all just a number.

A dollar could be backed by gold or it could not, this has zero impact on the transactions made. What matters is how many transactions are made, at what value, and how much money is available to the entire marketplace in a given period of time. Transactions quickly pass the ability of a gold standard to keep up. If you want a gold standard you have to slow transactions down because you dont have the money for them.

This is why markets need some regulation, otherwise someone might sell the universe twice and then default on one. But a gold standard, at least the type of gold standard I believe was talked about in this thread as a miracle cure, would be too limiting.

? how so ?

For the people who hate him and anything and everything he does maybe. As for me...

-------------------
-------------------

The bitch the former admin had in charge of the Department of Education tried to fuck me and everyone else who upheld their end of a 10 year contract to teach in inner city schools, with Joe Biden and im proud to say my own state rep

PASSED THROUGH BOTH HOUSES
SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT
NOW IT'S LAW
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/s848
Thanks to passing this, now the republican's aren't going to reneg on a 10 year agreement and turn that shit basically into a huge extra debt for me. That's good. Not to mention the recent ruling with predatory lending practices through NAVIENT. I been making double/triple payments on a student loan through them and still not cracked the principle balance for some reason. (the reason is, what they were doing is criminal) (thanks biden!)


PASSED THROUGH BOTH HOUSES
SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT
NOW IT'S LAW
My brother became addicted to opioids after a tendon replacement in his heel. Almost OD'd- Biden signed / passed a bill to combat that https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/hr4981

Thanks Biden!!!


>PASSED THROUGH BOTH HOUSES
SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT
NOW IT'S LAW
My daughter's rare neurodegenerative disease received funding to continue to study to treat and help prevent it in the future. That's good. https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/hr3537/text

Thanks Biden!!!


>PASSED THROUGH BOTH HOUSES
SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT
NOW IT'S LAW
The American Rescue Plan https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/hr1319

Thanks Biden!!!


>PASSED THROUGH BOTH HOUSES
SIGNED BY THE PRESIDENT
NOW IT'S LAW
The Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act
https://www.govtrack.us/congress/bills/117/hr3684

Thanks Biden!!!




Maybe not a good year if all your friends and fam are dying because they wear red hats instead of masks like fucking dumbasses.

Then we’re back full circle to I'm curious why you think enforcement of existing usury laws (without special rules for those who bribe enough) is the same as new building codes. Removing the special rules for predatory lending companies simplifies the law, it doesn’t complicate it like new, often contradictory building codes (that seem to be being used as an excuse for slow work by his contractor).
I feel like you’re comparing apples to brisket.

I think that's at the discretion of the judge, if you asked for 15%, likely you'll get your principal back, if you asked for 1500%, chances are you won't get a dime back as punishment, and may end up owing the borrower if you went overboard trying to collect.

I live in California, building codes change constantly. I agree, it is maddening and often backwards. He was specifically talking about codes for building stand alone solar, which are newer building codes. Even old building codes are often poorly thought out and contradictory. I'm not saying there isn't an abundance of red tape here, especially for building.
That said, his contractor should have been aware of all codes, submitted his plan, and would have approval or notes on what to change in weeks tops. There's something wrong when it takes over a year to get a shed built, some reason his plans weren't approved like they weren't to code.
Citation : personal experience - I installed solar in California, it took 3 days for my permit approval....and only that long because my contractor was being lazy.

That's the thing I disagree with, no new laws are needed at all, just a removal of exemptions/deregulations for businesses that pay large enough bribes (contributions) to elected officials. Even making all credit businesses operate on the same rules, allowing them 30% interest, seems ok, but that isn't reality today. It's unconscionable to allow 1600% interest on loans peddled to desperate people that don't actually qualify for a real, legitimate line of credit, many of whom don't understand it's what they're agreeing to, but the payday loan lobby is well funded and connected.
Citation:
Although U.S. states set their own maximum legal interest rates, a Supreme Court interpretation of the National Bank Act of 1864 preempted state usury laws and created a path toward a national consumer lending economy. The most important federal case in credit card interest rate deregulation was decided in 1978.

Her problems were multifold. The predatory loan took a fixable issue, her terrible customer service, and compounded it with insurmountable and ever expanding debt, which in turn undoubtedly hurt her customer service more, thus increasing her debt..... It sounds like she never should have purchased a service oriented business, and likely overextended herself from day one just to do it.

I'm unsure of your point in the last paragraph.

I think you mean they wouldn't have to pay you the interest. They would have to pay you back the principal. And that would be under specific cases and usually when no contract is involved, also all depends on where you live.

Also, I don't think either Bill's building codes are "new" vs. the usury laws being "existing". Please cite to support.

The irony is that additional laws to stop predatory lending are, in fact, what red tape is made of, by definition. So I found it amusing that he would look at her situation, say that Nancy and team were trying to solve it for her by passing new laws, then go on to complain about all the red tape surrounding this building. That red tape exists because someone else before him saw a problem or safety issue or concern, and put yet another policy or law in place to solve it. In reality, as your posts prove, her problem was not that a predatory lender got involved in her life, but that her business was in bad shape because she had gone off the deep end and was thus losing customers.

I could easily imagine a bit where he showed a stack of papers four inches thick that he had to sign to get a loan, and complain about the processing time, then showcase an SMS based loan that works in another country and funds in one day.

I've said it before, but it bears repeating. Trump didn't care that everyone assumed he was hiding his taxes because he was committing tax fraud. That means the truth is worse.

What's worse than a felony in Trump's world?

People realizing he's bankrupt.

Why does Russia have such a hold over him?

Well, we know he's borrowed huge sums from Russian oligarchs, we don't know how much, because he won't open up his finances, but it's a pretty safe bet those loans are all that's keeping him afloat.

Everything that he's done only lends proof to the hypothesis. He bends over backwards for Russia or any tin pot dictator who can do him a 'favour' and he uses every bit of power he can muster to throw business toward his failing empire.

Trump was never a good businessman. His father cheated the tax code to gift him New York real-estate that would be worth 12 Billion today if Trump had simply held on and maintained the properties. Decades of wheeling and dealing later, he himself claimed he was worth about 2 Billion, and most realistic estimates placed his wealth well below a Billion. And that's in spite of his fraud, chicanery, stiffing contractors and investors, and general malfeasance.

He's always been an idiot. He's been blacklisted for decades by every American bank. They won't touch him, they won't look at his business plans and they won't even think of giving him any kind of loan.

How any American can look at him and think he has the slightest clue what he's doing, or think he actually cares about anyone other than himself is beyond me.

There are some portions of the GND that could work, how well I don't know, but they could in theory. My biggest issue with it, beyond the more ludicrous parts, is that it doesn't allow for reality.

It is very much like the Soviet 5 year plans in that there are a series of grand ideas but when they fail they would just rehash and move on to the next set of ideas. It's kind of like Trump's promises about the border wall.

Any logical person knew that Mexico was never going to pay for it and that it would probably never be built, but there are a fuckton of illogical people out there and logical people are as vulnerable to mob peer pressure as anyone else. He might even win a repeat term because there is still a huge rift between the more logical conservative Dems and the pie in the sky ultra progressives. Hell, in the confusion its even been mentioned on CNN that Hillary might toss her hat in again or try to lend weight to a conservative Dem nominee so as to 'trump' the progressives.

Your idea sounds fair, but I could only see something like that working in a country like China, where the 'incentives' are that you don't get stood against the wall.

The Zero's Chinese performance was ignored by the U.S. command prior to pearl harbor, dismissed as exaggeration. That's actually the crux of my point.

Exceptional moments do not change the rule.
Yes on occasion a wildcat would get swiss cheesed and not go down, but 99% of the time when swiss cheesed they went down.
Yes, there were wildcat aces that did fairly well (and Zero aces that did even better), but 99% of wildcat pilots were just trying to not get mauled.

Hellcat didn't enter combat till mid 1943, and it is the correction to the mistake. The F6F should have been the front line fighter at the start of the war... and could have been made sooner had Japanese tech not been ignored/dismissed as exaggeration.


Russian quantity as quality? At the start they were shot down at a higher ratio than the manufacturing counter ratio (by a lot). It was a white wash in favor of the Germans.
It took improvements in Russian tech to turn the tide in the air. Lend-lease only constituted about 10% of their air force at the peak. Russia had to improve their own forces, so they did. By the end, planes like the yak3 were par with the best.


The Mig31 is a slower Mig25 with a digital radar. Their version of the F14, not really ahead of the times, par maybe.

F15 is faster than either mig29 or Su27 (roughly Mig31 speed).
F16/F18, at altitude, are moderately slower, but a wash at sea level.

Why would they shoot and run?
We have awacs, we would know they are coming, so the only chance to shoot would be at max range. Max range shots are throw-away shots, they basically won't hit unless the target is unaware, which it won't be unaware because of the RWR. Just a slight turn and the missile can't follow after tens of miles of coasting and losing energy.


Chinese railgun is in sea trials, right now. Not some lab test. It wouldn't be on a ship without first having the gun proven, the mount proven, the fire control proven, stationary testing completed, etc.
2025 is the estimate for fleet wide usage.
Try finding a picture of a U.S. railgun aboard a U.S. ship.


Why would a laser rifle not work, when you can buy crap like this : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7baI2Nyi5rI
There's ones made in China, too : https://www.sanwulasers.com/customurl.aspx?type=Product&key=7wblue&shop=
That will light paper on fire ~instantly, and it's just a pitiful hand held laser pointer.
An actual weapon would be orders of magnitude stronger than a handheld toy.
It's an excellent covert operations weapon, silently blinding and starting fires form kilometers away.


Russia does not need to sink a U.S. carrier for no reason.
And the U.S. has no interest in giving Russia proper a need to defend from a U.S. carrier. For the very reasons you mentioned.


What Russia can do is proliferate such a missile, and effectively deprecate the U.S. carrier group as a military unit.

We need carriers to get our air force to wherever we need it to be.
If everyone had these missiles, we would have no way to deliver our air force by naval means.

Russia has land access to Europe, Asia, Africa. They can send planes to anywhere they need to go, from land bases. Russia doesn't /need/ a navy.

Most of the planet does not have a navy worth sinking. It's just us. This is the kind of weapon that disproportionately affects us.

-scheherazade

Maybe @dag can lend a hand

You really don't know the history of your own religion, do you?

"Hey, Protestants, convert or die!" says the French Catholic.
"Hey, Catholics, convert or die!" says the Austrian Protestant.
"Hey, Jews, convert or die! Uh, but lend us money first -- we need to kill those false Christians over there!" says both the French Catholic and the Austrian Protestant.

You know Christians waged wars on each other over whether the Bible should be in common vernacular or not, right?

Also, you have no fucking clue about Islam. Learn about them? I've gone to a mosque (Sunni); I've watched them pray; I've talked to an Imam. Which of any of the above three have YOU done, O Scholar of Islam?

I thought this lends itself to a spring loaded spiral shaft automatic transmission, where the more torque applied, the more it compresses the spring towards the front crank, lowering the gear you're in. This could be adjustable, allowing a rider to select how hard they want to pedal and automatically adjusting the gears to keep that force stable at any speed.
A second gear in the rear, rotating in the opposite direction and sandwiching the drive gear, would go a long way towards stopping slippage and gear wear. They certainly need to ditch the aluminum gears, though.
Just what sprang to mind when I saw it.

There is a generally held belief that consciousness is a mystery of science or a miracle of faith; that consciousness was attained instantly (or granted by god), and that one has either attained self awareness or has not.

I don't believe any of that. I believe like all things in biology, consciousness evolved to maximise a benefit, and occurred gradually, without any magic or mystery. The closest exurb1a gets to that is when he says at 6:28:

"Maybe evolution accidentally made some higher mammals on Earth self-aware because it's better for problem solving or something"

We need to know what other people are thinking and this is the problem that consciousness solves. If a neighbouring tribe enters your territory then predicting whether they come to trade, mate, steal or attack is beneficial to survival.

Initially this may be done through simulation - imagining the future based on past experience. A flood approaching your cave is bad news. Being surrounded by lions is not good. Surrounding a lone bison is dinner. Being charged by a screaming tribe is an upcoming fight.

We could only simulate another person's actions, but we had no experience that allows us to simulate another person's thoughts. You may predict that giving your hungry neighbour a meal may suppress their urge to raid your supplies but you still can't simply open their head and see what they are thinking.

Then for the benefit of cooperation and coordination, we started to talk, and everything changed.

Communication not only allows us to speak our mind, but allows us to model the minds of others. We can gain an understanding of another person's motivations long before they act upon them. The need to simulate another person's thoughts becomes more nuanced and complex. Do they want to trade, or do they want to cheat?

Yet still we cannot look into the minds of others and verify our models of them. If we had access to an actual working brain we could gradually strengthen that model with reference to how an actual brain works, and we happen to have access to such a brain, our own!

If we monitored ourselves then we could validate a general model of thought against real urges, real experiences, real problem solving and real motivations. Once we apply our own selves to a model of thought we become much better at modelling the thoughts of others.

And what better way to render that model than with speech itself? To use all of our existing cognitive skills and simply simulate others sharing their thoughts with us.

At 3:15 exurb1a referenced a famous experiment that showed that we make decisions before we become aware of them. This lends evidence to suppose that our consciousness is not the driver of our thoughts, but a monitor - an interpretation of our subconscious that feeds our model of how people think.

Not everybody is the same. We all have different temperaments. Some of us are less predictable than others, and we tend to avoid such people. Some are more amenable to co-operation, others are stubborn. To understand the temperament of one we must compare them to another. If we are to compare the model of another's mind to our own, and we simulate their mind as speech, then we must also simulate our own mind as speech. Then not only are we conscious, we are self-aware.

Add in a feedback loop of social norms, etiquette, acceptable behaviour, expected behaviour, cooperation and co-dependence, game theory and sustainable societies and this conscious model eventually becomes a lot more nuanced than it first started - allowing for abstract concepts such as empathy, shame, guilt, remorse, resentment, contempt, kinship, friendship, nurture, pride, and love.

Consciousness is magical, but not magic.