Love the Academy's statement: "The Academy does not condone violence of any form", and yet they just did. Here's your trophy, congratulations. Pretty gutless. Can't wait for the first angry dad punching out a ref or umpire at his kid's game, and uses the Will Smith defense... "It was a bad joke so I broke his jaw". What an excellent role model.

We are not hoping Putin will reverse his course, we are hoping (rich elite and military) Russians will decide they would be better offf without war and threatening to destroy the world.

Switching of SWIFT is not a total ban on transactions but is very annoying for russians.

Dependency of Europe on Russian oil and gas is a direct security danger, they do use it to extort (and bribe - see Mr. Schroeder) the west.

China gets paid mostly in dollars, it would be a pain for China to use anything else to buy oil and gas. But nothing is ever certain forever.

Russia will need dollars in any form, even if they have to be black market dolars so they will gladly take Chinese payments in dollars. Also their stock market and currency is... f***ed.

That is the point of discussion, right?

I know a true gold standard is inferior to a well functioning reserve bank issuing paper money and an international exchange standard based on mutual trade agreements.

I am not sure I can explain it well or convince you, but I like you so I try.

Unfortunately the matter seems to be complicated.

The fact that something has, as you put it, "real" value is actually a bad thing, as clipping gold coins is as old as gold coins.

So let us assume gold coins are out and we are going to use some form of symbolic money...

Nope this will not fit in this thread.

The real bob stood up.

You aren’t for assistance for the homeless, you insist you should get the same handout, for the same period of time, despite having no need. You just erased the positive comment above I think someone else made using your account.

You know 1/2 or more would use it up early, then need assistance later.

The “strings” are things like prove you applied to at least one job per day AND do community service until you’re employed. Barriers to getting your shit together and, for many, barriers to applying.

Who gets to determine who qualifies as disabled?

Republicans ARE assholes and you have chronic dependence already in the form of tax breaks (to the point of zero taxes) for their businesses, massive corporate welfare outpacing personal welfare exponentially, use of public services despite not paying for them (roads, ports, police, etc).
If you use ANYTHING the government provides but don’t pay taxes (or minimal taxes equating to 5-10%) you are chronically dependent on government welfare. That describes every Republican business owner I’ve ever known, not one wanted to pay a dime to keep his nation healthy if they could possibly avoid it.

Competition? Seriously what competition is there?

2 things are clear
Clearly your anti Tesla.
Clearly you truly dont know much about the EV market.

Tesla is dominating the EV space.
Tesla has 8 quarters of growth.
Growing roughly 20% per quarter and about 70% YoY
2021 seen 84% growth in car sales.
Demand is a 6 month wait.
Tesla has sold 930K vehicles in 2021.
2022 Fremont and shanghai will make 1.2Mvehicles alone.
Giga TX and Berlin coming on line soon should add 500K vehicles.

Ford / GM do not have the capitol to make EV and ICE.
Layers of management and union demands will keep from a rapid necessary to EV.
Ford / GM have each have over 100 Billion in debt
Factory closing and chip shortages causing more Ford /GM losses
Ford / GM probably go under unless bailed out.
Ford/ Gm lost sales and Tesla grew sales.

Toyota also dragging their feet.
VW is the only company seems to be moving to EV in a substantial manor.


As you say high demand / low supply is some how bad. This is good place to be. Its a supply issue . Tesla is addressing that.

Saying Tesla doesn't pay taxes. false argument. Every company pays their taxes. If you don't like the amount then that's a government tax policy issue.

FSD is still in beta form. It is not a final product. It is pretty fuckign good as is.


Elon being pro corporate anti tax is what you would expect.
Im sure Apple, Facebook, Google are all in this same camp.
Far right? I dont know about that.

Likely do to some form of stress while in captivity. https://www.animalfoodplanet.com/why-do-snakes-eat-themselves/

I know, right.
Just like those poor Republicans peacefully protesting when scary black ANTIFA and BLM attacked them, then attacked congress….and now the poor little Republicans are getting blamed….just like that poor put upon little Jussie. You all should form a support group.
(To be clear, that is not a defense of Smollett in any way)

Side note….Who’s idea was it to violate southpark’s copyright? This is going to be taken off YouTube soon because that’s called theft and Comedy Central doesn’t usually let that slide.

Yes, that is what I meant, as soon as he was approaching with an openly carried gun, wild west rules as I understand them say the moment he attempts to aim at anyone he is open game for anyone who can draw faster.

If you desperately want to live in the wild west that is.

I am totally lost on whether I should be using the sarcasm button on these posts. I am being sarcastic. I believe some form of gun limiting federal law is the only way out of this mess. But then the sarcasm does not make my claim invalid.

I knew an american who came to Prague (turns out he is still here and is still a film producer) who would carry his gun around all the time and randomly pull it out and show it to people at business meetings and in pubs. I thought at the time (early 90s) dude this is SO embarassing. Regular manners in a civilized society since roman times dictate that people do not carry weapons unless danger is imminent. You only carry weapons if you are directly employed to be in dangerous situations, otherwise you are putting yourself and others in danger and appear to be a reckless fool.

So if the USofA consider themselves the wild west to this day, then it is understandable that Kyle was let go, and I say disarm him or shoot him before he shoots you.

Hit him with that skateboard, only harder!

Jesus Fuck! Last year Trump tried to invade Mexico and start a war on the Southern border by sending 250000 troops to the border with instructions to follow cartel smugglers back into Mexico and murder them there. Thank our lucky stars someone realized how illegal and dangerous his plan was and stopped it, or the Southern states would all be Mexico now and America would be a new world pariah.

Can’t wait for the Jan 6 report. Ex presidents don’t have executive privilege, Trump’s actions will come to light, and that will prove you support an anti American traitor who attempted a coup.

It also came to light the extent of some of his tax frauds. Just one instance, one golf course he owned was valued for taxes at $15 million. He insisted that was an outrageous inflation, it was only worth $1.5 million, and he sued repeatedly to get the taxed value lowered. At the same time, 2015 and after, he listed it as an asset when filling out financial disclosure forms to run for president, there he listed the value as well over $50 million (for credit purposes). That’s both tax and bank fraud, and just one of hundreds of felonious frauds he perpetrated for decades. Daddy Trump will likely die in prison.

It's like Monty Python in paper form!

Oh shit! The congressional house oversight and reform committee has found that Trump committed massive bank frauds during his presidency, before, and after.

He hid his massive debts when bidding on the lease for the old post office and getting loans to buy it….preferential loans from foreign banks based on blatantly fraudulent claims about his net worth. That’s bank fraud.
He reported profits of $150 million (publicly he claimed more), but in reality had losses of $75 million. He reported one huge value for his properties on loan applications and another, exponentially smaller, likely sometimes negative value on tax forms. That’s bank and tax fraud.
He took in over $3.7 million from foreign governments for rooms that were rarely if ever occupied. That’s a flagrant violation of the Emoluments clause, Article I, Section 9, Clause 8 of the United States Constitution.

No charges filed by congress yet, but expect all this information and accompanying documentation to make it to the prosecutors in New York who ARE charging him with bank fraud, tax fraud, charity fraud, embezzlement, and who knows what else.

Not a good time to be a Trump.

Just a little PS: In a deposition that took place in August, Rudy Giuliani admitted that the "evidence" he based his voter fraud conspiracy on actually came from posts on Facebook. Believe it or not, this man used to be considered a brilliant legal mind, but now he's been reduced to filing lawsuits based off idiotic conspiracy theories he saw while scrolling through social media.…and you listened to him.
🤦‍♂️

Edit: ruh roe, sounds like there are multiple takes of Trump’s message to the rioters where he praised them but refused to tell them to stop the attack or leave the capitol. Part of the lengthy delay in his statement was because he had to re-record it repeatedly before they finally got him to tell his people to leave. Of course, seeing the takes where he just praised the attacking terrorist mob won’t change your mind, but they will inform future history about when America had a super villain as president.

Creepy.

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'Paradise Lost': How The Apple Became The Forbidden Fruit

This month marks 350 years since John Milton sold his publisher the copyright of Paradise Lost for the sum of five pounds.

His great work dramatizes the oldest story in the Bible, whose principal characters we know only too well: God, Adam, Eve, Satan in the form of a talking snake — and an apple.

Except, of course, that Genesis never names the apple but simply refers to "the fruit." To quote from the King James Bible:

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And the woman said to the serpent, "We may eat the fruit of the trees of the garden; but of the fruit of the tree which is in the midst of the garden, God has said, 'You shall not eat it, nor shall you touch it, lest you die.'"
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"Fruit" is also the word Milton employs in the poem's sonorous opening lines:

Of Mans First Disobedience, and the Fruit

Of that Forbidden Tree, whose mortal taste

Brought Death into the World, and all our woe

https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2017/04/30/526069512/paradise-lost-how-the-apple-became-the-forbidden-fruit

Actually it’s both. The final forms aren’t stable in the real world, they shed particles that are ingested, vapors inhaled, who knows, they are likely absorbed through the skin from many products.

Assume they aren’t actually toxic, functioning as designed they coat digestive systems and, if the report is to be believed, individual cells in extreme cases, leading to things like digestive issues and vaccinations not working. In developing children, it sounds disastrous…and it’s everywhere and in everyone….often in high levels.

This is akin to a crop that’s mildly toxic, not one adjacent to a pre existing separate toxic weed. You can’t plant this crop without permanently contaminating the field, and adjacent fields, and the local water sources, and to lesser extent anyone who uses the crop. There’s no separate toxic weed here, just a toxic crop we keep planting in new places, making the contamination much much more widespread at constantly increasing levels with no way to clean it up and little knowledge of the long term effects of such contamination. Pretty big gamble to take with the entire planet just so your thin rain coat doesn’t leak, don’t you think? Especially with a non biodegradable easily spread but impossible to remove toxic chemical with relatively unknown cumulative effects and no method whatsoever for removing it from people or the environment….like this one.

Howdy - I don't know if "addressed" is the right word. Commented on, but not given sufficient perspective. Having said that, the problem is incredibly complex, so there should be no expectation that Mr. Oliver's video or any other single thesis on the topic could possibly suffice.

Your "one chemical bond difference" is an appropriate consideration, but with recognition that once we reach on the order of C20-C40 length dispersable or emulsifiable molecules as surfactants / surface energy modifiers, the insoluble polymers come into play, with not 30'ish bonds growing one at a time, but leaping to 20,000 or more. No doubt the pool has already been irreversibly pissed into by the irresponsible producers that convert small molecules into very, very large ones, but with some control, responsibility, and integrity in our industrial process owners (yes, hell just froze over) there is no reason why we could not safely continue to produce the polymeric forms of PFAS. We do so for substantially more toxic chemical conversion processes today.

It's interesting to note the (usual) examples brought forward by others in this post (Teflon cookware), just waiting for someone to mention Gore-Tex, but by far the biggest impact won't be on consumer goods that we all touch regularly and recognize the name brands of, but will be on the industrial / commercial uses of these polymeric families that are pervasive in the systems / processes that we all derive benefit from every day. Ironies exist, that perhaps confuse the "all PFAS are bad" premise ... consider - effectively every seal, gasket and control valve in a water purification plant is most commonly made of a PFAS polymeric compound, PTFE included, all tested to rigorous specifications and compliance by specific agencies that do nothing other than deal with potable water (thankfully not the EPA - it's National Sanitation Foundation (the other NSF), or Water Research Advisory Scheme (WRAS) in the UK etc.) .

So my contention and the view of many in the end user community is that it's not the final form of some of these compounds that are bad, it's the horrendous messes we leave producing them. We can't unwind our Clock of Dumb, but killing the entire crop just to get rid of the long ago seeded weeds doesn't solve the actual problem, it makes it much, much larger.

Thanks for your comments.