@Axtremus said in The gift for the one who has everything: https://www.burntimpressions.com/ https://www.hammacher.com/product/selfie-toaster?srsltid=AfmBOorJuxHtgeZlSjA4iDRwgoJwAus8TupZV0LwUBXLuRMbZJe_JgPq Disappointed that I cannot find anything like this on Amazon, and the reviews on the Hammacher site are many years old. Leads me to believe that the product is not actually available today. I think Ax wanted one real bad.

Let’s say it really is a “one way street,” and will remain so for another 5 to 10 years. Is that really a problem? They produce stuff that we don’t want to produce ourselves, they give us stuff, we give them papers or numbers that end up in a bunch of electronic ledgers. Is that really a problem for us? Another bone to pick — it seems the article talks only about trade imbalances concerning goods, and overlooked services.

FFS

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I do not approve of coddling those who disrupt the comings and goings of law abiding citizens.

@Tom-K said in USAid: @89th said in USAid: JFK knew... USAID was first a defense strategy, and second a humanitarian effort. Either way this is F***ed up. Why can't indigenous people in a region they have been living for thousands of years sustain themselves without the aid of Multi National relief agencies? Africa is the most handout receiving continent of the world. Not really. Throughout the Cold War the USSR was aggressively pursuing targets of opportunity for influence throughout the Third World and southern hemisphere. The Marshall Plan had successfully checked Soviet expansion in Europe. Communist success in China and North Korea had attained immediate political objectives in Asia. That left African and South America ripe for Soviet mischief making. USAID and similar foreign aid and technical assistance agencies in other Western states were essentially capacity building programs to contain global Soviet influence. Sort of a collective Marshall Plan Phase II.

The questions about precedent are interesting. But then again, the question of whether this was a "show me the man and I'll find you a crime" have long been answered to any reasonable person's satisfaction.

Interesting - let us know how the sound quality compares to streaming, not by the spec but when you actually hear it, I'd consider getting one of those to connect to my receiver instead of a CD player

I agree the Service’s bios of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin are very good - perhaps the best single volume English language bios of Lenin and Trotsky available. I also highly recommend Orlando Figes’ A People’s Tragedy for a good read on the 30 year period leading up to the Bolshevik coup in October 1917. I have heard but not read, that Antony Beevor’s recently published survey of the Russian Revolution is also very good. Beevor, like Figes, is immensely readable and always well researched and organised.

@89th said in A major motion picture announcement…: (he voluntarily left hollywood to be a dad) I remember they called him crazy when he quit his job to have as much unprotected sex with as many women as possible. But who's crazy now.

I saw them twice. Once with my wife and once with a girlfriend before I met my wife and I've been married a looooog time.

It would be a good start.

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Link to video

Well, depends on what scriptures you read, the god(s) may also have Paleolithic emotions, medieval institutions, and godlike powers.

@jon-nyc said in News sites getting crushed by AI tools: @Axtremus said in News sites getting crushed by AI tools: Look forward to the day AI mostly trains on content generated by AI. Hallucinations all the way down. Spot on. Followed by descent into artificial madness.

@Horace said in Jesus Fucking Christ: I wasn't aware that Russia now owned that age-old bit of anti-war rhetoric that's been around since I was a kid. It was grandfathered to the Russian Federation when the USSR was dissolved. It was always a Soviet anti nuclear propaganda piece going back to the “Ban the Bomb” movement among Western leftist groups immediately following WWII. Reached its peak during Reagan’s first term prior to the perestroika reforms under Gorbachev.