@Horace said in Make America Globalist Again: I think the main pro-isolationism messaging boils down to empathy for people who would have died of a fentanyl overdose, but were saved by a factory job. As a country, we're really, really prioritizing that story. It's a strange thing to put at the top of the economic priority list. Agreed. I don't think it was the factory job by itself. It was the factory job along with the cultural norm of people able to get married and have a regular life if you were willing to buckle down and do an honest day's work. The culture part of the equation is completely ignored.

@Doctor-Phibes Trump had better, seeing that his policy of tariffs and other assorted threats against Canadian sovereignty have single-handedly stolen the election from the Conservative Party of Canada and all but ensured a Liberal Party majority on Monday evening. @Mik Said no Canadian ever. I wish. Sadly, there are a few out here who have crawled out from under their rocks thinking the Trump path to salvation is the new and immutable gospel. I expect they will follow the lead of their MAGAt brethren and demand obedience from the majority of the country following Monday’s election. The rather inept premier of Alberta plays to their anger and keeps it stoked.

@LuFins-Dad said in Will we have a fee election in 28? Or even 26?: Poll taxes can make a comeback! [image: 1745595489571-c953254c-ed50-439e-bb55-e072bf42c50b-image.png]

I heard that there’s a rumour going around that Hegseth may resign after learning there are Trump tariffs on make up and other grooming products.

Kill me now. [image: 1745527108995-img_4379.png]

The clown show continues. https://x.com/richardhanania/status/1915498370304716851?s=46

@LuFins-Dad said in LMFAO: Just heard a quick news hit about a bus driver strike in Maryland. First thing that hit me as hilarious was the driver they interviewed talking about pouring his blood, sweat, and tears into his job… Hemorrhoids?

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment-arts/business/story/2025-04-23/two-decades-ago-youtube-uploaded-its-first-video-now-its-a-tv-juggernaut The grainy 19-second YouTube video that started it all hardly had the makings of a viral sensation. Shot at the San Diego Zoo, the primitive video clip showed Jawed Karim, the platform’s co-founder, complimenting the elephants in the frame behind him. “The cool thing about these guys is they have really, really, really long trunks,” Karim said. The clip, titled “Me at the zoo,” was the first video uploaded onto YouTube 20 years ago, opening the door to a new medium of television. and When YouTube first started in San Mateo, its founders weren’t thinking they would take on the television industry. They envisioned it as a dating site where people would upload videos and score them. When that didn’t work, the founders decided to open up the platform for all sorts of videos. Users drove traffic to YouTube by sharing videos on MySpace.

@jon-nyc said in These are the most chaotic airports in the U.S.: JFK and Newark aren’t exactly a joy to get to. Right, but there's the bonus that at the end of the drive that you get to leave New York or NJ. Is that second place a real state or is it like a colony of NY? I'm never sure.

Quick math brings that to about $462,000 per kid. I stopped a few things (like grandparent care) after 5 years, and didn't even include whatever prenatal/postnatal care is or citizen fast tracking.

Jocko Willink, now a podcaster and motivational speaker, is a former navy seal team commander whose unit was the most decorated special forces unit of any kind in both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars. He never drinks caffeine at all, except for when they would go out on patrol he’d have two Red Bulls. I can’t imagine what that would do to someone with no caffeine habit.

Yep. Moving it now.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/videos/2025-04-22/unpacking-catl-s-five-minute-ev-charging-video Today, both CATL and BYD claim to have batteries that can charge electric vehicles in as little as five minutes. However, CATL raised the stakes earlier this week in Shanghai when it revealed that the 320-mile range of its new Shenxing battery is around 70 miles longer than BYD’s claimed 250-mile range, and it can charge that range in 5 minutes. By contrast, Tesla's Superchargers are only capable of providing 200 miles of range in around 15 minutes.

https://www.vanityfair.com/style/story/private-jet-plane-crashes Interesting article about the (relative) lack of safety if you fly on private jets. Fancy fliers are creating a huge boom in private-jet travel, no longer the exclusive province of Fortune 500 companies, Donald Trump, or Taylor Swift. Yet for all the allure of flying private, it’s a rather dangerous luxury.

@Axtremus LOL

I always think of @jon-nyc and his statement about trying to sensibly talk with someone who has conspiracies. He can relay it better than I, but basically, every time you give a logical counter argument to one of the conspiracies, the answer is yes, but......... Eventually, you are putting together table of melt points of various ANSI steels. LOL

https://fortune.com/article/pope-francis-vatican-finances-reform/ Even on his deathbed, Pope Francis didn’t pause from pursuing a dogged campaign that distinguished his reign: reforming the Vatican’s infamously troubled finances. On February 27, the pontiff’s 13th day at Rome’s Gemelli Hospital suffering from exhaustion and bronchitis, the pontiff unveiled the formation of a high-level commission assigned to raise donations for helping plug chronic budget deficits. Francis launched the fund-raising enterprise as a gambit aimed at blunting demands by top officials in the Curia, his vast administrative arm, that the leader of the world’s 1.3 billion Catholics halt his drive for deep spending cuts. The bureaucrats bristled at the Pope’s recent draconian moves: Since 2021, he’d slashed salaries for the Church’s 250-odd cardinals three times. In 2023, he nixed the rich housing subsidies for elite staff, and last September for the first time in decades demanded that the Vatican set a rigorous timeline for achieving a “zero deficit” regime. Quite an interesting story on the finance reforms that Pope Francis tried (and partially succeeded) with the Catholic Church

Heglet? MacPete?