While prestigious, I have to think the type of lawyer who wants Trump for a client is hardly goingbto want to do heavy government work for a civil servant’s salary. Surely there’s way more cash in skip-and-falls and “get six divorce punches on your loyalty club card and the 7th is free”.

What I hate about the current situation is that there’s no room for “Russia is a significant power that won’t suddenly vanish, so maybe if we can avoid being at complete loggerheads with them 24/7, it might avoid decades of tension and expensive military grandstanding.”

You must either fellate Putin or demand the entire 82 billion square kilometres of the Russian state turned to glass. No other options. It worries me that any more nuanced takes on Russia get pushed into the “Kremlin talking points” file.

Not that she isn’t a screwball all on her own, but we could use a less militaristic take here.

ISTR having some hallucinogenic colour issues when Vulkan wasn’t properly installed.

Thr death wave virus that crippled mankind requires a tech hegemony beyond belief.

I think it’s not even 100% a superiority thing, but the loss of position, purpose, place.

Stable jobs and healthcare would do so much to defuse the “I need to outcompete/hobble everyone else to WIN” grindset hustle mentality.

In my field (a “successful” one in the modern economy), the conventional wisdom is to intentionally change jobs every two years or so to get a bigger raise than loyalty yields. Other fields have either intentional high turnover or mismanagement that sabotages long-term employment. Nobody develops a pride of position and it creates more easily replacable workers. Of course this ripples to “nobody even stays in the same neighbourhood anymore” as we Grapes of Wrath ourselves across the map looking for opportunity.

If you aren’t forced to chase the ever-moving brass ring, maybe you can find satisfaction in being part of long-lived communities which encourage mutual support. If you know your needs are going to be taken care of, different faces and lifestyles are less of a risk to destabilize your world.

The Apple II’s big selling point, compared to the other two big brands introduced in 1977 (the Radio Shack TRS-80 and Commodore PET) was colour.

But it was a weird and colour scheme that took advantage of clever Wozniak hacks to make it viable on a cheap machine. Good video hardware, and enough memory for the colour display, were spendy. That’s why even into the 1980s you’d have machines like the ZX Spectrum with limitations like “every 8x8 block can only have 2 colours” which used less memory, and 40-column screens that were readable on TVs instead of dedicated high-res monitors…

The only appropriate family hauler is a 20-year-old Camry with 850,000 km on the odometer and the obligatory rear bumper dent.

If we can pick home computers that lean into cartridges, the Atari 800XL is a real winner. Nice two-tone finish, classy silver buttons with a plexi trim oiece covering the power light.

Can we bring back George III? Or at least poofy powdered wigs?

As a reptile keeper who knows full well they don’t know when to stop eating, I find this story charming. I want to feed her a basket of eyes (pre-frozen to kill parasites)

One hour from new classic myth to kawaii. I think that’s near Rule 34 turnaround speed.

Trident TGUI9440 on a VL-bus card. Surprisingly peppy on a 486/66 overclocked to 80.

I was always disappointed that celebrity and character voice packs weren’t a thing for the voice-assistant platforms. I’d pay literal ones of dollars for a voice assistant with a Sebastian Michaelis intonation and theming.

Cortana for Windows Phone came closest, I think they did use the same voice actress as the game character.

I doubt they enjoy having their balls in TSMC’s vice.

Intel is the only option remotely available to leverage against them.

• Starting from zero will cost bajillions and take decades to get competitive
• Samsung’s probably not divisible in a way that makes their fabs buyable
• They can’t buy into any of the 7nm/5nm level players in the PRC and fund their modernization due to sanctions
• Does anyone else have sub-10nm at anything buy lab scales?

Genocidal Shark Pirate, with sidekicks Octopus Swordsman and Karate Stingray.

(Frantically smashing “himbo harem” button)

How about Delete, since I don’t see it on the layout.

Or the Most Scroll Lock Ever.

Well, it can’t be Bosnia.

I know nothing about the history or culture, but the flag, by design, looks like it was cut off partway like someone tearing off a half-finished printout from an old dot matrix.

There’s also the strangeness that they continue to have a currency pegged to the Deutsche Mark, 20 years after that ceased to exist.

Although you can make the case that the current dominant reserve currency channels the ghosts of Spanish colonial 8-real coins the same way.

I suspect that democracy is a “good times” system. It works well enough when the problems are either low-stakes or widely agreed upon.

When you get into a world of hard choices-- for example, anything where we have to devalue some existing wealth – suddenly there’s going to be both a lack of consensus (likely manufactured) and leaders too afraid of losing the next vote to pull the trigger.

That’s why I expect to see China solve its climate change and housing problems faster than the West. Without the almighty polls lurking in the shadows, they can say “petrol is 100 yuan a litre to discourage its use” or “we’re nationalizing second homes and disbursing them to schoolteachers.”

I feel like there’s a bit where they try so hard to keep a honeypot going-- funding the mutual-aid requests, providing useful resources to keep the audience tuned in-- that they end up as revolutionary heroes.

Of course, some of the Entrapment Specialists would probably have to make room next to the medals from Al-queda they earned for the last 20 years of antics.

Can we start calling Amazon “AliExpress with American characteristics” now?

I can’t see how this won’t further undermine the value proposition of Prime, as yet more of their inventory is ineligible for “free 2-day shipping.”