When your country’s leader is a fat man who inherited everything he’s got from his dad, is always threatening war against other countries, disappears anyone he doesn’t like, lives in opulent luxury while the people suffer in poverty, and demands absolute obedience from the members of his party by appointing people to top government positions based only on their personal loyalty to you.

(Who else fits this description…?)

Except that Sodor is noted to be in the United Kingdom, which means Thomas was loyal to His Britannic Majesty and served his king and country, not those Nazi scum.

This is some gamble to make with unclear payoff. It costs billions of dollars to get the manufacturing contracts, hire the engineers, and obtain the procurement contracts. Not to mention the years of effort it would take. Unless you spend decades growing your own talent, the only way you’re going to be able to attract the talent needed to build this project is by poaching them from Apple, Intel, Nvidia, and Huawei by doubling their salaries. And by buying out their non-compete agreements or hiring the best lawyers in the world. You’re betting on two facts to remain true:

1. That the issue of avoiding American products will even be salient in three to four years’ time. By that time it’s pretty likely that America has either taken over the word or been reduced to rubble. Trump will either be god-emperor of mankind or leaving office a broken, defeated man (or perhaps in a coffin before that—the man eats more Mcdonald’s than can be good for him, especially at his advanced age)
2. That people care enough about this to pay double the price of an American-made cell phone.
3. That your customers don’t count the fact that their phones were made mostly by American or Chinese engineers against you. America attracted all the best tech talent in the world with high salaries and China basically brute forced it with sheer numbers.

Number 2 is really the problem here. Even if you could get a competitive cell phone to market literally tomorrow, it’d have to cost twice as much as an iPhone and four times the price of the latest Huawei or Xiaomi model. While customers are more than happy to pay $6 for Quebec maple syrup so they can avoid $3 Vermont syrup, the proposition of paying $3,000 for a Canadian cell phone versus $1,500 for an iPhone is a much more difficult one to accept. And one that not many people are likely to be able to afford.

It is not because of a shortage of asphalt that potholes exist. It is a shortage of attention and money to fill said potholes.

There is no limit in the Constitution that prohibits individual US states from exchanging representatives with foreign countries or from expressing or sending support to them. However, there are some caveats, of course, and it’s a very nuanced area of law that has interesting implications:

1. Accepting formal diplomatic representatives from another power is deemed under international law to mean recognising the independence and sovereignty of the power whose representatives you are accepting. Which essentially precludes formal diplomatic ties from consideration. This is why the US doesn’t accept diplomats from the Republic of China (a.k.a. Taiwan) and refuses official Taiwanese diplomatic and service passports, but is more than happy to accept “unofficial” representatives.
2. Any representatives sent would not have the power to contract treaties as US states are not competent under US law to enter into treaties or make any other binding obligation to other countries. This is problematic because that means they can’t even do as much as rent an office space in another country without the involvement of the US federal government.
3. The primary reasons that a country might consider hosting a diplomatic mission of a foreign power is so that they can (1) complain to the ambassador about that foreign power doing things that they don’t like, (2) so that the foreign power can issue passports and visas within the host country, (3) so that consular services can be provided by the foreign power to its citizens or subjects living within the host country, and (4) negotiate treaties. Since US states don’t really do anything abroad that can’t be handled or complained about through the US Department of State, and because US states don’t issue passports or visas, and because consular services to US citizens is already provided through the diplomatic missions of the United States, it is unnecessary for any country to consider hosting a US state diplomatic mission.

Cannot agree more. I say things all the time here that people hate and downvote me for but the numbers are even more useless here than on Reddit so it’s difficult to care.

My friend, they are a multi-million-dollar corporation. There is no such thing as integrity, only profit. It just so happens that for the greater part of their existence, having the appearance of integrity has been the best way to achieve the real goal.

There are really two viable explanations for this:

1. Interference from Bezos
2. The Washington Post has realised that allowing this advert to run exposes them to legal risk from an erratic administration that is extremely sensitive to its public perception.

Paper money doesn’t exist

I feel like she’s more of a pragmatist while Sanders is firm and staunch in his ideology. AOC will bend the knee to the Party when she realises she needs to in order to get what she wants, but only just enough so that they don’t hate her guts. Sanders had the luxury of being able to raise the middle finger to the Party because they knew they had to suffer him anyway owing to his huge popularity among the left. Sander’s popularity allows him to remain ideologically pure. AOC doesn’t have the power.

It’s extremely frustrating to see this guy dropping one truth bomb after another just to have nobody listen to him. I wish Sanders was younger.

Edit: It’s really sad, now that I think of it. Here is a man who has devoted his entire life to the betterment of his country. And here he still is, in his eighties, continuing to fight to prevent the rights and liberties that he in his twenties fought to create from being undone. If there was any justice in this world, he should have just now wrapped up his term as President of the United States and be enjoying the few years he has left on this earth in peace after having passed the torch to the next generation of Democratic leaders. Bernie Sanders, a true patriot and devoted warrior for the working class to the very end.

I have to agree with the sentiment expressed by the social media posts shown in the article. If your country’s electricity infrastructure is so fragile that a monkey could take it offline then it’s probably time to take a hard look at investing in improving its resilience.

I want to add a third thing to this list:

3. Feeling left behind by mainstream political parties.

The parties in power surely pay lip service to the issues that concern the young but very rarely do they actually do anything about it.

Well, at least you got a bit further than we did in the US with our most recent corrupt head of government.

Obviously it is. But not all insurrections are wrong.

Committing an insurrection because you lost an election is far less laudable than committing insurrection against an increasingly fascist dictatorship.

Okay, you got me there. I’ll admit that’s a pretty good use for cryptocurrencies

Blockchain is the perfect solution to none of life’s problems

China’s official narrative doesn’t deny that something happened on that date.

They paint it as the protestors’ fault. They say that the army broke up a dangerous riot.

Usually for used stuff eBay is way cheaper. And for many things, it doesn’t matter whether it is new or used.

The entire point of my comment was to indicate that this had seemingly little to no impact on the company’s success. Even the best employees in the world can’t save a company that is shipping no product and run by idiots.