Go all in on milking generational divide and do like a Taylor Swift / Kendrick Lamar ticket. I definitely think either of them could do a better job at being president than our current batch of options.

I would say that based on whatever calculus/evidence they have access to, Canada has decided that the threat of an all-out war, or least Israel carpet bombing Lebanon with munitions the US just sent them is high enough to warrant evacuation. That’s an above-average signal that something bad is about to happen, because it’s a big deal to evacuate all those people. It doesn’t mean something is definitely going to happen.

That said, bibi needs forever war for the time being because he’s facing jail if he gets punted from his position, and they’ve pummeled Gaza about as much as they can at this point while still pretending that they can end Hamas, so murdering civilians in another country is probably starting to look pretty appetizing to him. They’ll still keep slamming Gaza but he needs something big and existential for his domestic audience to keep them from taking him out.

So long story short, I’d say the probabilities of something like regional conflict happening have been raising pretty sharply lately. Hopefully the Canadian evac will prove to be alarmist, but our timeline hasn’t exactly been going the way I hope last few years so…

I watched the video from the “creative scientist” has on YouTube and unless someone has further info, this looks like a completely speculative fiction project.

Everything about this screams fake. It also all sounds like a horrible idea. They’re basically discussing traumatizing inmates at 10x speed. Given that a lot of criminals come from a background of trauma, I’d wonder here if you’d be doing more harm than good. There’s claims in this article that are absurd, without some form of clarification. What the hell is a “creative scientist” as a title—I’m not familiar with that discipline. Also, let’s uhh say am that all this was real, and possible. This tech would be a net evil in the world. If you can use it to brainwash inmates into cringing when they think about doing crime, you can also use it to torture dissenters into conformists. Given that the tech is already aimed at an element of the state security apparatus, there’s like no chance this wouldn’t get used for much worse purposes. I think they’re also misunderstanding how prison is used in many places. In NA, prison does not seem to be about rehabilitation, but just punishment and getting free labor.

Yeah you’re not wrong, he’s not as absurd as Austin powers. But he definitely looks like a time traveler from the 70s. I have another actor in mind, can see his face, but also can’t quite pull the name or movie up. But a British guy with sideburns and similar haircut. One of those staple actors of the 50s-70s that my parents would know, but was likely dead before I was born haha.

Hahaha came here to say: this is some serious warhammer shit

Yeeeaaaah baby

Hmmm. I want some weird neolib romcom based off this picture. “This Summer. Pushed away from Brussels for doing their job, these two type A’s might just be tumbling into each others arms. They say climate change is going to make the Mediterranean hot, but they didn’t account for these two!”

Dude I don’t think even the democrats would float this sort of plan. It’s one of those weird moments between planning the three stooges reich where he just glomms onto some idea that is actually super progressive without knowing it. Ultimately trump is apolitical personally I think—he acts based on narcissistic self interest, which is why it’s possible for weird shit like this to happen. He also just takes notes from whatever whackos are around that day, so you can be sure that any actual good or progressive ideas will get removed from the platform by one of the far right grifters he has in perpetual orbit, but still amusing to see.

The democrats would say they wanted to do this, then complain they’re not allowed to, and then produce a plan that provides green cards to foreign grads if they agree to live in an underserved neighborhood for 5 years, have a specific blood type, and complete a post-secondary degree within 5 years with the intention of working in green energy development after. Like some caveated-to-hell means tested crap that lets them say they tried, while effectively making it near-impossible.

That’s uhhh, a very specific and weird number. Since it’s likely totally fake/ballparked anyway, why not just round it up?

My experience mirrors yours. Back in the day I used to have to do clean installs all the time, but I haven’t for years now, and I’ve swapped lots of hardware and disks, etc. it’s fairly problem free for the most part, except for the creeping sense of doom I feel with each new piece of adware they cram into the user interface. I am definitely planning on switching to Linux, I have an Ubuntu server and have installed a flash drive version of arch on my laptop before, but I just haven’t hit a wall yet that makes all the work of completely switching necessary yet.

Also you realize this isn’t Biden and the dems being nice right? These were terms of the repayment program that the borrowers agreed to with the gov’t—these programs were launched years ago in order to stave off a tidal wave of defaulted loans (which thanks in part to our man Biden, cannot be expunged via bankruptcy) and they were structured so that if you met the criteria, and paid every month, you’d have the remaining balance forgiven after the agreed upon period of time. Sure, they could have tried to not honor their side of that contract, but that would open up exposure to potential lawsuits. So basically this is the gov’t meeting its agreed obligation, ie doing what they were supposed to do, as opposed to some benevolent gift. Also in many cases, these cancelled balances are treated as taxable income, so the people receiving them may get fucked next April by a substantial jump in their tax rate depending on the balance.

I mean I hear ya, but most of those folks look pretty old. A lot of cultures have elder traditions that don’t exactly include looking hot. No idea, but given how old the photo is, might be they’re important village elders, or people like priests/spiritual leaders, and they’re wearing ceremonial stuff also.

Oh yeah, I’ll bet. It hasn’t happened as far as I know, but that’s the kind of situation where things like really strong storm surge or tsunamis would be pretty rough to evacuate from. I assume there are some ferry’s, maybe the region could mobilize a personal craft flotilla for a evac rescue, like dunkirk…

“It’d be a real shame if something happened to your work file. If you pay us monthly, we can make sure your work is protected”

Yeah absolutely. This is one of the things that movies seem to get right. Also in post apocalyptic disaster type movies, you often see freeways with just huge empty traffic pileups.

I was leaving on a car trip a few years back, and unbeknownst to me, about 20miles up the road, a huge thunderstorm had brought down some trees and power lines, blocking one part of the northbound highway, during early rush hour. We got stuck for 3 hours trying to get past it. No matter which side road, turn, whatever we took, it was jammed. We waited for an hour on one small side road only to get sent back because a line was down at an intersection. This wasn’t a major natural disaster, things went back to normal in a couple hours. But it really drove home to me how pointless it would be relying on escaping/evacuating from a real disaster if you didn’t get out early. I don’t say this to suggest that people shouldn’t follow evacuation orders, they absolutely should; an evacuation order is early warning. I’m saying this to suggest that none of us should assume that we’ll just be able to get out in an emergency, particularly in a car. It just doesn’t take that many people on the road to completely seize the system.

Exactly right.

Given that half of them were enthusiastically taking horse de-wormer a few years back… this is not impossible

This is absolutely true. But Uber and lime etc also directly undermine useful mass transit. Over the years I’ve found myself in situations where I’ve gone to a place thinking that I will easily be able to get back via Uber, and then found that there are no drivers, or no drivers that want my fare for the return trip. So far after some time I’ve been able to finally find someone, but it’s become more frequent and I’ve been concerned I wouldn’t be able to get home.

A more amusing anecdote: my brother was in a Midwestern small city for a conference. His flight out was at 8am, airport serving the town was about 20mins away by car. He woke up and tried to get an Uber, Lyft. No dice, no one out driving. Tried calling the one remaining cab company, but they didn’t have any drivers out. There was no airport shuttle, or mass transit. Freaking out a bit, he finally spotted one of those electric scooters, and sighing, he signed it out. He was dressed in his conference gear, and had his bag. The city was very hilly, and he found that with the extra weight of the bag, the scooter didn’t have the power to get up hills, so he had to kick push to augment it. An hour later he gets to the airport, soaked in sweat, to see multiple scooters discarded along the road, others had clearly used the same method recently. The cost for the scooter was close to 40 bucks, 2.5 times his Uber fare in from the airport. Anyhow, an isolated incident, but sort of funny depiction of how the transit landscape has degraded a bit over time, and how Uber etc is not as instant and reliable as it sells itself to be.