It just so happens that under Russian rule, Russian rulers will be making profit instead of Ukrainian rulers.

I think we're missing a couple of nuances here, no? Although it's a stretch to call them nuance. The way Ukrainian rulers have been making money has been through privatization. And because there's so much privatization we need to look at who owns Ukraine's economy. It's only escalated since Russia invaded, with national assets being sold off to foreign private sectors so cheaply that one has to wonder why they did it when the gains are a drop in the bucket compared to the direct aid they've been getting from Western public sectors.

If Ukraine emerges from this conflict with its own sovereignty, it'll be sovereignty over a flag, a presidential palace and a state framework that protects foreign companies' investments from hungry Ukrainians.

Russia doesn't need to do that. Burgerlanders already experience it through the magical way they render themselves blind to their government's behaviour unless it's projected onto China or Russia. Like how Trump is a Russian asset and China is turning Cuba into a staging ground for an invasion.

Especially when the user experience is constantly guiding users who don't know better to do exactly that

The Democrats knew this was going to happen. There's no way they couldn't. And I don't mean Democrat supporters, many of whom were vehement that Biden was fine like so many anecdotes in this thread recount. I mean the Democrat leadership, who manage his campaign and more than likely manage his presidency. Unlike the public, they have access to him. They have his medical records, the reports of his doctors and caregivers, everything. There's no way they didn't know this would happen if he debated.

They might start seeding support for a different candidate into their supporter's discourse after this, but they will have been planning for this outcome long ago. And when a left-leaning (left from a US Overton window) news platform hosts a debate that shows him up that badly and then publishes commentary like this, you have to wonder if that caused friction with the DNC or if they assented to it.

As the party starts singling out a replacement, the question I hope people start asking is why they didn't replace Biden earlier? Did they need to wait until the urgency of imminent elections made their new candidate more palatable? And if they don't replace Biden, why are they letting Trump win?

He gives lots of reasons, but if one of them isn't "oil-producing countries are starting to escape US hegemony and your gas-guzzling motor industry is on borrowed time" then I don't think he's really appealing to the US government's interests.

Or it's a glimpse at Rom's Dengist arc

The kicker is that Rom eventually becomes Grand Nagus and starts transforming Ferengi society.

The new HBO The Last Of Us series for example has this scene,

I love that scene. It's so authentic: hearing a white American describe his successful living arrangement as literal communism but saying it's not communism, and a black American correcting him. 100 years of Red Scare and minority struggle captured in a few lines of dialogue.

That's not just research, molten salt heliostats are in active use already.

How'd that work out for Australia and Gough Whitlam trying to close Pine Gap?

isn’t there a single candidate that thinks more about the humans than for the money.

Yes, plenty.

Any of them that will be allowed anywhere near power?

No, none.

Florida Man tells teachers to scare children with stories of bad communists

Guy thinks South China Morning Post is "Communist Party Controlled"... it's owned by Alibaba Group but anyone who reads that rag can see that they absolutely don't bother 'controlling' it.

additionally: if Iran's military capability hinged on 3 individuals we'd have heard their names years ago, endlessly, as the Western Media relentlessly demonized them to justify murdering them. And they'd have been murdered a lot sooner.

Conscious and Conscience are different things (but understandably easy to conflate)

https://youtu.be/sKyJ1o5JjHg

I saw this comedy sketch this morning and it got me thinking it's similar to how libs see China just trading with developing countries and denounce it as some kind of nefarious 'dept trap diplomacy'

You gotta think outside the box. There's more than 7,000 bricks in a typical Western European house. All you need is for the MIC to bolt some fins on and design (and build and sell) a launch system and the war could go on. Europeans just aren't willing to sacrifice hard enough.

It's a good opportunity for a stakeholder analysis.

When you tabulate who stands to benefit and who stands to lose from French troops being deployed to Niger compared to being deployed to Ukraine, it's very obvious that the French government serves the interests of groups other than the French people, or even itself.

His proffered respect for the Royal Family has dropped dramatically with the death of Elizabeth. In the first show back after being sworn into parliament he was openly decrying the fact that he has to swear loyalty to Charles to be able to keep his seat. He'd never have been so vociferous with his crticism about that with ER2. I guess being born right after the Attlee government, the Queen was associated with a childhood in the kind of Britain he's been fighting to get back ever since. And then there's also the realpolitik of Elizabeth having been quite popular, and extremely popular relative to Charles and his Duchy Orignals™ drama farming progeny.

I mean there's a possibility they spin this up into an invasion justification with experts telling us how they could strike Europe in less than 45 minutes again.