azertyfun

Building a service-based industrial economy would be good for capitalism.

Unfortunately Trump does not serve capitalism. He serves fascism. And fascism requires factories that can be reconverted for a wartime effort once the immigrants and the queer start running out. That's the fundamental lifecycle of fascism.

Americans are sending us all on a path leading straight to WWIII and nuclear Armageddon if they don't fix their shit but everybody's too pussy to spell it out as if this demented ape doesn't have unlimited control of the most powerful army on Earth and enough nukes to end civilization several times over.

I wouldn't say "no chance". Last summer Trump was a few inches from being a chunkful of splattered History.

Of course the idea that the population could take the US military full-on is ridiculous. But resistance doesn't have to take the shape of traditional warfare, and anything would be better than the current overwhelming apathy that is the response to being governed by literal Nazis.

Star Wars is not right wing by America's fascist standards but it is right wing by most other standards.

Lucas is clearly a firm pro-capitalism liberal. The story criticizes fascism and the concentration of power but hardly criticizes authority and firmly supports strict social hierarchies. There's an entire sub-caste of sapient slaves called droids that never gets acknowledged as problematic!

And that's what made Andor very special. It's an allegory for class struggle and unionization. It's a story Lucas would have never told, and it is brilliant.

I can't help but notice that your comment is highly upvoted, with one down vote at the time of writing. I also notice that whenever someone comments something like "Americans deserve Trump and everything that is happening to them" their comment is usually around 50 % downvoted.

Regardless of your opinion on whether a people can collectively be held responsible for the actions of the majority, it looks like a lot of Americans on this website need to reevaluate their own cognitive dissonance.

(Also what the fuck is up with the comment at the top of the chain. That is literally hate speech and could get you fined in my country).

Those are very different things.

The whole American credit system is frightening. You all but have to own a credit card (here they are only used by people travelling internationally), the credit card needs to be paid off manually (!?!? my bank just auto-withdraws the balance monthly), etc.

Here we employ a straightforward system to vet potential lenders : mortgages almost always have a contractual stipulation that you must use that bank to cash in your paychecks. Your bank will ask for proof of a stable income. You have to put down a downpayment. Defaulting on a mortgage furthermore puts you in a government registry; it's not "a wink and a handshake" as you put it, but a formal tightly-regulated process.

There is nothing that the credit score system does that the Belgian system doesn't achieve, except the part where it enables banks to prey on people through a privately owned and unregulated system used to push citizens towards short-term credit and needlessly dangerous financing habits. A 30 year-old with 50k€ in a savings account and no credit history sounds to me like someone who "should" get a mortgage a lot more than someone juggling 3 credit cards and a 10-year car loan. But the american credit system incentivizes the opposite. That is anarcho-capitalist predation.

In an economy where skill (supposedly) correlates to income, income is expected to increase across a lifetime.

Therefore 25 year-old me borrowing excess income from 45 year-old me is a good thing, purely egotistically.

Furthermore lack of debt means every big purchase is preceded by hoarding. No matter which way you look at it this is bad for society. If I had 50k€ laying around it would be much more efficient resource-wise to lend it to my neighbor so they can build up their business, than to keep the money under my mattress and tell them to tighten their belt for another five years. They get a business, I get a bit more money in the end, everyone is richer and the economy is stronger.

Economics are not a zero-sum game. This belief that "if someone is making money then someone else is getting robbed" is deeply damaging, especially as it seems to be the main economic driver for Trump's batshit insane administration.

Debt is good. Predatory practices are not. That is what regulations are supposed to curtail. Where I live "credit scores" are not a thing, banks only loan to you based on proof of income, a declaration of open credit lines, and your civil status (age, partnership status, dependent people). Racism and sexism are of course an issue, although if caught the banks face big fines. But it's not like American credit scores are colorblind...

I doubt Trump thought that far but his posse of inside traders certainly did. And they're (probably) right.

BTC will never replace the petrodollar, but already acts as a refuge asset exactly like gold. It is valuable because it is reliably scarce and reliably in demand. It is not unreasonable that with US bonds cratering and the fed causing Turkish levels of inflation on Trump's orders, some investors would divert some of that money to (perceived) alternatives such as gold and crypto. Much to the pleasure of Trump's buddies.

What's bizarre to me is that a lot of billionaires not close to the Trump syndicate will be getting fucked on the collapse of the US economy and it's hard to believe they are getting a better deal than under Biden when the stock market was booming and they could already buy politicians and newspapers for relative peanuts. The supposed deep state is doing a really bad fucking job of fighting for its own survival.

This whole case has collapsed into a handful of choices:

1. Judge doesn't declare the Trump admin in Contempt of Court (i.e. does nothing). This sets precedent that Trump's administration enjoys full immunity from the judiciary, officially turning the US into a dictatorship. This is what has been happening for weeks and remains by far the most likely scenario.
2. Judge declares Trump in Contempt of Court, but is unable to enforce it. This is equivalent to scenario 1.
3. Judge declares the Trump admin in Contempt of Court and deputizes state police to enforce the ruling and arrest, if not Trump, at least some officials. This would be legal and remains the only constitutional solution, but would almost certainly trigger an armed response from the regime. Democracy doesn't go down without a fight, but the end result is uncertain.
4. Pro-democracy factions use illegal/violent means to force Trump to comply (military coup, sudden Luigi's Mansion remake, etc.). However it would seem that the masks fell off and despite decades of propaganda to the contrary, literally not a single living American is willing to put their life on the line to protect Democracy.

Democrats again playing backfooted.

The time to chastise congressional insider trading was last year at the latest. Now they're doing the same, but on a much bigger scale and without fear of reprisal because the institutions meant to penalize insider trading have all been gutted. They are literally openly bragging about the billions they made from this move.

This is how fascism wins. Antifascists perpetually fighting last month's battle while everyone else deals with this week's crisis. Mark my words: Republicans will disclose their trades in a month or so and literally nothing will happen.

There's a rock that is perfect for an entry-level Illusion magic spell. You cast it onto pretty much any dish and it improves and magnifies the taste.

As a more advanced spell of the Alteration school you can also cast it on the ground to remove snow.

This is terrifying. Americans are running headfirst into the Greatest Depression, except this time they are the Nazis and they have enough nukes to eradicate life on Earth.

And their political discourse oscillates between "serves us right" and "yes daddy". Republicans are complicit and literally everyone else will refuse to resort to political violence or disobedience even as Trump orders nukes to be fired at whoever he's mad at that week.

Bad news, the people driving cars in that traffic are breathing in the exact same fumes. The cabin air doesn't magically get rid of pollutants because it went through a paper filter meant to keep out large particulates. The asthma/cancer causing pollutants go through just fine.

In fact in slow moving traffic where two wheelers are allowed to filter, I'd expect they are getting exposed to fewer pollutants because they are spending less time in traffic. Plus cyclists get improved cardio which helps negate breathing problems.

Anecdotally the physical health difference between no exercising and mildly exercising while commuting is mind-blowing. And the fact that so many able-bodied office workers couldn't run a mile uninterrupted due to a car-dependent lifestyle should be terrifying.