At that price, I expect it to have at least 640K RAM. :-)

I'm not denying anything about Republican stupidity. Trump is a grifter, a stupid man who does however understand the art of the grift, telling people what they want to hear. They FAFOd. The Democrats were being equally stupid, just in a different direction while feigning superiority and following a group of far left misandrysts. I present to you the DNC produced "Men for Kamala" ads, which used Feminist stereoypes of White males, including a morbidly obese white male, bragging about eating carburetors for breakfast. protip: Not much uses carburetors any more, other than lawnmowers and small engines

And they were feigning the that Republicans were anti science, while they were riding the back end of the Trans movement, which ended up in stark denial of biology and science, to the point of not being able to tell the difference between man and women. Rejection of DNA and biology at a level that would be approved by ideology driven Soviet Union scientists and their Lysenkoism.

They supported schools aiding students who were transitioning, and allowing the schools to keep that fact that the students were transitioning a secret from the students parents. Note - this is not Trump's idiotic claims that Bobby can go to school Monday and come home as Tina, or whatever claim he made. The matter has been going back and forth for a while.

They largely declared males irrelevant, believing a blue estrogen wave would suffice, and with an undercurrent of #metoo stirring the pot.

They declared that the working class was not needed in person and bluntly, when Harris told the head of the Teamsters, that she was going to win with or without Union support.

Finally, they came to understand what the years of feminist attacks on males brought forth, the concept of male toxicity when ended up morphing into it's final form - that being male was in itself toxic. You may to my not agree, but they lost the young male vote, once quite reliably a liberal vote. I guess when you are told almost from birth that you are evil, you might not end up voting for that accusing demographic.

And the Republicans could point to documented evidence of all this, didn't have to even make shit up. All of this has been diagnosed by smarter people than I. Fortunately, it appears the insanity has calmed down. I believe that the Dems have learned their lesson. We've seen the results of following a half-wit President and his rubber stamping minions in power. Ain't good

Especially given the super quietness of drones that size - oh, wait. What? I... SAID... "OH,. WAIT." :-)

With all the gold screws and cables - that "improve" the sound ... *sniff* they grow up so fast, so proud. [wipes tear] :-)

And remember there is power in tend idea that if you convince a lot of people to hold the idea that voting in the US is corrupt if you lose, and fair and free is your party wins, and never ever ever conceded, who cares if there is absolutely no fraud? The paradigm just shifts.

And don't even deny that this has happened, and my bet if there is a shift in the midterms, it will happen again.

I live in a very liberal area. I go into the polling place, pull out my wallet and my voter registration and drivers license, they mark that I was voting on paper, and I fill out a paper ballot. How is that corrupt? And I mean it is those corrupt Democrats running the system.

What would a completely non corrupt 100 percent verifiable Republican system involve? And I hope you do know that the never-ending accusations of corruption is a wedge issue that is more valuable as a wedge issue than actually corrupt voting. You obviously is a Republican implements plan that no Republican will ever complain about. It's like abortion, rallying the faithful base is more important than actually eliminating it.

Looking forward to the infallible system you present, and it is a lot more than what you have said so far.

What I see as an issue however, is the apparent paradigm that Data Centers, need all of the generated power - not just available, but all of it. And then need more. Here in teh states we're talking bout restarting old nuc plants to service the Data Centers. I don't see much introspection, just "Build more DCs, we need more power!" More nuc plants - they are green, so nothing can go wrong!" What I've heard and seen so far is there appears to be no limit, to the need.

Don't forget as Datacenters store more data, that there will be more data, which means more datacenter, to store more data - seems like infinity is in that equation,

And you might have just hit the nail directly on the head. I'm not particularly frightened of AI, but I can't be the only one that sees the current models as unsustainable. In another post, I compared the present Datacenter concept with the original tube based computers. We're acting as if current AI and its needs are already finished product. Just like I'm sure that the makers of those behemoth tube computers were.

This need for more power, more centers smacks of that. And it is a weird bubble, and as I noted, a lot of people much smarter than I probably are seeing that too.

Much of the cheating has already been shown to be Republican. If we look at the Arizona recount process years ago, they simply refused to accept that it wasn't cheating even after shown there wasn't enough to mean anything. Took the Vice Governor (IIRC) to say, the madness stops now. And Republican standard bearer Mike Lindell, the man who represents Republican ethics, ended up showing lines of code to prove the corruption that meant absolutely nothing, and even their hand selected expert refuted it. But Lindell still refused to accept it. In present day Republican Party, Lindell tried running for Governor, lost and still reused to accept the voter results in the primaries - this shows the Republican paradigm was to never accept the results if you lose, but embrace them when you win.

One of the first things for you to know is I am an independent. I also believed there was a reason the Democrats lost in teh previous general election. I also believe that part of that was their own spinelessness. Here's where we are:

Republicans hold a majority in the House. Republicanshold a majority in the senate, Republicans hold the White House. Facts. Would you care to dispute those facts?

But okay - I'll accept your notions that elections in the USA are corrupt, and must be changed. Let's roll...

Illogical - I must then accept that the party that is the beneficiary of corrupt elections are in the majority, because otherwise, they would not be in the majority. They would be the plucky underdogs, making a valiant attempt to wrestle power away from the corrupt who are taking advantage of the process they implemented to keep them in power. The majority in power - and that tells us exactly who the corrupt are.Those in power. The people in power in a corrupt system are the prima facie evidence and hard to disprove the exact people that who use that corruption for their political power.

Unless you wish to argue that the corruption riddled US election system favors those not in power? That'd be pretty odd.

Do it - let's hear how the corruption is the Democrats, and it results in Republicans in power.

Schrödinger's Republican - Whenever a Republican candidate loses, it is prima facie proof that the elections are rigged and corrupt. When a Republican candidate wins, it is free and fair, and proof of the people's voice being heard through the democratic process.

You can usually just stop here.

What do you mean by all electronic voting? In my city, we fill out paper forms which are scanned by a machine. It's already illegal for non-citizens to vote, and people already have to show valid ID in most places to vote (I did), but those IDs don't prove citizenship -- not even a Real ID (except, optionally, in a handful of states). Not everyone has a passport or access to their birth certificate, and getting them costs money. Also many places provide viewing of the ballot counting and all places allow observers from the political parties and media -- a Town Square isn't a secure area for vote counting.

Democrats complain because most efforts by Republicans are unfair or onerous to at least some people, usually poor(er) people who don't usually vote for Republicans. As far as cheating... Republicans are the ones gerrymandering states to squeeze out democrats, trying to get the federal Post Office to manage state mail ballots, threatening to send ICE and/or military to polling places (which is illegal), talking about nationalizing elections, which is contrary to the Constitution. Republicans have nothing to run on to entice voters, so they have to resort to tricks to stay in power.

This attempt to acquire a voting machine was from the beginning of the second Trump administration, which started in Jan 2025 - almost 2 years before those machines would actually be used. And since the plan was to acquire a machine secretly, who knows how hard they'd try, or would be able to, to keep it up-to-date.

This is true in a lot of case.

The other case is where the fund managers and 'market makers' are not tied to the individual companies, they also don't care about long term performance. They only care about the ROI, on their position.

If a 'savvy' analyst determines the latest round of layoffs will mean a huge jump in earnings per-share for the current product cycle, and knows that is usually 2 years or so long. They just put a tickler in to sell 18 months out; before retail an state pension funds work out ACME has nothing in the pipe line and will soon be going to market with quick application of lipstick on their current products up against likely superior offerings from competitors, and it will end in tears. Or that the current round of enshitification is going burn thru the remaining customer loyalty they have enjoyed jeprodizing their future market position or whatever the case may be.

They simply don't care because they can make a profitable trade today. They are 'owners' and 'investors' but they don't have a traditional sense of ownership and concern. I come back to the problem not being 'capitalism' or even hard nosed capitalism ie 'you don't work you don't eat', 'you don't produce value nobody will buy' but rather on of to great a number of abstractions and with them to many perverse incentives.

I have said it before i really do think the 401k system has broken not just markets but our society. Your point "so essentially the retirement accounts are yes votes and not ownership oversight" is DEAD ON!

Not to defend China - its amoral indefensible blight on the planet - but the average Chinese citizen being one 1/3 as productive is not the only way the math works out. It certainly can be the case that we are not measuring productivity accurately and/or are using the wrong metrics as a proxy.

For on thing productivity is a measure of progress toward a goal, does China have the same goals we do? I am not sure "Biggest GDP" is really what Xi is after.

I think looking at Europe is good example. They are mostly capitalist but the best parts of it also using the petrol chemical cheat code. Germany is struggling, they have trouble even trying to allocate and spend their own stimulus packages. The rest of the EU make the US debt spiral situation look solvable ;-) by comparison and the bond market does not share that view.

I think you could say that hard-nosed brand of capitalism is what has carried us this far and why we don't look like France right now. I mean seriously compare the BLM unrest, or Jan 6 (if you like) in the US to what is happening in France right now. There is no comparison, in terms of how destructive and destabilizing it is/was. Take away all the various politicking and window dressing about what is going in France right now and it boils down to - a large segment public accustomed to increasing socialism is upset the government won't give them nicer stuff, and government that is by no-means opposed to affording people lots for entitlements pushing back on doing so because those in office recognize it isnt sustainability affordable.

The problem isn't capitalism and it isn't how 'hard-nosed' that capitalism might be it is an ownership and direction problem. Capitalism as described by someone like Adam Smith assumes self interest but it assumed the owner of the capital would be in control of it. That is if you are the owner of a company you want it to continue to grow for at-least-your-life-time but probably that of your children and grand children. Today the CEO is employee and the owners are largely inactive shareholders (they don't vote on much, read board meeting records etc) they are not interested in how the company will perform 20 years from now they are ONLY interested at most in how it will perform between now and maybe the next dividend date. The CEO is only interested in the current quarter and perhaps next, he does not plan to be there longer than 18mons in anycase and is perfectly happy to move on if the quarterly bonus are not fat.

Ross Perot tried to explain this to the public when he said 'Giant Sucking Sound'. Anyone with a brain could see 'trade modernization' was going to create massive windfalls for ownership short term as the divested expensive American workers, real-estate, and regulatory environments and bought cheap labor in Mexico and further afield; but anyone with a brain could see what that was going to mean 30 years on.. Well here we are. An America that can't make things, and I don't think has bright economic future at all, unless we make some PAINFUL choices today to course correct. Because guess what AI datacenters dont care where they are at and models/IP will always be stolen by whoever wants it enough. In the end you have to make things - physical things - people want.

It's up to the individual states and in this case, yes. From Trump is a convicted felon. Here’s why he can still vote today

Had Trump been convicted in Florida, he'd have to pay all the fines and fees associated with his conviction (if any) before getting his voting rights restored, although I imagine (R) Governor DeSantis would have found a way around that for Trump in any case.

> Capitalism didn't cause any of it.

What do you think capitalism is, or maybe put another way, what don't you want to change about it?

What do you suggest to fix "workers and communities become afterthoughts"?