I daresay Mikhail Gorbachev probably wished that he had insisted that James Baker's promise not to expand NATO "an inch" was provided in writing, and ratified by the US Congress, in lieu of letting East Germany merge w/ West Germany

Yes & No. Iran is in no position to close the Straits of Hormuz, since their navy has been scuttled. However, they still have the capability to threaten shipping using drones, and that they are doing. However, you are right that they are now getting blockaded, and that their tankers which unloaded in Malaysia are no longer capable of returning to Chabahar or Bandar Abbas or Kharg Island

Correct, what I have is a Surface Pro 9 book

Don't you watch For All Mankind? Everyone there uses a Zune instead of iThings.

People on slashdot routinely say religion is for the gullible and stupid.
Now suddenly the Pope is "sacred"?

You guys are such bald faced hypocrites it's astonishing.

There was a shitty faux treaty that did nothing, it that the one you were talking about?

The same IEA has warned repeatedly of the precarious position Europe has put themselves in with regard to fuel dependence. The Russian war on Ukraine and subsequent sanctions should have made that tangible but Europe just switched over to Gulf suppliers, exacerbating the present problem. In fact instead of reacting to increase domestic refining and reserves just last year Europe shut down 4 refineries (~400000 barrels per day) of capacity. It lets politicians pretend they are being green while actually just paying someone else to do the dirty work.

The US does all of its own refining and is able to send both crude and jet fuel to Europe to offset at least some of the deficit. The markets are rerouting and many of the global tankers (especially from Asia) are headed to the US to resupply, with the US set to almost double its exports. Unfortunately extra-crude doesn't help Europe's jet fuel problem much since they can't refine it.

Ha! What fools those scoffers were!

Instead, it took the world by storm with lightning speed ... er, to briefly over 50% in almost 30 years!

... "'Yes' blood for oil" then? (As opposed to the old standard, "No blood for oil" chant)

Or, alternately, should we surrender to the mullahs?

... I thought Europe wanted people to use less petroleum?

Surely they are delighted? What's that? No?

The mistake was the Marshall plan.

We should have turned the EU in to dependent agrarian shit-hole.

....porn will lead the way.

On second thought, I really hope not.

I wonder if it could be made into an effective non-lethal crowd control / deterrence weapon.

I bet you could get people to vacate an area pretty fast if suddenly the only thing they could smell was the strong sent of decaying flesh or similar. One of those sents that everyone is programed instinctively to move away from.

Live theater where I live is quite good. It's just not a lot of variety. the shows stay a long time, they have decided to chase each other's repertoire, and my most favorite troupe has taken to repeating work done 5-7 years ago. Good shows. I want a little more variety.

And of course there are things to see on the screen that cannot be replicated on the stage. Just different and interesting.

"With the RAM pricing, a MacBook Pro is actually priced considerably less than a comparably specced ThinkPad"

Well, as of yesterday, maybe. Is Apple immune to supplier pricing?