Is it just price? The iPhone SE is around $400, but that seems pretty stiff. I know my kid's locked into Apple for their messaging app because it's like a little social network with their friends. And I know if you go as far back as high school being a kid with the "green" chat bubble was bad news. The equivalent to wearing cheap cloths and handmedowns when I was a kid.

Hell, at one point my kid wanted one of the fancy Samsung phones but the messaging app kept them on Apple. Samsung briefly made their phones as desirable as iPhones but that just didn't last, and nobody seems to be able to stand out.

For two reasons. The first and obvious one is nukes make it impossible to just invade a country that has them.

But the bigger one is that multinational corporations owned by global ruling elites who do not think of themselves as citizens of a specific country own factories and property in every country of the world. They are not going to let you have a big nasty war that blows up their stuff.

You can blow up as many houses and hospitals and schools as you want over in Palestine because those are poor people and it's basically an open-air prison. Nobody's really making any money off that the speak of. It's just a wedge used by a variety of people in the Middle East to jockey for power where the actual wealth is.

But go take India and Pakistan. Years ago Pakistan looked the other way while several terrorists attacked India's capital. It's the kind of thing that should have sparked a war between the two but the corporation stepped in and said no. They didn't want to lose their cheap Indian labor.

So if you're counting on a world War to save humanity in some kind of weird way no you're not going to get that. The only way out of this is the one way all us old farts hate the most. We need to change from a competitive society to a cooperative one.

And that is fucking hard because nothing is pounded into your skull harder when you're a kid than the idea that competition is the best thing in the world. Every fucking movie I grew up with was about that in one form or another and about how it made everything better. Hell even just mentioning that we should be transitioning to a coperatives society is probably going to get this post modded into Oblivion because it's such a boring alien and frightening concept

but nothing they want matters. They're right wing. The core of the right wing isn't libertarianism, that's a left wing thing. The core is obedience

The right wing grew out of the French monarchy (and monarchists in general). The word literally comes from monarchists sitting in the right wing of the French assembly.

The idea is there's a strict hierarchy. You've got some people at the top and some at the bottom. In exchange for obeying the guy above you the guy below you has to obey *you*. That's the deal, and that's what makes it so appealing to certain people. They get respect, even if they haven't earned it.

Ever see a video of some short pasty looking white dude in his 50s getting into a fight with a young, tall muscular black guy and wonder "what the hell is that idiot thinking? He's about to get clobbered!" and then have a good laugh when he does? That's the right wing in action. 30 years ago that black guy was lower on the totem pole and would've had to back down, show _respect_.

That's what the Neanderthal misanthropes are pining for. They want to be able to walk up to somebody half a head bigger then them and tell them what to do and they do it. They want to strut down the road and have those guys get out of the way.

Sure, they've got to do the same thing when somebody higher up than them throws their weight around. But they convince themselves it's for the best because of prosperity gospel or some such nonsense.

It's irrational nonsense but it feels pretty good, and all it costs is your self respect and your economic prosperity and your kid's futures.

even Denmark with their much higher standard of living have dropping birthrates. Buddy of mine wanted more kids. He's Asian and unabashedly admitted it was his retirement plan. Wife vetoed it because she's the one that has to squeeze them out, and she's had it with two. A lot stop at one.

Women with other options in life won't just keep cranking baby after baby. Most physically can't. 2 or 3 is usually the limit, especially with modern babies where the mother is carefully monitored and has her nutritional needs met. They come out huge and more often than not need a cesarean. That's some pretty big surgery to go through for yet another kid.

Oh, and we just criminalized abortion in about 1/2 the country, so expect rates to keep dropping. Sure, we could criminalize birth control and force women into marriage, but short of that you're gonna have a lot more women unwilling to take the risk. Especially on a 2nd or 3rd child. Word will get around what happens if your have complications...

Not that economics isn't a factor, but social issues are just as if not more a factor.

because we're not in a world war right now. Go read up on the 1st two industrial revolutions. College level history books, not high school level. There was _decades_ of social strife and mass unemployment until wars killed a large number of working age men and new tech made new jobs.

And yeah, we don't have widespread technological unemployment right now, but we *do* have massive technological underemployment.

Face it, we have a large scale social problem going on, with the worst of it about to hit and hit hard. Now is not the time to stick our heads in the sand ostrich style.

to buy is products?

Is where theocratic dictatorships get their start. They don't stop at banning stupid pornos. They're openly out there telling you that they're not going to stop until you're either all on board with their brand of extremist Evangelical Christianity or six feet under.

That's not an exaggeration. We've all seen them going on and on about how gay people cause hurricanes and earthquakes and we laughed it off. They're not joking they genuinely believe that.

Christian nationalists believe in what I can only describe as a sin thermometer. They believe in a level of ambient sin that if it gets too high God smites everyone and everything in the vicinity.

They know damn well they sin all the time and their attitude is they're doing everything they can to reduce the amount of sin they commit so they have to get out there and force you to stop sinning so the temperature of sin goes down enough that we don't all get smited. So they're going to make you obey and they're going to make you act the way they want you to act because in their crazy ass minds that's the only way to protect themselves.

In other words you are a threat to them. At least inside their minds. And so they are not going to stop at dumb bullshit you can easily get around with your VPN if you are so inclined. They're going to go after those vpns and they're going to go after you. Because like I said in their minds you are an active threat

Obviously, BOTH audio recording and transcription will be available to both parties in case of disputation.

The role of transcription is auxiliary, it's not going to be a decisive piece of evidence, only to funnel cases that are more likely to stick.

That's it. Author if this piece is making a big deal out of nothing.

Wrong question. The question is who pays that cost. It's one of those things where it's easy to externalize those costs onto somebody else. Especially early on

I don't have figures but from what I understand this is just getting the grade to the point where I can handle the number of electric cars they want to put on the road by 2030. It doesn't solve any of the security or reliability or maintenance issues. It just builds out enough capacity that the whole grid doesn't collapse under the weight of all those of EVs.

That said 20 billion dollars is peanuts. To put things into perspective California's annual GDP is well over $3 trillion. I'm no longer a fan of electric cars after I learned that they don't really solve the smog problem and after I was introduced to the concept of High-Speed rail and walkable cities, but if I can't have those things I guess I will take the facts that they at least reduce our dependency on foreign oil. We're making motions to back out of the Middle East and electric cars are a big part of why.

it happens with cops and "school resource officers" (read: cops in school) all the time. And they have way more time and training.

was when a shitty call center I worked for illegally fired a guy. As he was cleaning out his desk He was grinnin' ear to ear over the lawsuit he was gonna file.

The HR rep (an absolutely enormous woman) came darting out to catch him in the parking lot. Never knew someone that heavy could move that fast. He had his job back that moment and the firing manager was reprimanded.

which is that this doesn't solve anything. If China wants to manipulate us they can do it like Russia does with troll & bot farms. And it's probably not a good precedence to set that our government can block off an app from a nation that isn't formally sanctioned.

True but the more popular rules and legislation that the Supreme Court strikes down the sooner the Democrats are in a position to balance the courts. Thomas and Alito are both at retirement age and both very likely going to face criminal investigations for their obvious bribery scandals as soon as the election is over. If the Democrats are still in charge of the Senate and the White House then those two are likely to retire so that they can cash out and the Democrats will have a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court again with Roberts deciding. He's not exactly the most liberal judge but he tends to side with the liberals if they are the majority

Seriously fast food workers have non-compete clauses now and they have been used to bully workers into not changing jobs.

It doesn't have to be legally enforceable it just has to be a threat to someone who's in a weak position.