...consider listening to One Person Found This Helpful", a BBC radio comedy show about absurd reviews for often even more absurd products. Surprisingly good show.

For anyone not from the UK...not sure if you can access it, but even if you can you're going to need to make your way through a full-on Birmingham accent. Godspeed, you brave intrepid souls.

... In the sense of "a Linux-using vegan who went to Yale didn't know how to start her conversations..."

That's funny, I've noticed among leftists there's a tendency to call everyone you disagree with a racist.

Coincidence, perhaps, how neatly that intersects with your observation.

Which lies would those be, specifically?
And from what agreements has he withdrawn that he didn't promise to, if/when euros didn't fulfill their obligations?

They will dig a hole. They will put the tractor in the hole. They will not go back to the hole unless the reactor fails, or they shut it down.

When Martian dirt will do fine for shielding...

I recall very early in the conversation, the transcription included a "why did you turn those off?"

Are you saying nobody said that?

I agree with you in principle: the open Internet, distributed expertise, and solid investigative journalism CAN reveal the true story when official sources are covering it up due to an agenda.
OTOH, the internet is *also* a being ground for paranoid conspiracy theories, tinfoil hatters, and cranks cherry picking data to drive their pet theories.

How does an amateur tell the difference?

So you're suggesting that circumstances could intersect resulting in large scale drought and climate change without an industrial civilization?

Without cars?

Without capitalism?

Without America, specifically Republicans?

Jesus, next thing you are going to be saying is that the current climate panic might not be entirely man made? That's crazy talk.

Trump Delusion Syndrome has been the greatest thing for the Chinese ever.

If Trump says 2 + 2 = 4, Western Europe and half of the US would demand that we abandon basic math.

Thankfully, the only people believing the climate grift are the zealots anymore.
The world is healing.

I hear these 'it's the oldest' and think to both the New Jersey POTS cable plant, and the horrors of maintaining wiring that Alex Bell installed. Or the joy of Parisian telephone cable plant, legendary for being unmanageable.

lest I forget, Jakarta and Manila vie for the worst overhead wiring in the world, sop dense and tangled it blots the sun in places. Ugh.

US-East-1/2 is just complex. And too important to rebuild.

The inability of people to clear student loans with bankruptcy generally, was a fantastic gift by legislators to universities and lenders who otherwise needed to actually evaluate loan risk.

US Federal Debt in 1995 was about 65% of the GDP. Plus, the US was looking at a booming (fake) dot.com economy and expecting to reap the benefits of significantly reduced defense spending due to the end of the cold war.
Yes, when you're flush with cash (and helps being a Democrat) it's easy to promise $ for anything and everything.

In 2020 it's 132%.
1/4-1/5 of the US budget ANNUALLY is borrowed.
We *can't fucking afford to buy everyone lunch any more*.
https://www.investopedia.com/u...

It's ironic that Biden's comment "lines up to Ukraine" as oyu say, when largely the problem today is his Boss's/Clinton's meddling in Ukraine (ie about as critical a Russian sphere of influence as it gets), toppling Putin's puppet, and then doing FUCK ALL in 2014 when Putin boldly invaded Crimea (because Mr Obama was desperate to have RU support for his pointless, unenforceable treaty with Iran as a way to ensure Mr Obama's historical "legacy").

Just to maybe jog your memory a bit: Mr OBAMA was the first that told the lazy ass free riding Euros that they need to start paying their way. Not Mr Trump.

https://www.france24.com/en/20...

Mr Trump was merely "classless" enough to HOLD EU economies to their promises of years before. HOW GAUCHE!

Thought you might have forgotten that bit.

"a do no harm oath, just like most other industries"

Like which other industries?

First, an MBA is not an industry. Most likely they are not even industrialists. They are cogs in the machinery,

Second, again, what other industries have a 'do no harm oath'? Doctors claim to subscribe to this, Realtors purport to adhere to an ethical standard that could be confused with the do no harm mantra, Professional engineers have professional responsibilities to do work 'correctly', for lack of a better single word.

Do you think pharmaceutical researchers even bother with pretending to adhere to such an oath? recent experience would seem to deny this. Same for much of the food industry, certainly the financial industry (such so that we need copious law to restrict their behavior), and there are other examples. Even if you exclude sales, which if they followed such oaths would be in a position of serving two masters...

The premise is flawed, and demonstrably false. We wish everyone else treated us so, but in reality we often do not ourselves, out of self-interest. Which is sometimes understandable, and sometimes excusable. But not always.

Right now the drive to diversify is entirely political.
Ok great you hate Trump, congrats.
The FACT is that there is no serious alternative to the USD as a reserve currency.
The currencies mentioned (euro, yuan) are indeed probably the closest in a basically empty field.
The yuan is controlled by a deeply dishonest tyrannical government that hasn't authentically reported financial information for decades. The EU is an anti democratic talking shop that can't manage to stand up a coast guard, much less manage a monetary policy.

Don't get me wrong, there are major, major issues with how the US handles economics. Inter party vacillations every 4 years. Dishonesty about inflation or economic data when it's politically inconvenient. But to the point of real-world contexts critical to underpin faith in a currency, the US remains economically dominant, more militarily secure than all others, and well supplied with food, water, oil, and raw materials.