My understanding is there are mines for other materials that contain a lot of rare earths as waste. They're literally sitting in piles at the mine. We have the materials, we have the mining, we just need to start using it.

Wow, somebody actually created that South Park haircut in real life.

"AI" isn't. Tools like ChatGPT are just that: tools. It's like a hammer: a hammer made construction much easier for our ancestors, and continues to do so. If you don't know how to use it, it's not useful. If you don't know how to use a hammer and strike a nail with the handle itself, it will kind of work, but it's not optimized for that. Only when you learn to use the head will it work well. The same goes for "AI". This tool actually enables the same person to do more in a given period of time. An attorney, for example, can handle more cases because their legal assistant can put together more cases in less time.

You're also describing corporate America. I just spent $150 on groceries. That's double what I was paying only a few years ago. It's $50 more than I was paying just 6 months ago. I understand there's a market correction going on because of tariffs. That doesn't explain why foods that have always been made and manufactured have gone up by that much. It is explained by Wall Street deciding to put psychopaths in charge of companies because they came to realize that, without a conscience, they can raise prices and not think twice about the prices or shrinking the price, just so long the stock goes up. That psychopaths thing? Yeah, there actually was an article about that several years ago. I don't remember the source, but that is a real thing.

But Elon needs his tax cut! He's a job creator! He created jobs by laying out tens of thousands of employees! These jobs were created by him, not the huge government grants he got!

I'm trying to think of how many degrees of separation you have when you consider the fact that a lot of the types of people with that kind of knowledge tend to be pretty antisocial. In my own case, it's more than 2.

I can't speak about suicides, but a friend's son OD'd a couple of weeks ago after asking ChatGPT how to get high and increase the intensity of the high. Given that, I'd say probably yes.

Ask somebody who's not technical if they know how to do this process.

And your average Joe knows how to do this?

I always buy dual-sim phones. Even though I've not traveled outside of the US recently, I always get a sim-based phone. I can use it when I travel and use it locally. No problems whatsoever. Esim's aren't about you, they're about making it easier for carriers to lock you in.

Seems like you made more even after the union dues. You also overlooked the ability to strike and to protect your job. Or do you prefer getting fired on a whim?

The 20th century was built upon, in part, things like highways. They didn't exist, at all. Horatio Nelson Jackson was the first person to actually drive across the nation... in 1903. The automobile opened up the door to point-to-point delivery of things like groceries. It opened up shopping areas outside of downtown. It created unions, which enabled the middle class. The wealthy have done everything they can to eliminate unions because apparently having 500 million in the bank isn't enough. The interstate system was built in part on taxes on the industries of the wealthy. No wealthy person was struggling during the 1970s, the height of unionized labor in the US. Want to know why union workers make more money than non-union? Because they belong to a union. You know medicare, medicaid and social security? Yeah, people don't need to be dying for no particular reason nor struggling to find a place to live past retirement age. Oh, and don't forget: it created your job. Seems the 20th century has done us well. Let's see how long you last without these benefits.

Uhm...

• Revolutionary war. The British sent a lot of troops our way. Granted, we weren't a recognized independent nation yet.
• War of 1812. Our army was different back then, heavy on the militia side. You know, everyone had guns (like today). Like in the Revolutionary War, minutemen strategies were also used it in and are basically early Guerrilla warfare tactics. We would have lost badly, in part, because everyone had a gun.
• Mexican-American war. Mexico was the aggressor. It was because of disputed borders.
• Japan, WWII. Guam, some Aleutian islands, Philippines (then a US territory), and they tried, unsuccessfully, Hawaii (Martial Islands are a part of the Hawaiian Islands). Hawaii was planned to be a jumping point to the US west coast.
• Hitler approached Mexico to try and get them to invade the US to distract us from Europe.

So we do get invaded and our laws make it very difficult for invaders to succeed. Because of our gun laws, we are considered the only uninvadabe country in the world. In Switzerland everyone has a gun because military service is compulsory, but any large army will overtake them. Holding them is another story, but I digress.

It was put together by Matt Stone and Trey Parker (South Park guys). It was a satire about how some in America and those in the world saw America at the time. This was put out a few years after 9/11, when we were busy dealing with the aftermath of invading Iraq. I have no idea why current post-Britain and post-French empire borders need to be relevant today. Doing borders by culture makes a lot more sense and would probably do more to end wars than anything. Yes, I do understand there are areas where cultures have mixed. A modern example that led to a years long war is Northern Ireland.

Sorry for the vulgar language, but it's needed to make the point. Sometimes somebody has to be the dick to fix things. Remember the movie "Team America: World Police?" There was a line in there somewhere near the end: "You have dicks, pussies, assholes. You need dicks because only a dick can block both a pussy and an asshole."