"Ukrainian advance", is a contradictory statement.

Look up Mariopol 2025 from air, looks quite nicely rebuilt. That's the future of any Russian controlled territory.

Even if conflict ends today, what does the future for Ukraine look like? Repaying debts for the next 100+ years. Won't have anything to rebuild with. Not a great place to live. They don't even own their natural resources in the ground anymore. And it's not like corruption would go away. If one cares for Ukrainian people, as crazy as it may seem, it's actually better if Russia takes more territory. At least there people could live somewhat decent lives and there would be a chance to re-roll the whole corruption dice. On the flipside the standpoint of someone who doesn't care for Ukrainians, better to let them go fight and die. Their prize in an unlikely win is spending the next 3-4 generations in debt and poverty (first have to not die to have next generations though, tricky part).

The most I fear about this conflict is if Russia mirrors US/NATO actions and starts selling weapons to anyone that wants to use them against NATO countries. Why wouldn't they? It's already been done to them. Would only be a fair reciprocal action. And that's when WW3 starts, which I want no part of.

Productivity this century is way up, although workers don't benefit from that much. We don't have famines anymore, nobody would starve like they did during collectivization 100 years ago in USSR. Might not be horrible to try again. The rich might object, but ... that problem was already worked out 100 years ago. Hell, we keep hearing how AI and robots will be taking over most jobs, it might be inevitable. The alternative of course is the world of "Aliens"/Robocop, where everything is owned by a few mega corporations that are bigger than governments, not super appealing future either.

"Also, the $100K payment goes into effect in some time this weekend, even though there's no system set up to track or collect the funds."

There's a system set up to collect and track funds already. You didn't think H1B visas were free before this did you? If they can track 215$+all the other smaller fees, they can track 100,000$ through the same method.

- Fees previously ranged from approximately $1,000 to over $4,500. These existing fees include costs for the lottery registration ($215), the petition itself ($780), and other potential government-mandated fees like the "anti-fraud" fee ($500).

Estimated as of Jan 2025 about 750,000 H1B visa holders in the US today, with about 550,000 dependents. Maybe if it was a one time 100k fee, at least half of those would stay. But since it's annual, I doubt more than to 10% would remain.

Funny you say that. If India became 51st state, they would get 2 senators, just like any state, and they would also get about 1800 members in the house of representatives (house is population based, right now each member of the house represents about 800,000 people in US, 435 voting members in the house, India's population is 1.45 billion about, so 1.45 billion divided by 800,000 is 1812.5 seats in the house).

USB-C is much smaller and weaker, physically. Plug it in and out 2-3 times a day for a year or two, and it wears out, becomes loose or god forbid put a bit of pressure on it from a slightly angled/bent cable for a few weeks and it's game over. USB-A is much more durable, cable seems much more flexible, and it just holds things better without becoming loose. Some of this is helped with dongles/hubs/docks, but then again you take your laptop home every day and the first thing you do when get to work plug it into USB-C, go to meeting with laptop unplug, plug back in x times a day. It helps that most laptops nowadays come with multiple USB-C, but not much....

Same thing that happens under capitalism. Or socialism. Or any other system. Depends on how much people don't want something and how much they are resisting whatever the current law is. Try it out, say no to capitalism, go try to take what you think you "need", as you would under communism, from someone that disagrees with you. Depending on how much you insist, police will likely get involved, if you disagree and resist... there can be severe life changing/ending consequences. Same as communism really. So ideology itself isn't evil. One could argue that more people died under capitalism even. Comparing human suffering to ideology is like comparing apples and oranges.

They were worth it at 5.99$ without adds, but only for the first 6 months at 2.99$. I stopped buying streaming services when they started sticking adds in them. 20$ A MONTH for one of these fragmented services, even without adds, is too much.

If we go by laws of the time, why were there Nuremberg trials? Weren't German soldiers just doing what they were ordered? Yet, they were tried after the fact and convicted. This sets a precedent that "Yes indeed, if you do bad things that might not be illegal now, you may end up on trial for them later". So it really doesn't make sense why the crew of Enola Gay hasn't gone to trial as well. The west in general has huge problem with consistency, none of the laws or rules really matter, hypocrisy on top of hypocrisy. Iraq/Afghanistan Invasions, Ugoslavia, current conflicts in middle east involving Israel/Iran, Syria, Ukraine etc... almost every one of them contradicts the other. Ex: It's NOT right to invade Ukraine!, but it's ok when we invade Ugoslavia/Iraq. It's not right to help terrorists! But we still helped Al Qaida in 80s and Syrian "freedom fighters" that are beheading christians after.... and then suddenly Israel does a bombing run on these new Syrian freedom fighters we liked so much and we're ok with it lol. Torture is wrong! *cough" Guantanamo Bay *cough*. Dealing with western nations is like dealing with a seriously bipolar/inconsistent person, doesn't matter what rule they followed 5 minutes ago, as soon as it becomes advantageous for them they'll break it.

30 billion of 26 Trillion GDP is roughly 0.115%. That's equivalent of making 100k a year and donating 100$, exceedingly generous you say?

Make it possible to survive and afford basic lifestyle and a few luxuries occasionally on a single income. Population problem solved, almost overnight.

Make it necessary to have 2 incomes in a family, and you get population rates dropping like they are today.

Same in any place, any country, not just Japan.

Google better pray Russia loses WW3. In the event that they and their allies do happen to win, I don't know what laws are like over there for indentured servitude, or how many generations of anyone associated with google will be in debt for. I'm sure it won't be pleasant though.

Don't kid yourself, WW3 is already in progress at its early stages, almost all nations are involved already in one way or another, it just hasn't spilled out of Ukraine yet. This type of conflict is a first though. They may or may not lose conventionally, depends on what allies they'll have or how far it will go, but when facing conventional defeat, that's when nukes come out. Then what? No one can tell you for sure, because it never happened before. Best case scenario, agree to disagree and both sides walk away peacefully... but if comments here are any indication, mutual respect and walking away isn't very likely.

I get free AppleTV+ (cheapest plan with commercials) from T-Mobile. Nothing to watch there, as in at all, except maybe Foundation (it's alright). This is one of those things where free, still costs too much (I do have to deal with ads...) for what it is.

Biotech companies (most of which seem to work on cancer treatments/vaccines/cures/detection) go in and out of business in US all the time (https://biopharmguy.com/links/company-by-name-defunct.php). Startup>get capital>live large>fail miserably>go bankrupt. Sometimes last 2 steps are: get at least something useful out of your research > get bought by big pharma to cut some of the losses. But result is the same, cancer is still there and killing, but that's incremental progress for ya (maybe someday?). There's an article about some or other trial/breakthrough on slashdot at least a few times a week, this one happens to emphasize trials in Europe, so it's not that special.

Better example of that same song Contra Spem Spero I was talking about (I think it's youtube channel from original author). This one has a video they attached to it, no clue if AI generated the video to soundtrack. https://youtu.be/HNILpRZ0M1o?s...