If I were carrying, I would evaluate the situation:

0) are there nonlethal options?
1) is anyone else responding?
2) is lethal force a danger to bystanders?

Which is why I don't carry for now.

This is the nature of a Republic. We are the United STATES of America. States elect the President. That's how it was constituted. Hence our Constitution. Wanna change it? That's a fundamental change. Often accomplished by revolution. It, ignore the Constitution, as recent Presidents and political parties have been doing. Sorry, I believe our nation was well conceived, and should ensure as intended.

That is just late 20th century thinking. That worked in mono-polar world where we were the only nation really capable of sustain force projection (security), the reserve currency, and at least some technological superiority.

Advanced Medical equipment - If China wanted to take that market they could inside a decade. Same thing with chips at this point, they have all the precursors. There is nothing left we can produce that is a 'you can't get there from here' for them any longer, it is just a pick an item from the list make it priority and fill the gap. It is rapidly approaching the point where if we just cut them off completely all at once they could 'make do'. All your type of think at this point does is allow them to make progress - entirely at our expense on their own terms. It is DUMB

On the other hand be if coffee makers, or COIVD masks, those end up being things you need. You can't make do without them. Robots or people, however they get built in the re-emergence of a multi-polar world the nations that can make THINGS, especially basic necessity will again be the ones with power, both economic in terms of trade, and military in terms of being able to keep supplied. Look at Ukraine, Russia would have rolled over them long ago without a sustained supply of American arms - why because we can produce them. The rest of NATO - LOSERS every one! All together they can't meet basic logistical needs for any sustained conflict. China see that!

They see why Russia even a solid 20 years behind in most tech, remains at least someone combat effective.

Power is about control of production, money is just a tool to facilitate it. The nation that can put engines on chassis, tires on wheels, coffee makers on counter tops, counter tops on cabinet bases, and grain in those cupboards is a nation with a future. The nation that buys all those things, is just waiting to be how far to bend over by the seller and when.

China wants a new world order where they are masters. They also see the lessons of the 20th century clearly. That is it is far better to be the worlds hegemonic master than to try to conquer and rule it in the traditional sense. Exactly non of this is possible though unless their sphere of influence appears irresistible. To that end they can't have a island they claim to rule sitting there doing its own thing, and worse being nominally oriented to the existing global power structure.

They also rightly see the rather 19th century western model of national borders being determined by a few world powers who make agreements about lines on map without regard to the reality on the ground or blood sacrifices the plebs for the political theater of the occasional proxy-'fight' over those borders, as limiting.

China wants to be able to use both soft power and hard power whichever seems least costly / most expeditious and have the results stick. To that end they have seen the muted response to Russia's actions in Ukraine as useful.

However the reality is Ukraine is not part of NATO, Europe is weal and broke, the USA is strong but broke, and nobody wants to see the mass destruction that would result from a atomic contest with Russia. So a truly muscular defense of Ukraine was never going to happen, is never going to happen. The mistake politically was not ignoring the situation. In making a fuss over it we have turned it into the precedent setting event China wants if Russia succeeds.

Ironically as far as US political influence is concerned, thwarting Russia is becoming important in a way it never needed be and wasn't four years ago. We made to big deal about it, so now we have to show we have influence and the ability to impose our vision. What we should of done is handled it like Crimea, looked the other way and it would have been no big deal in geo-politics or US power. Now we have to both avoid a hot contest with Putin AND win proxy-war. We are not that good at proxy-wars... Biden and Blinken really FUCKED UP.

the revamped definition will NOT result in a dramatic rise in the prevalence of obesity. It will only change the perception and statistics.

Understand?

Well, best of luck. You could try explaining that it needs to be rewritten in a modern framework, and you don't happen to be fluent in that. Unless you are. Give them the Scotty estimate of time.

I'm trying to be sympathetic to your problem of having work... Uncomfortable work isn't a blessing.

Bear in mind that the 'muh democracy's is an old meme, people complain about the Electoral College and forget Article 10. Federalism is confusing to modern, poorly educated voters who think our nation should be a monolith. 'Their' monolith, of course. Montana would not work under California rules. The 17th Amendment was intended to address corruption, but it's somewhat ruined the Federalist model. And of course you don't prevent corruption with law, you only expose and punish it. Punishment might limit corruption, but we have many examples to the contrary. Repeal the 17th, set term limits for Congress, then we'll see new forms of corruption.

Just imagine the new hire going in there. You'll be fine. What's the worst you could do, rewrite it all?

"This isn't a republic, its a democracy."

Where do you get this? Certainly not from understanding how our nation actually works.

"The problem is that 100 million or whatever it really is is just gone from the economy. It gets absorbed by Salesforce Senior Management and the big stockholders."

Oh, dear, all economists are amateurs.

One of the CTOs at my last work commented, 3 weeks into the role, that he was disappointed that only 68% of the corporate IT projects could be considered successful. He had a point, It was not that, at the time, we were only twice as successful as the overall reported success rate, for all industries that would answer the question.

Realizing that, per the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 20.4% of businesses fail in their first year after opening, 49.4% fail in their first 5 years, and 65.3% fail in their first 10 years, why are we at all concerned that 'most corporate AI pilots are failing to deliver any value.'? Most corporate AI pilots are early implementations of fresh new technology. They should be failing. Consider the development of modern missile technology. Fail fast, move on, get it right sooner rather than try to get it right the first time. Fail fast. Learn. Improve.

In truth, if you are replacing direct support roles with AI, you are most likely automating transactional tasks. Just a the voice response systems automated password resets and online self-help move that along another iteration, much of what passes for tech support is indeed transactional. And that is potentially able to be automated.

It's how my job went away, and a few years before AI was considered viable for those tasks. In fact, my job evolved, and I moved from role to role, as each time it was found to have become transactional. Earlier, the role moved to lower-cost resources, and that is just business. Later, it was more properly defined and transformed, and could be delivered for lower cost.

I pitied the others who were displaced in the last wave I finally got caught up in. Most were long-tenured, thought they were terribly valuable, and could not understand how any automation could re-place their insights into, for instance, generating spreadsheets that fed dashboards and enabled good decision-making. It was painful to listen to them. Worse to consider their prospects in the market. Nothing worse than realizing your skills are now irrelevant. Word to the middle-aged, learn learn learn. Oh, that's three words. But learn.

So it's now a patchy bit of software?

That is a successful model. Be proud of it.

"we need to bring down complexity"

Oh, making software simpler will solve all this? It will make software less useful and less interesting for sure.

But I do not see the quality issues the same way you all do. I see the GUI user interfaces enabling complexity in a way command-line interfaces could not survive. And of course, for both, it's usability. Command-line needed a few dozen man pages to guide us along, relying on command history to make them tolerable. The GUI claims to be self-evident. Ha.

...and considering that the app is accused of consuming all real RAM, did the OS go to swap? Well, actually, did the app end up consuming huge swap space, and the rest was swapping in and out furiously?

I'm suspicious also. Add in the concept that we are living in an age of worse software quality, considering the insane capabilities of current software, it's a wonder they dance at all.