Sure, it can keep printing greenbacks, but all it takes is a single time for Congress (or the Senate, I forget exactly how it works) to wait until all extraordinary means have been exhausted to keep paying the bills (except it's ordinary now, as we do it all the time) and then decide not to bump up the debt ceiling. And we are electing more and more wack jobs willing to do it, just "because we can".

Even Trump has said that he thinks it would be no big deal for the US to go bankrupt, because he's such a good dealmaker, he could then make a deal on the US debt. Of course, we now have a year of data indicating he is utterly incompetent at making deals, past getting a "I need a Pepsi now" button installed on his desk in the oval office.

Google isn't killing it.

Google is keeping it all to itself, which is a HUGE difference.

Sure, other's can provide a similar service, but they are still doing so in competition with Google. Good luck with being a startup trying to raise funding. You'll probably get some, but everybody knows there isn't much upside, as Google will redirect most searches for airline info to itself. You've got to have really deep pockets to get any kind of traction.

Yeah, I thought all the browsers on my Mac sucked, in that they all used a lot of CPU (using 35-45% of 4 cores while just sitting there displaying pages), but it turned out that something was physically wrong with my Mac (not exactly what, but had to replace the motherboard). Get it back and now CPU is down to under 10% idle in browsers... yay!

And Firefox used to also be a memory pig, it would normally sit at about 4 Gb of VM (I normally have a lot of open tabs), but every once in awhile, it would just blow up and increase it's vm space until my Mac would grind to a halt. If I noticed it happening in time, I could force-quit it, but if I don't (or it happens while I'm not sitting there), my Mac would be unusable trying to force-quit Firefox, it would be faster to force-reboot the Mac (as in force-shutdown the computer, not a clean reboot). But starting earlier this year, Firefox no longer has done this.

Now firefox works really well for me, and all the extensions I use have been updated to the new api...

You just haven't heard Trump's definition of "middle class". If you have a net work between $500million and $5billion, you're middle class... And they desperately need a tax cut, just to get by.

So, naturally, now that NK has demonstrated they can make a nuclear bomb, and are somewhat close to being able to mount it in a ICBM that should be reasonably reliable and accurate (hit a continent at least), clearly the best solution is to go "Hey, you gonna use that thing or are you some kind of pussy." poke poke poke "I think you're chicken. You won't use it cuz I'll beat you up if you do." kick in the nuts "Come on, do something about it, you wuss"

Those regimes got/are getting a bunch of missile technology from Russia...

Of course, it also gave that despotic regime buckets and buckets of hard cash to do despotic things. And it takes fewer rocket engine designers (maybe none?) to manufacture more of the same engine...

key phrase: "previously unseen"

they had seen some diseases, but Europeans brought over new diseases
they had seen some devastation, but Europeans showed them real devastation
they had seen some violence, but Europeans brought it to a whole new level. For example, it's one thing to shoot at each other with spears and bow&arrow, it's quite another to mow down everyone in an area with a gatling gun.

Yeah, there were certainly no white tribes that would go around raping and pillaging neighboring villages, killing and/or making slaves of everyone. And we definitely always treated Native American's with respect and kept our word and our treaty responsibilities with them.

It is unlikely that open source software has a huge impact in managing the largest known vault of gold.

what

Or "Just been noticed". It's been sitting there right in front of us all along.

Sure, but they are also brother and sister.

TinyHands wants a couple minutes of good press.

So, before he is impeached, expect the body of a dead Astronaut to be strapped into the nose cone of a missile and fired at the moon. "See! Mission Accomplished!"

Only if everyone gets to have the number tattooed their forehead!