not new for most palces.

Maybe it's just a US thing?

I doubt very much this was, or is, normal in most places. Perhaps in the US, which is about 4% of the world by population and about 6% by land area. We certainly read the whole novel in the 80s and 90s. No individual chapters, ever.

Vietnam required a draft. If the US tries to actually conquer and occuply Venezuela it would too. Canada or Mexico as well.

The US has gotten by with decapitation strikes, the same thing Russia tried to do to Ukraine, and only a couple of actual occupations supported by international allies and a lot of contractors. An actual war against an actual determined opponent, especially without allied support, would absolutely require conscription and even then would probably grind down into another Vietnam or Ukraine.

Of course they're going to do things of consequence. Most of the US's allies are trying to de-Americanize their military and other supply chains as quickly as they can. This will encourage that even more. The US's non-allies can now point to renewed American aggression and sphere of influence foreign relations to justify their own actions. Unaligned countries will likely start cozying up to China for protection. Several countries are likely to be pushed in the direction of developing nuclear weapons of their own.

Nobody is going to invade Texas over Venezuela. That doesn't mean there won't be consequences.

Precisely zero of those other buildings host the security council or has the facilities for that.

Seems like feature.

They have also invested heavily in education, science and R&D. They are good at innovation; they quickly move new ideas from proof-of-concept to prototype to production. They plan for the long game and set ambitious goals, then allocate resources to achieve them. Doesn't always pan out, and they have their share of economical and industrial problems, but they are outpacing us.

I'd be more worried about zero day workweeks brought about by AI.

"Tokyo has a lot of family owned shops."

Tokyo is a modern, walkable city with good mass transit. In the US most places are totally dependent on cars. Having separate, butchers, bakers, and so long would mean making multiple trips to multiple destinations with multiple stops. And that assumes said places could be priced competitive with the big box stores and grocery stores.

Costco offers a decent selection of foods and goods at affordable prices w/o the typical price gouging seen almost everywhere else. And they treat their employees well, including wages and benefits.

But instead of recognizing why people would prefer such things, they try to frame it as a cult.

"On every front it's the exact opposite of value."

It's not a "value" product.

"It doesn't do anything anyone needs or wants."

Makes the classic mistake of assuming that everyone's needs and wants are identical to your own.

So they only grossed $157 million on them last quarter??? Or $1.2 billion in 2024? I wish all of my failures were so lucky.

Then again, it's said that Apple has spent $7B on it. so I suppose that's a loss. OTOH, Meta has seen operating losses of more than $77 billion since 2020 in its Reality Labs/metaverse division.

(BTW, currently reading this page on my Mac using the AVP Ultrawide monitor.)

When I was young I read because books were my only escape. If born today I fear I would have vanished into video games, perhaps never to resurface and never even leaving my parent's basement...

Look at it this way. Reading literature, books, short stories, and so on is basically akin to reading documentation... about people. Hopes, dreams, aspirations, failures... all that and more.

To quote DPS, "We read and write poetry because we are members of the human race. And the human race is filled with passion. And medicine, law, business, engineering, these are noble pursuits and necessary to sustain life. But poetry, beauty, romance, love, these are what we stay alive for."

I'm not so sure. Around here (Netherlands) we have something similar to Costco: a big box volume package retail store that sells only to members. The reason they only sell to members was a compromise: they were the first big box "supermarket" to be built around here, and the gov't decided against having big box stores that require a car to reach. Later they made some exceptions for shops like IKEA or DIY stores that require a large footprint. But back then, the compromise was that it was to be a members-only shop, aimed at food and beverage companies (though anyone registered as a business at the Chamber of Commerce can become a member for free).

Anyways, there's no lowlifes at these stores. But I'd be hard-pressed to find a more dour, resentful, impolite and malcontent crowd as the people that frequent them. So it must be something else that Costco is doing right.

The first paragraph is sort of reasonable, but fraught with confounders. The second is just making the original error but substituting the author's pet cause and adding some religious weirdness. Fortunately the exact same argument deals with it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The highest per capita meat consuming countries are non-muslim. The muslim countries are all mid tier except for a couple gulf states, including Qatar.

Sacrificing animals is big part of Islamic religious ritual.

Lol. It's a big part of Christian religious ritual too. That doesn't mean people do it very often.

Oxygen also causes cancer.