And just so everyone knows, I did not drop to anonymity, someone else did. But yes, These folks cannot even answer a very simple hypothetical question, and try to force their narrative. Perhaps they don't realize it says much about them and their narrative?

Once again, the answer is simple IMO - If the US disappears overnight, China will become the world's dominant power. However, I would not expect them to be a gentle guiding force to lead the world to perennial peace. And that is the point. As easy as it is to deservedly whine about Trump, and claim he represents America, he does not. In fact, the Republicans are looking forward to a shellacking in the Mid Terms, the disapproval rate on Trump is now higher than Bush2 or Richard Nixon post Watergate. A majority of Americans want him impeached, his policies are wrecking the economy. I suspect some of his fervent followers in the rolling coal brigade aren't doing it as much when paying 6+ dollars per gallon for Trumpfuel diesel, and people wonder how this is happening when the US is the leading oil exporter.

But a simple hypothetical about a subject that is actually different from "trumpistan" rhetoric, with the insinuation that I'm MAGA, merely shows the utter intolerance of some people's viewpoints. To the point of embarrassing themselves.

Your Example Dell PC doesn't "need your leftover keyboard, mouse, and monitor", because Dell is happy to sell you new ones if you'd rather not supply your own.

Mac Mini is the same.

Just collect your yuan, and declare yourself the winner for refusing to answer. At this point, I see an intelligent person who is afraid to answer the question, perhaps related to where he is posting from, and who is paying him.

Your answer merely shows your narrative, And really, it is a simple question, that you refuse to answer. I say remove America from teh equation, you try multiple times to steer it back to Trump.

Usually you are pretty intelligent and insightful. Are you perhaps collecting yuan for your statements? I mean seriously, it is just a pointed hypothetical

It is not difficult to understand that it is a hypothetical that makes a point that there has always been a dominant country. That humans always get involved with others, often in Warfare. Does not matter if it is the British Empire, the failed attempt by Europe and Japan in the 1940's that led to the US becoming dominant, or the Roman Empire, or the Egyptians, Abashevos, the Hittites or Assyrians to name a few. It was always a "smaller" world, but some group was always willing to impose their will.

Now with this - My own answer - If the USA disappears overnight, China will replace it. See how easy that was?

peace out.

There ya go! Right to the misogyny claim. Most very respectfully, you need to stop using that as your initial attack.

This was on a college campus - do you work on a college campus? There are quotas and preferences, and one way to think, Sorry that you believe that any discussion of the viability of those things means that the questioner hates women. Shame on you.

Before going further, your response is illustrative of a huge part of the problem. Because it is emblematic of a system where utter compliance is demanded, and castigation is the best you can hope for, career destruction is not unusual. And yes, there were two dynamics at play. Those hired under the quota/checkbox were allowed to pick and choose what they would do, and what they would not.

And despite your claims I hate women, indeed, I was at some level an enabler, because I would do the things they effectively refused to do. Travel, dangerous work, come in early, stay late, deal with the directorate. Is that hatred of women? They could pick and choose. But I did what I did because I am a professional.

Next note, I worked in efforts to recruit young women into STEM positions. This was in the first decade of this century, so we're talking GenZ kids. One of the most depressing parts of that were how badly it failed. We had the bring our daughters and sons to work day every year, And there were demonstrations of technology. My usual part aside from organizing was 3-D animation, which was a pretty popular demonstration. At the end of the day, we did a survey. The boys. were a standard mix, with a general attraction to STEM. The young ladies had very little interest in STEM, it was always at the bottom of the list. The scary part - at least for me - was the number one career the young ladies were choosing was Pop star Diva, usually followed by Lawyer. Veterinarian was also high on the list. Which I always considered STEM, but for some reason wasn't considered as such.

The women running the show would have a PM to discuss how things turned out. When asked, I had to be extremely careful, so I just said we need to stay the course, that full 50/50 representation was going to take time. When in fact, I came to believe that girls have their own minds, and are simply interested in what they are interested in, that vanishingly few become pop stars, so they decide on another path later in their journey. And they choose what they are interested in, despite the claims always blaming it on men.

And your rush to say I hate women is exactly why I didn't tell them what I thought - could have been career suicide. I say or write nothing hateful, and you cast me as the mortal enemy of all women. Exhibit b your honor.

And everything should be perfect. Your concept of anyone can do anything if they are trained is terribly flawed. I am really good at what I do. I have very high technical ability, have good social skills, and in addition, I am what is called a pattern weaver, https://katheryngreenleaf.subs... which makes me a extremely quick troubleshooter.

To put it bluntly, it is difficult to find a person with both excellent technical skills and social skills, and once you factor in pattern weaving, that can't be taught. No one is irreplaceable, but sometimes it takes two or more. And the reason I got called while on vacation, or when recovering from surgery, and on pain meds, was that they knew I was able to analyze their problem and fix it quickly.

My wife, who is pretty good about professionalism (she is one herself) while she was only a little annoyed by the vacation calls, was not happy at all about the recovery from surgery. Turns out they tried to get me to come in pre surgery as well, By that time I was shot up with some "I don't give a damn" med. But normal situations, she had no problem with my professionalism. All that said, I have been working post retirement with a group who are specifically there for one reason - they are tops in their field, employed for meritocracy, and we are men and women working at an extremely high level of competence without respect for our genitals. And the pay is very good. So perhaps you and I are in a different world. I merely note why I was on call so much, and it triggered you to call me a hater of women, because you are very intolerant. You think anyone can be trained to do anything - that's nice, but the hires were supposed to already know the things I did. And - no you can't train anyone to do anything.

The real pity is that those women who were hired for different reasons not necessarily related to competence, ended up crashing out when it came to downturns. Was that fair to them? One time, I got an email from one of the women who was terminated, wondering if there was ever a chance of re-hiring her. In it she said "I'll even do those other things you do." Kinda sad really, she knew that she was in a privileged position, while I was picking up the things she didn't want to do. But downturns are downturns, and the stuff I did was still required.

Have as good day sir, let no one question your narrative. I think you need it that way.

This got me interested. What exactly is he saying there? Does it mean what I think it means - that they immediately shift that money around, possibly through some mixers, to muddle the origin? And, of course, make it better suited to pay their proxies now that Qatar isn't sending suitcases of cash to them anymore?

Thank you for writing that. I was starting to think I'm going crazy and I can't possibly be the only one who sees through that.

And if you realize that Trump is just the clown at the helm. There's literally an entire bureaucracy underneath him doing most of the planning, deciding and executing.

Douglas Adams was right. The role of the president is not to excert power, but to distract from it. President of the Galaxy, president of the USA, no difference.

This.

You don't need billions to be care-free. Even double-digit millions in some nice safe assets already give you enough fuck-you-money to be good. And while everyone looks at the super-super-rich and they're in various public lists and tracked by not just the tax authorities, barely anyone knows the multi-millionaires. I know three or so that I'm sure nobody on here has ever heard anything about. They stay quiet, comfortable, private.

Don't you think you have the absolute best reason to not be revealed right there?

Can you imagine what criminals the world over would do for a few percent of that money?

Yes. I watched a documentary about the Destruction wreaked on countries that fell to the Roman Empire. Once they won, the Romans set to destroying the cities, and buried the places under the rubble.

They then set to rebuilding to reinforce Roman power. Interestingly, often a coliseum was one of the first items.

War is incredibly wasteful of resources and people. But it isn't going to go away totally because it is part of our genetics.

Remind me again on how you use really poor deflection methods, and accomplish nothing?

Since you read the thread so far, that's the only thing.

I am not defending the action in Iran, or Ukraine, or wherever else humans are happily killing each other in 2026. My personal analysis is that it is a big mistake. I'll even spell it out the background and my simple question again:

Humanity has engaged in "Killing the Other", as long as we've had history, and even before, Notably at the site of Jebel Sahaba, committed against a population associated with the Qadan culture of far northern Sudan. The cemetery contains a large number of skeletons that are approximately 14,000 years old, around half of the skeletons with arrowheads embedded in them. This is the earliest scientifically determined instance of warfare.

We even engage in internecine warfare, where we kill those within our group, not "The Other". And we haven't stopped. This is not conjecture that we haven't stopped - these are verifiable facts.

Humans are not the only species to intrinsically engage in war against themselves, Pan Troglodytes (Chimpanzee) is quite violent as well.

Early History shows this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... (that page has a lot of good stuff - and is the jump point for the series on War. And oh, goodness, the Roman Empire....

So my question, which is quite simple follows: Since humans simply will engage in warfare, some group will be in the lead position.

If not the USA, tell me who you want to be in the lead position?

I don't disagree. But the easy manipulation is because of the genetic propensity to violence. It may have helped humanity to survive in our earlier evolution, but especially now, threatens our existence.

Once again, I agree. And too far left or right becomes totalitarian as well. But my original question pretty much remains unanswered. There are too many armed conflicts around the world wo suggest that we don't like what we are doing.

War is a horrible waste of people, materials, and money. Of course we shouldn't ever make war.

My point is not about the USA, or Iran, or China, or the Great Orange shitgibbon. If it he or Putin disappeared tonight, war wouldn't go away. Because there are places where the US or Russians are not fighting. https://www.instagram.com/p/DE....

My point, and my only point is that as long as there are humans, there will be wars. Killing other humans is a core competency of humans, it has been proven over and over again.

So anyone who understands that needs to ask themselves, who do you want to be the war leaders? Because if the USA went away tomorrow, not much would change.

Blaming it on Donnie and the Epstein files is all well and good, but that's not the question I've been asking. That this present action is ill thought out is hard to deny as a major screwup there are still all the other "actions" going on, with our without him. With or without the USA.

Ever thought about moving the gaming PC? :-)

But seriously, there are cheap wireless KVM solutions for 1080p, and slightly less cheap 4K HDMI wireless extenders. I haven't seen any 4K + USB, but they probably exist. But I'd imagine anything wireless is going to be artifacty.

If you can run a single Ethernet cable in a crawlspace or attic, you can get a KVM extender for $153, and that presumably would be a clean, near-zero-latency HDMI and USB repeater (because it's probably just a bunch of level shifters).

Why would you use Steam Link for a TV and waste precious network bandwidth and suffer compression artifacts and lag just to avoid running an HDMI cable? Even if it is in different rooms, $90 plus a point-to-point Cat5 cable will solve the problem permanently without all the hassles associated with using software workarounds.

Steam Link makes perfect sense when you're talking about headsets that are mobile, but streaming to a fixed device like a TV set sounds like a niche use case that would be better served with dedicated hardware.