Okay - let's discuss. What game is China playing? Then what game is the US playing?

Chang'e, the Chinese Lunar program is moving along recently landing at the lunar South Pole. They have a pretty well thought out mission. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... Present plans are to land people in 2030. Planned for 2035 is a moon base with nations China, Russia, South Africa, Belarus, Azerbaijan, Venezuela, Pakistan and Egypt as partners.

This isn't the same game as the 1960's race, this one might have sovereign property declaration involved. There are science implications as well - witness the brouhaha over China's recent landing at the South Pole. There are mineral rights as well - if the pole holds water, it would have an important role in water for drinking and fuel for further space exploration. Seems like a plausible reason for a race to me.

Your thoughts?

Since I'm required to be on that cesspit, and all jokes aside, there are plenty of under 60's there. Surprisingly seems to be as many thirst traps as say, instagram. There are even some proper uses for it.

But yes, social media for kids is terribly toxic. And I'm certain some will get around the ban. But we shouldn't make perfect the enemy of good.

As we fall off this bridge, we really need to attempt to do an assessment of how it affects older people as well. People might remember I'm an amateur researcher in the area of gender relations. Young adults are being harmed as well, especially in the area of relationships.

Things like the Toxic TikTok relationship tests are "testing" relationships by destroying them - loyalty tests, fake breakup tests. Illiterate boyfriend tests. Ignore your boyfriend tests.

And on the other side, since men have learned of these tests, the result is usually an immediate breakup. Because men have their own access to the internet and social media, and are sharing some of this.

A pity, because a lot of relationships that might have gone somewhere have ended over stupid tests.

China! There needs to be a prod to get the US moving. Just as the Apollo Program was in response to Russia's space program, we now have a fire lit under us by China's space effort.

The pieces are in place, so time to roll seriously. Artemis appears to have shaken down okay. Now it’s time to get the mating pieces put together and make certain they work.

It's my money. I'm responsible for it. If I give an entity my credentials to my money then I am accepting the risk. Even if I'm a moron and I'm trusting a crypto bro, a gambler or an AI. It is my money, not the banks. I can do with it whatever I want. If the AI, crypto investment or Magic the Gathering card collector makes me 100x return on the investment that the bank thinks I shouldn't have made, does the bank get to keep my profit? This seems like losers wanting to not take any responsibility for the downsides of their actions but I bet they still want the upside. Or maybe the banks can offer idiot accounts that don't let you access the money with out the banks approval for every transaction. And no buying lottery tickets.

You're telling me. I was on bereavement leave this week but had to spend 3 hours pushing an emergency patch to 57 PHP servers last night. Great times.

They were talking about Skullcandy... Bose is typically known for "No highs, no lows, must be Bose." However they recently took that to heart and reworked their latest line to add more bass emphasis, unfortunately. I think their sound used to be more balanced but I still prefer my Sennheisers to anything from Bose.

The primary purpose of the stock market is to give companies money to invest in capital. Investors are gambling the company will pay dividends or its stock price will go up. If everyone only invested on the bases of future dividends and we didn't have day traders to create liquidity then the companies won't be able to raise as much money for new capital. There are serious inefficiencies in the stock market but this isn't one of them.

Crime stoppers tells people not to give personal information in the reports. In the early days most of the tips were phone calls. Crime stoppers then transcribed the calls and then, if someone did leave personal information, redacted it before passing it on to the police. BUT they kept the original information and that's what is also in this leak. This wasn't exposed because of the breach, it was exposed because Crime Stoppers kept information that they should have been deleting!

I heard he was well hung....

Wink, wink! Just because there is a law, doesn't mean it won't happen. Just buried a few layers deeper.

I'm not denying anything about Republican stupidity. Trump is a grifter, a stupid man who does however understand the art of the grift, telling people what they want to hear. They FAFOd. The Democrats were being equally stupid, just in a different direction while feigning superiority and following a group of far left misandrysts. I present to you the DNC produced "Men for Kamala" ads, which used Feminist stereoypes of White males, including a morbidly obese white male, bragging about eating carburetors for breakfast. protip: Not much uses carburetors any more, other than lawnmowers and small engines

And they were feigning the that Republicans were anti science, while they were riding the back end of the Trans movement, which ended up in stark denial of biology and science, to the point of not being able to tell the difference between man and women. Rejection of DNA and biology at a level that would be approved by ideology driven Soviet Union scientists and their Lysenkoism.

They supported schools aiding students who were transitioning, and allowing the schools to keep that fact that the students were transitioning a secret from the students parents. Note - this is not Trump's idiotic claims that Bobby can go to school Monday and come home as Tina, or whatever claim he made. The matter has been going back and forth for a while.

They largely declared males irrelevant, believing a blue estrogen wave would suffice, and with an undercurrent of #metoo stirring the pot.

They declared that the working class was not needed in person and bluntly, when Harris told the head of the Teamsters, that she was going to win with or without Union support.

Finally, they came to understand what the years of feminist attacks on males brought forth, the concept of male toxicity when ended up morphing into it's final form - that being male was in itself toxic. You may to my not agree, but they lost the young male vote, once quite reliably a liberal vote. I guess when you are told almost from birth that you are evil, you might not end up voting for that accusing demographic.

And the Republicans could point to documented evidence of all this, didn't have to even make shit up. All of this has been diagnosed by smarter people than I. Fortunately, it appears the insanity has calmed down. I believe that the Dems have learned their lesson. We've seen the results of following a half-wit President and his rubber stamping minions in power. Ain't good

And remember there is power in tend idea that if you convince a lot of people to hold the idea that voting in the US is corrupt if you lose, and fair and free is your party wins, and never ever ever conceded, who cares if there is absolutely no fraud? The paradigm just shifts.

And don't even deny that this has happened, and my bet if there is a shift in the midterms, it will happen again.

I live in a very liberal area. I go into the polling place, pull out my wallet and my voter registration and drivers license, they mark that I was voting on paper, and I fill out a paper ballot. How is that corrupt? And I mean it is those corrupt Democrats running the system.

What would a completely non corrupt 100 percent verifiable Republican system involve? And I hope you do know that the never-ending accusations of corruption is a wedge issue that is more valuable as a wedge issue than actually corrupt voting. You obviously is a Republican implements plan that no Republican will ever complain about. It's like abortion, rallying the faithful base is more important than actually eliminating it.

Looking forward to the infallible system you present, and it is a lot more than what you have said so far.

What I see as an issue however, is the apparent paradigm that Data Centers, need all of the generated power - not just available, but all of it. And then need more. Here in teh states we're talking bout restarting old nuc plants to service the Data Centers. I don't see much introspection, just "Build more DCs, we need more power!" More nuc plants - they are green, so nothing can go wrong!" What I've heard and seen so far is there appears to be no limit, to the need.

Don't forget as Datacenters store more data, that there will be more data, which means more datacenter, to store more data - seems like infinity is in that equation,

And you might have just hit the nail directly on the head. I'm not particularly frightened of AI, but I can't be the only one that sees the current models as unsustainable. In another post, I compared the present Datacenter concept with the original tube based computers. We're acting as if current AI and its needs are already finished product. Just like I'm sure that the makers of those behemoth tube computers were.

This need for more power, more centers smacks of that. And it is a weird bubble, and as I noted, a lot of people much smarter than I probably are seeing that too.

Much of the cheating has already been shown to be Republican. If we look at the Arizona recount process years ago, they simply refused to accept that it wasn't cheating even after shown there wasn't enough to mean anything. Took the Vice Governor (IIRC) to say, the madness stops now. And Republican standard bearer Mike Lindell, the man who represents Republican ethics, ended up showing lines of code to prove the corruption that meant absolutely nothing, and even their hand selected expert refuted it. But Lindell still refused to accept it. In present day Republican Party, Lindell tried running for Governor, lost and still reused to accept the voter results in the primaries - this shows the Republican paradigm was to never accept the results if you lose, but embrace them when you win.

One of the first things for you to know is I am an independent. I also believed there was a reason the Democrats lost in teh previous general election. I also believe that part of that was their own spinelessness. Here's where we are:

Republicans hold a majority in the House. Republicanshold a majority in the senate, Republicans hold the White House. Facts. Would you care to dispute those facts?

But okay - I'll accept your notions that elections in the USA are corrupt, and must be changed. Let's roll...

Illogical - I must then accept that the party that is the beneficiary of corrupt elections are in the majority, because otherwise, they would not be in the majority. They would be the plucky underdogs, making a valiant attempt to wrestle power away from the corrupt who are taking advantage of the process they implemented to keep them in power. The majority in power - and that tells us exactly who the corrupt are.Those in power. The people in power in a corrupt system are the prima facie evidence and hard to disprove the exact people that who use that corruption for their political power.

Unless you wish to argue that the corruption riddled US election system favors those not in power? That'd be pretty odd.

Do it - let's hear how the corruption is the Democrats, and it results in Republicans in power.

Schrödinger's Republican - Whenever a Republican candidate loses, it is prima facie proof that the elections are rigged and corrupt. When a Republican candidate wins, it is free and fair, and proof of the people's voice being heard through the democratic process.