NATO literally puts weapons on trains and trucks and ships them into Ukraine. If things get spicy, China will blockade Taiwan on day one and no ship or plane will get through.

Also, Ukraine had the most powerful military in Europe when Russia invaded. Taiwan's military is weak and notoriously corrupt.

There's nothing they can buy which can compete with Chinese factories churning out missiles and launching them from the parking lot outside the factory. All these fantasies about the Super-Dumper American Navy protecting Plucky Taiwan from Hitler Xi area complete nonsense because China can massively out-produce the US in weaponry and they'd be fighting on their own doorstep rather than thousands of miles away.

1. The US can't defend Taiwan from China without attacking the Chinese mainland. Which leads to a collapse of the global economy and nuclear war.
2. Taiwan will join China sooner or later because their future is with China, not the US. Xi is well aware of this, which is why he's in no hurry to invade.

Why?

I mean, seriously. How exactly is it a good thing that someone driving past a school bus with some flashing lights gets a more serious punishment than someone who crashes into a school bus and kills a few kids?

It's owned and operated by private companies in the US because US laws make it difficult for the government to introduce the surveillance state directly. All across Europe these cameras are just owned directly by the government.

> This is what happens when you let a handful of people have too much power.

Yes. This is why we need to get rid of 99% of government.

Without which, the billionaire oligarchs couldn't function.

They're terrified of people doing unauthorized things. So they must spy on us all the time to ensure we don't.

Weak people have a desperate desire to control others, and Western governments have never been run by such weak people before.

No, bars will throw out scumbags. Public transit, at least around here, will not.

> Europe has plenty of meth-heads too, yet public transportation there does not suck

Then maybe they keep the meth-heads off the buses. But in America that's raxist or something.

There is never going to be a case where it's better to walk to where you have to wait for a bus which takes you to somewhere you have to walk home from than to just get in your car and drive there, which is why European governments concentrate on making travel worse for drivers.

The problem is that public transit is full of the public. And people with money don't want to be around them.

Here you're quite likely to end up sitting next to a meth-head who's been riding the bus all day because it's warm and the drivers let them on even when they won't pay the fare.

Cool.

Now imagine that Trump could deplatform all Democrats from government, employment and the financial system by simply deleting their Digital ID.

One click, all gone. Nothing they can do about it because they no longer exist in the digital world.

> Falcon 9 generously halved the previous price to orbit.

Note that there's a difference between price and cost.

I've seen estimates of a Falcon-9 flight with a reused booster costing around $20,000,000 which is about $1,000 a kilo to orbit. The Space Shuttle was around $20,000 a kilo and Ariane is apparently over $5,000 a kilo. So the cost is maybe 1/5 of traditional launchers.

The price is higher because when there's no competition in your price range there's no reason to cut prices lower than you have to.

If laws were primarily used by criminals to rob the law-abiding, why would you want laws?

The Sullivan Act was literally pushed by a gang-affiliated politician because the gangs were fed up with law-abiding folks shooting them when they tried to commit crimes and wanted the law-abiding disarmed.

Was that law a good idea?

"Just because something always fails, why should we stop doing it? Maybe it will work this time!"

That and because he's not Christian.

Regulation is always used by big business to keep small competitors out of the market. So why should we keep doing it?

1. China has a real government, so Xi will subsidize sales in China to take the low/mid-range gaming market away from Nvidia.
2. China has a real government, so Xi will subsidize sales outside China to take the low/mid-range gaming market away from Nvidia. Even more so if necessary to make the choice between the Nvidia card and Chinese card a no-brainer.

Nvidia's nightmare is that China starts churning out cheap GPUs and AI chips which undercut Nvidia's market. If they put just 64GB of VRAM on this 3060-equivalent card they could easily start taking the low-end AI market from Nvidia.