Unless you're able to call up the assistance of someone fairly high on the food chain, at which point the process can take weeks, am I right? At least that's the way it is in most of the world.

That's like saying the only possible purpose of a stick of dynamite is to blow up a visiting dignitary's vehicle, ignoring the whole plethora of other uses from mining, farming, construction and general amusement.

Pretty much how they always determine that sort of thing, they reached into their nether regions, pulled something out, washed it off and said, "We saved the world AGAIN!!!"

If you mean home security systems, BFD. Home security alarms are the very last priority for dispatchers because (literally) 95+ percent of them are false alarms. The dispatchers that I've worked with say that kids smoking weed in the park are a higher priority than home alarms.

If you want someone to actually respond to your home alarm system either 1) cough up the extra cost to have the alarm company dispatch someone to investigate, or 2) get an alarm that is so freaking loud and obnoxious that the neighbors will call the police to get it shut off.

Yes, and due to public pressure they're addressing the issues, the same as the US did.

Iran's air defense system was taken offline by a remote exploit before the attack commenced, the supposed 'stealthiness' of the flying trailer park had nothing to do with it.

Indeed. Wamsley has an article about fire trucks here in the US, which is a monopoly situation with only three vendors. A basic ladder truck now costs $2-2.5 million dollars and delivery times are 2-4 years, with replacement parts having 3-6 months backorder times (one of the reasons why the Palisades fire was so devastating was the number of inoperable trucks awaiting parts). That same truck from China is $400,000 and delivery times run around 4-6 weeks. Unfortunately we're not allowed to buy them here in the wonderful Free Market (sic) of the Untied States.

That would include all of the NATO militaries. It only takes one bribed/threatened/tricked/stupid low level flunky to run a cable from Point A to Point B somewhere in the system and you can be seriously screwed, as every ransomware exploit against supposedly "air gapped" SCADA networks has demonstrated.

Thus the destruction of the 'free press' in favor of the 'corporate media'. Where once every small town had its own newspaper, television station, and radio broadcaster owned and managed by local people, and larger towns had multiples of each, people managed to stay fairly well informed. Now 4 international media conglomerates own around 90% of all of it, and most of the new Internet media as well, so unless one is willing to put a fairly large amount of time into it staying even minimally informed is almost impossible.

Richard Nixon would have been too liberal to get even the Democratic nomination today.

There aren't any that aren't conservative, there's just moderate conservatives, far right wingnut conservatives, and the batshit loonies.

Bush v Gore was the first time that the Supremes ever included the statement that a judgement of theirs could not be used in the future to establish a precedent for any other case. Of course it was used just that way within two years.

Ah, you dewy eyed optimist . . .

I'm really afraid that this is the beginning of the end of the 250 year experiment. Oh, well, we had a pretty good run.

Oh, crap, and I burned all my mod points this morning.

The first two years the thing was officially "operational" the software to fire the weapons hadn't actually been written and tested yet.

Yeah, they're all from the same source. What can I say, I'm lazy. All these articles are lavishly supplied with links to reference material if you want alternative sources.

Nuclear power - China is exporting nuclear power plants in addition to building them domestically at a furious rate.
https://kdwalmsley.substack.co...

Transformers - I assume you're making a funny about a kids movie I haven't seen.
https://kdwalmsley.substack.co...

Custom vehicles (or pretty much any custom product really)
https://kdwalmsley.substack.co...

Buildings - Have you not seen photos of Shanghai? Contrast it with a photo of only 20 years ago and tell me they can't put up quality buildings incredibly quickly. This is what I was referring to, though.
https://kdwalmsley.substack.co...

I could have added robotics, AI, factory automation, trains, education, and more if I spent a few minutes thinking about it. Logistics too, of course.