Nah, Democrats can hallucinate about that without any help.

Heck there was a time the GOP thought that about Trump. But he did turn on them and with a minority of really extreme diehard supporters he's managed to completely co opt the party and pushed moderates out. And some that were moderate he's managed to completely turn to the extreme. Fascinating (and horrifying) to watch it unfold in real time.

I didn't know about that. That sure makes whoever was in charge back then look intelligent doesn't it. Not sure what those "ties" were in the first place, other than using the software.

Regardless we're rapidly approaching a new phase, already reached in countries like Russia (familiar after decades of soviet rule), where we will have to keep our opinions to ourselves, or face the wrath of the leader.

As a farmer I was struck by something in the article, which touches on a looming agricultural crisis in North America, and probably other places in the world. And also brings to mind some uniquely American issues with regards to farm succession. Notice the age of the farmers in the article. The main person is 80 years old and almost certainly semi-retired from actual farming operation or will be completely retired very soon, perhaps not by choice. And she's not alone. Despite a few prominent young youtube farmers, the average age of farm owner operators in North America is getting close to 60 now and is not trending down. For a variety of reasons beyond the scope of this comment, younger generations are not taking over agriculture. If the AI bubble lasts a few more years, the company in the article won't have to pay an inflated price for the land. They just have wait until the farmer has to sell in order to retire. Or if the owner dies, the land goes to her heirs, who will be glad to sell because they have to pay the 50% inheritance tax and the only practical way to do that with a land inheritance is to sell. All of these factors do not bode well for American farms' future, nor for the future of farms and food security in many parts of the world including Canada and Europe. Even China is grappling with this issue after decades of promoting urbanization.

Raise their own prices?! You don't know much about farming do you. Farmers sell commodities. As such they don't set prices. When a farmer wants or needs to sell his crop, grain buyers put out bids based on the futures market and a basis level. Farmers take it or leave it. That's it. Farmers can hedge or speculate in the futures market but individually they have no influence on the market.

During the pandemic when artificial shortages caused companies to arbitrarily triple input costs for farmers, someone said to a friend of mine, I guess now you've got to raise your prices to stay profitable don't you. He was speechless that people generally were that ignorant of the basic facts of food production.

Learn To Read. The left/right axis is not related to religion. You can be religious on the right or on the left.

Strictly speaker, if you are not talking about someone sitting on the left or right side of the National Assembly hall, then "left/right" is just an imprecise, lazy metaphor.

For the most part, people who divide the world into left/right are either trying to manipulate the world, or are lazy thinkers. You can guess which one I think you are.

I'm ok with that.

I wonder if there's a correlation between the undetected occurrence of a dangerous vehicle fault and reluctant to sell one's own land...

considering the NUMEROUS recent cold-weather debacles, solar and batteries are probably the best responses possible. Those are the most cold-resistant things on the grid. (wind is pretty resistant too but I don't think Texas gets a lot of wind?)

For how reliant they were on natural gas and nuclear, neither had been hardened against cold. Batteries are pretty foolproof there. And since they've voluntarily isolated their grid, batteries are the only safety net option available to them.

Hamas is trying to overthrow the existing world order, and establish a new order.

The conservative/rightist ones are the ones trying maintain the existing order. In this case, the existing order is Israel/US. It's not related to religion. It's not an accident that leftists around the world feel sympathy with Hamas and antipathy for Israel (although socially Israel is much more liberal).

I don't understand people who try to jam every issue into the left-right spectrum. Most issues are not a left/right thing.

Where do you put Hamas on the left-right spectrum?

Poe's law definitely applies to this comment. I can't tell if the poster is being sarcastic, or genuinely can't speak concretely.

(It looks like he's afraid of the Elders of Zion or some nonsense.)

I realize that this is either some fancy-looking exercise that goes nowhere as cover for what actually happens; or a shoddy crypto con; but what possible justification would there be for coming up with a new gaza-specific stablecoin, if you thought that stablecoins were the correct answer, rather than one of the other ones that is already in wider circulation?

Well, no. It's true you can't buy books for the purposes of scanning them *and then making them available online* (Hachette v. Internet Archive). Scanning them for AI training is not settled law in every Federal District, although in at least one that has been ruled transformative and therefore allowable (Bartz v Anthropic, Northern District of California).

Thank goodness it doesn't run AI. Was pricing small TVs to use as an auxiliary monitor today. It's hard to imagine how they make this work financially.