The logic is economic autarky -- the belief that we're always better off having complete political sovereignty over every part of our supply chains than having to depend on imports for anything.

This is likely also behind Trump's trade war with Canada. His demands with Canada aren't about discirimatory tariffs -- those were negotiated away with NAFTA then re-negotiated in his first term. His demands are now infringe on Canadian sovereignty, to give US control of Canada's external trade policy, and even on its internal markets (e.g., the use of French in Canadian internal commerce). Symbolically, that's why he wants to rename Lake Ontario to "Lake America". HIs establishment of US control over the Venezuelan oil industry is his greatest foreign policy achievement -- although it's not clear he understands the legal limits on what he can do with their money.

There's a foreign and military policy angle to this too: Taiwan is absolutely critical to the US economy, so we are absolutely committed to defend them if China invades. Semiconductor autarky would mean it's not our problem.

The problem with autarky is that even if it's a good idea (which economists don't believe), you can't conjure it into existence overnight. It will take many years, possibly decades for the US to replace the Taiwan's semiconductor industry. In effect, the administration is proposing to inflict the very damage on the US economy that a Chinese invasion of Taiwan would inflict.

And, once the US has voluntarily self-inflicted that damage, China would be free to invade Taiwan.

Well, that character isn't on my keyboard. I don't even bother to double up my hyphens - I just use one as an em-dash. If it was a key, I'd use it. Until then, I'll just use the one hyphen and let Word or whatever deal with it.

Alt-0151 will get you the em dash. Or, type 2014 then hit Alt-X and Word will convert it for you.

Now be a good American and whine how that is too difficult.

Tariffs are a tax collected by business for the government. Since Trump is the one who gave the illegal order, he would be responsible, but since the Supreme Court has ruled a president is untouchable, nothing will be done.

Next up will be a "national emergency" to prevent or disallow the results of the general election.

Remember when Elon bought the place and ran most of them out on a rail?

Considering Elon WORKED for the government to spread propaganda, continues to censor certain posts and words, blocked publication of information about J.D. Vance prior to the election, and continues to let lies about the 2020 election proliferate, no, I don't remember.

Then you have the people that think upscaling an image 3x makes it more detailed and sharper.

It doesn't? You might want to tell these folks.

The male/female ratio in China isn't that skewed, it's something like 106:100. A lot of it is probably the same thing you see in every other country, where both men and women lose social skills and have unrealistic standards of what kind of partner they are entitled to.

Right-wingers have been loudly cheering the inevitable economic downfall of California for years as its economy continues to grow. It must be so infuriating to them that Commiefornia just keeps getting richer.

"After 9 years as a US citizen, he could run for the US Senate. He would be 76 (or 74) years old.In short, it looks highly unlikely that he could (or even would) run for the US Senate."

Yeah, he would be way too young for our Senate.

I feel bad for entry-level folks -- though continually surprised how many of them outsource so much of their thinking to AI themselves. It seems like most college students cheat with AI, making them less useful as entry-level employees.

So, die of skin cancer instead of Alzheimer's?

Nope, there's now a vaccine for that.

When Ukraine dissects the remains of Russian drones or missiles, they inevitably find western components. In one case, reported on here, they found an Nvidia chip inside a missile.

Is someone, or someones, inside the supply chain redirecting chips? Is this the same as the servers getting to China? Or is this merely a case of someone buying this stuff under a shell company and then passing it along?

And you think the fact that carbon dioxide has steadily increased over the past 150 years or as we pump a lot of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere is a coincidence? You honestly believe that there is zero connection between pumping gigatons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere, and there being gigatons more carbon dioxide in the air than pre-industrial times? Completely unrelated events?

I had to add minimum paragraph and sentence counts to the prompts it uses to keep it from trying to write a few terse sentences each time.

I noticed this in Claude (from DDG). It invariably tries to shorten sentences or make them more compact and concise. Sometimes that can be good, but most times long-winded sentences are what are needed.

and there is no way I can find to make it stop popping up giant intrusive ads for their other services every single time I open it.

Just like Firefox. There is no easy way to turn off being harassed by an intrusive pop-up telling me about a new update.

There used to be. It was a simple checkbox. But somewhere along the way someone had to justify their existence and removed that simple checkbox in favor of harassment.