People seem to have forgotten that after his last term, Trumps existing personal plane (a 757-200) was left to rot because, according to rumour, he couldn't afford to pay for the maintenance. (big jet maintenance is a very large expensive proposition) He had to rent or borrow a smaller jet for a lot of his travel during the Biden administration.

According to current information, the plane is that the US gov't will pay to have this 747 refitted to be Air Force 1. But that after Trump steps down (assuming he does, of which I am doubtful) it will transferred to the Trump Presidential Library Foundation. The Library Foundations are initially funded through donated funds, but once stood up and operating, are transferred to the Federal Gov't. Once in the hands of the Federal Gov't. The National Archives and Records Administration is responsible for the upkeep and maintenance of the Library and its holdings.

So it looks to me like Trump is indeed getting his own personal jet, outfitted and maintained by the gov't for the rest of his life. As a bonus; the National Archives, which embarrassed and annoyed him by keeping track of the secret records he took home with him and demanding them back, is going to be the one to pay for it all.

So he gets his very expensive airborne symbol of ego, another opportunity for sycophants to slip him major amounts of money and revenge on some honest Federal employees who upheld their duty.

Adobe trying to "solve" the problem of pissed off customers by sticking fingers in its ears and going la-la-la.

Customers are rightly pissed. Just in general I.T. terms I think software as a subscription service is a Bad Thing. Forcing it on customers is worse.

Buuut, until the creative types and the I.T. guys that support them pull a mass defection to other software suites, nothing's going to happen. The money machine going brrr is louder than customer's complaints.

Dude, I gre up in and around the community. I was among the family invitees at the first legal gay wedding in Ontario. I've been to half a dozen Pride parades and many post parties.

I have never, repeat *never* seen paedophilia be accepted, let alone "nurtured" as you claim. NAMBLA and the like tried to become part of the LGBTQ2S+ movement back in the 60s and 70s and it was rejected at almost every turn. Even today, every time the LGBTQ2S+ movement re-surges in public awareness, the pedo crowd try to attach themselves to the coat-tails of the movement, only to be repudiated and rejected.

What I *have* seen is the acceptance of youth in the community and an encouragement for such youth to discover and celebrate who they are. For many kids, the recognition of their sexual orientation occurs simultaneously with the early stages of puberty. To put it bluntly: Once you're old enough to masturbate, you're also old enough to realize what your orientation is. If you're a tween or teen lad who finds yourself masturbating anthro porn, you might be a furry. If you're a lad masturbating to Luigi Mangione, you might be gay or bisexual. The entire community is keenly aware of how they themselves worked through their journey of self discovery. There are literally MILLIONS of people who went through a real bad time during that vulnerable phase because their family and friends were not accepting of them. Greenwich Village, the Castro district and Miami Beach are full of people who had to run away from home in their younger years because there is no room for queers in Smalltown USA.

This is why the song "We Are Family" is such an anthem for the community. There are millions of people who had to leave their biological family behind. So the community has explicitly evolved as an intentional family.

Crucially, it DOESN'T mean that it is OK for an adult to be sexually intimate with such a youth if they are still below the age of consent. That is predatory behaviour and is recognized and rejected as such.

Remember that this administration regards the LGBTQ2S+ community as dangerous sexual deviants _at best_.

Posting pro Pride material will almost certainly be construed as "subversive material". Ditto for pro religious tolerance, pro immigration, pro Ukraine (or who ever the latest national victim of of authoritarianism is). There is already talk of opening up logging and oil drilling in what was protected lands, including National Parks. Any immigrant or resident who wants to protest that automatically becomes an enemy of the State.

The ultimate result being that resident aliens and immigrants won't have the same freedom of speech the rest of America has. At what point will you see that as America being in the wrong and stop shifting responsibility to the victims?

"I hate when the bullshit I spew, the end stage capitalist things I want to do end up reducing the value of my portfolio"

That's still 79 million dollars for what amounts to nothing more than a Cheshire Cat's smile. Since Trump tends to not actually own anything carrying his name, just licensing his brand and collecting steep salaries for being the CEO of the business, I wonder how much of this actually ends up in his offshore accounts.

There are already numerous large shipping brokers, load expediters, load amalgamation services and load boards. There are a lot of ways of ways to avoid deadheading, or running with only partial loads.

And yet, even the companies with the widest footprint and market penetration have to run deadhead sometimes. No service in the world can make loads appear out of thin air. And trucks have to have homeward bound legs on a regular basis or you'll lose drivers. (you might even run afoul of DOT regs) You can't just keep taking loads to wherever on the grounds that going to B on a paid basis is always better than going to C deadhead so the driver can see his family and get his laundry done.

That said, there probably are some inefficiencies there. There is a place for a universal "one stop shop" for shippers, carriers and receivers. But it would have to be huge, with almost complete market share for it to be effective. But that gets into monopolies.

I'm in the "let the idiot kill himself if he is so determined" camp. So there is a problem with the enforcement of those maritime laws.

Easy solution though, next time he needs to find someone willing to run a charter out into International Waters and drop him and his hamster wheel off.

Of course, then the powers that be might end up charging the charter captain with all sorts of things.

FWIW, This is the reason behind higher educations "liberal arts" programs. The idea was that studying those subjects were necessary to ensure the creation of well rounded individuals "liberated" from the usual human patterns of greed, bigotry and intolerance.

And this is also the reason why even highly technical majors (or perhaps especially technical majors) always include the requirement that you take some electives in the arts or soft sciences.

Obviously, it doesn't always work.

Nitrogen asphyxiation. (or any inert gas really) You don't feel suffocated by a lack of oxygen as long as you can fill your lungs. What actually causes the symptoms of suffocation is a build up of CO or CO2 that does it.

It's a major factor in confined space training. If you are in an oxygen poor but otherwise inert atmosphere, you feel fine until you suddenly pass out. If you don't get hauled out and artificially ventilated within a very short span of time, you're dead.

From SoHo down to Brighton, I must of played them all.

And charging at the print level is probably also in the works.

Dude, MILLIONS of us watched it happening on LIVE TV!

We saw:

1) Trump claiming fraud even before his opposing candidate was announced. Everyone clearly saw this for what it is. Pure FUD.

2) Dozen of lawsuits filed on hearsay and speculation. Virtually all of them tossed out for being the baseless bullshit they are. But along the way, those suits achieved their real purpose: giving the GOP rank and file reason to go on believing the Big Lie.

3) Numerous members of the Trump inner circle, in and out of the White House, asking for pardons well in advance of the actual election. Those requests became more frequent and frantic after the election as Jan 6th approached. NOTE: they were asking for legal forgiveness for criminal acts while denying they did anything criminal.

4) Trump and a handful of elected officials using ever increasingly violent rhetoric about how they are at war, that the nation is being stolen. That if the people didn't fight "they won't have a country any more". Again, I remind you, this was on LIVE TV.

5) Elected and appointed officials and political candidates using phrases right out of Mein Kampf. Loads of Nazi symbolism. Fuck, we've seen speakers doing the Nazi salute. (and don't try the lame excuse that it was the Bellamy Salute that was purposely dropped by you Yanks because of it's similarity to the Nazi salute)

6) Actual, black clad and brown shirt clad nazis and white supremacists being welcomed with open arms into GOP and other conservative rallies. Trump himself referring to them as "very fine people" and saying "we love you".

7) Trump promised to pay the legal fees of any of his low level people who got caught doing anything. He clearly expected them to be committing crimes on his behalf. And was using an empty promise of legal support to help convince them it would be safe to do so.

8) Some of the seditious chuckle fucks had T-shirts made. Much was made about this being the GOPs "1776" moment. That is a clear reference to the War of Independence which was politically a war of rebellion and revolution.

9) Trump at the Jan 6 rally, specifically saying that the audience needed to fight now to "take back" their country. He even suggested he'd walk up to the capital with them.

10) After the Jan 6th insurrection, many participants were bragging on conservative forums about their actions. They all saw it as brave acts of revolution. Many speculated this would be the spark that got the rest of the nation on their side. THEY knew they were trying to over throw the government. They didn't express remorse, didn't feel that they just got carried away in the heat of the moment. They saw Jan 6th as just the first battle in an inevitable war, one that many feel they are ordained to win.

Let me put this as bluntly as possible: Trump and his inner circle attempted a coup and failed. Any elected or appointed official who participates in a coup attempt is guilty of treason, plain and simple. Any citizen who plots to use criminal acts or violence to influence politics commits sedition. Any person who uses acts of violence to influence the political outcome is a terrorist.

OPs point was that if Israel launched a nuclear strike against *anybody* (Iran being the top contender as far as I know) there would be subsequent nuclear attacks by others. One Israeli nuke won't end humanity, but given how fragile the ecosystem seems to be these days, even a limited retaliatory nuclear exchange might be enough to cause it. This is, IMHO, the main reason behind the "No First Strike Policy" every nuclear nation has adhered to. No one wants to end the human race.

It's my understanding that Israel is interested in the nuclear option because a) They are surrounded by largely Arab and Muslim countries who hate them and b) At least some of these countries are known to be working on nuclear programs of their own, or have done so in the past. (Again Iran heading the list) As you point out, the public has no way of knowing is there is a Samson option being seriously considered within the IDF. We know Israel has nukes, what we don't know is how likely Israel launching a preemptive nuclear strike is. Israel has adhered to the No First Strike Policy despite being in several wars and armed conflicts without resorting to nukes so I doubt a Samson option is seriously considered by Israeli policy makers.

To think that a very small country, surrounded by enemies who are trying to get nuclear weapons, will not only keep its nukes, but also create a list of nuclear contingency plans isn't a blood libel. Matching or slightly exceeding Iranian, Iraqi or UAE WMD capabilities would just be common sense to maintain the status quo. That said, given the tensions that region has known for millennia, I can easily see the more war hawk-ish Muslims spinning that fact into a true blood libel by claiming that Israel is utterly committed to Muslim extinction, pointing to the existing Israeli nukes as "proof" of that intent.

But doesn't that also cause legitimate traffic traversing or originating from a given network to be dropped as well? That would make it the "nuke and pave" option.