This got me interested. What exactly is he saying there? Does it mean what I think it means - that they immediately shift that money around, possibly through some mixers, to muddle the origin? And, of course, make it better suited to pay their proxies now that Qatar isn't sending suitcases of cash to them anymore?

Thank you for writing that. I was starting to think I'm going crazy and I can't possibly be the only one who sees through that.

And if you realize that Trump is just the clown at the helm. There's literally an entire bureaucracy underneath him doing most of the planning, deciding and executing.

Douglas Adams was right. The role of the president is not to excert power, but to distract from it. President of the Galaxy, president of the USA, no difference.

This.

You don't need billions to be care-free. Even double-digit millions in some nice safe assets already give you enough fuck-you-money to be good. And while everyone looks at the super-super-rich and they're in various public lists and tracked by not just the tax authorities, barely anyone knows the multi-millionaires. I know three or so that I'm sure nobody on here has ever heard anything about. They stay quiet, comfortable, private.

Don't you think you have the absolute best reason to not be revealed right there?

Can you imagine what criminals the world over would do for a few percent of that money?

If the rumored pricing of $2000 is true, it will be interesting to see how many they sell. I've seen a few people with folds, mostly playing games. I don't see how it ofers any advantage over videos in terms of view size since the screen aspect ratio changes and would result in black bars to maintain the video's AR.

That, or Boeing is the ISP...

Put them in school zones and activate during the speed restriction times. Give ticket money to schools. Profit

The legislators will, flat on their back , taking it and enjoying it.

It baffles the mind that Microsoftware - known for decades for being unreliable shit - is allowed on space missions at all, no matter how uncritical the role. The potential for malware alone is ludicrous. "Hey, pay us 2500 bitcoins if you want your space capsule back".

Then again, I figure the days when NASA did the right stuff are long past.

Itâ(TM)s the moments of sheer terror that made it fun. Submarines once, submarines twice.,,

Yea, but as long as the size of your budget determines how much staff you get and how important you are, no.

John Boyd was part of those battles, recounted in Comer's excellent biography of him, titled "Boyd: The Fighter Pilot Who Changed the Art of War."

They were the ones who publicized the $400 hammer and $600 toilet seat.

While I like those stories and many pointed out serious problems in government procurement, some also fail to tell the whole story because the headline is what someone wants since it causes outrage.

We used bolts that cost a lot of money and looked the same as a 10 cent one from a hardware store, but ours were designed to perform to an exact spec, traceable to the ore, and tested to ensure they meet specs. You don't want that bolt to fail to performa at a critical moment when you are above, on, or below the ocean. We had bronze tools that cost a lot but looked like ordinary tools because sparks around oxygen tanks can cause issues. My point: There is a lot of wastefull spending and overpriced stuff in government contracting, but sometimes there is more to the story than simply "Military spends $x00 for something that is $10 at Walmart..."

One big problem is how the government budgets. You generally have to spend all you money on an annual basis, and if you give money back that you saved, you risked getting less next year because "you didn't need as much as you said last year..." So, come Q4, you go on a spending spree to spend whatever is left; trying to spend more is better than trying to spend less.

This is so true, so true.

And it's not even US specific. In the wake of the Ukraine war, German parliament voted to give itself 100 billion of additional taxpayer money (i.e. debt) to spend on defense. Recently a report came out of all the money spent so far, 90% did not go towards the intended purpose.

Why any of the jokers in charge of our governments are still not in jail baffles me more and more every year. Oh yes, it's because they make the rules, sorry, my bad.

That's what campaign donations get you, if they are large enough.

This is why congress occasionally bullies the big tech companies. We all think they might want to have some regulation or to punish them. Oh sweetie... they're saying "nice company you have there... would be a shame if something happened to it..."