OK, then. My first point - that the US isn't sponsoring the Canada by buying from them - is of course correct. By not recognizing that - or that tariffs aren't paid by foreign countries, but by US residents and businesses - it seems like you are the victim of TDS: Believing everything he says, and following it.

First, as you do not attempt to defend it I assume that you admit that "sponsoring other countries" (in this context Canada) is flat out wrong - just as wrong as claiming that other countries pay the tariffs, rather than Americans. Trump is economically illiterate, and others who know better - e.g. the secretary of the treasury. - don't dare to correct him.

Second - most of the countries Trump hate have better conditions for blue collar jobs than the US. Including Canada, Europe, Japan, etc. Public healthcare, vacations, sick leave, unions, and better pay. China and other poor countries (e.g. Bangladesh, India) differ here. As for tariffs bringing back jobs - they also make goods more expensive for everyone, and of course loses a lot of jobs that are exporting goods. I'm looking for a car - it was never going to be a US car, obviously -not good enough - but these days being assembled in the US are also disqualifying. Just as I paid extra to avoid US products for a rehabilitation last summer.

Free trade leads to better outcomes across the board. If the US - the "original free market nation" - can't compete, they need to look at the reasons. More STEM and less stupidity ("MAGA", conspiracy theories, antivaxxers, birthers, etc) is a good start.

The US wasn't sponsoring Canada, that was just basic economic illiteracy. As for why Americans can't afford heating and healthcare, that's caused by national US policies.

Trump antagonized Canada, not the other way around by talking about Canada as the 51st state, and trying to pressure them into his failing state by tariffs not respecting earlier agreements. When you're antagonizing everyone, don't be surprised if they look for other partners.

Throwing around the word "communism" doesn't make it accurate. Sure, China is run by the communist party but it's not very communist anymore - they mostly left that behind in order to have economic growth. Today, it's more like a dictatorship where you can get rich, do most things, and own most things as long as you don't threaten the power of the ruling class (AKA "the communist party"). And beyond that, there isn't a lot of communism around - fortunately. It was a complete economic and humanitarian failure, and should be on history's scrap heap alongside fascism and nazism.

It should be noted that "not voting for this nonsense" isn't the same as not being a part of it - the people who thought "I don't like Kamala", and didn't vote for "sane person with whom I disagree with a lot" when the opposition was Trump are also at fault. Not opposing Trump is just pure insanity, he's speedrunning the US into 1930s Germany and making "idiocracy" look like a movie magically brought back from the future.

Emissions need to be tracked at the destination, not at the source. These statistics are just as bad as people thinking "oh, Norway stopping production of oil and gas would lead to lower emissions". In reality, it would just give more money and influence to nations that are almost universally bad - with the exception of Canada, Norway, and the UK they pretty much all are.

Another "sideeffect" of measuring this way is that e.g. Italy, Ireland, and Spain would be considered "zero emission"... which they certainly aren't.

We do need to lower usage of fossil fuels dramatically, but we need to do so by building green energy - nuclear, solar, wind - as well as improving technology. The stone age didn't end because they ran out of stones.

Sometimes, Slashdot could really use a "sad, but true" moderator state...

This makes no sense whatsoever. For one, you are seeing the collapse of the US in real time at the hands of the republicans right now: Military threats against allies, rewriting history (Jan 6th), turning the GOP into a cult, threats against media outlets criticizing Dear Leader, constant lies, corruption on a scale never seen before in democracies, murders of citizens, sanctioned masked gangsters operating in the streets similar to the SA in Germany in the 20s, killing of foreign people in boats far away from the US with no evidence of anything, unsanctioned (by congress) military actions for oil, banning tourists if they have criticized Trump, etc etc..

That aside, this is not why malls are struggling. They are struggling because a lot of trade has moved online. In addition, whole categories of traditional goods are almost eliminated by new technology - streaming of audio and video killed off most of the record and movie stores (and are working on cinemas), video games are mostly sold digitally, books are both less popular and a sizable chunk is just digital etc.

As an actual conservative, the whole transformation of the GOP from a somewhat conservative party to a right wing populist party and then to a nutjob cult is weird and frightening.

MTV dropped music videos and migrated to crappyvision (reality shows) many years before YouTube was founded - they started in the 90s and finished around 2000. No music, just cheap junk for idiots.

Have you played the guitar on MTV?

You can't convert the numbers. To illustrate - having 800 million weekly active users does not mean they have more than 3.2 billion monthly active users. Many of these users would be counted multiple times if "converting" that way.

3% of the British population lives in Northern Ireland , and I wouldn't be surprised if many of them drove more than 3% in Ireland - work, business trips, visiting family, weekend getaways, holiday properties etc. We have a similar border here - Norway / Sweden - and you have a lot of that kind of traffic.

If they cared about kids, they'd restrict guns.

Well, there was - but it currently suffers from some issues: the Trump-Epstein shutdown, incompetent partisan leadership, and being reallocated to be an instrument of revenge on people Trump don't like.