Trump is the one who tore up the deal that put inspectors into Iran to ensure that they didn't get nukes. If Iran gets nukes, it is because Trump gave them nukes on a silver platter in a misguided effort to "own the libs" who put that agreement in place.

And the things he has done regarding oil — disrupting Venezuela, creating a situation where Iran can mine the Strait of Hormuz, massively inflating the cost of oil, eliminating world sanctions on buying oil from Iran, etc. — are also effectively giving massive aid to a state sponsor of terrorism.

It's hard not to see the direct consequences of many of his actions as commander in chief as anything less than supporting terrorism. The only question is whether it was done intentionally or merely because of utter incompetence.

What I don't understand is this: Did Congress authorize this spending? No? Where's the budget for this coming from, and why has no one already filed a permanent restraining order to prevent the illegal misappropriation of federal funds?

I ask because to do this, they have to steal — yes, steal — money away from something Congress DID authorize. And this isn't a tiny amount of money we're talking about here. There are probably some other major efforts that Congress authorized that won't happen because our idiot-in-chief is stealing the funds to do something else.

Irrelevant. That is a different issue.

The student loan issue was the endgame of a social experiment that failed with horrible outcome. And make no mistake, it was not a capitalistic or conservative experiment.

1. People were told that having a degree - any degree - was the mark of a superior being. They bought into it.

2. Young people, encouraged by their parents, teachers and society, started going to college en masse, buoyed by loans that covered everything, tuition, books, living expenses.

3. It fell apart in two parts. First was that the "any degree" paradigm allowed young people who were perhaps not "college material" to take majors that were not going to give them employment possibilities that would allow paying back the loans. Opinion degrees don't prepare a person for gainful employment.

Second was it was simply unsustainable.

Universities added layer upon layer of middle management using that money. They are re-adjusting at this point. Painfully.

Meanwhile, those who took majors that could land them a good paying career, could pay back their loans. I work with a number of them.

I do feel a little badly for those who wasted their college years on degrees that qualify them for the same jobs as the guy who quit school in 10th grade. But damn, why was this obvious to me when I first heard of the loans? I mean, I'm not the sharpest pencil in the box, so why did so many people who are smarter than me buy into it?

I always like to point out that I retired at 55, was searched out for work after "retirement", and my present employer recently gave me a 50 percent raise.

Kind of flies in the face of your "only way" comment.

Our new hires didn't want to work, truth be told. They wanted to be back in school, Mom and Dad and student loans paying the bills. It was a good gig while it lasted.

But do you for a minute believe that a person who likely has never worked a job in their life would be ready to become a productive employee with a positive career trajectory if they were just handed their duties, then left alone with them?

Perhaps this generation has risen like Venus from the sea, fully formed, competent in all aspects of employment - but they would be the first, so I doubt it. I'm pretty adroit in my field, and it took a while to get there, and the only part that was from home was reading books on teh subject during my off time.

I do roughly 50:50, home and onsite. The whole "I will only work from home" business has a few issues.

Networking is a big one (I know networking is a 4 letter word on Slashdot, but hear me out) Like it or not, it is really hard to network from home. I've always networked well. Even became friends with many co-workers, and that really helps with career trajectory. And it is an exceptional way to create synergy. Some might call it schmoozing, but then again, I'm a pattern weaver, so all the interactions are a learning experience. In the end, I have been hired twice because I am a known quantity.

A person who makes a demand that they will only work from home is purposely limiting their career choices. You don't get the learning and career leap that requires full time in person work. And there are many jobs that require actual presence. You as a remote worker are only an avatar on a teams or zoom screen. The interactions I have with the people I remote with and those I interact with in person are quite different.

Your experience is universal. Mine is different, but therefore irrelevant. Thank you.

I pay several thousand every year to fund education through taxes. Your statement insinuates that the USA does not fund education.

And since we are talking about capitalism, and you seem to think the USA is the prime example, allow me to show you what your claim shows.

Free or reduced childcare https://childcare.gov/consumer...

Section 8 housing https://www.usa.gov/housing-vo...

Free PCs: https://www.pcsforpeople.org/e...

Free phones and free cellular https://lifewireless.com/

Medicaid and CHIP: https://www.healthcare.gov/med...

Heating assistance: https://www.liheap.org/

Those are just a start. And of course, there are income limits. Funny, I thought capitalism was something different entirely. And despite our current issues here, the memes ,possibly spread by people as disinformation in service of our adversaries, are not correct.

While it is easy to blame everything on capitalism, as if the word is uttered, and the wise will simply nod in agreement, it isn't quite that simple.

Yes, once a person gains more workplace skills, they will want to be compensated. So if they aren't, they will go to a place with better compensation.

The only cure for that is pure communism, where are careers are paid the same, and everyone from the newest to most experienced are paid the same.

That never even happened with the attempts at Communism that were tried.

I think the issue of wanting experienced help, and paying them for it may have had a genesis when the first crop of millennials hit the professional workplace. I cannot vouch for everywhere, but our experience matched what we were hearing from other places:

Entitlement, expectation of rapid promotion for basic expectations, belief that they and they alone knew everything, not those stodgy old people. The stodgy old people turned out to know a lot more than they did. The concept that work was a sprint, not a marathon. That sprint concept was more prevalent in the women.

There are exceptions. Two of the best employees we got were millennial's and women. But most of the millennials we hired weren't worth it. 90 percent just left, moved back in with mommy and daddy, or in one case with Grandma because Daddy grew a spine and said "time to grow up".

Finally, they refused to take telling. They found any constructive criticism to cause great upset. An example is one guy we hired who for some reason was petrified of me. As much as I tried, he's still freak out. Finally, I relayed assignments to him via on of the women co-workers.

And the clash between AI, and the demands to WFH for first hires is just a non-starter. A person who has never held a job is going to have a lot of issues under those conditions.

Indeed, yes that is the core issue! Although, if we look at history, like in the book "The Dawn of Everything", for thousands of years humans have lived in a variety of ways, so alternatives are possible.

Dawn on Everything: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

The "Dictionary of Alternatives" lists both historical and imagined possibilities for social organization: https://archive.org/details/di...

Mike Kashtan person writing stories on envisioning a socially healthier future:
https://nglcommunity.org/about...
"Miki Kashtan is a practical visionary pursuing a world that works for all, exploring the application of the principles and tools of Nonviolent Communication (NVC) to social transformation. She dreams of local and global systems based on care for the needs of all life. In her work with individuals, she focuses on supporting movement towards rapid empowerment in service of the whole. In her work with organizations, she focuses on creating and supporting collaborative systems and processes. In her work with multi-stakeholder groups, she focuses on transcending polarization and advocating for solutions that work for everyone. Inner freedom, nonviolence, dialogue, collaboration, interdependence, leadership, conscious use of power, and a commitment to structural change are the lenses through which she looks at every moment and interaction. Some of her deepest sources of inspiration are many feminist theoreticians, Gandhi, Martin Luther King, Marshall Rosenberg, Mary Parker Follett, radical economics, and the commons movement. Miki strives to bring together theory and practice, spiritual commitment and conceptual clarity, radical vision and practical applications, heart and mind, self and other, personal change and social transformation."

James P. Hogan in his 1982 sci-fi book "Voyage from Yesteryear" and some other books illustrates a conflict between scarcity-thinking and post-scarcity-thinking.

Also: https://www.aeinstein.org/
"The Albert Einstein Institution (AEI) is a nonprofit organization founded by Dr. Gene Sharp in 1983 to advance the study and use of strategic nonviolent action in conflict. For over 40 years, we have been committed to the defense of freedom, democracy and the reduction of political violence through the use of nonviolent action. Our goals are to understand the dynamics of nonviolent action in conflicts, explore its policy potential, and communicate this through publications and other multimedia resources, consultations, and educational workshops."

Or something I just saw today:
https://dictionaryofradicalalt...
"This platform aims to share worldviews and practices around alternatives processes in a collaborative way."

The same thing is to true for maintaining physical and mental health in our modern world, where organizations caqn exploit our natural preferences tuned toward scarcity to control us using manufactured ultraprocessed abundance not designed for maximizing health.

"The Pleasure Trap: Mastering the Hidden Force that Undermines Health & Happiness"
https://www.healthpromoting.co...

Similar: "The Pleasure Trap: Dopamine Nation Explains Why We Feel So Empty; In the age of infinite abundance, we are somehow running on empty.
https://danielyeepsych.substac...

More general:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Supernormal Stimuli: How Primal Urges Overran Their Evolutionary Purpose is a book by Deirdre Barrett published by W. W. Norton & Company in 2010. Barrett is a psychologist on the faculty of Harvard Medical School. The book argues that human instincts for food, sex, and territorial protection evolved for life on the savannah 10,000 years ago, not for today's densely populated technological world. Our instincts have not had time to adapt to the rapid changes of modern life. The book takes its title from Nikolaas Tinbergen's concept in ethology of the supernormal stimulus, the phenomena by which insects, birds, and fish in his experiments could be lured by a dummy object which exaggerated one or more characteristic of the natural stimulus object such as giant brilliant blue plaster eggs which birds preferred to sit on in preference to their own. Barrett extends the concept to humans and outlines how supernormal stimuli are a driving force behind today's most pressing problems, including modern warfare, obesity and other fitness problems, while also explaining the appeal of television, video games, and pornography as social outlets."

The Dawn of Everything describes a time some thousands of years ago where walls started going up around cities and kings appeared. One take on that: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"McNeill also makes a broader comparison of civilization [or militarism?] to disease, as a "macroparasite" that weakens societies but also confers political and bureaucratic protection as endemic diseases can confer protection against severe outbreaks of infection."

As I see it, there were "pre-scarcity" times, and then "scarcity" times (the last few thousand years as populations grew in excess of technological capacity) and now we have the e potential for "post-scarcity" times -- but only if we don't squander all that abundance (like Bucky Fuller warned about).

So, another way is possible. But as you imply, it takes a lot of (social) work, and it is a constant struggle (like the perennial fight against mildew in a home in a damp climate). We could use robots to help in that struggle, or we could ironically use robots to spread more "mildew" (mil-do?).

You do realize there is male Pr0n for women don't you? It isn't the one sex servicing creepy lonely men you know.

We all know some universal truths:

Intelligence and competence are inversely proportional to wealth and status.

The poorer you are, the more competent and worthy you are. until you have nothing. At that point, you are perfect.

By me from 2010: https://pdfernhout.net/recogni...
      "Military robots like drones are ironic because they are created essentially to force humans to work like robots in an industrialized social order. Why not just create industrial robots to do the work instead? ...
        There is a fundamental mismatch between 21st century reality and 20th century security thinking. Those "security" agencies are using those tools of abundance, cooperation, and sharing mainly from a mindset of scarcity, competition, and secrecy. Given the power of 21st century technology as an amplifier (including as weapons of mass destruction), a scarcity-based approach to using such technology ultimately is just making us all insecure. Such powerful technologies of abundance, designed, organized, and used from a mindset of scarcity could well ironically doom us all whether through military robots, nukes, plagues, propaganda, or whatever else... Or alternatively, as Bucky Fuller and others have suggested, we could use such technologies to build a world that is abundant and secure for all. ..."

Or as I summarize in my sig: "The biggest challenge of the 21st century is the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity."

Customers who care should just sue. This is pretty strictly a civil issue, and the government isn't going to bother to intervene. It's up to the customers to force them to reverse that.

That said, 22 kW AC charging is absurd. It requires 32A of three-phase power or 90A of a single phase 240V, which means a three-phase 40A circuit or a single-phase 120A circuit. That's larger than the total capacity of my entire breaker box at my house. In a sane universe, the demand charges alone would be enough to discourage anyone from charging at more than about a third of that rate, because unless you just happen to be producing solar power locally at the time, it's horrible on the electric grid.

Even Tesla never went much above about 17 kW for home charging, and they stopped doing that years ago because there was approximately zero demand or real-world use of higher charge rates.

So while technically speaking, they are absolutely doing something wrong, they're still right that the number of people who legitimately care is likely to be within the margin of error of being zero.

They deliberately but in a system for verifying that the software is allowed to run, and deliberately used a certificate that has a fixed expiration date. Whether through incompetence or malice, Microsoft deliberately bricked the software. Technically, they did it a decade ago, and it is only just now being revealed that their time bomb is about to go off, but the effect is the same.

It is per se fraudulent dealing/false advertising to sell a perpetual license to software with full knowledge that it will stop working on a specific date.

This is, IMO, an open-and-shut Lanham Act/false advertising case. And any even remotely competent judge should absolutely throw the book at them.

If the class action lawyers are at all competent and the primary plaintiffs are not horrible people (bought off), the class action should demand that Microsoft release a hot fix that turns off the relevant validation. It's an hour of coding effort for Microsoft, though it would probably take half a dozen engineers a week or two to spin up a build environment capable of building it. The hassle of being forced to unlock the software would do far more to make them and other companies wary of such shenanigans in the future than any mere financial penalty ever could.