manxu

The most badass troll in history! In the best possible sense.

Honestly, tulips were a better investment than Tesla or OpenAI. In fact, the continued success of the latter two tells you by itself there is something deeply, seriously wrong with the stock markets and the economy as a whole.

Wait! I thought the stated problem was that Venezuela was a drug state? Did they transport drugs on the oil tanker?

No, but if you do, the (American) social media companies will tattle on you, guaranteed.

Haha, I wondered myself if I had slept through the winter and it was April already.

Yeah, that is not such a good idea. Maybe we could focus on taxing and regulating American social media companies instead, I hear they like that a lot! And Zuck and Musk definitely have access to the White House.

As everyone knows, “Sans” is just short for “Satan’s!” /s

No, no, you remember the same that I do. But the early response to COVID would have been a national responsibility anyway, I believe.

What the EU did that was swift and decisive was to fork out huge amounts of cash to soften the financial blow, based on loans that the EU took on. It was the very first time the EU and ECB took on large debt, and instead of going through the infinitely slow process that financial decisions usually take, it was done quickly and without much thinking (so much so that nobody knew who and when was going to repay those loans).

You are absolutely right, but when it came to COVID, the EU reacted very rapidly, in line with the USA or UK. So it’s a choice, not a structural problem. They just don’t think a rapid response is opportune.

Yeah, they probably shouldn’t have used the phrasing, “vibrating strap-on device” if they wanted us to take them seriously. 🤣

“this isn’t going to last, enjoy it while you can”

that was of course the original assignment by OP!

I am with you, although I don’t understand the logic of movie theaters. The ticket is stupid expensive, the food is even worse, and then the quality of both the movie watching (if you get a bad seat) and food is absolutely terrible.

I haven’t visited since Everything, Everywhere, All at Once (2022), where before COVID I’d go about once a month. Some of it may be due to movies being duller these days, but the vast majority of my reticence is the terrible experience and cost/value ratio.

Good to know!

MoviePass. Although it looks like they relaunched in 2022 in limited markets.

As usual, he who suggested it should be the first test subject.

It’s 50th of 50 in education, IIRC, so that is probably your answer :-)

You kid but that’s the point she was making. She claims the lesson to learn from the Holocaust is not that we should help the weak when they are being pummeled by the strong, but, apparently, something like that Israel can do no wrong.

I believe it’s a reference to the very real fact Chuck Schumer gave us a month of government shutdown to save ACA subsidies and then gave up with nothing to show for but a vague promise of a floor vote on the subsidies in January.

Imagine how that must feel for Germany. First, they decide they want to tie Russia down to eternal peace by dangling infinite oil and gas riches in the face of Putin, and he decides to hell with riches, he wants WAR!

Then they have this relationship that lasted for 80 years with a former occupying nation that they submitted to and obeyed. They braved nationwide dissent over that nation stationing nuclear missiles on its peace-loving soil. They criminalized everything that nation disliked. As recently as (checks notes) now they supported a genocidal regime because they were told that’s the thing to do.

And now all this sensible foreign policy blows up in their face, and they did nothing wrong, except bet on the crazy horses.

I mean, it beats BEING the genocidal regime, or - worse - being the target of the genocidal regime. But it does give one the impression that being sensible is not all that it’s cracked up to be.

Is this pure Facebook friendship or is this controlled for family ties?

I wonder how much a commutation costs these days. I mean, can’t be hard to figure out, all you have to do is look at $TRUMP purchases in the days before it was announced. Since the dude reported to prison and days later was busted out, he probably went in, decided “Hello no!” and paid whatever amount of $TRUMP was required to get back out.