I wonder where they went?

This alone is enough to answer why people need to vote for Biden next term!!!

I mean… that depends on what metric you are going by, I suppose.

Not by personal happiness, or by health outcomes, or “freedom”, or safety, or education, or (non-military) technology, or … well the list gets rather extensive.

To be fair, the USA did used to lead the world, e.g. being first if not to space then to the moon, and we sequenced the human genome, and computers were invented here, and there’s Hollywood serving up movies and culture all over the world, etc., so I am not knocking any of the past achievements. Notably, after WWII we did get a bit of an “uneven” start compared to countries like the UK that were bombed by Germany whereas the USA emerged fairly unscathed, and yet we took that headstart and really went for it! We indeed were the most successful country in the world - unquestioned by almost anyone.

However, lately… well, “the economy” is still booming, but most average people are going to die significantly sooner than their parents generation did, possibly by a terrorist event such as a school shooting that we have nothing whatsoever to try to stop, health outcomes are abysmal, and many millennials and especially Gen-Zers strongly doubt that they will ever be able to afford a home, seeing how homes have become “investments” rather than places to live in, colleges costs have quintupled, most jobs today for younger people are “temporary” positions in the gig economy, etc. etc. etc.

You do bring up a good point: compared to the rest of the world we still do have it pretty good, in some ways. It is just that compared to how we ourselves used to have it e.g. 50 years ago, we are doing significantly worse, relatively speaking.

Look at almost any list, e.g. the top 10 scientific discoveries, or engineering accomplishments, and America barely makes those lists anymore. Other nations with drive & heart like India or China are sacrificing so that they can outpace us. That’s fine I guess, they needed their turn:-). But at some point we should ourselves: what exactly makes us “successful”… these days?

You might think that I am one of those that hates America, but I do not think of myself that way, it is just that I am questioning our place and how it has changed over the years. Though perhaps I am simply paying attention to the wrong sources, so if you want to send me something to read or watch that answers that, I would like to learn. So far though, everything that I have learned lately ends up just depressing me b/c it at least appears to be a decay, and not just morally.

Russia can be smart… in some ways, sometimes (while also simultaneously dumb in others, as aren’t we all?:-P). e.g. wasn’t it 2025 that Germany was scheduled to eliminate its dependence upon Russian oil (or was it rather all?) for energy. Knowing this does seem likely to have influenced the timeline of events somewhat, seeing how in that regard at least (and some others) it was the perfect time to strike - i.e. if they had waited longer it would have become far more difficult?

And let’s be blunt: if they had managed to take over what they wanted in that “three-day” timetable as initially planned, wouldn’t Europe have simply let them have it? As we consider that, let us not kid ourselves here b/c this invasion has gone on for a decade at this point - Georgia, Crimea, the area west of Crimea, etc. - each time citing “no, I swear, this was all that I wanted, I won’t do this ever again, I promise”. So if EU nations are somehow shocked, Shocked I tell you, SHOCKED, that those leopards would not one day turn and eat THEIR faces off, then I don’t know what to tell them…

However, I was pleased to note how e.g. Germany quickly turned its economy upside down and started mass-producing weapons. They tend to be a very smart and technically-minded people, so I for one have no problems believing that it at least could have been a strategic move on their part to “not have weapons”, when they were not immediately needed, yet also be ready to start producing them at a moment’s notice when the need for such became apparent - as you pointed out.

Likewise but with very different factors involved, those nations physically closest to Russia may have wanted weapons yet been afraid of enraging the bear by having them? So what I am trying, probably ineptly, to say is that it may not “purely” be due to willful ignorance on behalf of every EU nation, to lay down those older-style weapons that cost a lot yet haven’t been necessary for literally decades. A better cost-to-benefit ratio may have been to invest in something like energy independence, so long as the military factor was covered at some very minimal level.

Plus technology changes so fast… as we are seeing live in Ukraine, “tanks” were not the big thing, especially as Russia heavily misused them at first, compared to drones, right? So EU nations were “not prepared”, in the specific sense, but by investing into robotics and batteries and such, the converse does not seem quite true either i.e. we cannot say that those same nations were not entirely “unprepared” either?

That is why it is so amazing that Ukraine is holding off Russia, essentially acting as the shield for the entire fucking world, making Russia expend all of its military might & resources upon it, which could otherwise be put to use elsewhere, into saving up and preparing for the next target, which they ofc according to Russa “we have no plans for, b/c Ukraine is all that we want, we promise”!

Ukraine really does deserve aid then - they’ve earned that. But… there are >100 Republicans who seem to believe rather that Russia has “earned” the right to take whatever they want. And that should worry us all, around the world.

There’s a lot we could unpack there - e.g. it makes me all the more glad that they passed this, since we’ve already spent it either way!?

One quick item: Biden has stated that the aid can be there this week. He was prepared to spring on this. As you already said, this package was mostly to replenish already-spent funds, not as much directly to push forward with new ones. Although with that replenished stamina, I would expect to see new pushes happen as well.

Another big item is that Ukraine is not a member of the EU or NATO. As such it is “entitled” to nothing - everything that is being offered is purely voluntary. So, compared to nothing, $60B USD is quite a lot? Hence why he is grateful, and rightly so.

Another is that the USA does not need to be the sole provider of this aid - not that I am glad for the pause, but given that it happened anyway, I was heartened to see other nations rise up and cover the slack. And now for the USA to join the right side of history - well, better late than never, and all the more so with an amount this big!:-)

As you pointed out, the biggest one is that there is a faction within the US government that looks to be wanting Ukraine to fail, or more precisely for Russia to win. If Trump “wins” the next election, one way or another (i.e. legally or… otherwise), the USA may even go so far as to join Russia against Ukraine?! But for now, even delaying that aid may hamper it enough for Russia to finish the job. Maybe. Even so, this particular aid package got passed. Come what may, this one is a success. It is as important to celebrate success as it is to call out failures - failing to do either is biased, and therefore wrong.

Speaking of, the USA may also fail one day, less due to direct Russian military intervention and more from an internal civil war. But not today, b/c again, come what may, this particular aid package got passed, whoo-hoo!:-)

There is a whole entire universe of back-stories there - not just Han Solo as a kid & young adult (but that too!), but Boba Fett, Lando Calrissian & Vuffi Raa, and like you know Darth Vader but there is also Prince Xixor the head of the Black Sun organization that was his top rival for power underneath the Emperor, and all manner of “minor” characters like IG-88 that almost took over the universe:-), oh and we should not forget Anzat the nostril vampires.

Robots, magic, love, intrigue, pirates, death, honestly like any story it’s more about the strength of the author to tell it than anything but the universe is there to work within, and that’s solid.

You already mentioned some of the top highlights: the Thrawn series - b/c Timothy Zahn is really good - and the rogue series, are both good. I found Michael Stackpole to be a bit distracting to read b/c of all the action terms, but if you can either know or ignore what “pitch” and “yaw” mean, they are great regardless:-). Especially Wedge becoming a pirate - fantastic!:-P

I am guessing that you only think you know about Luke/Leia/Han - e.g. Luke was this old hermit sage in the wilderness in the more recent movies - but at one point he was abandoned by his mentors and had to sort of just figure out the entire Jedi thing all on his own. He went from child/tween to young man to middle-aged long before he pulled back to his role of “retired sage on a mountaintop”, which is the journey of a literal lifetime.

I think you are right to avoid the Yuuzhan Vong - not necessarily forever but at least to start with, b/c it was written in a time when all the other stories had already been told, and people were waiting on George Lucas to expand the universe to be able to tell more, so they are just strange, and also meant to be interpreted in the context of flat being “different” than any that came before. Ngl, there are some interesting stories embedded in that arc, but you can come to them later if you want - they are not good to start your jouney with imho.

Basically I am confirming your existing plan: read what you are interested in, those you mentioned are good, and once you read them, you may have a better feel for what you would be more interested in knowing next. e.g. I always thought the whole back-story of the Noghri was somewhat interesting, especially Leia’s involvement, but until you read the Thrawn series you may not even know what those are.

I guess I should add that it will be really weird to be shifting universes all the time: the Empire (Thrawn and X-Wing series) is a very different place than the Old Republic, the latter is full of entitled people who barely know the meaning of the word “hardship” (and who all think that their lifestyle will go on & on forever) while the former rarely if ever mentions someone who has a stable source of income & a home, instead everything is slavery, death, and freedom fighting. So I confirm that your plan to read whole entire series at once is a good one, as those transitions especially between pre- and post-TOR will be jarring.

So get in there, and enjoy!:-)

While true that the timing is shit, the amount is nowhere close to “table scraps” - this seems like it will legit be helpful, maybe even enough to turn the tide in Ukraine?

Also, it’s not like Congress fed its own and then waited months to feed the dog - rather, dinner for the entire family was delayed from the start of the fiscal year 2024 in October 1 until just a few weeks ago, involving the ousting of one Speaker of the House and almost doing so to the second as well. And now, this aid package for Ukraine may likewise finish the job of getting the Speaker kicked out, bc any time the government is “functional” is considered bad by some elements.

But the timing from passing the federal budget itself to passing this aid package is actually quite short. Yes it’s half a year late, but it did eventually happen, and the amount of aid is large, so is a “success” by multiple metrics, and all the more so given the opposition. If we do end up having a civil war as people like MTG are calling for, this may well be the last aid package that the USA ever manages to pass in the final stages of its democracy.

So imho we should take the win and be happy - we may not get to celebrate Congress doing routine activities like “passing budgets” very often in the future, even six months late.

Thus becoming one rule for the rich, vs. another for the masses…

B-b-but… you weren’t supposed to eat my face off!?

I meant that people like Matt Gaetz and MJT are promising to make the 4th turning happen, by escalation of the existing obstructionism and even outright bringing about a second civil war. I do not think it will happen so quickly, but they will try again, and again, and maybe one day it will. So this is a time of “replacement”. But I did not read the book, just a wikipedia article about it, so probably I am not matching up the terms well.

Keep in mind that people will PROMISE that, but then not deliver. Worse, they will promise it and then WILL deliver their distorted view of it - an example is Trump “draining the swamp”, which he did, sort of, so long as you define “draining” as “installing” and “swamp/corruption” as “efficient and capable leadership, using fact-based policymaking decisions rather than whoever donates the most gets to wear the shiny hat”.

If you can just remember that “good=bad” and vice versa, “up=down”, “forward=reverse” and so on, then the fact that conservatives want to “innovate” the nation to “remove corruption” is a “good” thing!:-)

Sadly, whether we vote on it or not, powerful people are going to implement the 4th Turning regardless. Possibly they will use corporations to become powerful lobbying groups and then after taking over the government from the inside turn around and use the facade of it to take over, or maybe they’ll just do an end-run around it altogether and let us have whatever silly little government we want, while they ignore it and do whatever they please free of interference from it. Most likely they will do both at the same time. Source: they have already been doing both of these for decades, and while corruption goes back beyond the dawn of humankind lately the swing does seem to have turned more towards rather than away from it.

I am no historian personally, but from what I am hearing, even if a former President had only had to deal with a tenth of the issues that Biden has - heck, just pick COVID alone out of that ginormous list - that he already has dealt average to above average with it. But when you put them all together - like you had a whole list and still didn’t get to huge concerns that people have like the border issue - then it becomes supremely admirable, in relation to what he has had to deal with.

I wonder if some of that may be due to the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle early on in his Presidency, but even there he owned up to that, despite how it was Trump who caused >95% of it, and anyway that was years ago now. Another part is that the process he chooses to use to get things done is slow and boring, and then he doesn’t grandstand to the extent that past Presidents have done.

The media has consistently been instantaneous to blame Biden whenever there is the tiniest thread of a future thought that he might be to blame, but then when he does things like help out the train workers, or lower gas prices, those achievements barely register. This is “biased reporting”, arguably so much so that we are not “informed” by what they say and thus it seems not “reporting” so much as showing “advertisements” for things that bleed & lead.

Fox News is correct - hurk 🤮 - when it says that our “lamestream media has failed us”. Ofc it is also corrupt and it does even worse, but if that much at least were not a true statement then it would not have half the viewership that it does.

Like Brexit, we have allowed our government to fall into such disarray that we will never be seen the same way again on the global stage. Nor should we.

As you should be:-). It is possible for both sides of a conflict to be in the wrong:-P.

Bc corruption, one presumes, getting the government to get involved with people’s rights to choose. Yeah it’s weird for me too:-P.

Total deregulation=anarchy, but not all regulations are good either. This is the kind of stuff that made people choose capitalism in the first place, to try to get away from it (not that it worked, obviously).

I mean, we do hold leadership to a different, higher standard, that much is true. But is this man not the foremost world-class expert authority aka leader of his own life at least? And if not him, irt to that super narrow niche, then who else would be considered the leader of his own life?

Imagine if you will a scenario of a Doctor on television, let us call him Oz, who gives patently false advice that literally gets people actually killed. It is not okay for the TV station to air whatever film was handed to them, but how does that absolve the responsibility of this Doctor Oz from his own measure of responsibility, one may even say culpability (or perhaps criminal liability?) in this whole affair?

Again, there is more than one way to be incorrect, and by extension they both were partners in this crime against journalistic integrity.

Your own wording softens the blow too much, imho. How is it “fairness” to point out that he may or may not have been lying (you seem to think not but… how can you tell, really? after all: his answers were prepared in advance, thus the fact that they were not inconsistent is not a surprise?)

Also, even if like you say he is massive unintelligent, he still collects a paycheck to do the job - how then is he not a liar, either way? When people get into a plane, it is with the expectation that the “pilot” knows how to fly the plane. Then, if someone passes themselves off as one, how is that not a lie?

There are so many more ways than one to be incorrect. For example, just b/c they don’t slant the coverage as much overtly towards Trump does not mean that it is unbiased for it to have been slanted away from Biden.

The job of a newspaper is to tell the unvarnished Truth. Whether it fails to do so for reasons of profit, or b/c of Russian interference, or they are merely unintelligent, or whatever - does it matter? Whether it is a “lie” (and that fact demonstrable in a court of law) or not, it is not the Truth, and thus fails the criteria of being “news”, and remains mere opinion instead.

The long winter is over! He’s back, baby!

Good work tracking them down though!

Part of it was that the study, if you are thinking of the same one as me, referenced the concept that: would you work twice as hard for $100k as you would for $50k? Like if the latter was a 40hr/week job, would you work a 80hr/week one for twice the pay? At some point you start to dip into diminishing returns - like you’ll work a bit harder but not TWICE as hard, so after that point, each additional dollar is not worth as much as those before that point.

Which makes perfect sense - like if you could make 100k at 50hrs per week, what’s the point of making 200k at 100hrs per week, it’s just too stressful to try to keep up?! At some point, with your basic needs met, you are no longer as aggressive at chasing down additional funds, and people would generally prefer to relax a bit, and Quality of Life concerns rise to the foreground over money.

And there’s probably other considerations as well, e.g. working for yourself vs. others.

Thank you for the explanation.