Weydemeyer

I needed a Bluetooth speaker for my work PC (I work from home). I got one with a radio tuner as well. I’m fortunate that I have several radio stations in my area that play music I like. I prefer having some music on in the background while I work, but I was getting tired of having to actually think about what I wanted to listen to next. So I’ve been listening to OTA radio quite a bit, and it’s a nice change of pace from streaming music. And it’s not like the radio bits added much to the cost of the speaker.

In addition to what others have said, you have to run very large, very persistent trade deficits for your currency to become a reserve currency (in addition to obviously needing to be a highly stable currency). Of the only currency issuers that could potentially fill reserve currency role (US, EU, China), only the US is interested in persistent trade deficits in order to pump the globe full of their currency.

There numerous solutions to addressing child safety online that do not violate personal privacy. This is one example, there are others. Solving the problem when you want to address this specific problem isn’t difficult. But the reality is that all of these measures being pushed are not meant to provide real safety to children, but rather to be able to de-anonymize the internet, so governments can better identify “dissenters” (i.e. people who criticize Israel) and provide higher quality information to AI and online marketing firms.

It’s estimated that 30-40 children died on Oct 7th. Consider the reaction most (white) Americans had to that event to the 165 schoolchildren killed in Minab recently. Neither Israel nor Iran are meaningfully “closer” to Americans than the other.

I’ll add that Disney+ is on the BDS list, so I consider pirating Andor to be a moral imperative.

After many years of trying and failing, I finally convinced my friends to try a TTRPG (Dungeons & Dragons). This is my first time ever playing a TTRPG as it is for most of my friends. We are having an absolute blast. The general consensus is that we should have started doing this years (which I always pipe in with a “yeah, that’s why I first brought it up like 5 years ago”)

I have an N64 and a Sony PVM, so I play a lot of games on that. But there’s two I play much more regularly than all the others: Mario Golf and Mario Tennis. They both hold up incredibly well.

I second this. I enjoyed reading Lenin’s Imperialism very much, but it also felt very dated (as it should, it’s well over 100 years old now). I can’t help but think that if Lenin were alive today, he’d agree. That doesn’t mean it’s not an incredibly important work that we can’t draw from today, but we should also understand how the world has changed since. I haven’t read John Smith’s Imperialism in the 21st Century yet, but I’ve heard it’s a very good update.

Worth noting that usually, the public pays for the stadium in whole or in a significant part, but the sports team owners are the ones who pocket the proceeds from the naming rights.

Yes, I think my advice applies more to an interview than something you would put down on paper on a questionnaire.

I am going to go against the grain of conventional advice and say you should just outline it like you did here. I have been in the position of hiring people before. I much prefer to know the real reason why someone left a company. Granted, if someone says “my boss was an asshole”, I would probably just see that as likely making excuses. But, if someone says “I left because I was subjected to verbal and emotional harassment by my boss, and if you want me to provide specific examples I can do so”, that’s actually information I would prefer to know. I think your situation falls into that later example for sure. The idea that you should never speak ill of a former employer regardless of the circumstances IMO is bad advice.

You’re talking about simple conquest. By that definition any offensive side in a war is imperialist, which is nonsensical as that means nearly every war in human history involved at least one “imperialist” power. Imperialism is system of establishing and maintaining hegemony over large areas for the benefit of an elite (capital in modern times, patricians in ancient times, etc) within a metropole (probably too simple of a definition but it works). The Romans were an empire not just because they had an emperor, but because they conquered lands from Spain to Syria and wealth flowed from those lands into Rome.

Following the news. Between internet sites, twitch, podcasts, etc I spend hours a day just following the news. What’s insidious about this for me is that following the news is a good thing. I feel I’ve found enough solid news sources that I can stay informed about what’s happening in the world. When I don’t follow along with what’s happening I feel anxious, like I’m going to fall behind and then I will somehow get behind and not be able understand what’s happening around me. So while following the news in itself is not a bad thing, it has negative consequences in my life, mainly around time. It cuts into my time with my kids a bit. And it definitely cuts significantly into my time for reading books, which is probably my #1 hobby. I’ve tried to reduce the time I spend on it all but it doesn’t usually work. So it’s a habit I’m trying to kick but not really being successful at it.

I support the DPRK but tbh their flag is kinda mid.

Invading / starting a war is not the same thing as imperialism.

I share most of the opinions expressed about it already expressed in this thread, so I’ll add one: whenever I’m exposed to libertarian media (podcasts, articles, etc), I’m really struck by just how surface-level the analysis is. It’s like, for anything going on in the world, they simply try to tie it back to “biG gOvErNmENt” and shoehorn everything into that. I get that once you start applying dialectical materialism to your analysis of the world around you, other analyses can seem vulgar. But tbh even your typical liberal worldview seems more thought out libertarians. As any example, a libertarian I know was complaining about how California is going eliminate plastic carrier bags at supermarkets. I just asked “ok, then how else are we going solve the problem of plastic bags everywhere?” They just sorta shrugged off the question and said the government has no business banning bags. I actually was a libertarian briefly a long time ago. It was the fact that it offers no real solutions for the biggest problems we face as a species was why I eventually abandoned it.