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Joined 1 year ago
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Cake day: June 23rd, 2023

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  • This might sound tin foil hat-y, but the doctor - Petrak - is a contractor without an incentive to complete the work in a timely or efficient manner. I can’t see why he would push for a speedy closure.

    That plus a hospital that doesn’t want to be sued for malpractice, plus a government agency where they would rather check boxes and maximize their metrics*, than consider the damage of their policies to innocent people is a recipe for torturing the public.

    * I would assume they’re going for number of investigations, and not efficiency. They probably count raw numbers, and do what they can to catch every little thing - thoroughness can be good, mind you - because finding something is “proof” of their efficacy.

    It’s a shame more families don’t sue in these circumstances to make the involved parties check themselves to ensure they aren’t causing more harm than good.








  • You connect with someone, pool your resources and efforts, and live together.
    If nothing else, you’ll have someone to miss you when you choke to death.

    But seriously, all we have is each other. Some folks may never partner up romantically, but they can still build their own sense of community and family. Cooking for 2 is easier than cooking for 1, and cooking for 4 is even easier still. According to realtor.com’s July rental report, a single bedroom apartment in the U.S. averages $1600, and a 2 bedroom is $1900. Splitting that 2 bedroom with a roommate is way more economical than going it alone. Paying bills, planning things, having a vehicle break down, needing to share housework — Life is just easier with community. Many hands make light work.

    I’m not trying to paint a rosy picture. It seems right now that capitalism has “won.” With rare exception we’re all peasants, and we all face the same grim reality of being captive to systems that lower our quality of life and increase our challenges to strip every ounce of value from us and the environment around us. Maybe together, we can make it suck less, or at least try to.


  • I don’t disagree with the points you’re making in terms of military explanations.

    I think the U.S. definitely wants to provide Taiwan with all manner of drones, as they can use that as a test bed for their own drone efforts. Even if it’s unlikely to actually occur, I think the specter of China getting involved militarily is an opportunity the U.S. is keen to exploit that will allow them to deploy and test drone systems on the dime of one of their strategic partners, rather than solely at their own expense.

    But I also think that China is working on a diplomatic/economic win in Taiwan.
    With the recent passage of the … oh, I can’t remember the name of it … the law that allows China to arrest people who criticize China online that will apply to Chinese citizens who live/work in Taiwan, or to Taiwanese citizens who have reason to visit China, it means that there is a pall of fear over criticizing China in Taiwan.
    If folks can’t criticize China, it skews the narrative in Taiwan. A few more laws like that, some social/election influence campaigns (in the U.S. and Taiwan), and I could see a gradual undoing of Taiwanese-U.S. relations, and perhaps even a voluntary joining of PRC in a few decades.
    I’m sure, though, that the U.S. is doing the same thing in Taiwan, to try to keep the relationship tight. So it sorta comes down to who can do the best data mining, influence campaigning, and crafty diplomacy.

    All armchair speculation on my part, but that’s how I think it’ll shake out. Less of a military conquest, and more of a cultural conquest.