Thanks for the reply, I was hoping to generate more discussion. It looks like you were the only one…

Hot take here and I would love discussion- but this is a small reason why I am against a full UBI in cash, but want UBI in voucher form with only a small portion in cash. Vouchers limit potential inflation spill over from sectors and you can now control how much people are getting depending on factors to better and more fairly suit their situations. This is also why I am a huge fan of “food stamps” or food welfare programs. This is essentialy what they are doing already, just make it universal. Then we look at things like housing vouchers, another great program that we can now just scale up and make universal as well. Then you only need to give a smaller cash handout for incidental spending. You know people are going to have to spend money on housing and food, so make those the priorities for funding vouchers and you can put rules in place to minimize inflation within those industries. Then if you have people who are well of enough to not need the full voucher, let them convert the voucher over to cash at a penalty rate, say 2 to 1 for cash, or some progressive scale for remaining money. They don’t need the money as much, but you also don’t want them to be completely left out unfairly and have them resentful of the system. This could even expand into other industries or normal costs. Transportation, cable/internet, cell service, even some insurance (like car, rental, umbrella- assuming that if you are at a level of providing UBI, you are already providing universal health care). Now for each voucher you can make it needs and situation based and evaluate a fair amount for each person through an automated system depending on some quick metrics of their life. Each voucher system is also industry specific with its own oversight and regulations and inflation reductions built into it. I think it would be a better system and am open to others thoughts.

I agree with you as a realist on the situation. We will never stop manufacturing them, at least for the foreseeable future. But we forget that something like recycling is the last stage of the 3R’s to follow. We must first look to reduce consumption. We need to find alternatives where possible, and switch away from these forever chemicals anywhere we can. Next, while “reusing” is not the best term here, but we need to find ways to extend the life of the products that we are forced to use and try to use them up in every way we can. Then lastly we need to be recycling it as best as possible before we send it to an incinerator, or more realistically a developing nation landfill.

Reduce -> Reuse -> Recycle is listed that way for a reason. Everyone always just jumps to the final stage then argue about how bad the recycling is while not even considering ways to reduce or reuse throughout the entire process.

Edit: I see where you are getting your numbers now after looking around. I will leave my comment here for sake of others seeing it and the discussion.

How are you getting 4.2 kg of CO2 for 800 cal???

The average estimate is 0.35 per 1000 cal for the more eco friendly

https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/ghg-kcal-poore

https://www.globe.gov/explore-science/scientists-blog/archived-posts/sciblog/index.html_p=183.html

If you are eating stupid amounts of meat every meal, sure you might average that high.

And more than that, the food is just CO2, arguably not as bad of a GHG. the petrol/gasoline also has the really bad stuff people don’t bring up as much, such as the nitrogen-oxides and sulfurs.

It isn’t just about the pumping. You can pump crude all day and still be broke. Look at several of the middle east smaller countries or even most south America pumpers. The refining is where the industry and money is really at. Cars don’t burn crude oil, it has to get refined. Plastics don’t come out of the ground, they have to get refined. Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest crude oil exporter and they still have to rely on others to refine.

In fact, here is a direct quote from OEC-

“In 2021, Saudi Arabia imported $7.43B in Refined Petroleum, becoming the 27th largest importer of Refined Petroleum in the world. At the same year, Refined Petroleum was the 2nd most imported product in Saudi Arabia. Saudi Arabia imports Refined Petroleum primarily from: India ($2.17B), Greece ($1.09B), Russia ($892M), United Arab Emirates ($835M), and Egypt ($689M).”

This is a huge deal for India. They are the world’s second largest exporter of refined oil, and the largest in asia. This means a lot of buisness is about to shift to them. This is also after India has been negotiating cheap raw oil off Russia due to a combination of sanctions and the occasional case of exploding refineries leading to excess raw oil in Russia

600$

To employ someone at 10$/hr, their actual cost is probably close to 15$/hr when you factor I them coming in to work in the office and all the costs associated with that. At 15$/hr it takes 40 hrs to cost 600$ to thr company. That is one week of work for one employee. This means that they could have a 600$ fuck up every week and still break even over hiring a person. And we are talking about just one person. Chat support is nor.ally contracted out as entire teams and departments.

I remember a case like this that was on reddit. She posted some video explaining the whole thing and that she turned 18 in a few weeks and had no documents. No birth cert, no SSN, no DL, no official docs of any kind. She was leaving her crazy anti gov parents when she turned 18 but realized she had no way to do it for that reason. The easiest solution people had for her to start the ball on all that was for her to sue her parents for a paternity test and go from there with sworn statements and such.

Me and my brother both joined the army at slightly different times. We both did a tour in Afghanistan that overlapped and were just one province away from each other. I did a second tour over there and he got out.

We both came from a VERY conservative family. It was after serving that we both became suuuuper liberal. It was like the wool being pulled out from out eyes when we joined the army and saw how much of a lie it all was. Oddly enough, this is a semi common story for conservative people joining the military.

We grew up with our dad working in the military-industrial-complex and he would make fun of the liberals who called out the military for serving the MIC companies, and how it Iraq was a war for profit. Then we serve and see it first had with all the contractors, the needless equipment, the contracts for new tech that wasn’t needed, and all the other money sinks going into it. It was all a lie.

We grew up being told how bad universal healthcare would be, but then had it in the military and saw how amazing it was.

We were told that if people didn’t have a personal motivation through debt and loans to make them work harder, then people going through college would have no motivation to improve their lives. And yet here I am with the GI bill. (Granted, I still have 70k in student loans. The GI bill is kind of a lie in its self).

Everything that was a conservative talking point was exposed as a lie after joining army.

They also cost as much as 3 samsungs. I am all for buy-it-for-life, but when I can buy a nice Samsung with bells and whistles, have a better wash, lower energy use, and more flexible options on how the clothing is being washed- then why would I not buy the Samsung? My Samsung washer was 800 and the dryer was 600. A speed queen starts at 2400 each. I could buy 3 washers and then 4 dryers for that. Plus I save money on the energy cost with my Samsung eco settings.

I have a house filled with buy it for life where I can and where it makes sense. And when I bought the washer and dryers I looked into speedqueen. It didn’t make sense. And before people start saying things like “good luck replacing them in 3 years” they are already 5 years old. My 1400$ is 5 years in and doing just fine.they could break today and need to both be replaced, and I am still ahead. I think speed queen is one of the few BIFL brands that I disagree with.

There was a HUGE difference from when I first applied a few years after my first tour and had issues (around 2010) versus when I recently applied. The first time was a whole stack of paper only. Electronic wasn’t allowed. Must be in person to submit. If anything wasn’t filled out correctly they wouldn’t tell you, you just had to wait a month and get a letter telling you what page to resubmit. Then the appointments to evaluate you were scheduled with zero input from you. And occasionally they would do ghost bookings to boost numbers. Those are bookings where they would book it the day or two before, only give mail notice, and when you get it it was for an appointment that had now passed, and they make you rebook it with the strike against you for noshowing. It was a nightmare. Then the clinicians defaulted to just assuming you were there for money and if there was a shadow of doubt it was denied.

Then, if you did finally get a rating, good luck getting any treatment. I had a prescription of sertrilene, aka zoloft, literally the world’s most prescribed pill, it ran out after I moved back from Chicago to Houston. But because records were only regional at the time and I was in a new region, I had to re-register for Healthcare. And even though I had the bottle with me, I could not use the pharmacy without a new prescription. So I had to go through the ER, as a triage level 0. I was in there at 11 am and waited ALL DAY until the standard ER closing time and they shifted to life threatening only (about 6 pm), and was not seen. Told to come back the next day. Was in there by 10, seen around 3 or 4. And the doc who saw me was shocked about the whole thing when i explained it to him.

With all that, it has come a long way and was so much easier when I did a pact act claim. It was all online, simplified, they worked with me, contracted out the appointments, it was great. World of change over the last 10+ years.

Woosh

Ethiopia DID have a coast. It was what is now known as the country of Eritrea. They were forced to be part of the country after WW2 in 1950, and ignored the wishes of the people to remain independent. Then by 1961 a war for independence started and lasted for 30 years. It ended with the Eritrean forces taking the Ethiopian capital and winning the war capture the flag style, but with guns.

As far as Djibouti, they are probably the best example of American modern imperialism. The country enjoys a stable currency by using an American backed currency. In exchange the US has their Horn of Africa base there. Because the country is so small but the base has so many troops and the US pays to lease the land, the US military ends up making up a little bit over 10% of their entire GDP. This is the base that launches the anti-pirate operations for the region, not only providing security for Djibouti, but security for the entire HoA. Say what you want about the USA and their modern imperialism, but the only thing anyone in that region agrees with is that they love the US troops there and the mission they do.

If Ethiopia wanted to take Djibouti, not only would that piss off literally every other country in the region, they would also have to go through the USA to take it. Good luck with that.

For those who are not familiar with operation praying mantis, here is my favorite video the breaks it down in about 15 minutes.

https://youtu.be/d5v6hlRyeHE?si=qjuaWUv61xe0Y4Xe

Technically it would reach an altitude where it would become ‘null’ due to dividing by zero. You would eventually hit the vacuum of space where there is no speed of sound and any speed is faster than it.

Audinell ear spray. It will change your friends life. And only $15 a bottle.

Are these OTC hearing aids? Or prescription ones from a reputable audiologist and brand? Every brand I have worked with require the devices to be in pairing mode to do that (the first 30 to 60 seconds of when the devices turn on)

In 2000 the Afghani was worth 75,000 to 1 USD. During ISAF occupation it was fixed at 50 to 1. It is now at 70 to 1 and dropping. Let’s stick to one argument at a time rather than playing the whataboutism game. You said the USA destroyed their economy, yet the evidence strongly says otherwise. Before 2001, Afghanistan was the second poorest country in the world. When ISAF pulled out it was ranked at about 40 (I say ‘about’ because it was still growing and changing faster and the rankings were uptated). In the short time of Taliban rule they have dropped back down to sub 33 with exact number still to be determined. (The sub 33 ranking is important because there are only 33 countries on the UN “least developed countries” list).

I would spend time debating topics like this with educated people and those that are open minded, but you do not seem like you fit either group. Do not expect a reply.

It was a few steps further than talks to make the sequel. It was going to be a Netflix/streaming series (6-10 episodes). They had funding lined up. They had scripts written but still being massaged and finalized. They had almost gotten everyone signed on and was finalizing details for the last signature. -then Alan Rickman died. Then it all fell apart, scripts would have all had to be redone and the whole story line redone, and thus funding pulled out. Then that was the end of it.

Funny you say that- that isn’t far from how it was made. Someone wrote a spec script about a human war with space bugs, independent of starship troopers. When one of the production people read the script they brought up the point that there was a book that they remembered that was kind of like it. When they checked, no one had the film rights to it so they bought it for cheap. They then did a quick rewrite to slap in the character names and basic/cheap/easy things from the book to make more of an appeal to the book fans. Then when the director came on board he was a fan if the book but also wanted to do his own thing. So you now had at least 3 different directions the story was going and it was simply held together by the loose premise of starship troopers.