theFu comments

If you want peace, prepare for war.

Taiwan has learned that.

Ukraine as learned that.

Israel already knew it.

Japan is learning it along with NATO countries who haven't been putting their fair share into defensive spending, including Canada.

I think much of the world doesn't realize how tight the USA and Canada are on defensive systems. We share much of our infrastructure with officers from both countries working side-by-side daily at different installations. Denmark too - there are US based in Greenland, property of Denmark and the UK, Germany. Finland has been working with the US for many decades. Sure they weren't part of NATO, but they did participate in annual exercises.

If you want peace, prepare for war.

Don't forget, Russia attacked Ukraine.

Perhaps he and Trump will finally be able to kill off the SLS program. Chemical rockets don't need any fundamental breakthroughs anymore. That's solved and NASA needs to get back to basic research, not running a life company for payloads.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/08/former-nasa-official-on-trying-to-stop-sls-there-was-just-such-visible-hostility/

This guy is like how the US Navy mandates that all aircraft carrier captains are former Naval Aviators. You don't need to be a rocket scientist to lead NASA. You need to be good at understanding engineers and making cost-effective decisions for the entire organization.

I'm not a fan of Musk, but he does have the most cost effective and safest way to get to orbit today. The others companies all lack that and the SLS is a "launch every 5 yrs" rocket that gets thrown away. That is not cost effective and America would be better served by less expensive launches. Boeing is in the dog house. They don't know how to make low-cost rockets. All the others are for tiny payloads, nothing useful for manned missions anywhere.

Police had not yet established a motive.

There are probably 29.7M UHC customers pissed at the company he runs.

They've been caught using AI to systematically deny benefits. Some health insurance companies in the US are known to automatically deny and force the customers to appeal multiple times to get the payments that should be covered.

https://www.propublica.org/article/unitedhealth-healthcare-insurance-denial-ulcerative-colitis is about one person who had $2M/yr in drugs and was about to be denied coverage by UHC. I don't care what issue there is, no individual should ever see drug bills required to keep them living over $10K/yr. Not ever.

If you are going to disappoint people with life and death choices, best not to do it to people who have just a year left to live. There court case won't ever get to court before their death. Their savings are likely all gone and they've probably divorced their marriage partner so some of their savings can be hidden from the medical vultures.

$2M/yr for drugs? That's crazy.

Don't forget, Russia attacked Ukraine.

There was no plan for Ukraine to attack Russia or to join NATO, ever. Now there will be AND as many other border countries as can will want to join both NATO and the EU ASAP. Putin really screwed up in his plans to put the USSR back with Russian leadership. Soon the Russia-aligned -Stans will want to join NATO too, for their own protection.

Trump will have his tongue so far up ... er... somewhere. I guess that's one way to peace.

NATO membership was never on the table. Fine. Take it off. Then when peace happens, Ukraine can join NATO a few months later ... er ... post-Trump and NATO can take back all the land trying to be stolen by Russia.

Russia needs to start sending 10% of their oil profits to Ukraine to fund rebuilding for the next 20-40 yrs as well.

3 - 2 - 1 - until the CCP deniers show up to point out that the UN doesn't recognize Taiwan as a country.

The declarative theory of statehood defines a state as a person in international law if it meets the following criteria:

1) a defined territory;

2) a permanent population;

3) a government and

4) a capacity to enter into relations with other states.

Taiwan is a country. They are free to meet with anyone willing to meet with them.

Are they going to drag more anchors on the bottom of the ocean looking to catch undersea fibre cables? Like they did in the Baltic Sea? Of course, it was by accident ... er ... twice. Or will they "accidentally" break an undersea oil pipeline again?

Or setup more overseas "police" stations run from restaurants and laundry shops to hunt and harass anyone who appears Chinese into not using their free speech rights inside those countries?

Is that resolute?

With China, it is hard to tell, but usually it looks like incompetence and foreign interference. OTOH, they will ship CPUs, support chips and other dual-use items to Russia to aid killing Ukrainians without a second thought.

Taiwan will never invade or attack China first. Same can be said of all other countries, except Russia. Nobody wants land in China, except the border countries where China has built towns, slowly shipping in more and more Chinese to live on and across the borders. Pick almost any border country and there are newly built Chinese towns straddling it full of Chinese people. India, Tibet, and others have over 600 new villages. This isn't a small scale operation. China is slowly, methodically, expanding into foreign countries on land. They are attempting to do the same in the sea. This is the CCP being aggressive, not the other countries, though they have every reason to send troops to each of those towns and force-ably remove all the Chinese newly settled.

Any fears of that any other country wants part of China are just foolish, but the CCP keeps telling average Chinese that others want to invade as a way to misdirect incompetent political leaders.

Operation Fox Hunt. https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/two-arrested-and-13-charged-three-separate-cases-alleged-participation-malign-schemes-united

China and the CCP need to weigh potential implications for regional security, and the impact on the relationship between China and other states based on their actions outside China. It isn't like NZ has setup fake police stations inside China.

https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/politics/report-of-china-run-police-station-spurs-govt-to-launch-multi-agency-probe/3V7VA7D4GNH7ROSTYFO6DX6HYI/ is a news article from the NZ Herald about Chinese police stations in NZ.

Rudy is just trying to delay. He's following the Trump playbook, hoping that when Trump gets into office, all the attorneys will be fired.

He's had nearly 1 yr since the verdict was set.

The court should have demanded months ago that his assets be named and turned over to the women he harassed and libeled. He's guilty of so many things. Certainly his vehicles can be handed over, with keys and a $1 purchase price until the title is found/replaced. The keys to his properties should have been handed over as well.

Let him live in Trump's tower for free - meaning Trump should cover any bills from Rudy for living there.

I have ZERO sympathy for this man. None. What he did to those election workers was proven to be lies in court. There are repercussions for lying about other people. I guess legally, it is called "defamation." It is also extremely non-Christian to lie about others. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor (Exodus 20:16)

China is feeling the same sort of pressure that Hong Kong, Taiwan, Vietnam, Philippines, and any country working with Taiwan is forced to feel.

NZ gets to make their own choices. It is an internal matter.

It is China who started all of this, since Xi came into power and started China on the path as the regional bully and has placed de facto Chinese police stations outside China, with 7 of them across the USA, used to bully former Chinese citizens, dissidents, from telling their truth about life under the CCP.

NZ should be cautious when dealing with China. Of course, NZ already knows this.

Taiwan will never attack China first. China has nothing to be afraid over from Taiwan, provided they don't try to change the status quo.

China has shown through actions bad behaviors towards Taiwan, Japan, and lots of other SE Asia countries. Actions speak clearly, so Taiwan is also "acting" in their best interest. It won't be enough to prevent China from taking Taiwan, but the cost will be very, very, high to China.

I fail to understand what Russia has to do with this and why anyone would listen to a country that invaded another country and has illegally tried to annex it. Hardly the leaders anyone in the world should want.

Beggars don't get to choose their meals.

The world is going to lose those places, especially the islands that don't have much land over 3m above sea level.

If all the major greenhouse gas countries stopped today, magically, the floods from ice melt will continue another 30-50 yrs and sea level will raise 1-3m. There's no stopping that at this point. It will become even worse, because not enough is being done.

For anyone living at less than 3m above sea level ... find a fool to buy your land and move ASAP. You don't want to be the last fool on the land that nobody will buy. I live at 300m altitude for a reason. I used to live at 3m above sea level. After a major flood, it was my Darwin moment, I moved. Humans are smart. We can predict the future and take actions BEFORE nature tries to kill us. If you see nature coming to kill you, sitting there waiting for it to happen is foolish. Move.

Blaming others, even when it is true, isn't going to stop it.

First world countries can't even spend that money to stop emissions at home. It will never be released.

Senator Rich needs to be retired already. There are lots of US women in combat. Lots who fly combat missions too. Senators displaying ignorance isn't good.

“Women in combat today, they are vital to our defense, and it’s not as if we’re having Gladiator 2 types of confrontation, but rather, we have women who are high-performing aircraft pilots… they’re sailing our ships, they’re flying our helicopters. They’re engaged in combat in every sense of the word,” said Cohen, former Defense Secretary.

Rich will have a hard time being confirmed over his anti-women comment.

I'm more interested in the fact that homophobic murders and physical abuse are extremely rare in China, unlike in the west.

How would you know? The CCP doesn't leave gay stories. Heck, a few weeks ago, a man ran over 100 people exercising together outside a gym and it wasn't on the local newspaper front page, ever. There are lots of bad news stories that get buried/censored in China. Tragedies, even when caused by nature, are covered up in China. We have lots of proof of that. Hundreds of stories every year with photos ... that Chinese inside China will never see.

What do the "developed" nations get by paying this? I've never understood that. As long as they are expelling huge amounts of greenhouse gases, any money should be spent at home to reduce those amounts and make any violators pay.

Of course, Trump will never go for this.

Undeveloped countries don't have a good track record of using money well. Any money sent needs to come with strict requirements for actions and democracy with protections to prevent autocratic leaderships.

Money given always comes with strings. Everyone in the world knows that.

Island countries need to be building solar, wind, wave power, and energy storage infrastructure. Also, they need to start building either floating buildings or building on stilts. There's no way anymore there won't be at least 1-2m of sea level rise at this point. Melting has begun and it isn't going to stop for at least 30-50 yrs, even if we cut all emissions today.

My Japanese would cause smiles and giggles when I attempted it while working in Japan. Seems my teacher spoke with a lisp and I learned that as well. ;)

Requiring English doesn't make sense. Requiring 1 foreign language DOES make sense, but it doesn't need to be 5 yrs of study, just 2-3 yrs to get the idea of different languages really helps.

If you will be doing business with mainland China, best to learn Mandarin, not English. If you will be doing business with South America, learn Spanish. If you will be doing business with lots of foreign countries, learn English.

The choice of language needs to be that of the student AND parents. Does everyone need to learn Calculus? Nope.

To Israel, this has always been about hostages. Complete hostage release, unharmed, or no deal. Would you leave your family in the hands of terrorists in any negotiation? This is and always has been an act of terrorists. That's is extremely clear.

Battery-powered land mines. Guess that's one way to limit the danger time, but also to make repeat customers. Even if the battery lasts 1 month, is that sufficient? 6 months or 1 yr would be better. Can't imagine that my smoke detector 9V batteries last over a year, but these only last a few weeks?

If it funnels Russians into a cut-down location, seems like a win for Ukraine.

Ukraine needs ways to hit every home that Putin sleeps in nightly. That's the only way this war can end with Ukraine remaining as a country, I fear. Trump will shortly cut-off all aid to Ukraine, so time to act is very limited.

Estimates say that up to 1M Russians have been killed in Putin's fallacy with Ukraine. That number seems high, even to me. It is over 500K Russians, but not near 1M, I don't think. Studies say that Ukraine is killing Russians at 35x the rate they were killed in Afghanistan. I'm torn. Distant relatives live just east of Ukraine in Russia, but some are also in Ukraine, no doubt.

So, USGovt employees can expect Twitter-like layoffs, without the stock payouts. Good to know.

Boeing has been in financial trouble since the 737-Max problems.

Cable and door plug issues didn't help from suppliers trying to remain in business right at the edge of bankruptcy. Issues stacked on issues.

There isn't 1 single reason for their financial problems, but tens of the reasons.

The strike didn't help.

Companies aren't charities. They are for-profit entities. Why is that hard to understand for some people?

When there's X money for employees, if one group gets more than they were planned to get, other groups will get less. Money doesn't grow on trees - at least for non-govts.

Multiple eye witnesses say he did it. He may not have known she was 17, but there won't be anyway to know that and US law doesn't care if he knew or not.

Looks like this man is a pedophile. If he is confirmed, then we know the swap has been re-filled by Trump. We already have that idea. Fortunately, Trump can't pardon someone for violating state law.

NASA tried to kill the SLS program around 2010, but Congress wouldn't let them. NASA knew that commercial launch vehicles were going to be much more cost effective. They are, by far.

Govt used to be the only way to get to space. That isn't the situation for Earth orbit anymore and won't be for the Moon in a year or two.

Private industry can do things much more efficiently than any govt. NASA doing launch vehicles of any sort should be ended. That's one thing that Trump may do that I agree with. It will end the engineer welfare that is govt launch systems. That's a good thing.

Last month, Community College of Allegheny County sent a rocket into space as a class project. Getting into space isn't like it was decades ago when a college team can do it. A student team from USC did it 5 yrs ago.

There are more interesting problems for engineers to solve than chemical rocket launching. Have the rocket scientists work on what to do once in space. Getting there is a solved problem, at least for the USA.

Of course Trump likes Musk. He has more money and Trump wants more money anyway he can get it, legally or illegally. Don't forget that Trump is the first President in the last 100 yrs, perhaps longer, who didn't divest from his personal asset management.

For the few things I agree with Trump about, I couldn't let the fact that he's a convicted felon, petty, and known, massive, liar, make me vote for him.

I agree with about the same number of things on the democratic party's platform, but not being a liar or convicted felon made the choice clear.

Did the Muslims forget that Trump moved the US embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv? Did they think he'd be pro-Muslim after doing that? Fools.

Lesson: Letting your emotions control your vote is a bad idea.

On day 1, Trump is going to issue mass pardons to everyone doing Pro-Trump things. He will do it again on Jan 19th 2029, to prevent lawsuits for all the new illegal Pro-Trump things under federal law that happen while he is in office this time. He's a lame duck President, so he has nothing at all to lose.

2000 US marines in AUS? I can see the costs of that deployment already.

I don't think either Japan or the Aussie military need any help learning to be professional soldiers at all, but being around each other daily CAN build trust between the different platoons.

silly people who still believe that this is democracy..

Nobody thinks China is a democracy. Press freedom is a cornerstone of all working democracies. It is the 4th branch of govt, since govts worldwide have proven they cannot be trusted to self-police themselves. Having someone show yourself (your govt) in a mirror is very important.

And when will those self-driving, self-parking, vehicles all work safely that we were promised in "a few years" back in 2014? Turns out that specialized, expensive, hardware is necessary. I wonder if AI had to tell them that or if they figured it out themselves?

AI is changing the world, just is subtle ways that people outside businesses using it don't see. It won't happen overnight. It will happen to the connected world as an evolution, not a revolution.

AI isn't even at the Model-T place yet. It is all very much custom built for specific purposes. Sometimes there are surprises - like the AI setup that decided it needed to learn a new language to help an unexpected question be answered.

Between AI and quantum computers with classical computer front ends, some amazing things will be possible, but that is a long time away, as current quantum computers use near absolute-zero cooling which won't fit in a car.

It's coming, but like many engineering problems, it will needs decades of optimization before you and I have AI on our wrists or in our brains to help with unimportant daily choices.

International business uses English. If you are going to be a rural farmer, then it would matter if you want to sell your stuff outside China to foreign places without a middle-man translating.

Long ago, people learned that the best way to learn any language is to go live for a year+ where it is spoken daily. That is still true.

Sending your teen to an English speaking country for 1-2 semesters is great, just like someone from English speaking countries sending their teen to Japan is great. Costs are $10-$20K. Going for a few weeks in the summer is $3000-$6000, so not as good a deal and the language skills learned will not stay with the student as long.

Get your kids into an exchange program. Don't send them to a big city if you already live in Tokyo. Really shake up their view on life.

I'm always shocked when people choose to install and use software from a huge marketing company and one of the best abusers of our data. I'll never understand people like that.

Google has been caught, multiple times, lying about the data they collect. Do you think that when you ask google to delete data it actually does? Fool! To google, "delete" means "never show this data to the user again", not that they actually remove the data from their storage. Of course, google will claim that the data can't be removed because it was incorporated into data with millions of other patsies and it would be impossible. In court documents, google has admitted they get personal information based on browser use sent to them when you aren't visiting google websites.

When google changed their moto from "don't be evil" to "make as much money as possible", that's when smart people stopped feeding them data. Whenever it is easy, I poison data on myself that google slurps with misinformation. Some of the suggested stuff they offer is really funny. Same goes for FB and all the large data tech companies. See how much bogus information they will gleam from you if you throw in a few wild searches that are meaningless or for a different type of person once in a while.

If I told you that standing in the middle of a lane on a freeway was safe, would you do that too? Don't use google chrome browser folks. Just don't.

So much for 1 county, 2 systems that was guaranteed for 50 yrs.

Biden spending money that isn't his to spend.

I'd much rather see that money fund Ukraine, since much of it will come back to the US in arms purchases anyway. Plus Biden could transfer that money before Jan 20th, when the crazy-man liar returns.