@oskargroth You seem to be proof otherwise apparently intelligent Europeans can be as stupid as MAGA supporters in believing misinformation provided by their political leaders. Secure private personal agentic AI systems are incompatible with opening the private information to "competitors".
@RickPetree@PhillipsPOBrien Well, maybe that’s the whole goal of Trump’s apparently crazy posts, fights wth the Pope, manifestly unconstitutional policies, doge, wars,… as a misdirection to what is really going on
@petergyang And once you get registered and learn all the apps, it is easy to function even knowing virtually no Chinese. Don’t need an eSIM. Roaming with US carriers plans is reasonable and bypasses the Great Firewall.
@petergyang We had exactly the same impressions (as non Asians yet) over Christmas/New Year in Shanghai. Was in Chengdu last spring, also amazing, modern, spectacular food and more laid back and friendly even than Shanghai.
To add to @ColinPClarke post….. It’s just mystifying, inexcusable, and a bit outrageous all at once that anything is a “surprise” now. It’s Iran FFS-the problem set of all problem sets. We had an entire Mission Center at CIA devoted to this. DoD war gamed Iran basically…well, forever. Btw-raising these issues is not unpatriotic. I’m fully onboard Team America. Always. That’s ingrained in my DNA, after nearly three decades in the IC. What I’m not good with is blindly accepting poor performance and no accountability (senior civilian and military planners alike). We r in reactive mode too much and it’s incredible-the Strait of Hormuz, the Huthis, aircraft getting hit in unhardened shelters, Iranian strikes in the Gulf, lack of an uprising - all were obviously going to be issues. So what happened at senior levels at CENTCOM? And In the IC? If we had actual congressional oversite, maybe we’d know. Did they warn admin, and were ignored? On that note-perhaps we need to stop always giving seniors at DoD and the IC a pass and just blaming Trump. I’ll always support the guy and gal on the ground in uniform or at the agency, they r just doing their jobs…tip of the spear, executing policy, I’ve been there many times, I did what I was told . …but maybe consider leadership levels in DoD and the IC don’t get such a pass. 🤷🏻♂️… I’ve also noted that former senior US military who r now in media can’t seem to critique senior DoD in uniform either. That needs to change, I’d suggest. Maybe Caine and Cooper (and Ratcliffe) are as responsible for the conduct and planning of the war as Trump and Hegseth. The good and the bad. And to reiterate, raising this is not unpatriotic. This is America. Holding govt accountable is imperative to a democracy.
@yashar Days or weeks? More like a month…or two. And quite a perimeter to defend with quite a lot of troops (on the ground). Dubious this is in the cards without an unconditional surrender.
@baseballot Those statistics say nothing about the degree of gerrymandering. Imagine a state with an absolutely flat distribution of red & blue voters, 50.9% Party A & 49.9% Party B everywhere. A fair NOT gerrymanderered map will result in Party A winning 100%. Your post is disingenuous.
An Iranian boy from Mashhad won a prize on a TV show and traveled 920 km to Tehran to claim it, only to find out it was a free ticket back home—his laughter went viral!
News flash: People in STEM already immerse themselves in literature, philosophy, and art, and think deeply about the human dimension of their work. Far more often than professors in social theory learn calculus or thermodynamics or quantum theory.