Imagine the suspension of intellect it must take to admit that Russia is willing to pay you push the narrative you are already pushing, or are willing to push, and then considering yourself a victim for doing it.

You weren’t the target, you were the tool.

Second job overnights at a gas station… Pretty much any combination of right/left hand, upside down/mirrored, cursive/text, words forward/letters backwards, etc.

It doesn’t require suspension of critical thought when you can look around the world and see that nowhere does anyone have high speed rail spanning distances and population densities equivalent to what the US would need to go from, say, New York to LA, it East to West Coast in general. There are plenty of examples similar locally to East or West Coast population centers, but nothing in between. High speed commercial routes? Maybe. High speed commuter rail? It’s not even close to being worth the cost: utilization.

Not sure what you are arguing with exactly, theres a huge difference between commercial and commuter ‘profitability’. Things that freely allow for commerce like a road can be justified from many different direction where a periodic service only makes sense based on demand. That isn’t to say that maintaining an underutilized route with the goal of it becoming utilized based on is availability is always a bad idea, but a road can be built and it’s cost can at least roughly be correlated to it’s use. If you had to periodically rebuild every road, at roughly the same cost whether it was used or not, they would end up with the same ‘profitability’ concern, but mostly you have to build all the roads for minimal usability and then spend the most money on the most used roads. Freeways are understood to improve commercial visibility and are funded by taxes for that reason. The entire country benefits by having clear routes for good to move. Commuter rail primarily benefits a local area and is funded heavily by fares and local taxes.

Is that supposed to be a smart ass answer?

Well, since you ask, it likely depends on whether they’re humorously encouraging you to look at something from a different angle, or if they’ve just discovered a handful of situations that get a chuckle from people who only encounter it occasionally, them proceed to subject everyone to the same ‘second-think’ ad nauseum.

Facts are tiny, but there are a lot of them. Theories are big but only useful the fewer of them there are. Grow oversimplifications, of course, but the more facts a theory can explain, the more successful the theory. Maybe that’s is how they should be framed, theories are never proven, they are only successful or disproven.

These are nice for when you need to tighten something random and you have no idea what size it might be. They do not excel at being a dedicated tool for a larger job. Definitely a matter of preference, but if you find yourself being the go-to person for assembly, a dedicated tool of the correct size is like night and day. If you find yourself just needing something convenient that can jump from bed frame to electronics project and fit in your pocket, these are the way to go. Personally I’d have a hard time imagining not having both options in different tool boxes.

I think you are stretching the semantics pretty far…the US is primarily rural geographically and urban only in very sparsely spaced cities…where Europe is urban in more condensed areas. The US doesn’t make everything ‘more inconvenient’ for the most part, most things are simple more inconvenient by nature.

On the other hand, within cities themselves, the US does shoot itself in the foot with it’s policies and what it subsidizes. Overall, though, most people don’t realize how really big the US is, space vs population-wise, compared to Europe or Japan.

There is no way a US federal high speed rail would look anything nearly as successful as ones in europe or other highly populated locations. I think people fail to realize that for the most part the US is very sparsely populated. with the exception of maybe 2-3 ‘regions’ that might look close to the population density and public transportation feasibility of Europe, there just wouldn’t be enough people going between each individual point to make it profitable, even if subsidized. Imagine putting up 300 miles of high speed rail that cost many millions of dollars to build, millions of dollars a year to maintain, and thousands of dollars to run each round trip, and then finding out there are only a few dozen people that need to go between those particular terminals each hour. Trying to adjust by running less often just makes things worse because running less often means fewer people yet will find it convenient…running more often makes it less profitable…so you end up like the US and basically don’t bother making routes and stations without enough traffic.

A free printer might be awesome if it’s laser…a free ink jet printer is like saying you got stabbed ‘for free’. I mean, yeah, it was free.

Yeah, he was basically telling them to stop, or maybe more generally he was telling them to take a look at whether they really need to print things.

Brother printers were the last straw in throwing away they last inkjet I ever hope to own.

Want to scan something into your computer, you say? Sorry, can’t do that because you’re low on magenta!

No idea if their laser printers try the same crap, because I avoided that brand when it came to picking one out, but holy crap what an off-putting experience.