Nah, I put that argument in the same camp as “if you tax them, they will move” in New York; pure bluster and ultimately an empty threat of Mutually Assured Destruction.

If a billionaire takes out a loan against their stock portfolio (as they so often do); force that to be treated as a Capital Gains taxable event. L

The US military is also arguably not at it’s prime now either - but I’d say Iran is much better equipped now than it was a decade ago (when Trump nixed Obama’s nuclear agreement).

0.1% still equates to 8.1m people; instead, if we we’re to focus focus on the Top 1%, of the Top 1% of the Top 1% - that is only ~8,100 people.

Holding their feet to the fire, and getting them to co tribute their fair share - despite their dragon’s hoard of wealth - would quickly bring those below them with less wealth in line.

e.g. Make an example out of Elon Musk, and the Ellison’s would quickly fall in line.

I personally think Yuri’s Revenge brought about a bit too much mechanical cheese, and prefer vanilla RA2 - but I won’t begrudge a fellow fan their preferences!

o7

The Veronica Mars movie was a great continuation of the original series.

It’s a real shame that the revival series ended the way that it did (avoiding any spoilers), it really killed off fans’ desire for more.

Again not the original person you asked, but I found Bazzite a tad too restrictive - I couldn’t for the life of me get PIA’s VPN client installed (for all of those Linux ISOs on my home server).

Ended up switching to CachyOS, which is also very gaming-focused (and Arch-based, if that matters at all!). It’s a bit more open, allowing you to fiddle (or not) with everything a bit more than Bazzite.

As an aside, my only hang-up is that it sometimes hangs while trying to boot up the GUI (not sure why, hasn’t bothered me too much), and it can’t wake from Sleep - but I’m pretty sure that’s just something misconfigured in the BIOS.

4K content on streaming is pretty terrible - so I can’t blame you for that opinion.

But comparing a 1080p Blu-ray to a 4K copy makes it a lot more noticeable, akin to watching a 480p DVD next to a 720p Blu-ray.

Lines are crisper, you can notice a lot more detail (skin texture on close-ups), background objects are clearer - nothing exactly revolutionary, but still an improvement nevertheless!

I’ve heard good things about IKEA electronics and white-goods also; for instance their LADDA batteries are apparently Eneloops, their dishwashers are/were Bosch, and they partnered with Sonos for their speakers also.

Costco apparently does quite similar with their Kirkland own-brand products - but at least here in Australia they haven’t offered (m)any electronics yet.

Oh, this 100%!

I ended up buying a cable tester in order to sort, identify and validate the rats nest of USB C cables we’ve accumulated.

Once identified, I use a little bit of coloured electrical tape around one end to keep them categorised. I originally wanted to use silicone o-rings or mini clips for this purpose - but didn’t have any luck finding something suitable.

It shouldn’t have to be like this, manufacturers should clearly label both transfer and power delivery capabilities on the cables themselves.

For this reason alone, I’d give plenty of kudos to LTT for doing just this with their recently launched line of True Spec cables. Every cable moving forward should be produced to this same standard.

TBF, charge-only USB-C cables are great for data security when needing to charge your device from a public / untrusted port.

I thought USB 2.0 Type C cables were covered by the spec also, but I honestly have no idea.

Beyond just the pedophilia, his (Epstein) operation was largely one of socialising, and securing (probably coerced) introductions from people he helped facilitate and now held blackmail over.

e.g. using blackmail material on a Bill Gates to secure an introduction to another wealthy and influential individual, offering them a “massage” and then producing kompromat at a later date to bring them into his circle.

Now don’t get me wrong, everyone who found themselves in this position was a willing participant, not a victim - but I can understand how so many oligarchs eventually found their way into his little black book.

Historically, GOP candidates have benefited from lower voter turnout (Trump ‘24 being the only notable exception in 40+ years).

By disincentivising Dems and Independents from voting because “both sides bad” and “nothing gets better” it’s increasing the chances of a Republican victory, and accelerating your nations decline.

Your primaries are the period you’re meant to vote for your preferred candidate, whereas in the general election you vote against the candidate you hate more.

I would, as an under-educated Australian, expect a lot of these migrants being from the Middle East - due in no small part to all of the US-led fuckery over the past 25 years (in particular).

So not colonialism, but something altogether worse?

The American Experiment is well and truly coming to an end, and I think we can mostly agree that it is ending an abject failure.

The big question is: what comes next? Will it be the age of the American Empire, or the start of America’s Century of Humiliation?

Mind you, neither answer is a particularly good one - seeing as how the rest of the world has basically built itself up based off the foundation of a unipolar world.

We are cursed to live in interesting times.

For anyone on the fence about this series (as I was, right until I saw this):

The series, created by R. Scott Gemmill, premiered in 2025 and tells the story of healthcare workers inside a Pittsburgh emergency room over the course of 15 episodes. Each season has taken course over one shift, with each episode covering an hour of the shift.

Immediately sold, starting as soon as I’m home.

Maybe a dumb and selfish question - but what does this mean for PBS shows like Sesame Street?

While I definitely enjoyed S5 and think the ending managed to thread the needle in providing a suitable ending to two different camps, it did feel comparatively rushed and not quite as polished and fun as S3 & S4.

Some of the articles I’ve since read did touch on a lot of the ‘darker’ content being left on the cutting room floor - so that does go some of the way to explaining the pacing.

But overall, it’s one of the few shows that will definitely go into my annual rewatch rotation!

There are apparently OpenVPN profile you can import, but as I said in my earlier comment - I just couldn’t get it to work (connection attempts would just time out).

I still have like ~18 months of PIA left (joined under a 100% cashback offer), but will likely switch to Proton or Mullvad afterwards - as they both seem to work better under Linux from what I’ve read.

I’m sure over time I’ll tinker more under the hood over time, but for now - I’m just trying to ease myself into Linux with pre-configured installers when particular apps aren’t available through the Cachy Package Manager.

30-odd years of Windows usage has dulled my IT skills!

I barely know what I’m looking at! 😅

Pretty sure I tried poking around that file on Bazzite also to see if I could locate the RPM to try and do a manual terminal install - but gave up after a few minutes.