kapone
And I guess the two countries (combined) that have almost 3B people don't believe in climate change either? Because if they did...
Now compare that to...
Yes, solar and wind projects are being canceled, and yes, there may be an element of ideology involved, but the reality also is that the math aint working.
If the math worked, Europe's energy prices wouldn't be where they are now, given the commitment they've made to renewables. I'd much rather see a national focus on nuclear, which is as clean as any other form of energy, and to a degree that is happening now.
Oil prices are down, we now produce more oil than anybody else, and enjoy low energy prices domestically.
Where’s the problem?
We shall see.
WE have been the money pit for the entire world for a very long time. Likely too long. People and countries are having a fit because the money flow seems to be slowing if not stopping altogether.
What matters on any stage is … power. Pure, unadulterated power. Soft power is for pansies. And we know how to show and use our power. Just one…one of our carrier fleets packs more power than entire countries.
FAFO - Fuck around and find out.
Edit: The cartels in the south are starting to find out. We can shut down that entire corridor in the blink of an eye, if we wanted to. And we may be there now.
That’s how ICE has always worked, this is not new. “People who get assaulted” - seriously? Catching people who break the laws of our country is “assault”?? Show ID to who? People who are not even supposed to be here?
That’s laughable.
And they are not “our” treaty commitments. Treaties by definition involve more than one party.
But out of curiosity, what commitments are talking here? Talking in abstracts is meaningless.
The totality is what matters, not you, not me.
Ha ha. They (democrats overall) need to look inwards for that.
> Same reason he pardoned Fauci and others. Fauci screwed up our country so bad, it aint even funny. The fact that he needed a PRE-EMPTIVE (i.e. he wasn't even accused of anything at the time) pardon says it all. And the fact that Biden gave it to him, says everything there is to say about Biden.
> And from what we've seen, he was right to do so. Not even close.
> Although, they've been angling to declare his pardons void so they can go after whoever they wish. They should.
- Look at what Biden did to the southern border. And look at it now. - Look at almost any "democrat" run major city. Any. Then look at the crime rates and cost of living. - And the recent farce that was this "No Kings" crap...
Trump isn't perfect. Far from it. He's got major flaws, both in character and execution. However, name any major policy initiative that he's undertaken that is bad for the "country". As a whole.
H1Bs use Microsoft products more than others? Or they do it because they have to…or what??
Please explain yourself.
Yes, it’s not great, but so what?
Money rules. There’s no ifs and buts about it.
If it doesn’t have a reasonable rate of return, nobody gives a shit.
You’re not seeing investment into these kinds of “essential global infrastructure “ projects, because there are NO such things.
We can’t even agree on what “global” means.
WHAT should the Wikimedia foundation invest in, that's viable for a thousand years?
That requires a Wall St/hedge fund and/or Buffett mindset.
The Wikimedia foundation is none of those, and they're not big enough to make even a ripple in the investment landscape.
They’ll fall in line quickly enough.
Who’s got the money?
Stay quiet.
>The US Dollar has never been 100% backed by any metal.
This is not accurate but the devil is always in the details. What exactly does "backed by" mean? If we mean pre Bretton Woods (1971), then, for all intents and purposes it WAS backed by Gold, not just a promise. The federal reserve could not conjure up fiat dollars on theirs (or anybody else's) whims and fancies.
Pre-1971 US dollars could be freely traded/swapped for gold at any bank at the then rate of 1oz of Gold = $35. This was written in stone.
Of course, then Nixon did what he did in 1971, and as they say the rest is history.
p.s. The Bretton Woods Agreement/system/whatever you wanna call it, came into being in the aftermath of WWII, in 1944. This was [1] essentially an agreement that those 44 countries will use the US dollar (and by correlation, the USD<->gold peg) as long as the (US) powers that be didn't fuck it up.
p.s.2 - A lot of people don't realize that these accords were what established the IMF, and the beginning the World Bank, BIS etc.
So, what happened in 1971 and what did Nixon do?
"On August 15, 1971, President Richard M. Nixon announced his New Economic Policy, a program “to create a new prosperity without war.” Known colloquially as the “Nixon shock,” the initiative marked the beginning of the end for the Bretton Woods system of fixed exchange rates established at the end of World War II." - per US Office of the Historian.
So, yes, things can change due to government actions, and yes Bitcoin and its peers could be rendered worthless in a heartbeat, if the power that be want it.
>What really backs the US dollar is the US military Agreed. But as always there's a time factor. This was true around that time, but not so much today in 2025. While the European military assets are not worth talking about, China and Russia both have continued developing those assets and do present an equalizer today. Are they equal to/better/worse than the US military is somewhat of a moot point. They exist. That in itself is the point.
[1] - The Bretton Woods system of monetary management established the rules for commercial relations among 44 countries, including the United States, Canada, Western European countries, and Australia,[1] after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement until the Jamaica Accords in 1976. - As per Wikipedia.
Imagine it was 1970. You had dollars and you had gold and they were inexorably tied to each other. Gold was ~$35/oz at the time and you swap dollars for gold easily. You could keep your "money" in dollars or gold. If you chose dollars at the time...you made very bad decision (1972...Nixon...the US went off the gold standard...and all that).
There's no DXY to measure from that time, but who gives a shit. Let's measure in terms of "Purchasing Power". In the early 70s, the average wage in the US was ~$9800 and the average house price was ~$17,000. So, at the time you could take your "dollars" and buy the median house for $17K or so. So, roughly twice the median wage.
Fast forward a few decades...
In 2022 the average wage in the US was ~$54,000 and the average house price was ~$375,000. So....roughly 6.5 times the average wage.
Notice a problem yet?
Now, let's take gold.
Price in 1970 - $35/oz Price in 2022 - ~$2,000/oz. Price in 2025 - ~$4,000/oz
So, gold has gone up ~57x, from 1970 to 2022 and ~114x from 1970 to 2025.
If your wages had climbed in-line since 1970, the average wage in 2025 would be $1.2M, but of course it didn't. Why? It's the dollar stupid, not gold.
If you took every spare dollar you had in 1970 and bought gold...vs keeping dollars in the bank...
That's the dollar's "worth", not a fucking index against other fiat currencies.
See the problem there...?
Remember all those switch vendors (especially the money grubbing ones like HP, Dell...)? Their switches won't work with optics that are not coded for THEIR hardware, even though...an SFP is an SFP... I mean look at fs.com and the gazillion choices they offer for optics coding.
HDDs on the other hand are vendor agnostic. They HAVE to work in "anything" as long as the hardware interfaces (i.e. SATA/SAS/NVME etc) are matched.
Calling a spade a spade is a good thing. Synology got greedy, tried to fuck over their customers and the customers told them "Go fuck yourself, you aint that unique".
:shrug:
Hardware…is cheap, and bare metal performance outweighs anything cloudy by multiples of magnitudes. If I have to invest money into something, I’d rather invest that in bare metal tooling, than paying for a managed service, that’s just a wrapper around tooling. E.g RDS, EC2, Fargate… or their equivalents across other CSPs.
I can run a Postgres cluster on bare metal, that will obliterate anything cloudy, and cost less than a 3rd if not less. Is it easy? No. But that’s where the investment comes in. A few good Infra resources can do magic, and yes, I hope to be large enough that these labor costs will be way less than a cloud bill.
And Google and Microsoft are hellbent on pushing AI into everything. Even if users don't want it. Nope, we're gonna throw the kitchen sink at you and see if it sticks.
In the non-tech world, nobody gives a shit about AI. People and businesses go about their daily lives without thinking about things like "Hmmm...maybe I could have prompted that LLM a different way..."