Which sports team am I supposed to root for with this map? Do you expect me to make a careful analysis of team history and current lineup? Or do I pick the one in the state I was born in like a normal person?

It was a talking point that Trump had in his first term. He tends not to let go of bad ideas once they get into his head.

At the time, people didn’t take it seriously. With the Ukraine War, Europe feels like it has to now. But it’s going to be domestic production, not paying US MIC companies like Trump was thinking.

China might have a 2 year window coming up where it’s even possible to invade Taiwan. Their military has modernized a lot, but they probably aren’t quite to the point of being able to pull it off. At the same time, they are looking at a demographic cliff from the long term implications of the One Child policy.

It’s possible this window as already closed. That said, authoritarian regimes have started wars before that were terrible ideas.

Eeeeehhh, if you just look at numbers of boats, yes. The US Navy has far, far more experience, though. Drones are also going to change the game in ways we’re only starting to see with the Ukraine War. With that, the answer might be “everyone’s boats are sunk now”.

China probably couldn’t gain air superiority over Taiwan, and without that, an invasion will fail. That will be true even if the US ends up losing more boats.

Cause and effect are a little twisted here. Trump was already undermining NATO during is first term by saying European members should spend more. They didn’t agree at the time, but the Ukraine War proved that Europe really did need a more domestic MIC, and now they are.

Trump wasn’t saying it in the first place because he thought it would help NATO.

Discovery Zone, man. I actually feel bad for the kids that never got to experience Discovery Zone. Lasted for like 2 years. It apparently failed because they had a mountain of debt (all those plastic tubes are capital intensive buildouts) and adults had to sit around while their kids played.

I feel like if you made it work like a gym membership for your kids, and had something for adults to do off to the side, you might be able to make the numbers work.

Some of that is from white balance making the top picture look warmer, but even accounting for that, it’s a tragedy.

Le right generation

Not necessarily a nepo hire, but they are scraping the barrel.

Project 2025’s playbook was to fire all the existing people in the federal government and replace them with Trump loyalists. To that end, they created a list of pre-vetted replacements.

Problem is, those people are vetted for loyalty first, and competence a distant second. Also, a lot of them likely have jobs already that are more lucrative than a federal position. In other cases, their circumstances change in the months in between vetting and the offer becoming concrete. So even though they may have a few thousand people on the list, a big chunk of them aren’t going to accept when the time comes. Those that do aren’t necessarily going to be qualified in any way.

What may be surprising here is that they’re scraping the bottom so quickly. You’d think out of several thousand possibilities, they could find someone more qualified than this guy.

This tends to be destructive in the short term, because incompetent people are making important decisions. In the long term, it’s one of the self-defeating factors of fascism. A system just can’t work this way, but it can destroy the rest of society before it implodes on itself.

Historically, this is what the NRA was for. They had basic designs setup that were very safe, and they’d offer grants to build them. There’s a local range by me (a private club, not state owned) that was developed that way. It’d be hard to shoot a bullet and have it get out of the range area.

They still kinda do it, but it looks like the industry is sending the funds on their own rather than funneling it through the NRA. Makes sense given the current state of the NRA.

US water softeners are usually only on the hot pipe. They tend to add sodium to the water, and it’s not recommended to make it your primary drinking water source.

Southern US is the best place for developing new methods to kill yourself in delightful ways.

You get 3-phase in the US if you live in a large apartment complex. Especially if it has an elevator. Since this combines to get 208V, the math works out to making your 240V stove only 75% of what it should be.

For residential use, split phase is fine. We just run the two legs to get 240V on the specific things that need it. That’s generally electric stoves, water heaters, AC unit, electric dryer, and more recently, EV chargers. 3-phase is great when you’re driving something that spins with a high draw, and of those, only the AC unit does that (electric dryers spend most of their electricity heating, not spinning).

As a combo tea/coffee drink, it tastes horrible. Nobody wants tea flavored coffee or coffee flavored tea. Although you usually don’t get tea flavored coffee in those hotel drip makers, but only because the grounds they use are shit tier quality and taste too burnt to even get tea flavors.

Have to drop the US number by 20% for continuous loads like a kettle would be.

That said, US homes built in the last 40 years or so tend to have a lot of separate circuits in the kitchen. My house has one for the fridge, one for the disposal, one for the dishwasher, one for the lights that’s shared with lights in adjacent areas, stove has its own 240V outlet, and then one for all the other plugs. If I ran the microwave and a kettle and a mixer all at once, I’d probably still trip it, but that’s a lot of multitasking going on.

Zojirushi. They last. Since it’s BIFL, I don’t see the extra cost as a big problem. That’s what you deal with when you BIFL.

Microwave magnetron efficiency is around 65%. Since a kettle turns electricity directly into heat, it’s basically 100% efficient.

A caveat is that microwaves will heat water directly and won’t lose as much to its surroundings. This is similar to why induction stoves are more efficient; they’re less efficient on paper than direct electric heating or burning gas, but they heat the thing you want in a more direct way.

Even so, a microwave isn’t great for this task. If you’re short on space and don’t want even a small travel kettle, I can see why you’d take this option. Otherwise, no.

Most residential outlets in the US are going to be a 15A limit. You also have to reduce that by 20% for a continuous draw.

UK might be able to get away with the full usage because their plugs are designed to have a fuse built in. Not entirely sure on that, though.

That said, kettles are still a better option most of the time. Technology Connections has real world tests of this.

We have a Zojirushi. 120V does limit it somewhat, but it’s fine.

The water in our area of country is also hard as shit. We have undersink RO now, but before then, mineral buildup in the kettle was bad. Crusted like concrete if we didn’t stay on top of it.

A good reminder that the system was already broken before Trump got here.