In Russia there's long been a sort of "social contract" between the oligarch elites and the general population. As long as the general population "stayed out of politics" and let the oligarchs stay rich and powerful, the oligarchs wouldn't interfere with their lives. The classic bread-and-circuses thing.

I guess the US could have a similar dynamic developing.

It very much depends on where you're located, what sort of climate the place has, even what sort of neighbors you have.

I have a relatively small front yard and am located in a temperate region with reasonably good rainfall. So I planted a bunch of perennial flowers and clover in the existing grass of my lawn, laid down some decorative stone pathways weaving through it, and some shrubs around the edges. Bought a sign that reads "Meadow Habitat Restoration - Please Do Not Mow or Spray" to make it clear that I wasn't just neglecting my front yard but was deliberately turning it into a patch of pseudo-wilderness. Now I can basically leave my front yard completely untouched all summer (occasionally pulling a few thistles because I personally hate them) and it looks lovely and has plenty of bees and whatnot visiting it. There's no such thing as "weeds", just wildflowers.

My back yard is much larger and I wanted to keep the lawn because it's a nice space for activities. But I got a pushmower, and the lawn doesn't grow fast because I've allowed trees to grow all around the edges and that makes it quite shady. The trees make for a nice privacy screen once the leaves come in, it's like my back yard is a forest clearing. I scattered clover seed among the grass there too, you can mow clover just like grass so I figure whatever survives best gets the territory.

Personally, I'm not fond of gravel because it's an unnecessary dead zone. There's already plenty of bare concrete everywhere, we don't need more of that. But if you're in a dry environment that doesn't support greenery without watering or fertilizer then some hardscrabble landscaping could look quite nice. Maybe plant a few sagebrushes or even cacti (cacti can put out some very nice flowers) with some interesting piles of larger rocks to add visual interest.

Maybe take a wander around your neighborhood to see if other folks have set up interesting alternatives to lawns and get some ideas off of them, they'll have done the testing to see if it works.

There's a bunch of different cryptocurrencies and a bunch of different government-backed fiat currencies, all with different ranges of stability. Even stuff like gold isn't actually "stable", the price varies. Pick whichever range of stability suits your needs. You could use a stabletoken that's pegged to something else - US dollars are popular.

Except that suddenly he's realizing that soft power did matter, as he casts about looking for anyone to help him out of this mess he's got himself into in Iran.

So the more powerful a country is, the less able it is to stand up for itself and do the right thing in the face of opposition? What an odd philosophy.

If the most powerful country in Europe won't do it then who will?

Firefox has the ability to generate random secure passwords. Firefox Sync backs the (encrypted) passwords up automatically, if you set that up to do so.

Then Houston joins California and out comes the surprised Pikachu.

Yet another area where the big companies are voluntarily leaving money on the table for the open model users to rake in. I approve.

I love it when I have no idea where in the sentence the transition from truth to lie happened.

I haven't been watching Trek for a long time now, the only recent series I liked was Lower Decks. The Kurtzman stuff just hasn't been doing anything for me. So I 'm happy that there will be an opportunity for a fresh start. I don't mind a hiatus because I wasn't watching anyway.

This is exactly as designed. The whole point of a prediction market is to encourage people who are knowledgeable about a subject to expose that knowledge in the form of bets. We should want people with inside information to be doing this to make the predictions more accurate.

If you don't have inside information or special knowledge then you probably shouldn't be gambling like that yourself. It'd be like buying stocks on the stock market without knowing anything about the industries the stocks are from.