One of the stated goals of Project 2025 is dismantling the Federal Reserve, they won't need to bother with "accidents" if they just shut the whole thing down.
They actually recently (within the last few months) agreed to join a larger grid. So that should be a bit less of a problem this year. It is Texas though, so there's always the chance they turn around and shoot themselves in the foot.
China needs us economically as much as we need them for manufacturing. Sure, we're trying to be more independent and make more domestically, and they are trying to be more independent economically through BRICS. Neither country is doing a very good job of attaining their goals of independence, but to keep up appearances both countries like to simultaneously pretend there's not a relationship and also that they are the top in the relationship.
The reality is both countries have some wealthy "oligarchs" who exploit workers and governments that mostly only work to benefit themselves and their oligarch friends. China will take out an oligarch here and there when they decide they're getting too powerful, and Americans get to elect some of our leaders, other than that we're not very different. Deep down both governments understand it would be political suicide to antagonize the other to the point meaningfully harming them. At least both current governments that is, Trump is probably too dumb to realize we need each other, so that's a potential wild card, but North Korea is almost certainly a bigger threat to both the US and China than we will to each other for decades.
I still use DDG as my "daily driver" (I know there are better options for privacy and avoiding big tech, but I haven't yet found anything independent that is good enough for me to switch to full time yet). I bookmarked Stract a while back, and it proved useful a few months back when Microsoft had an outage that took down Bing and by extension, Duck Duck Go. I do like Stract, their index seems to be enough larger than MoJeek (another independent search with their own index) that it gives me better results.
Stract might not be as open as I'd like, but it's nice to have as an option, and I'm never going to complain about having more search providers with independent indexes.
And then once your person wins, shout at them every day about the things that are important to you. Pester and annoy them so much that they are both motivated to do what you want just to get you to leave them alone, and also so they have support they can point to to convince their colleagues to join the cause. We'd be in a very different place if we had demanded getting rid of the Electoral College even 10 years ago, and a vastly different place if we had gotten that changed 25 years ago.
I know it's a lot of work to stay loud about political issues all the time, but if you don't use your voice, someone will take your silence as contentment and nothing will change.
As long as they don't remove my ability to still have a separate search field beside the address bar, I'll still be happy. I know it has probably been a decade since Chrome merged the search and address bars (and Firefox followed), but IMO it makes the experience of both searching and typing addresses worse, in exchange for a at best mildly cleaner UI.
The kind who never knew the world before he got into politics, and the kind who think the things he says are funny memes and want to sow chaos in a poll that doesn't have any real weight. If they had to be serious, more of them probably would be, but it's not unusual for kids to goof off and be chaotic when they know their voice doesn't have direct influence on anything that matters.
If it was just AliBaba drop shippers it would probably be better, but rather than drop-shipping they're basically a US based warehouse and distributor for drop-shippers to be able to sell their garbage with 2-day shipping.
Yeah, from what I watched of the rally, it felt more like an attempt to gaslight supporters into thinking they have it in the bag and that the only way they can possibly lose is if they are cheated. So I expect the blitz of "the election is being stolen" propaganda will start any day now, probably before we even get to election day.
It's for the other wealthy assholes who have never worked at McDonalds (or any other working-class job) and are so out of touch they think this is good outreach to the poors, showing Trump as a relatable everyman. They have no awareness of how much he just looked like a rich asshole who has never done any real work in his life, showing up to work an average job for a couple hours during the slow part of the day and walking away with a warped view of what it's like to be working class.
As someone who grew up in Christian-Nationalist churches and circles, just dress like a Jehovah's Witness or like a young Ben Shapiro. Even if someone does call to complain, they will describe 70% of the people there and they'll probably address it as a gentle reminder to all the canvassers in a meeting rather than one on one. At which point someone more right-wing will stand up for everything because they actually believe every one of the policies are good things, and everyone will think they were the problem, not you.
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Technically it's not a full 55% of my countrymen, just 55% of the ones who bothered to vote. I'll admit that's not really a meaningful distinction though. Unfortunately, there's also more of us who want to leave than the rest of the world can reasonably handle. I hope as many marginalized people can get out, because it's going to be bad, especially for them. But those, like me, who are unlikely to be directly targeted due simply to being lucky enough to be born straight, white, men should probably leave those limited seats for those who truly need to leave.