"Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz," he said.
USA, #1 world power, nukes etc, failed to win. Iranian regime wasn't destroyed, and the HE uranium is still there. Two carrier battle groups weren't enough to re-open the straits. Burned $45bn and achieved nothing much.
Iran, fourth-rate regional power, failed to lose. Regime still in power, and still has its HE uranium. Oil infrastructure intact. Military knocked-about a bit, but still capable of controlling the straits and bringing in the $$$. They get to keep brutalising their frightened population.
Israel, premium regional power, suddenly all on its own running a hot, two-front war with no easy exit, because Trump cut and ran. Netanyahu is probably toast in the upcoming elections, which means hes going to jail for all the corruption stuff.
China, mega military power, picked the right side and comes out of it clean. Looks like a model, dependable global citizen. Access to the oil without paying the $2m/boat straits fee. Didn't blow $45bn on nothing.
Russia, third-rate power on the way down, made some roubles on the oil price thing, but still has all the same problems as before. Meatgrinder war. Economic and demographic collapse still imminent. Global pariah, except for Orban and Erdoğan and the Belarus guy. Putin's getting pretty old.
EU+UK basically sat it out. Sensible. Much economic damage though.
Thousands of dead/wounded/traumatised adults and children -- a running sore that shames us all. Plus all the victims of the Gaza and Lebanon wars. Deep, deep anger for multiple generations. Revenge, etc.
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Officially its a ceasefire, but everyone knows the US won't restart after this. Its six months to the mid-terms, and the genius orange guy in Washington has other things on his mind. And Epstein is still hanging around like a bad smell. What to try next?
> and another group who earns less, works hard, but does something they find very meaningful and important to their ethics
It is very rare, in my experience, to find this in tech careers. I don't know why - perhaps its something structural about the uses to which technology is put, and the disconnect with personal values and/or work ethic.
1. In tech, large companies tend to pay much better, which means that people flock there. In a large company you have little control over your work and you simply have to do what your boss tells you to do whether you agree with it or not. This quickly demotivates anyone who has any creativity.
2. Tech work is very lonely while requiring communication skills. You sit there all day long staring at the screen, once in a while replying to official-sounding Slack messages from people you wouldn't recognize in real life. In contrast, there are jobs where you're in a small group, and while your hands are busy, there are endless opportunities for conversation.
3. Your effort has zero correlation with reward - the effects of your work are often extremely abstract, especially if you're doing background work that doesn't pump out features, and managers rarely reward effort with salary bumps.
Sure, screen time. But I am also deeply tired of just keeping things charged. Some of my stuff insists on special usb cables - because those cables contain chips that mediate between the <thing> and its charger. Its exhausting.
I have a smartwatch, I like it just fine, but I kind of think that smartwatches are actually pretty bad at being a watch. I had a Casio G-Shock for about a decade that I wore nearly every day [1], and I never had to change the battery. My Garmin Instinct Crossover, which is considered to have very good battery life, has to be charged every two weeks, which despite that seeming like a long time, I manage to forget about it every time until the battery is dead.
[1] I have a few fancy wind-up watches I wear to formal occasions.
Yeah, I mean, the Instinct Crossover has been my favorite smartwatch that I've used, and two weeks is a decent lifespan for these things, but I do kind of miss never having to worry about charging it.
Does your physical environment change that much that it requires cognitive load for you to decide on what cables to use? For myself, I bought two wireless charge "base" stations that handle my spouse's and my phone/watch/airpods. That's it. One place, bedside, where I need to put things.
Sure, for new equipment or in a pinch (that becomes cumbersome) but even traveling, you know what equipment you have, charge rate and things needing to get charged from what connector type. So you purchase the variants that you need.
They didn't repatriate the gold in the sense of physically moving it from the US to France. Instead, they sold the gold that was held in the US and used the money raised to buy gold from other sources, which is held in France.
Different gold, and two financial transactions, accounts for the financial gain.
a) they bought the gold long time ago for basically nothing and had it on their books valued at basically nothing
b) they sold it now (in the US) for around $15b and thus for accounting purposes realised a $15b gain
c) they bought it back (in France) for around $15b and will have it on the book now valued at $15b.
The fact that the gold price rose over the course of b) selling and c) buying doesn't matter (despite what the article implies). That the gold price rose between a) the original purchase and now b)c), that's what resulted in the profit.
Reading the "endgame" section, and I feel that some serious thought ahould be given to what the replicator colony will do after it has finished dismantling Mercury.
"Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz," he said.
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