I think the point is, it would be nice to know which books are being put back up (seems like a pretty basic thing if you’re going to make a post like this) but OP made it about as hard as possible to see any but 1-2

Lotsa misinformation coming from that general area.

Assuming the words themselves are accurate, there is still a difference between wanting to “engage more” with Beijing and wanting them to swallow your country whole. Not to mention all the other issues one may vote over

Screenshot taken at 18:07, which puts you at GMT+2. Curious what makes you such an expert in American and Asian secessionist politics from Eastern Europe 🤔

Hi, it’s now 2024. To the best of my knowledge the independence movements of Puerto Rico and Hawaii are currently minimal (not non-existent, but even Texas has some weirdo secessionists). While the circumstances of those territories becoming a part of the US may be dicey, “our ancestors made a mistake” isn’t really a good reason to cut those places away entirely if modern-day people generally wish to keep the current arrangement.

Taiwan, on the other hand, generally wishes to remain independent from China. False equivalence.

Not really. There were plenty of random pages, but you really had to seek it out to see it. Now an overwhelming majority of non-ad posts are stuff like this (and I wouldn’t be surprised if they pay to have this stuff seen, basically making it an ad)

Yeah? That’s where I’d start. Maybe they were at a bank that’s not their own?

I’m not sure that’s necessarily true. There are plenty of military contractors out there, and a driver is the kind of position you would expect to be likely contracted out. That in no way makes one a soldier.

Super hard, actually

When I wrote that I was thinking of what I had in Czechia! Kind of in between bread and a dumpling, not stuffed, and great to mop up some gravy.

Don’t get me wrong, I live a good pierogi, but I was trying to stick to the simple staples

When did I say anything about a private room? You get a few feet of separation from your parents and a different adult to talk to for a moment. That may be enough of an opportunity.

Uh, that’s not exactly what happens when the metal detector goes off but it gives you an opportunity to talk with someone without your parents around. TSA isn’t police, but hopefully they can contact police.

That said, parents do get a pretty strong say in where they take their minor children.

The Bolt is ok. It has a screen and Android Auto and stuff, but I only use it for Android Auto navigation and energy stats when I’m curious. For pretty much everything else, there are good ol’ fashioned buttons.

Oh, it does have OnStar and some stuff associated with that, but GM discontinued the worst of it after a class action lawsuit.

Part of the problem comes when companies go out of their way to provide a service on their end that could be covered reasonably easily on the consumer’s side of things. Why put a few cents worth of storage in a device and make it locally accessible when you can make it cloud-connected and hosted to turn it into a revenue stream?

Another example, GM has had OnStar for ages. It does the same things your cell phone does, so it’s hard to justify the subscription. Plus Android Auto/Car Play works really well and relies on something you update more often. So naturally, GM revamped their infotainment to do the things you’d have your phone do and got rid of Android Auto/Car Play.

I’m not a fan of the company, but at least this one has a handful of different platforms underneath it - Oculus, Instagram, WhatsApp, and Facebook. Having Facebook the product and Facebook the overarching company kind of ads a little complication.

I don’t quite feel the same way about Alphabet/Google, but at least that’s more subtle.

X can fuck the duck right off.

So Maduro’s response should be to falsely claim victory in the election? Or do you think he actually won?

I understand your point, but the original claim was that spirits and cola could be the same price. My argument was that spirits have a much more involved manufacturing process which raises the price. In my opinion, watered down cleaning alcohol has a different manufacturing process and wouldn’t count - whether government prohibits it or not. It’s a different product, made a different way, so of course it’s going to have a different cost.

Thinking of it another way, and trying to play devil’s advocate against myself to think this through, what if government said that cola needed to come with a side of premium caviar? It would raise the cost, and government would have caused it, but it would also be a different product. That doesn’t mean that if you got rid of government regulation, cola with a side of caviar would cost the same as cola without caviar, spirits, or diluted cleaning alcohol. It just means that the regulation alone wasn’t what made it expensive, because there are intrinsic manufacturing costs regardless.

Venezuela quality of life is so horrid right now, people are leaving everything and traveling thousands of miles to get away from it. It’s no wonder people would want their president out… but it’s the US imperialism that’s at fault, obviously.

So it’s actually a lot more involved to make spirits when you don’t want to go blind over it, especially if you want it to taste good as well.

US taxes spirits at $13.50 per proof gallon at most (like income taxes, there are different margins). That means a gallon of 100 proof (50% alcohol by volume) alcohol spirits has a tax rate of $13.50. A 750ml bottle is .198 gallons, and .198*$13.50 is $2.67.

So… You sure about that?

It’s a battery. You put it in the car, and it powers it. How much support does the manufacturer need to provide that can’t be baked into the initial cost?

“initial” could very well be the key word here. Same goes with any new technology, including the relatively outdated Chevy Bolt design (which was pretty expensive at launch and is now a dime a dozen)