Spyke

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Translation: We at Buc-ees want to be in shithole states that ruin local businesses and give us kickbacks

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To explain; they think any form of consequences for bad behaviour is cancel culture and cancel culture is a purely left thing and is evil and wrong because freedom of speech and because it's something the left does. So anyone who advocates for consequences for a company's actions must be a leftist. It's a very common thing with American right wing propaganda. I have seen it way too often.

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Although not peer reviewed or replicated, a NASA veteran claims their Propellantless Propulsion Drive, that physics says shouldn’t work, just produced enough thrust to overcome Earth’s gravity

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I'm not merely sceptical I know this is bunk. Not because they're claiming they accidentally stumbled onto something akin to cold fusion, or the incredible claim that they've found a new fundamental force that everyone else completely missed. No I know it's bunk because they're already talking to the press about and releasing statements with their claims before the paper is ready.

Every credible organisation if they stumbled on something like this would lock things down. They wouldn't make any statements until they have double, triple or quadruple-checked everything. Making a massive claim that can make world news but quickly gets debunked is poison to a group's credibility. So every group that cares about their credibility would only officially confirm anything once every single i is dotted and every t is crossed.

The fact that they're already talking to the press means they don't have the real evidence to prove their extraordinary claims and they know it. This is a scam and the whole "We don't know what causes it" is simply a tactic to make it harder to debunk while they fish for gullible investors to sink money into their scheme.

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Realistically... How fucked is the US?

Multiple regulatory bodies are going to get disbanded. The EPA is unlikely to survive, whole departments of the FDA are about to get gutted. Anything involving industrial safety is going to get its funding cut. Unconstitutional crackdowns on free and independent media is almost certain. Large scale damage to the functions of many government institutions can be expected. Massive economic damage due to reckless deregulation ( that's even before they start putting tariffs on everything and wind up in multiple simultaneous trade wars). Funding for education and infrastructure maintenance will be reduced to allow tax cuts for the already wealthy. Massive loss of global influence and a massive gain in influence by hostile autocratic nations is also something you can expect.

I could go on and on but even if you were to assume they weren't serious about project 2025 (if you haven't read that you should) it's real bad.

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Choices

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Being a nice person isn't bad but "nice guy" is a term for someone who presents themselves as nice and polite (but only to people they're attracted to) and expects romantic attention in return for being nice. Basically, they think the fact that they put so much effort into being nice they deserve that romantic attention. They'll often talk about how nice they are.

Of course, anyone who needs to repeatedly tell you they are nice tend not be.

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Illinois Carbon Capture Project Captures Almost No Carbon

This is sadly not a surprise. Any carbon capture project that doesn't involve trees is guaranteed to be a money sink and little else. Any process that pulls carbon out of the air is going to be an energy intensive one. Which means that many carbon capture projects are carbon positive. Often by a significant margin. Most of them are pushed by the oil companies since it's something they can point to as helping the environment but it increases power usage and their profits. So it's the option they want everyone to go with. And they'd prefer if we ignore the option that uses self replicating structures with built in solar panels that have spent the last billion years becoming hyper efficient at this exact task.

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How come it seems for the past decades the Catholic Church has been plagued with sex crimes especially among young boys? How long has this been going on? Or did I just miss something up.

The sexual abuse of young boys has been going on for a very, very long time but for most of that time, the church and all its institutions were unassailable and infallible. So most of it went unreported at the time. The attitude that the church and by extension, the priest could do no wrong was especially prevalent here where I grew up. Which is why some truly horrible things were allowed to happen. The church committed some vile acts and they weren't all sexual abuse and enjoyed the protection of the government all the while. Here have some fun reading.

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EU ministers fume as ‘outrageous’ Hungary yet again blocks military aid for Ukraine

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Oh the Russian speaking population that sprang up in rebellion from nowhere in pretty much a single day with a clear and organised command structure from day one, with matching gear, uniforms and weapons and a bizarrely poor understanding of the local geography despite supposedly being locals. You know they attacked a movie theatre because they thought it was a local government center? Those rebels? The ones the locals didn't recognise? The ones whose casualty numbers had a weird correlation with Russian servicemen dying from unexplained causes? Those rebels?

Now I normally don't call 'Russian bot/troll' too often but Russian propaganda about this is so poor I have a hard time coming to any other conclusion.

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Is someone safe if they report income from illegal means to the IRS?

Actually yes. Or well sort of. I believe some tax forms even have boxes for illegal income. This is because there is an odd interaction between two very important laws; you must report all income truthfully for tax purposes and you cannot be compelled to incriminate yourself. Tax law cannot overwrite the 5th amendment. This means they have a choice; either they can prosecute anyone they see as having an illegal income but make it so people writing nothing but "I plead the 5th" on all their tax paperwork is perfectly valid. Or they can choose not to prosecute reported criminal income and retain the ability to go after people who refuse to do their taxes. The only way the tax system can work is if reporting your own illegal income doesn't legally incriminate you.

The things you write on your taxes cannot be used against you in a court of law unless you are lying in some way. So it is legally safe. Practically perhaps not. Both the police and many of the security agencies love using something known as 'parallel construction'. It's where they get some information they shouldn't have access to or shouldn't be using and build an investigation that explains how they got that information legitimately so they can use it in court.

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Iran says it has right to defend itself after Israeli strike kills soldiers

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Did you know that the Gazan bomb disposal teams are some of the most skilled in the world? The reason for this is so they can disarm and disassemble unexploded Israeli bombs so that the explosives can be repurposed and fired back. So a surprisingly large portion of the explosives that Hamas used were supplied by Israel via their long-term sporadic bombing of Gaza and anything resembling major infrastructure.

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Nato 'might have to get involved' in US takeover of Greenland, says Trump

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Kosovo was UN not NATO. Only NATO engagement was Afghanistan and the Taliban had claimed responsibility for an act of war against a NATO member. Now the actual war was fought entirely in Afghanistan but that doesn't mean it wasn't a defensive war. It just doesn't feel like one.

Don't take this to mean I supported the war in Afghanistan or the many horrible things US troops did while there. (nor do I support the Taliban or their practises and tactics). But NATO is by rule and charter very much a defensive alliance. So much so that if Trump attacks Greenland he will have to face the rest of NATO. Which is something I don't think he comprehends, it's obvious that to him the US is the ruler of NATO.

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Realistically... How fucked is the US?

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I'd love be as optimistic as you but unless Trump changes his mind the US will get a brainwormed fanatical anti-vaccier in charge of deciding which vaccines are safe to use. Even if the states don't cooperate with trump's agenda there are so many long standing federal institutions which till now you've never needed to think about that are about to get wrecked.

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*Permanently Deleted*

The removal of view counts could empower fringe content. Even the most gullible are far less likely to take a video of an extremist nut job seriously when they have 100 views. Part of how radicalisation works is by convincing people that the radical ideology is far more mainstream than it actually is. It's already easy to inflate view counts but removing them entirely makes it much much simpler for crazies to sell the idea that their ideas are popular.

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Realistically... How fucked is the US?

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There is alot of things the government does for you that most people likely have never thought about. Take invasive species for instance; There are huge efforts to contain and eradicate a variety of invasive species. You've probably never heard about these efforts. But they are needed to maintain and protect both farmland and the ecology of the United States. If those efforts are defunded and those species are allowed to run rampant it'll be almost impossible to put that genie back in the bottle.