Trump: ‘I’m really not trolling’ with talk of Canada as 51st state
wjrii @ wjrii @lemmy.world Posts 54Comments 1,530Joined 1 yr. ago
Yeah, I guess just assuming ill intent and fascism makes it a simpler discussion that's still perfectly reasonable.
This one has Box Navy switches.
I said improving, not reducing! 🤣
I assume certain short-term things will get better with anyone less crazy than Trump, but I agree the US is no longer reliable for anything long-term, and no other country should deal with us on the assumption that we'll give up certain short-term advantages for a long term stability within our sphere of influence. It's not even that the US was "good" (though I imagine the next hegemonic power could easily be worse), but across administrations, the US was generally intelligent about how to leverage its influence but retain enough goodwill to continue to do so indefinitely.
I like to idly game this out because it truly reflects how narcissistic and uninformed he is. So, he's talking about admitting Canada as a single state. Lets assume somehow that happens, even though the Canadians themselves would undoubtedly push for as many states as possible if joining the US were the only option.
You've now got a new largest state by both population and area, and one that has ridiculous reserves of resources and a coast-to-coast infrastructure. It instantly becomes the most important state. It's also full of millions of people who didn't want to be Americans and who've had a hundred years of more progressive governance than the US. Congratulations, Republicans, you've just skewed the Senate and completely fucked yourself in the House for a generation or more. You've also got 8 or 9 million Francophones who weren't even entirely sure they wanted to be CANADIANS, much less Americans, to say nothing of being Americans in a MAGA world. This is how real troubles begin.
So, in return for dubious "improvements" to the trade deficit, and certain (what?) administrative conveniences (I guess) for a military that already had basically all the access anyone would ever need, as well as a giant buffer territory you're not politically committed to defending with the same gusto you would your own soil, you completely upset the balance of power in Congress to your own party's detriment and add a huge population that hates their situation. Brilliant.
Although, I guess if you're just done with free and fair elections then a lot of these concerns evaporate...
LOL, it works for me, but undoubtedly part of it that I'm not a proper touch typist at all.
A major design element here is that no key is more than 1.75 "units", meaning nothing needs stabilizer hardware. It's a cheat to improving sound and definitely one for easing construction on my very cheap laser cutter (really more of an engraver, but it can get through some things). The open spaces are also meant to evoke the "HHKB" and its retro inspirations like the original Macintosh keyboard, and honestly it hasn't been a problem. I have four "spacebars" of 1.25 u each, but two of them do something else when held down (Fn for one, Alt for the other).
The 3D-printed case could stand a little refinement, and if it ever actually cracks I'll replace it, but so far it's hanging in there, and I really like the typing feel.
Apart from the board itself, how do you like the G20 caps? I have a hard time imagining how laptop-flat with full travel would feel.
There's always the Boston...
So, just in the past year or two they've finally released switches from new molds ("MX2A") that are quite well regarded, but not special enough to make up for what must be very high operating costs. Unlike GMK, they squandered an early lead in the enthusiast space and never got it back. They just took much, much too long to relaize that the viable markets for mech boards are gamers and people with varying degrees of enthusiasm for the hardware itself, not just an aging cohort of office workers who refuse to put up with membranes.
QK100 if you can figure out how to get one without getting Trumped in the ass by tariffs.
The number is not precise, but yeah kinda. Usually they’re missing about 4-6 keys, and you’ll also hear “96%” thrown around. There’s a subset of them called the “1800” style after a board from the late 80s that pioneered the idea.
What they all share is retaining the numpad and almost all the other keys, but resizing and shuffling them around a bit so they fit in a narrower width, originally a drawer in a server rack.
There's constant running commentary and speculation, and biographical segments, and sometimes a little drama when surprising things happen, or expected things don't, and a large group of people simply care enough that they want to know as soon as a pick happens, though how organic the growth of that group has been is certainly open for debate.
So it's basically a combination of everything that everyone else has said.
- NFL is by far the most popular sport in the country, but it also only has 17 regular season games (versus 82ish for NHL and NBA, 40ish for MLS, and 162 for MLB), and the entire season is spread over only 6-7 months of the calendar year, versus 8-10 for the others. There is an appetite for any content at all that materially affects the most watched sport.
- College Football itself is probably the fourth most popular sports "league" in the country, though its organization and economics are WAY different (for now) than the normal pro leagues'. There's huge overlap in general of course, but the Draft brings all of the fans together as CFB fans see where the top players will move.
- Going back to number 1, the NFL and media companies, being what they are, noticed the gap in the sporting calendar (after March Madness, before NBA and NHL playoffs, very early in the MLB season, MLS well... (LOL, I love MLS and it's a miracle it's stable but it's still not an important "TV sport" in this country). They also noticed that a certain segment of die-hards have been watching the draft for 30 years, and they saw an opportunity to tap that dormant interest for months of "segments" and a big day of ratings and revenue, so of course they did.
- More recently, seeing that their hype efforts were working, they've moved it out of an auditorium near League HQ and made it a travelling road show, goosing local attention and furthering the image that it's an event.
As to why all that worked, I like the posts that talk about the optimism and renewal that the draft represents. The NFL is unique in how it handles player development, in that it mostly doesn't because it has an independently-popular lower league that will do it for free. Since that lower league is effectively the sole source of players, and since the NFL is an American-style sporting cartel, the Draft becomes the single biggest infusion of talent that a team will see in a given year, some of it ready to contribute on the field right away, and the teams that need the talent the most usually have the best picks and therefore a real chance to improve quickly, though the same bad management that gets teams in a bad place will often squander that chance.
For those who follow European football (soccer, not the niche gridiron leagues over there), imagine a single day (okay, three days now, but Rounds 2-7 are still for the nerds) that combines the anxiety of a promotion playoff final (though with deferred results) with the excitement of the summer transfer window (let's consider NFL free agency the equivalent of the winter window).
Oh, you can still be mad. It was clearly a tactical retreat so they could continue to fuck over anyone with a complaint even tangentially related to the media itself. They're evil, but usually not stupid.
They gave that up within a week, mostly because pushing it that insanely hard would have ended up setting a precedent that would have been used against them in the thousands of closer cases they probably deal with every year.
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If you traveled to the 800s England, you wouldn’t understand the English they would speak.
Yup. You could probably go back to the late 1300s and get a grasp within weeks instead of months, at least in the southern half of England, and it would get easier with each passing decade, but you'd probably have to drop in a couple of generations after Shakespeare to be sure of being mostly functional on Day One.
Earlier in the week, news broke that Hegseth had personally created a Signal group chat including his wife, brother and about a dozen other people who he then texted highly sensitive information on active strikes in Yemen.... One person said Russian and Chinese spies were no doubt directly targeting susceptible people in Hegseth’s inner circle.
Even if, as I am sure he very wrongly does, Hegseth believes himself morally beyond reproach and too smart to be tricked, does he honestly think every single person in his circle and in their circles is as well? JFC.
Well, I can confirm their geese cousins know who they are under those feathers.
What an unusually sized set of rodents.
I do unironically believe the Mercator projection has influenced how much he talks about Greenland.