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Serious question: how come the police have not paid for the damage they caused?

They chose not to do so. And the courts are no help, because generally speaking, you can't sue the government unless there's a specific law allowing you to do so (sovereign immunity). The police as individuals are generally immune from civil suits unless they violated some clearly established right (qualified immunity).

Eh? This falls under tort law for damages caused by the government.

The laws that provide a right of action against the government generally don’t cover damages caused by police in the lawful exercise of their duties.

So yeah, sovereign immunity.


Serious answer: cops are not accountable for their behavior, in the vast majority of cases.

If the damaged party tries to sue the police for the damage they caused, the police can get the case instantly dismissed underqualified immunity.

Qualified immunity just protects the police, and other government officials personally. If there is grounds for a lawsuit then he could still sue the government that employs the police department.

I think in general, if it is a legit warrant, it is very difficult to win a lawsuit for damage. Though with that video, and how high profile this has been, he might be able to win something. though IANAL, and I'm just going off my gut.


The government has sovereign immunity which is why you usually have to sue the people involved rather than the government directly.

The federal government and a most state governments in the US have laws that waive or partially waive sovereign immunity for tort claims against the government.

This raid was in Ohio. Here's their immunity waiver: https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2743.02

Here's a page that links to a PDF with a table given cites and details for all 50 states: https://www.mwl-law.com/resources/sovereign-immunity-tort-li...


But these police don't work for the state government. They worked for the Adams County government. The immunity waiver you linked explicitly only applies to the state government.

> (A)(1) The state hereby waives its immunity from liability,

and then "state" is defined in https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2743.01

> (A) "State" means the state of Ohio, including, but not limited to, the general assembly, the supreme court, the offices of all elected state officers, and all departments, boards, offices, commissions, agencies, institutions, and other instrumentalities of the state. "State" does not include political subdivisions.

> (B) "Political subdivisions" means municipal corporations, townships, counties, school districts, and all other bodies corporate and politic responsible for governmental activities only in geographic areas smaller than that of the state to which the sovereign immunity of the state attaches.

Additionally even if the officers did work for the state, the immunity waiver still would not apply to the action of breaking down a door while executing a search warrant.

> (3)(a) Except as provided in division (A)(3)(b) of this section, the state is immune from liability in any civil action or proceeding involving the performance or nonperformance of a public duty

and Ohio state law specifically authorizes breaking down doors to execute search warrants so this action would be one "involving the performance or nonperformance of a public duty"

> (A) When making an arrest or executing an arrest warrant or summons in lieu of an arrest warrant, or when executing a search warrant, the peace officer, law enforcement officer, or other authorized individual making the arrest or executing the warrant or summons may break down an outer or inner door or window of a dwelling house or other building

https://codes.ohio.gov/ohio-revised-code/section-2935.12


I didn't know about sovereign immunity, but I just looked it up and there are exceptions to it. I think this one in particular could fall under a civil rights violation.

People routinely get money from excessive force used by police officers, and I believe that does extend to property too.

Qualified immunity means it is almost impossible to sue the officers directly, which is why so many people have a problem with it. Not only do taxpayers have to pay for the actions of a bad police officer, the officer themself isn't held responsible for their actions.

On the other hand, you don't want officers afraid to engage with a dangerous situation because they might bankrupt their family if they do the wrong thing in the heat of the moment. It is a sticky situation, and before smartphones and body cameras there was no real way to know if an officer crossed the line. As technology improves, I expect there to be more personal accountability, while also allowing the officers enough leeway to do their jobs without hesitation.


Police departments are sued constantly. Most major police departments even have dedicated divisions set up just to assess and respond to lawsuits. Oftentimes by just knocking on the door and handing over a check.

The government is sued all the time.

Stealing things out of a person's fridge and eating it is not covered under qualified immunity.

Making up details of the incident doesn't help either. They didn't eat anything, a cop just did a double-take at the lemon pound cake, and Afroman wrote a song about how they wanted to eat it.

um it probably is. Wasn’t there a case a few years ago where a dispensary was raided and the cops stole marijuana, and got away with it due to QI.

Qualified immunity.

which is double genius on afroman, because they forfeited qualified immunity to start this trial. now he can even sue further damages.

distrack as legal maneuver.


He is a seasoned professional at this. He was respected in the diss track game in his day, he definitely understands the boundaries of defamation. And what has long been known in rap in newspapers: even if you're right it's not worth it to be on the stand defending defamation. "It's average size your honor."

I'm going to keep this one... underqualified immunity :)

They’re not liable to repair damage incurred from a raid or any other action. If the fire department has to chop your door open with an axe to gain entry to your home, they don’t pay for that either, you do.

If the police execute a search warrant on your home and kill your pet or a person, guess who is responsible for cleaning up the blood and mess? I’ll give you a hint, it’s not the police.


There's even a legal case where police took a backhoe to a building and tore one wall completely out instead of negotiating during a hostage situation. The homeowner was unable to get compensation for their destroyed home.

His mistake was stopping when the lawsuit failed. Anyone can rent a backhoe. People forget that there is also a court of public opinion you can appeal to.

Are you suggesting a killdozer v2? I'm not sure what you're implying.

Just tear the wall off a relevant party's house and then return it to the rental place.

They mysteriously gain a lot of government contracts.

In a completely unrelated event, Donald sues Sam for 10M$ for calling him old, Sam grudingly agrees to pay him 16M$ and a beer.


"Sir, you now have twice as many private jets as Dario"

"But he owns a tooling company. WHY can't I have that? :( :("


These phones have Dex.

I have multiple times in past used Samsung phones as my primary computer while the laptop was installing updates (thanks Microsoft) or when I simply forgot the laptop at home.


Those Danes should study the Falklands war.

Using F35 in this situation is like brining in a billion dollar paperweight to the battle.s


That doesn't matter. It is not so much about whether the USA could do this and expect to win, of course they can. Nobody has any doubt about that. It is about gross miscalculation of consequences. Attack Greenland ->attack Denmark, attack Denmark -> Attack the EU.

So you don't attack Greenland. Because that would be wrong.

Unless all that stuff about shining cities on hills was nonsense. Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China.


Living in Japan, I meet and talk to Chinese when out drinking. Many of them are almost literally ROFLing about how the US practically just gave away everything they had to China. It's as if the US is playing poker with their cards facing up on the table. Chinese already consider themselves the defacto superpower.

If mainstream media in the US showed this, I bet the politics would look different.


Seems weird. China is definitely falling behind. India is not.

They are pretty happy with having superiority on high tech manufacturing and robotics. You basically cannot manufacture something without using China - even if you try. I don't think they consider the TSMC EUV monopoly a long term threat. Doing good on AI as well, you bet the OSS chinese models causing stock panic in the US makes them laugh.

On the topic of manufacturing outside China, the YouTuber "Smarter Every day" (Destin Sandlin) has a series on manufacturing and feels strongly about manufacturing having moved out of the country. As an experiment he tried to manufacture something without China, but was unable to: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ZTGwcHQfLY


And he's just making a grill scrubber.

I just ordered a bunch of drone parts. The majority of those part were only available from China.


If you want: motors, ESCs, flight controllers and radios those can be sourced from outside of China, and competitively priced too (if you're in Europe, outside you'd still have to add taxes).

Yeah tbf I wouldn't underestimate Eastern Europe. The drone industry there must be booming nowadays, pun not intended.

How?

As near as I can tell, the vast majority of the parts are made in China. When I look at the few alternatives, they're full of Chinese circuitry. If I look at circuit components, they're all made of Chinese raw materials.

Both Ukraine and Russia are planning to deploy (and use up) several million drones over the next year. Iran just joined them as a major procurer.

Where are all the US and EU component factories?


In Spain, the Netherlands and Ukraine.

Do you have any links?

Already in that other comment.

I checked both the links in the other comment.

While they satisfy the technical requirement of, "there exists an alternative" neither of them is generally available as a viable alternative to China.


They are for me.

I perused the links that you provided in another comment.

How much of these products are sourced from EU materials? Like is the copper in the wires from the EU? Is the wire made in the EU and coated with insulator there too? Are the motors wound in Europe?


This whole thread is in response to an attempt to someone trying to source parts to manufacture something in the US.

If "for me" is limited to some rich guy in the Netherlands, that doesn't solve the problem "for anyone else."


Well, we could counter that and say that the whole thread here is exactly about how the US is losing its soft power position and the import situation you are facing is an integral part of that.

And 'some rich guy in the Netherlands' is a nice target for you but I know plenty of people that are in other parts of Europe that seem to have no problem ordering from both of these. You asked for alternatives, you got them. You could have just left it at that but you feel the need to explain why those alternatives are not the alternatives you wanted. What did you expect? A 1-900 number and someone taking your credit card?


You could counter with that or you could read what's actually in this sub-thread.

"Some rich guy in the Netherlands" isn't about being a nice target. You keep saying it works for you but you can't demonstrate any way that works for others.

I can point you to a number of places that sell any number of Chinese drone parts that don't involve a "1-900 number". You can find them on Amazon. Any number of drone vendors sell them through normal sales portals. The manufacturers will ship them directly.

A handful of companies that require a bespoke procurement process and are operating at a tiny fraction of the scale do not have any appreciable impact on the market for drone parts today.


It's everywhere. And 'China free' is a real motto here.

I can't install a motto in my drone. None of the alternatives will allow me to put a physical drone part in my hand with any degree of reliability.

The thread is about manufacturing in the US so tariffs do have to be factored in.

On those specific parts:

Motors: T-Motor F90 1300KV - $119.60(incl shipping) + Tariff

ESC: Holybro Tekko32 F4 50A - $88.97(incl shipping) + Tariff

FC: Matek H743-SLIM V4 - £88.12(incl shipping + VAT) + Tariff

Radio: Radiomaster M2 $95.99(incl shipping + sales tax)

The FC was from a UK store but it originated in China. I already had the radio so I don't have current prices on it.

I'd love to find a list of vendors that have comparable parts, in stock, and without being insane multiples of those prices.

edit: formatting



Motor-g doesn't seem to ship outside of Ukraine. That's totally understandable but for anyone outside of Ukraine, they effectively don't exist.

Arctus asks you to contact them just for product info. It seems they just raised 2.6M in seed funding 3 months ago. It's great that there are startups in NL but that's not even close to a replacement for China's scale yet.

Both of these may change the landscape in the future. For now, neither of them is a practical way to get drone parts without China.


> Motor-g doesn't seem to ship outside of Ukraine.

They absolutely do.

> Arctus asks you to contact them just for product info.

You can order as much as you want from them, the price is right and the quality is extremely high.

Indeed, they're not on AliExpress, but that's roughly the difference between being a producer in Europe and in China, and that is precisely the difference that you should be happy with.


Can you show me? Is this some privileged access that you get as an investor?

Its easy to verify that Motor-g does not ship outside of Ukraine. I just put 4 of their motors in a shopping cart and tried to check out. The drop down menu for destination country has a single option, Ukraine.

Arctus does not list a single price on their website. That's also easy to verify. Every single product on their website only says, "request product data", or "coming soon".


I have both their products quite literally on my desk in front of me.

All I did was mail the manufacturer, asked for a quote, got a mail in return, they sent an invoice, I paid the invoice and they sent me the goods. Just like I would expect.


You claim it works for you.

Can you demonstrate a process that others can follow?


I have some friends who are doing things 'China free' and it is possible but it comes at a very substantial premium.

I think the most interesting takeaway from this video in question is that he tried to buy material from an Indian seller, who promised it was Indian. When the box arrived, it had the name of a Chinese factory on it.

> Attack Greenland ->attack Denmark, attack Denmark -> Attack the EU.

Rhetoric and public support aside, I honestly very much doubt that there will be a solid EU military response. For many countries like Baltic, Eastern Europe and Nordic countries (ironically DK included). US military support means life or death of their countries. I imagine they'd stall response like what Hungary did and hope that Greenland annexed become fait accompli.


> US military support means life or death of their countries.

Meant. They have begun to realize that this has changed and realize that if this were put to the test that the US military would likely not hold up their end of NATO.

What you wrote would have made good sense in 2015, but today it makes a lot less sense and with every passing day that gap is widening. The Baltics have become the voice of reason and ethics in Europe, Poland is much stronger than parties outside of Europe seem to realize, France is always going to be a force to be reckoned with and we have no doubt about where the UK stands, then there are Finland, Sweden and Norway who all are automatically on the side of anything that Denmark is involved in and I wouldn't be surprised at all if Canada would become part of it, because they too have a lot to lose.

There is a good reason why Putin has not risked engaging the EU and that's not just because the United States is still formally part of NATO.


From military consequences pov, EU isn't a military alliance but it would of course also be attacking NATO.

The EU absolutely is a military alliance as well.

That's a heterodox interpretation. Something akin to it was https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_European_Union but it's no more.


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_military_alliances

The EU treaty has a clause that calls for assistance for part of the members (who are not neutral) but there's no military structure outside NATO.

There's also a perpatual public debate about whether EU should become a military alliance. eg https://theloop.ecpr.eu/can-the-eu-form-an-autonomous-milita...

In practical terms, in event of a invasion, only NATO has a organisation set up for coordinated response.


You are really completely clueless, I have no idea why you keep posting comments that contradict your own comments but fine, whatever.

There are four different mutual defense pacts in Europe and there is an umbrella one and they all operate independently of NATO. And then there is NATO, with or without the USA.


>It is not so much about whether the USA could do this and expect to win, of course they can. Nobody has any doubt about that.

Um, lots of us have doubts about that. The USA couldn't win against Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq; why do you think it could win against Greenland? Greenlanders actually have a lot of guns; and likely most of Europe and Canada would also go to war against the USA.


I'm Danish. There are 56k people in Greenland and almost half of them live in Nuuk. The USA could frankly "take" greenland simply by putting a warship there and saying it was theirs. Not really sure why it was ever on the table though. The USA has basically free reign to expand it's military bases there, aside from the ban on nuclear weapons. Sure it would need approval by both Greenland and Denmark, but up until recently we were frankly more allied with the USA than the EU, and I doubt we've ever really said no before. We even bought the damn f35's despite them being so much more expensive than the alternatives, primarily because our history with the F16's. Which would probably have been a possiblity considering we're now debating whether or not to have french nuclear weapon carrying planes stationed on Danish soil in the fallout of the USA no longer being a trusty NATO ally.

If it was because of resources, then American companies are frankly free to extract them as long as they reach deals with Greenland about it. If the USA had waited a few years for Greenland to gain more independence then it would have been even easier.


Not the parent poster but, while I acknowledge your point on Canada and Europe entering the conflict (and I'd add that the highly motivated Dutch punch well above their weight in intelligence and economic spheres and this whole scenario of US invasion is a Putin dream), when you ask "why do you think it could win...", the 50k population of Greenland is smaller than Granada (100k) and three orders of magnitude smaller than Vietnam/Afghanistan/Iraq (~40m). So I find its insurgency potential hard to compare to those examples you give.

>"and likely most of Europe and Canada would also go to war against the USA."

Canada and the US share border and almost all meaningful infra of Canada is located in that thin border area. The US can obliterate much of Canada with artillery, various types of missiles, bombs etc. etc. Canada has nothing to counter it with. So no, I doubt Canada is that suicidal (I am Canadian btw).


They could. Destruction is easy after all. But then they'd have to hold it. That might prove to be a little harder.

Doesn't need to. America can just leave the towns alone and do whatever it wants elsewhere.

It will cost a fortune, but nobody is going to go 500 miles over an ice pack to raid a US mining settlement.


I suspect its easier to find Greenlanders willing to do that than it will be to find Americans willing to work in that mining settlement.

Unless we go full evilmode and just run them with slave labor.


The US wouldn’t even need to “attack” Greenland. What is there to even attack? 50 Danish soldiers? They could just say “that’s ours”, ignore whatever Europe says, and start doing whatever they wanted to do and instead force the EU to attack American forces or civilian business interests.

I’m not suggesting this is a good idea or anything but there’s a ton of other ways that something like this could play out which involves more difficult ways to counter than you might think.

> Instead of making America great again the US has ceded power to China.

What power has the US ceded?


> What power has the US ceded?

Before this, we (large multinational infra company) were happily using AWS, microsoft and a bunch of other US based companies.

Now we are beginning the migration away, not because its cheaper or better, but because we just don't think that we can trust the contracts we have with them any more.

This isn't a sudden thing, we are not going to do it over night. But we are not renewing multi-million dollar contracts in the coming years for stuff that would have been a no brainer last year.


It’s interesting how these conversations always start and end with “my company isn’t buying XYZ American cloud provider services” while ignoring other incredibly important products and services that you can’t or are unwilling to boycott. Are you turning in your MacBook Pro and iPhone, or are you putting a bumper sticker on it saying you bought it before you knew America was crazy?

Similarly, while it's great to take a principled stand here (it's yet again interesting how it's always a principled stand against American companies but never others), while you are busy spending time and money migrating away from AWS to a competing product that has worse features and is more expensive as you said, you should hope your competitors are too because if not, they're going to be delivering features faster and more cheaply. Something worth thinking about there.

I don't think Microsoft losing some European contracts is an example of the US ceding power.


> while ignoring other incredibly important products and services that you can’t or are unwilling to boycott.

Its about operational risk.

right now AWS is a key dependency, if that get turns off, we're fucked. we have mixed estate of end user devices, so its hard to turn them all off at once.


You're indulging in catastrophe fantasy.

If AWS gets "turned off" (the implication being the US is doing some big mean thing against all of Europe) for European countries then something absolutely catastrophic has happened and you're going to be hoping you have heat, electricity, food, and water.

If AWS gets "turned off" your MacBook Pro isn't going to work anymore because obviously the US will just whoops turn that off too! Your Google OS on your Android phone won't work anymore, and if you turn it on bam drone strike! Gotcha! Meta will shut down your WhatsApp, and you'll have to import all of your oil from Russia or something.

I don't think there's anything wrong with European countries or the EU as a whole looking to build more homegrown products and restore their manufacturing capacity - that's what we're looking to do in the US too in various ways and I encourage it. But I do think there's a problem with this fantasy, and indeed it is a fantasy of somehow decoupling from American tech companies or being isolationist or whatever and it's not good for you. We have global supply chains and in those supply chains you're going to have American products whether you like it or not. You can work on building better businesses in the EU and you should, but lay off the grandstanding, otherwise you just sound like the freedom fries enthusiasts.


What do I mean by "turned off"?

Right now if I want to process data in compliance with GDPR, I need to make sure there are sample clauses that provide equivalence in data protection standards.

Those clauses only hold if the US and EU agree that they won't fuck with them.

but thats fairly fragile.


It's also, frankly, very unimportant in the context of the geopolitical and geostrategic "USA has lost soft power" discussion that's being had.

Both my iPhone and MacBook were bought from Apple Switzerland AG and shipped directly from china to me. The money will stay in Europe unless Trump does another tax holiday where American companies can send money back to the USA without paying taxes on it - otherwise it's a pretty hefty tax bill.

Sorry that's not how that works.

First and foremost, Apple is still an American company and even if it isn't repatriating some amount of income because it doesn't want to pay taxes on it American shareholders still get the benefit of the reported cash position. Apple still owns the assets.

Second, the products are manufactured/assembled in a variety of countries including China, Taiwan, and more - US obviously designs the products and all that. But in each step of the way Apple is paying suppliers, suppliers pay other suppliers and so forth and when you finally go to Apple Switzerland AG and buy your MacBook Pro you're just paying the sum total costs of the profit for Apple, each individual supplier, and manufacturer. All that money has left Europe, Apple Switzerland is just charging you the diff on the imported product and what profit margin they want to make. Maybe it's $250 or something, of the supply chain that is pretty much all that stays in Europe, of course subtracting out where European companies are suppliers.


Macbooks are built in China.

Personally I have a Lenovo laptop (China) running Ubuntu (UK), on an LG monitor (Korea) with a logitech (Switzerland) mouse on an Ikea (Denmark) desk connected to a Mikrotik (Latvia) router.


I guess it's global supply chains when it's convenient for your argument, but not when it's inconvenient? Does Denmark build all the Ikea furniture?

Who do you think designs the MacBook, chipsets, and more? Who designs and builds the semiconductors for your Lenovo laptop?


> Does Denmark build all the Ikea furniture?

That would be so funny if it wasn't clear that you are serious.

> Who do you think designs the MacBook, chipsets, and more? Who designs and builds the semiconductors for your Lenovo laptop?

Why don't you tell us?


> That would be so funny if it wasn't clear that you are serious.

Sure ok - tell me what I'm missing.

> Why don't you tell us?

Are you unaware that Apple designs the MacBook and A/M series chips?


Are you unaware that Ikea is Swedish and that the ARM comes from a long line of UK products?

> Ikea (Denmark) desk

I was just going off what you wrote. I buy locally handmade furniture and haven't bought anything from Ikea since college. Anyway, Sweden doesn't build all of this stuff either.

> ARM comes from a long line of UK products?

Again, global supply chains when it's convenient for your argument.


> not because its cheaper or better

Actually, in a number of cases EU cloud is cheaper and better.

In terms of "better", spec wise it is not uncommon to get more bang for your buck in the EU cloud, especially around compute.

In terms of "cheaper", that too. AWS, Azure etc. will happily sit there all day nickle and diming you through obscure pricing structures with all sorts of small-print. Good luck, for example, figuring out if you're going to go over your "provisioned IOPS-month" on AWS EBS, whatever the hell that is. And have fun with all the nickle-and-diming on AWS S3. Meanwhile on EU providers a lot of stuff is free that the US providers nickle and dime you for, and the stuff that is charged is done in a manner where you actually CAN forecast your spend.

And then of course there is the real EU sovereignty. Not the fake US-cloud-in-Europe which despite what the US providers salesdroids try to tell you is still subject to CLOUD, PATRIOT and everything else.


> What power has the US ceded?

Seriously?

You live in a multi-polar world, there are three major power blocks and Europe isn't one of them, though that may change now (we're sick of war, but we're also sick of the threat of war, which one of the two will win out is up for grabs). There is - or rather, was, by now - Russia, China and the USA. Russia is unacceptable for many reasons, China is too clever for its own good in the longer term and the United States was historically our ally.

The United States has thrown away 80 years or so of very carefully and very expensively built up soft power because someone didn't understand the concept (apparently just like you). That doesn't translate into ownership and it doesn't in any way give you control but it ensures that things will, at least most of the times, go your way because of momentum and because it makes sense by default. Just like you may disagree on some stuff with your friends but you're not going to rob their homes, just because you can (and maybe just because they gave you the key to the back door).

You throw that away at your peril and because Russia is in no way capable of capitalizing on that the Chinese are. I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a decade or two the US$ is no longer the reserve currency. It could happen a lot faster than that. The US economy is teetering on the edge of the abyss and if you think that your ability to project power isn't diminished then maybe by the end of the Iran war you'll get it.

The US maximized its post-war power on the 10th of September 2001. Since then it has gone down hill very steadily and the fall rapidly accelerated with Trump. I see no reason to believe this will change, all institutions that were supposed to provide checks and balances have failed. And all China has to do is to look sane in comparison, that's not super hard.


the idea that Russia is a world power but Europe isn't is fairly silly. Europe had 3x the population, 10x the gdp. Russia has a bigger nuclear arsenal, and 5 years ago had more conventional stockpiles, but for all the ammo they had, they weren't able to topple the government of a single post Soviet country with a fairly unpopular leader. Russia is a fairly strong regional power but they're no where near the power that the Soviet Union used to have

> You live in a multi-polar world, there are three major power blocks and Europe isn't one of them, though that may change now (we're sick of war, but we're also sick of the threat of war, which one of the two will win out is up for grabs). There is - or rather, was, by now - Russia, China and the USA. Russia is unacceptable for many reasons, China is too clever for its own good in the longer term and the United States was historically our ally.

We live in a multi-polar world. Sure. But I disagree with your assertion that there are three major power blocks. The US and China are the only two. Europe has a decent sized and advanced economy but it lacks military power and is politically fragmented and always will be. China is building military power but lacks the ability and will to project that power. Manufacturing and economic powerhouse rivaling the United States. No doubt about that.

Russia isn't a pole in this world. As President Obama said back in the 2010s I believe "Russia is a nuclear armed gas station". That was true then, and it's still true today.

> The United States has thrown away 80 years or so of very carefully and very expensively built up soft power because someone didn't understand the concept (apparently just like you).

Well, I don't think this is true for one. And secondly if it takes just a year or so to throw away that power then it was just a matter of time until the EU got mad at the US for doing something and threw it away anyways.

> You throw that away at your peril and because Russia is in no way capable of capitalizing on that the Chinese are.

What soft power is the Chinese capitalizing on? Is it their support for Russia and supplying money, weapons, and equipment for their war in Ukraine? Or is it the soft power they had in Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran that they have just lost because of US military action?

> I wouldn't be surprised at all if in a decade or two the US$ is no longer the reserve currency. It could happen a lot faster than that. The US economy is teetering on the edge of the abyss and if you think that your ability to project power isn't diminished then maybe by the end of the Iran war you'll get it.

The US ability to project power isn't being diminished by the Iran war, only being exercised. Talking heads for some reason think that when you launch an aerial assault against a country that is amassing ballistic missiles, drones (which they build and sell to Russia to go bomb innocent Ukrainians), and more that it should be over within 24 hours and that the enemy shouldn't be able to fight back. It's unrealistic.

Nevermind Iran launching these missiles at civilian targets in countries throughout the Middle East. I get the argument that if you hose a US military base that the base is a target, but there's no excuse for attacking civilian apartment complexes and such.

It also misses the fact that, we've seen this movie before with North Korea. Except if Iran gets a nuclear weapon they also have control over your oil supply and it would kick off a nuclear arms race in the region because Saudi Arabia and others certainly aren't going to let Iran be the only one with nuclear weapons.

These are tough problems to deal with, and from the sidelines it's easy to think about how simple the solution is or point out all the mistakes, but the alternative headline here is the US does nothing, all of these Middle Eastern countries get nuclear bombs, Iran loads up on ballistic missiles, and then who knows exactly what will happen? Do they nuke Israel and Israel nukes them back? Do they extract a toll on oil passing through the Straight of Hormuz like they are as of today declaring they will do?


What soft power is the Chinese capitalizing on?

https://cdn.ihsmarkit.com/www/images/0421/mapoverviewofchine...

https://africacenter.org/spotlight/china-port-development-af...

Two maps that show a small selection of Chinese infrastructure projects in Africa. See all those harbours?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soft_power_of_China

For example, one-third of the top 100 mobile games in Japan currently come from China.[20]

I'm short on time right now, so no more examples.


What power?

Economic power (US will no longer be the world reserve currency).

The power of allies (see Trump begging for help in Hormuz).

All the soft power it ever had.


> Economic power (US will no longer be the world reserve currency).

As a reminder, reserve currencies are just currencies that are held in large amounts by national banks and other important institutions. The USD, like the Euro, Yen, Pound, and others are all reserve currencies.

The USD is the dominant currency, in part because the US is in the Middle East right now doing exactly what it is doing by using the military to enforce trade for oil in USD. But if the US loses that "status" it just.... reverts to being more like the EU? Doesn't seem so bad to me.

There's also pros/cons with being "the reserve currency".

> The power of allies (see Trump begging for help in Hormuz).

See Europe begging for help in Ukraine. I don't think this is a good argument. If 4 years of Trump being mean was all it took to erase all soft power the US ever had, then it never had it in the first place and it wasn't worth caring about.


The UK only had to send a single officer to Greenland to stop Trump's previous attempt to annex Greenland.

That was a signal, thankfully there are still adults in the USA who recognised it.


[flagged]


It's clear that you're projecting by not understanding the point presented.

You clearly don't know British understatement.

Firing on one British officer would be as bad a firing on 10000.

It's about lines.


This kind of stuff masked you feel good to say but the UK isn’t going to stop the US if it (somewhat foolishly in my opinion) decided that it was going to take Greenland. Neither is the EU.

You are mistaking the battle for the war: Denmark / EU would no doubt lose the BATTLE for Greenland. Within hours.

But the sun would rise the next day and the USA won't like the 'non-kinetic' consequences. Too many to enumerate.

Eventually the adults in USA would just return it.


No it would be a point of no return. But the "non-kinetic" consequences would go both ways.

It's not an exercise we should entertain, though the EU needs to step up in a very serious way and spend billions of Euros adding new equipment to Greenland to beef up detection and defense.


EU has more arctic warfare equipment than USA does, USA doesn't do much arctic warfare so the war would likely be much more expensive for USA than EU.

Most regular equipment doesn't work in -40C temperatures, to take Greenland USA would need to develop more arctic enabled weaponry just for that.


How will the EU get this arctic warfare equipment to Greenland? If the EU is so ready and willing to use this equipment, maybe they should deploy it to Ukraine instead.

The US literally has bases in Alaska and Greenland and deals with these temperatures regularly.


The EU doesn't have to fire a single bullet to get the US out of Greenland again. You are thinking in a very limited way.

Sure if the US decides it would like to leave Greenland? It's just depending on who wants what with what influence factors. But if both blocks just decided to put all of their might and resources and politics capital into this the US clearly can just take Greenland and there's nothing the EU can do about it.

It wasn’t even about Greenland, but a distraction from the extent of Trump’s knowledge of Epstein.

Anyway, there’s actually an index for soft power. Eliminating USAID halved that index. China built the highways, hospitals and water treatment instead.


They did study the falklands war, thats why they were planning to blow up the runway should shit go wrong.

The idea was to make it as difficult as possible to invade, not to stop it, because that’s largely impossible.


Argentina didn't lose the war because they came with fighter jets, but because their fighter jets were throwing scrap metal at British boats. Had these detonated, the outcome would have been different, and expensive for UK. I don't doubt that F35 are working very well in comparison to the junk Argentina was using.

Wasn't there a kill switch in the missiles?

Didn't UK get really really annoyed with France in the one instance their kill switch Didn't work?


Argentina only had 6 Exocets. I think the parent is referring to the failure of the fuses in the bombs the Argentinian pilots dropped on British ships.

I'm not sure what lesson they are supposed to learn from the Falklands. It was somewhat swung when we sank the Belgrano using a nuclear sub.

Sometimes these billion dollar high tech things work.


I'm sure they'd be grateful for your expert analysis. Maybe you could offer to teach at their war college?

I have a system instruction for chatgpt to never use emojiis.

It ignores it half of the time.

I can see why you would want to have something like this in a live weapon system :) ;) (>


Have you tried the settings for emoji use? https://chatgpt.com/#settings/Personalization

I have :(

I love multipass. It is a simple no BS virtualization solution and probably the best thing to come out of Ubuntu after LXD.

But I can't use it. You know why? Because despite being open source Canonical wont tell you how to compile it and install it as a standalone program. Instead all their documentation says "install via snap"... even if your are on fedora or debian or arch:

https://github.com/canonical/multipass

Snap needs to die, it is hurting everybody including canonical


They do document how to build and run, in the OS specific build docs. Eg this: https://github.com/canonical/multipass/blob/main/BUILD.linux...

I think pointing end users to use the end user packaged app is fine, as is to trust people who are comfortable with building from source to find the build docs from the repo.


I find it interesting that this is written in Rust (not golang) and co-authored with Claude (not gemini)

It's written in rust, but why do you believe it was co-authored with Claude? The README in github specifically says:

> This project was built using Gemini CLI

https://github.com/sashiko-dev/sashiko


Claude snitches on you in your commits. You can just look at the history.

Only two commits have 'Co-Authored-By: Claude' and they're both PR contributions from a non-google email.

Remove your Samsung account.

It is needed for a bunch of things including all bixby stuff (which is admittedly starting to get useful) but those constant ToS updates can drive a man mad.

If any Samsung employees are reading this: whoever is pushing those ToS changes is probably a on Apples payroll ;)


I've had Samsung phones for years and never made a Samsung account. Every few weeks my phone suggests signing in or accepting new terms and conditions, and I refuse.

I know Google is mining my information, but I convince myself I'm "sticking it to the man" and taking at least one small stand...


If I sign out, samsung nukes step tracking and basically neuters my watch's health metrics.

There are a bunch of free or cheap alternative apps. Probably not as smoothly integrated, but years ago a change to Samsung's terms popped up in the health app; I saw it said they could do anything they want with my private health data, so I rejected the terms and stopped using it.

It blows my mind that Samsung has been sitting on a premium hardware gold mine for so long, but insists on these anti-features. I would be buying expensive premium samsung phones if they just offered something not so maddening. I was so hoping (but certainly not holding my breath) that Samsung was GrapheneOS's partner. Oh well, I guess S doesn't want my money, so I'll give it Moto.

I wouldn't call it a "Premium Hardware gold mine", apart from the screens, the battery, cameras, CPU/GPU, etc are all on par or surpassed by Apple and Google.

How do you think humans survived for millions of years without a Samsung account?

With a team size of eight (!) I think they are not exactly bleeding money

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