bluGill

At this point the culture had shifted to not value large families and so few even think it is possible while not having kids seems like a valid option. It takes years to shift this even with an effort to encourage kids.

Ukrain is aware and probably giken minimal training - at least howito get a trasnlator on the phone.

Meat assults are not a great thing to learn.

How old are you? The Cuban missile crisis was far worse than this - but 1962 was 62 years ago - not many people alive are old enough to remember how bad it was then. For most of us that is just something for history while the things happening today are real to us.

Odds are this will pass, but just like in 1962 nobody knew for sure we were not on the brink of war, I cannot tell you for sure.

Every since the end of WWII there has regularly been things happening that felt like we were steering towards WWIII. You have to learn to live your life, you have no idea in advance what will actually start WWIII. There are of course plenty of signs but you don’t know until after WWIII is over what were important. Even WWII when the first shots were fired did not have to become a world war, things just escalated in ways that you couldn’t be sure at the time they would.

Don’t real the above as you shouldn’t work for peace, or that you shouldn’t prepare for WWIII. You should be doing both at the same time. The cost of peace sometimes higher than the costs of war - and war is expensive! (peace can sometimes only be had at the cost of becoming a slave - I’d rather my kids die in war than become slaves)

We don’t need a growing population, but it can’t shrink fast. We can probably even handle a slow shrinking, but a birth rate of .6 (which some countries are getting to) is low enough to be a real problem. Stable population needs a birthrate of a bit over 2 (1 child for every adult, and a few extra to account for accidents - how much extra depends on factors like how good your medical care is).

Of course the above is statistics. Some people have terrible genetics and shouldn’t have kids. Many people would be terrible parents (but few are willing to admit it is them - ironically many who will admit it would be good parents). And raising kids is takes a lot of effort (it isn’t as expensive as those without kids think, but it does take a lot of time) - all good parents have to give up a ton of things they currently do (in countries with the worst birth rates this is often working too many hours, but even countries with reasonable working hours are seeing concerningly low birth rates) .

Russia is not following their own military doctrine - or at least not what we know of it (which comes from Soviet doctrine) where Russia (and Ukraine) follow their known doctrine they get better results long term (but short term what they are doing gets faster results but it isn’t sustainable)

Just because everyone would be drawn into war doesn’t mean they can’t join. It just makes it so everyone is less likely to agree. if russa attacks a nato member (the baltic states?) Nato will bring ukraine in quickly because then they are already at war an ukrain has too many useful places to launch an attack on russia from.

Everything they are doing has known algorithms. Some are np problems though, but ai isn’t any better for those than the existing algorithyms. but ai is hype today so everyone needs to do it. In a few years this will die off and ai will be used for where it is useful. Just like every other ai that has been a fad for a while since 1950.

No this is a regular 120 volt trimmer. My dad had one like it from the laie 1970’s.

No, it is just different enough that a regular socket won’tly fit. It is close enough that the special cord can be used for other things.

More helpful than anything else. They have - for now - eliminated Hamas as a threat. If they have the guts to occupy the Gaza strip for the next 50 years - and do this well they can change the attitude of the people there. I don’t know if they have the political will for that - and the world is clearly against it. (I also don’t know if it will work, but it is just as good a plan as anything else)

I don’t know how to solve the situation there. However what everyone seems to be saying is “despite no evidence I’m going to assert this is the best course of action”. All seem to be built on hopes and dreams that people will get along even though evidence is people don’t get along that well.

capturing and trying the leadership -rather than making them martyrs by extra judicial killings

Easy to say, but what was being done about this? Hezbollah and Hamas have been launching regular rockets into Isreal for decades. Iron dome was developed to stop them (and patriot before that), but those rockets shouldn’t have been launched in the first place. If the world (both Arab and the rest) was serious they could have been doing something about those rockets before this all started. For that matter I don’t see anyone other than Isreal responding to the October kidnapping in any way that might have helped.

Don’t read the above as excusing Isreal. They have blood on their hands, but it looks to me like the rest of the world has more.

The misstles they are launching into Isreal is attempted genocide. But since Isreal can do no good you will ignore that.

That sounds like a “how to lie” with statistic fact. You can use per capita or total production numbers to make different arguments.

Since Lebanon won’t take care of private actors attacking Israel there isn’t any other option. If I were sending rockets into Canada the US would arrest me. (I have minimal understanding of Lebanon politics, but what I know suggests they can’t and many are hoping Isreal solves the problem for them)

Created faster than lost overall. There is more total manufactured in the US than at anytime in history. However population is up even more than production and jobs in factories are down by an order of magnitude (because of automation) and so it seems like we are producing less.

There has always been a push to manufacture in the states. The first buy American law dates back to 1933 (or at least the first I found with a quick search - feel free to correct me if you know more). George Washington wore a suit from New England at his inauguration to encourage American manufacturing. Things have been moving elsewhere for a long time, but there is still a push to build in the US, and new manufacturing in the Us is created all the time.

I’m saying you could have afforded it. That you didn’t want to accept that lower quality of life is a valid counter though. (it may have required you to move to the poor side of town which is often dangerous). Your observations about how it affects future career is also spot on. You could have done it though.

There are a number of people who want to raise a child but for reasons cannot have their own. I know several people with genetic issues that they do not want to pass on for example. There are also couples who despite trying just cannot have a kid (their doctors know more but that is private so it wasn’t shared with me).
There are a number of kids who do not have family who can take them in. There are neglectful parents who are not taking care of their kids (drugs are often a factor). There are cases where mom and dad died (car accident?) leaving a kid with no family to care for them (no aunts/uncles and grandparents who realize they are too old). The above is a small minority, but will several hundred million people in the US, and 8 billion in the world it happens all the time. The only question is how to get the two together.