Germany is the only G7 country not swamped by government debt (60% debt to GDP, as compared to 100%+ for the others)

So it's the one country whose pipes get blown out to destroy its economy

0%

"number go up" is not a viable business plan in the long run

The correct way to form an opinion is to ask whether something benefits you and your personal agenda. If this is the way you are thinking, you are not going to make a judgement call on the morality or lack thereof of vigilante killings, you’re going to ask: “well, who are the vigilantes killing?” All of this stuff about morals and principles is just bullshit for plebs. Morals and principles have to come from a rational place that is not abstract, but based on ones own interests.

https://www.unz.com/aanglin/no-one-is-against-vigilante-justice-on-principle/

The central principle of economics is that the means for improving human well-being—what economists call “goods”—are naturally scarce and must be produced before they can be used to satisfy human wants. The scarcity principle also implies that, once produced, goods cannot be bestowed on one person without depriving some other person or persons of their use. In other words, there is no such thing as a free lunch. The state and its friends reject the scarcity principle and uphold its polar opposite, the Santa Claus principle, which Ludwig von Mises defined as “the idea that the government or the state is an entity outside and above the social process of production, that it owns something which is not derived from taxing its subjects, and that it can spend this mythical something for definite purposes.”1

...

Unfortunately, at about the time that Mises wrote this, the relationship between economists and the state was already beginning to undergo a radical change. This change was most clearly manifested in the publication of the first edition of Paul Samuelson’s celebrated textbook, Economics: An Introductory Analysis.6 In this book, Samuelson concocted what has come to be called the “neoclassical synthesis,” a vain attempt to combine the scarcity principle with the Santa Claus principle.

https://mises.org/misesian/economists-and-state-enemies-friends

I've heard good things about Starship Troopers but haven't read it

(and apparently the film is not the most faithful adaptation)

I have read Stranger in a Strange Land, which was worthwhile... it has more of a 'flower child' or 'new age spirituality' tone than 'Moon' but I think it's an interesting story nonetheless

Heinlein's 'The Moon is a Harsh Mistress' is good

I enjoyed Andre Norton's 'Star Guard' which is military sci-fi (mostly on foot)

What is the point of studying legal technicalities if not to make a legal argument?

What topic area?

These are the ones I would recommend for philosophy:

Aristotle - Nichomachean Ethics

Lao Tzu - The Tao te Ching

Leonard Peikoff - Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand

Marshall Rosenberg - Nonviolent Communication

Richard Dawkins - The Selfish Gene

good luck showing this diagram to the judge

USA has an amoral system in which legal right has a tenuous connection to outcomes

the major cities in ROK are in the West, with the East sparsely inhabited

I think a North/South split is more likely than East/West, giving us South Korea (Gwangju), Middle Korea (Seoul) and North Korea (Pyongyang)

But a ROK civil war is exceedingly unlikely until after US troops are forced to withdraw

I approve this message

I keep my screens heavily redshifted at all times

I have some red LED night-lights with a photosensor so as natural daylight falls I automatically get very low-impact lights

There are certain plants that resemble insects, with the effect of causing an insect to behave as if the plant is an insect of the opposite sex

This causes the insect to try to copulate with the plant, spreading the plant's pollen

In 100% of known cases, the plant resembles a female

Dicks are low value, have always been and will always be

"Higher for longer" was based on the idea of fighting inflation by promising now that we'd fight it later

It worked about as well as losing weight by promising to diet later

https://inv.nadeko.net/watch?v=M5QGkOGZubQ

If something can't go on forever, it won't

But

There's a lot of ruin in a country

Candace Owens interviews a survivor of the Jewish attack on the US radio ship 'Liberty'

https://rumble.com/v5ybmmb-a-personal-announcement.html

"50 year" price high

I quote prices over 40 years

I'm using "the 30,000 foot perspective to miss a point"

Hmm

At the start of 1985, 1 ounce of gold bought 215 pounds of coffee.

At the start of 2015, 1 ounce of gold bought 740 pounds of coffee.

Right now, 1 ounce of gold buys about 780 pounds of coffee.

In other words, if you're spending gold to buy coffee it's been getting cheaper and cheaper. Only if you're spending paper faces has it been getting more and more expensive.

I doubt it.

Companies hedge inflation by investing in plant, equipment, land and inventory (ie their pre-exising core business). With the current build-out of data centers for AI, it seems MS likely has plenty of places to stash their money without going into a speculative "reserve asset".

I'm an LCP / KelTec P32 fan

I think people are somewhat foolish to ape military/LEOs in insisting on 9mm+

I think when you're not engaging at 50 yards through cover but instead 7-10 yards the sweet spot is more like 32 or 380 (or 38) rather than 9 to 45