As a child in elementary school, I recall the teacher describing balance of power and thinking it seemed like the president had too much power. I later learned some of the intricacies of the system, but am no expert and still recall not grasping how the checks and balances would actually play out if a nefarious individual were to infiltrate the system.

At this point, I’m thinking either my naive younger self was right, or these people that made it to power didn’t understand any better than my elementary knowledge and genuinely believe they have this power.

Or they know what they’re doing and it’s a blatant attack in the USA.

In any of these situations, there’s no clean way out when nearly half the population actually supports it.

"If a judge tried to tell a general how to conduct a military operation, that would be illegal.” Isn’t this premise just blatantly wrong though? A judge is to uphold the law, and aren’t there laws governing how the military operates that, if violated, could be have legal consequences?

At least, isn’t that how it’s supposed to work?

(Edit: I’m genuinely asking because I’m questioning my understanding of how these things are supposed to be balanced without giving absolute authority, as if in a dictatorship)

Yes 100%. They’re not giving them the keys to the financial systems without being certain they’re not going to abuse it. But they might pay them to find exploits in it. It’s all about being assessed for the job you’re being evaluated for.

While your sentiment is valid, the hiring practices for the sensitive information dealt with by individuals in government require intense scrutiny. The point you raise is true, but when someone finds a valid exploit, they can ignore it, report it to get fixed before someone exploits it, or they can exploit it themselves.

Regardless of how small the exploit, a person who does not choose to report it maybe doesn’t need any harsh penalties, but do you want them to have access to a database with your personal information including SSN, and the ability to freely access systems that control trillions in financial transactions?

Background checks for clearance purposes don’t simply look at your history and say no if you have anything on your record. They look at what is on your record, conduct interviews with you, your close contacts, identify where potential risks may lie. They compare those findings with the level and access you’d be granted and determine a risk level associated with granting you that access.

Bypassing those checks, for the systems in question, opens up the entire population to an unknown, unquantified risk, which has not been assessed. This means the risk must be assumed to be the highest level.

Seeing this posted right after reading this: https://apple.news/AulzFvgTVRTugNCCva61OjA New speaker of the (US) house thinks it’s best we cut back on climate funding.

Interesting, this sounds like enough to start a Google quest to learn more and maybe experiment. Thanks!

Figured I'd ask here since this thread seems to be getting informative. The number of door to door sales people for solar that come by my area really make solar feel like a scam. How should one go about finding a proper deal on getting solar without having to work with sleazy sales practices?

Why I say it feels scammy: the area I'm in has a lot of older middle class (not upper middle class or anything) residents. From talking to some solar reps, this is their target. There are much wealthier neighborhoods a town or so over but the salespeople I've spoken to say the business would rather sell financed installations to collect incentives and that it's easy to convince people they'll save money in the long run. But in this community, we're generally fine financially as long as nothing big hits. When they gave me the numbers, it fell into the category of a big upfront payment due to down payments and high annual costs that would only slightly be offset by electricity savings. I don't recall the term, but it was not something we could budget for. The paperwork is all showing the future savings and the savings on electricity, until you look into the details. There are two houses that I've seem go for it nearby.

I’ve been on the lookout for a game like Wolf ET, but I have never seen any game like it. Putting aside that it’s free, which definitely contributes to its ease of access, is there any other game with the diversity of objectives in a large online setting?

All other multiplayer games that I’ve tried are enjoyable, but follow very similar repetitive formulas of capture the flag, team deathmatch, etc. Games like CoD added some interesting game modes, and many games went the route of Battle Royale, but those are all the same as each other.

Wolf ET has a very good play style coupled with maps that each have their own objectives as if you’re playing single player campaigns but are actually online with real players, not npcs. It requires teamwork in the way I’ve only seen MMORPGS implement. But those RPGs are usually team work against NPCs.

Then there’s the custom maps and the community of mods that have expanded the game so much over the years that the only other games that come to mind to match this to me are (Open)RCT2 and Minecraft, which are already a games about building. So WolfET having such an extensive library of custom maps with custom objectives is just incredible and furthers the playability. I’m still coming across maps I’ve never played before after 15 or so years of playing myself.

So while I am surprised people still play it, I’m just as excited to keep playing periodically. But I also hope to find a modern game that implements the aspect Wolf ET implemented 20 years ago. Anyone find anything like it?