Like they sold average of 12,000 vehicles a day in Canada (some number like that, Tesla allegedly fraudulently claimed they sold loads of EV in order to claim subsidies from Canadian government worth $millions)?

And someone (on the Far-Right) is always trying to buy Wikipedia, monetise it, X-ify it, or take it down. I think Wikipedia is abusive - exploits volunteer unpaid labour - should have been created by an NGO like UN and kept safe for mankind like our Library of Alexandria. But it is what it is. Preppers download the whole site regularly in order to have that knowledge under their control in case is ever gets taken down or spoilt and they are rebuilding civilisation post-Armageddon. I keep meaning to download it myself (note to self: do that soon you lazy b. no more excuses!)

XDA forum was that for me. Great place to start and then follow links or do more research using the keywords used in the discussions. Just helpful for things like learning if a kernel is potentially fixable or not before buying a second-hand device for a custom rom project. The new look / reorganisation of stuff annoys me though as I find it harder to find stuff than it used to be but that's because I am using it on autopilot. I guess new users might find it attractive / easy to navigate?

Beware the Ides of March, huh?

If I recall, Shakespeare's Caesar says to Antony:

*Let me have men about me that are fat,

Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.

Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look,

He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.*

Trump certainly has plenty of fat men around him. I just thought it was a coincidence rather than a strategy but maybe he has some well-read people in his security team? Nah, on reflection, I think it's just a coincidence.

I know too little about Russia to know who is a contender to replace Putin or if when he goes the system that created him will go too. I am trying to educate myself on that.

As for China, I know a bit more but I am no expert. Given my limited insight, I am surprised that Xi is still in power. I expected the Communist Party to have 'neutralised' him, not necessarily bumped him off but to have taken away his power and reduced him to a figurehead, especially after he mishandled the pandemic and has struggled to fix China's economic woes. He is basically a thug. If all you have is a hammer, every problem is a nail. But you cannot beat a pandemic with a hammer nor fix inflation or unemployment or pollution with one. You must have as many tools as possible - Chinese perfected the toolkit of government over thousands of years. Sophisticated people in Chinese government must think Xi is an ignorant lout. I suspect they keep him in place because its better for the people who really run China to have a useful idiot as a puppet than to go through the uncertainties of replacing him - more or less how they handled the Kim regime in North Korea until lately. Putin and Kim collaborating on Ukraine must have really angered China which is probably why Chinese are considering sending 'peace-keeping' troops to Ukraine. Xi is a pig in a drawing room and the real government is just working around him.

It is hard to tell how much of the reportage about Xi is 'smoke and mirrors'. I recently saw a viral report on Reddit and in The Guardian newspaper (probably going around all the news outlets) about Chinese military exercises and some special navy vessels (biggest of their kind! etc) they had which were supposed to provide support for amphibian landings of tanks etc. Every report spins this as 'China war games is preparation for invading Taiwan - shock!'. I am very sceptical. Xi is apparently the driving force behind sabre-rattling rhetoric against Taiwan and building up PRC military might (his new bigger hammer), but I reckon most of Chinese government are not interested in a war with anyone least of all Taiwan - I think they expect to recover Taiwan eventually, by peaceful means, and are happy if it takes a century cos that long timescale is how Chinese think. So, given this split between Xi and the rest, I have the sense this whole media story is just a performance - whether it is to fool the world about China's military aggressiveness (advertising Xi's policy) or is some part of Chinese administration doing this to fool Xi he's still in charge (covert anti-Xi policy), I cannot tell. I just don't have enough facts to judge what these military manouvres tell us about Chinese government or, on the bigger scale, what real difference it would make if Xi was not around.

We (in UK) get 24/7 coverage of Trump's idiocies but not real information on other political leaders. I am European and I could not name five European political leaders, let alone predict the outcome if one were assassinated. As for politics in rest of globe, I am just clueless for the most part but I do try to educate myself. I have to create my own news feeds because the MSM is worthless.

Creating bigger problems. Exactly why I ponder if assassination does any good or just recoils on you. But I think that its usefulness is contingent on who kills whom.

I guess that is why there are so few assassinations of elite figures - it threatens the stability that protects the elite so the elite do not assassinate each other.

However, assassinating non-elite people - terrorists and revolutionaries is routine. The elites (governments of nation states, their sub-contractors) have even mechanised assassination by using remote-controlled drone attacks. This stabalises their control.

So, if elites assassinate those that threaten them, it typically works in their favour. But if non-elites do it to elites, does it empower them or not? If it causes chaos and instability amongst the elite, and the chaos spreads to wider society, and does harm to bystanders or even brings about war, is this a price worth paying, or even a good and necessary outcome?

Honestly, I am still struggling with these questions. Part of me thinks 'sauce for goose, sauce for gander' and the tyrants deserve to die by their own methods turned back on them. Another part of me knows war is terrible, especially for 'ordinary people' and for the environment, and should be avoided. But there is such a thing as 'a just war' and armed struggle can be morally good or even our duty.

So, I go back and forth.

Interesting... Thanks for that info. I am a Brit, I wonder what plans our secret services have prepared for different scenarios (Russia, China, North Korea ... and now USA). Looks like world is going back to Macchiavelli (if we ever really left).

That occurred to me too - I am old and can recall how we used to communicate and we were much more likely to give people time and hear them out than now. I am British and we now typically speak faster than we used to, youngest generation gobbles so fast I find what they say incomprehensible except for the expletives, and our accents have changed - standardised around Americanised, Londonised, British generic. There used to be strong regional accents, even separate dialects that had survived for centuries, but now these have effectively gone extinct and if I use a dialect word no one under fifty knows what it means. I find that rather sad. As for writing, this too is abbreviated and simplified e.g. using emojis instead of trying to describe complex emotions. I see this as a top-down change driven by technology and monetisation of social lives - it promotes brief attention spans, rapid turn-over of thought/feeling, quickly onto next topic, see another ad, move on, repeat, no leisure to reflect or second-guess or share a process with others. I find it debases public culture, encourages divisions and intolerance, and promotes political extremism (mainly of the Right since the Far-Right approves instinctive action over rational choices - 'move fast, break stuff' as does predatory capitalism - 'don't think, just buy!'). Everything is 'hot takes', empty slogans, and algorithm-led scripted reactivity.

I am not surprised that there is a global loss of literacy and language comprehension skills - in China, reliance on mobile technology means using predictive speech-to-text (Chinese language cannot be written effectively with keyboards) or voice control with the result that even university-educated Chinese now struggle to read or write less common words e.g. 'brassicas' rather than 'cabbages'. Take away phones and/or censor the use of this technology e.g. ban some vocabulary so it cannot be communicated in writing, spoken to others via technology, or be used to control technology, and Chinese citizens will soon be unable to communicate or think independently.

To avoid dystopian futures, I think we will have to take responsibility to reclaim these skills and/or resist the change by being 'old fashioned' especially when using new technology like AI or when online. Like I am now - writing a lot instead of a few hot words and expecting others to donate time and bother to read me. This kind of communication is either reactionary or revolutionary now, radical Right or radical Left. This kind of English is the luddite sabotage of the C21st. I want to use this kind of slow language to promote Leftist politics. Bring back the verbose! Bring back slow time! Save humanity! I guess I am in a minority on this but I always have been all my life so I shrug and continue. In practical terms, I ration my exposure to fast language and spend a lot of time reading paper books or listening to archive audio from C20th where the language is slower and at a pace that supports meaningful conversation (even if it is just imagined dialogue between the reader or listener and the author or speakers). Thank you for reading this far (if you did).

You make good points. I sincerely hope you succeed. I admire Sanders and AOC - wish we had similar figures here in UK politics, we had Corbyn but he was destroyed by the rightwing of his party and now we have Starmer who is at best Centre-Right. I think Starmer is clueless and unwittingly preparing the way for a coup in UK like the one in US. We are just a few years behind you unless we find a miracle. I am more pessimistic than you because I think this Trumpian coup cannot be stopped by legal means now that Trump views himself as above all law and thinks his executive orders amount to regal degrees from an absolute monarch. I cannot imagine Trump being impeached, tried, deposed in USA's current situation and I expect it to get much, much worse because Trump is serious about dismantling American democracy and has no respect for human rights and wants to wage imperialist wars and open access to the new economic zone in the ice-free Arctic. Would he even allow another election or accept any result he dislikes? Will Dems not be soon made an illegal group or labelled a terrorist organisation - like the people vandalising Tesla cars? The window of opportunity to stop him is closing very, very fast.

Given that what amounts to fascism or some similar tyranny not yet defined by academia already controls USA, what can ordinary citizens do? I think they have to recognise the old way is gone - no more calling police to report a crime, or expecting rights of employees to be respected, or getting insurance to cover healthcare, or having enforcible consumer rights, no free education, no civic freedoms or human rights, no social security in sickness or old age. Society, for the poor, those unable to emigrate, will be effectively lawless, have no safety nets, few outside resources to rely on, no state provision. Trump is trying to replace dollar with crypto currency. People might not even have access to cash economy but be reduced to barter. When 'might is right', the only way to protect your life, your loved ones, your neighbours and community, will be by organising yourself and improvising at the local level (and building ties with other similar organisations). Thus a kind of practical de facto anarchism - not read from a textbook and led by theory but built by trial and error from scratch from the ground up. I feel insane saying this about USA. It sounds more like an HBO or video game scenario! If Trump objects to such communities, they will either be disappeared by police or military or dragged into violent conflict with police or military. Eventually, it scales up and we have civil war or organised armed resistance and/or terrorism against Trump's regime. Who wins that armed struggle, who else gets involved, will it lead to WW3, is beyond my guess. I cannot imagine what 2050 will be like for anywhere on earth, least of all USA. And by then, I'll probably be dead of old age and never know.

I base this sketch of post-democracy USA on seeing what happens in improvised communities e.g. refugee camps etc. Yes, UN or MSF or other NGOs and charities do some professional organisation, send in some outside help/rations/transport/water/electricity, but the main work of surviving is on the refugees themselves. They do what they can, improvise schools, childcare, community kitchens, latrines, form orderly queues, ensure fair shares, stop crime, stop black markets, or help one another tolerate what they cannot control. USA has better infrastructure than a city of tents in Sudan or wherever but the principle remains - when a state fails, the people have to build from the ground up. Either that, or some opportunists hijack their fears, hunger, desperation, ambition, and recruit them into some cause not necessarily their own e.g. organised crime, religious fanaticism, terrorism, armed struggle in a civil war or maybe a revolution - give me your son to fight my cause and I'll give you rice, give me your daughter for my brothel and she'll send you a cut of the earnings so you can buy medicine, sell me your kidney and I'll smuggle you to a new country where you'll be safe. When society falls apart, there is chaos, and then there are new rules. The future is created by those who make those new rules.

I hope it will not come to this 'worst case' scenario. I hope there is a way to avoid this. But if it comes to it, I think leadership will emerge in the moment, from the community. It will not helicopter in from Washington or the state capital. The political parties will not organise food or medicine or dig graves. They are not designed to do that. Boy scouts, school football teams, college students, religious congregations, and random community groups would be more organised, integrated into the community, and potentially provide more timely, practical help. I would hope Leftists would be useful too but too many of us just talk, we don't do the work. There is some hope in that community preparedness - we can be our own leaders, make our own society, fix our problems good enough to get by. Humans have that built in. We have been doing this for millions of years and we all default to human and we can build on that and protect the human against the inhumane. I have to believe that. I have to believe most people are good and do right by one another given a chance. I believe good is better than evil and can win in any struggle, given time, hard work, and some luck. I don't want to be wrong about that. I think your hope in saving the democratic system by heroic efforts now, and my hope of surviving a failed system through heroic efforts in future, is based on this same belief in human decency and human beings' sheer determination to survive. We are allies, I think.

I'm old. I write essays. Youngsters write snippets for social media. Apologies for my verbosity!

Israel ranked 8th in 2025, if I recall correctly. 8th happiest country on earth, higher than my country (UK) or USA. Mind you, in 2024 they were 5th happiest so its not all sunshine and roses for the IDF. For comparison, I could not find rankings for Palestine or Hamas.

Makes me wonder exactly what they were measuring as 'happiness', how they measure it, and who they asked!?! They certainly did not ask Israelis opposed to genocide and doing their best to put Netanyahu in gaol - I have Israeli friends like this and they are off the chart miserable right now.

I guess MAGA cultists of all ages, Nazis, Christo-fascists, first-time Gen Z male voters enthralled by the triumph of the Trump, that Alpha Male so adored by the not gay but straight very straight get that right straight as straight as Vance he's married and she's not his beard manly Manosphere influncers like that guy whose name I forgot but was accused of rape in Romania, or the Gen Z Betas 100% in bed with the incels (so to speak), plus Tesla customers, and OpenAI employees, plus anyone who shot his balls off to own the libs, are all enjoying peak happiness right now - actually their Venn diagram is just one big happy circle. So cheer up, USA, its not bleak for everyone! /s.

Seriously, this happiness ranking is clickbait bullshit, don't let it spoil your day.

Exactly! There are some dark, dark story lines in Skyrim. We all talk about the obvious nasties like orphanage matron Grelod the Kind with her child-size torture chamber in Riften or farmer Lemkil in Rorikstead who relentlessly mistreats his twin girls. But there are even worse NPCs out there. And Hod is a monster...

Huge numbers of people eligible to vote, do not vote. I think the hope behind these calls for new parties is that the shy voters would like a change and would vote for a radical alternative in enough numbers to elect the Left into government. I am less convinced that shy voters are just waiting to give their votes to a better party. I think many have given up on representative democracy. The way all democracy, but especially USA democracy, has been privatised means you would still have to get massive funding to run a campaign just for the new party to be noticed by the media, let alone win votes from people not motivated to even bother to register to vote before. Thus your new party has to pander to donors more than its members or potential voters and the old, old story repeats on a loop where the party is just a puppet to wealthy puppet-masters. Old Dems are dead, welcome the New Dems, same as the old Dems.

Thinking things over, I am pretty old, nearly 70, I have recently decided that political parties and representative democracy are not able to deliver good government. Maybe last century they did, sometimes, but there's no way to go back in time. I now believe in direct democracy and some kind of anarchy - my model is life in a small community, everyone knows and trusts each other, agrees the rules on how to run their lives, the focus is on just living each day and being as happy as possible. This society meets human need, in humane ways. We humans need that kind of nurturing. Modern nation states are too big, too complex, admin is too 'one size must fit all' impersonal not to be inefficient and tyranical. Better to live in smaller communities and have more autonomy. Manage larger problems through a wider network of those who share your values, a federation of new city states maybe. Can it be done? Only way to know is to try it.

The Far-Right have smashed the old reality. Their ideas about new cities-states imagine them as kingdoms with absolute monarchs, elites admin, and slaves with no rights, only allowed to live if they generate profits. It is up to each of us to use this cursed opportunity to make a new future different from the dystopia imagined by Curtis Yarvin and his ilk. We have to dare to be free. As things get worse, it will not be a choice but a necessity. Be your own rescuer or be another's slave. Political parties have almost never been our friend, no matter what they say just to get our votes. More of the same is just slow death.