jrs100000

China does not actually give a shit about Russia’s problems, and they are probably not too happy about their campaign of global chaos either. Russia is useful political leverage, and if China just sits tight and lets things play out there’s a good chance Russia ends up as a subordinate client state before the decade is out. It’s doubtful they would put boots on the ground for a goal that does not align with their long term interests.

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This is just a frivolous lawsuit. Its unusual for a president elect to file one, but its nothing unprecedented. When the first reporters start falling out of windows, that will be the beginning of the end.

Final stages? I think you might be surprised how much worse things can/will get.

Oh they will. They’re both raging narcissists. Neither Trump or Elon gives two shits about corporate interests or anything else but their own comfort and ego, and they cant share a spotlight for long. I cannot wait for Trump to try to revoke Elons citizenship and have him deported.

It would have been too practical. Now Biden is a lame duck and were past the point of no return. Its the perfect time to publicly stake out a fanciful position.

Thats the hope. Trump gets side tracked chasing the news cycle and golfing while his incompetent lackeys smear shit on the walls. A couple years later he chokes on a hamberder, Vance pushes through some last minute tax breaks to pay off his backers and leaves office in 2028.

Everyone thinks their populist is the real deal and the others are frauds, but at the day populism is not about good policy, it’s about making a show of putting up a fight. There have been many populists in political history and only a very small percentage have been materially helpful to their constituents.

If half the population is actually susceptible to brainwashing over Facebook then democracy itself is unworkable. These people clearly have preferences and are making choices, including the choice to know very little about what they vote for. Im afraid that patience and compassion will only encourage this behavior.

The thing AOC, Bernie and Trump do have in common is that they are all populists. That they would also have accepted AOC or Bernie means that they dont necessarily want a demagogue, but its also not a deal breaker for them.

We need to stop with the brainwashing talk. A few people on the fringe were clearly mentally ill, but the rest of them had agency and they made a choice.

That would actually explain some things

Anakin was able to build this in a cave! With a box of scraps!

This applies to the US and western Europe. There are places in the world where hitmen can be hired by normal people, but they are closer to homeless drug addicts than the sort of professional you are probably envisioning.

Oh thank God. I thought they were bragging about using Twitter.

North Korea is quite poor. They ave a GDP per capita of around 1700 USD, and that has likely been shrinking steadily year over year since the Soviet Union collapsed. They have an extremely militarized economy, devoting perhapse 1/5 to 1/4 of their entire GDP to the military (for reference, the US is at about 3% and Russia is at about 5% right now in the middle of a punishing war). To come up with hard currency for their missile and nuclear programs they have focused on illicit programs including counterfeiting, drug production and trafficking their own population.

Their military is also massive for their population, with roughly 1 million active duty troops and perhaps 3 million more in reserve. This military has two primary missions: to keep the current leader in power and to reunify the Korean peninsula under north Korean rule by force. To accomplish this they maintain a strategic stockpile of supplies sufficient to support their active duty military for at least six months of high intensity combat. These supplies are kept in an extensive network of tunnels and bunkers that have been constructed throughout the country. North Korean doctrine imagines an extremely high intensity conflict that is likely more intense than anything we have seen Russia perform in Ukraine, outside of perhaps a Wagner suicide charge. The amount of food, weapons, supplies, fuel and munitions required to support a force this large for six months in an intensive offensive is enormous. When you consider the poor state of their economy and the poverty that most north Koreans live in its absolutely staggering.

Now during the 90s north Korea suffered from two catastrophic disasters. The first was the collapse of the Soviet Union, cutting off most of the foreign aid that had propped up their economy and supplied their military. This led to a collapse of their industrial base and starting the trend of year over year GDP decline that continues to this day. The second disaster was the North Korean Famine. This famine lasted throughout the mid and late 90s and resulted in the deaths of a significant percentage of their population. Exactly how bad things were is a closely held state secret. We know that people were trying to eat grass and tree bark. There were rumors that people were digging up freshly buried corpses and children and old people were going missing, but I couldnt say if that was common or even if it was true at all. The famine was finally ended with a steady supply of international food aid. This solution was a thin cover for the fact that their agricultural capacity has still not recovered to this day.

North Korea does manufacture arms and munitions for export. However, the quantity these weapons are available in would be on a scale suitable to arm your standard warlord on a tight budget, but not nearly enough to backstop a full scale mechanized conflict. If they are supplying at a significant level it means they are taking weapons and munitions from front line units (which they would never do), or they are dipping into their reserves. Now, north Korea does genuinely support Russia and it is very much in their interest that Russia not collapse again. However, considering the extreme hardships they have endured without touching those strategic reserves, I find it implausible that they are doing so now. I believe that this is actually an equipment swap, where they dig out crates of old supplies from their bunkers and swap them out with brand new supplies from China. I dont have any evidence to back that part up, its just a hunch.

North Korea has been painstakingly hoarding military supplies for generations. While their people starve and freeze they stuff tunnels and caves full of food and clothing. While their industry crumbles they pry up train tracks to melt down into artillery shells. They have their own soldiers train in cheap tennis shoes so boots can be saved for war. What would make them dip into these precious stockpiles that are so important to their security that everything else can be sacrificed to preserve them? My guess is its pretty simple. Russia sends oil to China, China sends new munitions and uniforms to NK, NK sends old stockpiles to Russia. Russia gets their supplies and China keeps their hands clean.

NK doesnt have a significant textile industry. They get their uniforms from China, like everyone else.

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In practice, if you report so little tips you cant hit minimum wage management will assume you are (a) lying to the IRS, (b) providing awful service, or © business is too slow to justify you being there. Any way you look at you probably wont work there much longer.

And elections coming up next year in the US. If the Russian stooge block in congress gets large enough it might become very difficult to continue supplying Ukrane, especially if it looks like they arnt making progress. If the presidency flips support might even start flowing the other way. Without full US pressure supporters like Germany and France are likely to go back to calling for negotiations, and the UK, Poland and Lithuania cant keep the Ukrainian army going on their own.