It’s a thing that’s trending on social media and showing up in click-bait journalism.

Which means it is:

a) Irrelevant to anyone who isn’t terminally online

b) Influencer-bait for every podcaster, YouTuber, and Twitter hot-takes artist

c) Going to see coverage inflate like a balloon as we get closer to November

I think I’ve spilled enough ink on the subject

I don’t know how that factors in

Then you’re being deliberately obtuse

So… wait, then what’s your point?

Jesus, dude

but it’s not USAID

The money was transferred to accounts used by US relief agencies.

So that means they didn’t count

If I shove you over, take your wallet, hand half the money to my friend who lost his house in a fire, and hand you back an HEB gift card with the other half banked on it? Did I just give you food aid?

In brief tho, the cessation of the opium trade was the largest (internally originated) exacerbating factor to the 2022 famines and completely destroyed the economy in the poorest regions of the country

The sudden loss of an external market for opium exports certainly hurt the Afghan economy overall.

But that market was the result of US military and contractor affiliates and the Karzai government leaving. So… should they simply not have left? Afghanistan should just stay a narco-state forever?

it’s tragic that gay marriage was such an impossible sell to the crossroads muslim population

It’s not an impossible sell. But it’s also not something foreign governments are going to impose on a population at gunpoint.

This is how you get the old Soviet “Gayness is just when the Brits do Imperialism” bad take.

News Media Last Week: “Invasion of Taiwan Imminent! US must protect our most cherished ally! WW3 definitely about to pop off, says unnamed source at Pentagon.”

News Media This Week: “China implosion imminent. Xi Jinping too much of a weak loser to send ground troops into Taipei. Whole thing will probably work itself out, famous Australian China Watcher confirms”.

China cut off communication with Australia and hit producers with $20 billion worth of tariffs

Why would China do that?

On 29 April 2020, Australia’s prime minister Scott Morrison reiterated the call for an investigation into the origins of COVID-19, saying that it was “entirely reasonable and sensible”. Morrison earlier had suggested that World Health Organization needed tough “weapons inspector” powers to investigate the cause of the outbreak.

Given how western governments have historically used “weapons inspectors” against Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria as prelude to outright war, I can see why this might have upset a few people in Beijing.

USAID to Afghanistan continued until Trump took office in Jan 2025

Biden began freezing access to Afghan funds as early as 2021. He then moved half of the money over to “humanitarian assistance” for Afghans as directed by the US government, effectively “aiding” them with their own stolen funds. And then he simply hijacked half of the funds to send to 9/11 survivors as a publicity stunt.

To be clear, USAID payments were not cut off until ~3.5 years after the US withdrew it’s forces

USAID payments (coming out of stolen Afghan funds) were targeted to areas of the country that maintained US-aligned groups. These were, most notably, the Northern Alliance forces notorious for their opium smuggling and child rape.

We know that poppy cultivation in the region seems to have stopped at least, though crop yields aren’t regularly published by the IEA as far as I am aware so it’s solidly in the realm of ‘informed speculation’

This is exactly what the Taliban did back in 1996, after they had secured the country against the Russian invasion of the prior decade. Also, a central motivating factor for their success. Native Afghans - particularly the devote Muslims - generally didn’t like their country being used as a massive drug lab. And the price of heroin globally has jumped since the US left Afghanistan. So their either hording all the opium for themselves. Or they actually ended production, as promised.

Probably need to increase the size of the base, the length of the pole, and the area covered by the blades.

After that, strap on a dynamo and find a battery to capture the energy. Probably need a transformer to regulate how much power you’re putting in and taking out, so you have a steady AC flow that doesn’t wear out or blow up any of the parts.

https://windturbinehome.com/news/how-to-build-1000w-wind-turbine-at-home

So about the famine…?

We had a program that bought out local communities with food-aid when we were occupying the country militarily.

And then we yanked all the aid and kicked off a famine the day the last soldier took the last plane out of Kabul.

I’m bringing this up not as a gotcha

What’s the gotcha? USAID demonstrably not a famine prevention program, as illustrated by this series of events.

perhaps going forward we can celebrate the deaths of programs like this a little less and lament the cessation of what good was done a little more.

The difference between Bush-to-Biden Era policy and Trump 2 Era policy is “All Stick, No Carrot”. It’s an ineffective policy, because it assumes - incorrectly - that a fuel bomb can do more to bend people to your will than a food truck.

I am not going to lament a program that was used to turn civilian Afghans who’d been rendered destitute and desperate after our initial invasion into cheap, ill-equipped, and disposable goon-squads working on behalf of Northern Alliance child-rapists and opium smugglers.

The mistake we made was carpet bombing Afghanistan to begin with. Then transforming their breadbasket region into commercial poppy farms for global export.

Sending USAID in to plug the hole in national agriculture supply we created during the 2002 invasion, so that we can delay our military exodus by 23 years, isn’t something we should be celebrating.

I quit and when I looked back at the mid 2010s the game was unrecognizable

I have to say, I’ve played on and off for a long while - from the mid-90s until a few years ago - and I agree. But that was sort of the appeal of the game. Always evolving. Constantly trying new mechanics and styles of play. It was a kind-of laboratory for game design and implementation that kept me coming back to see what was new.

The thing that has turned me off more now than ever before is the way the game has fully stagnated. Every new release is just a reskinned iteration that calcified at the end of COVID. The mechanics have gotten cookie-cutter and have really divorced themselves from the different styles and themes between sets. The gulf between Common and Rare/Mythic, plus the way Common cards are totally interchangeable across editions, has made Pauper a lot less fun.

And now that AI art is popping up in all the new sets, I can’t even enjoy that much.

That’s before you get into the shameless cash-grab that was the 30th aniversery set. $999 for a box with four packs in it which, apparently, did so badly that the excess cards were dumped in a landfill rather than going into discount. Really painfully shameless overmarketing and underdeveloping. Heartbreaking to see Hasbro rip the beating heart out of the company, because they saw a golden goose and couldn’t be satisfied with just one golden egg a day.

I see articles about this nearly every week.

What I never seem to find is the Trail of Hunger and Death Behind U.S. Aid Cuts (archive.is). The abysmal Taliban policies towards women end up being used as a flog, seemingly to justify the sanctions that are killing thousands of people - including the 2.4M Afghan girls for whom we’re supposed to care about.

Incidentally, while the US continues to punish Afghans years after our two-decade long occupation officially ended, the country’s eastern neighbor Pakistan is now in open war over a border dispute, killing still more of the country’s vulnerable civilian population via air strikes across the south of the country. This conflict has also gone almost entirely unreported.

to pay respect

But Google tells me that a typical rate for size of mortgage in your example is 6.6%, not 2.85%.

Today, certainly. Back in 2020 when we were entering the COVID-induced recession, the prime rate plunged back into ZIRP territory and you could refinance a mortgage incredibly cheaply.

Also of note, the 25 year mortgage has a slightly lower rate than the 30

Generally speaking, your options are 15 year or 30 year (at least in the US). The difference in interest rates is typically marginal, though. Maybe .5 pt, from what I’ve seen. The real perceived benefit is paying off the debt faster. But… again, if the loan is large and the interest rate is small, you’re putting a lot of cash behind a comparatively low return.

There are two things missing from that calculation. First, the mortgage savings are generally after tax, while investment gains are taxable. So the comparison of break even needs to take this into account.

Long term taxation on investments is 15%. So, at a 2.85 interest rate we’re still talking about 3.3% ROI. I can beat that buying a US Treasury Bond.

Secondly, if pay off the mortgage earlier, then you have some number of years at the end where you can then invest the entirety of your payment instead of paying mortgage.

But you’ve foregone all the income returns in the initial years that you failed to invest in the market.

Let’s be conservative and predict a 7% market ROI (right now, the markets are doing closer to 25% YOY). If my options are $1100 mortgage payment over 25 years or $1000 over 30 years, I’m looking a 25 years of $100/mo savings ($1200/year -> 25 years = $30,000). By the time you’ve paid off your mortgage, my accrued investment returns amount to around $78k. So we’re going into year 26. I’ve got $78k in investment principle, at 7%/year, earning me $5400/year. That’s nearly half my mortgage note. You’re putting your first $1100/mo => $13,200/year into savings, having missed 25 years of compounded returns.

Up the ROI from 7% to 10% (the historical DOW return over the last 30 years), and now I’ve got $123k in principle, earning $12,300/year, which is more than the mortgage note.

The excess you’re paying into the mortgage is effectively an investment with a yield equal to your interest rate. If you were paying an 11% note, getting rid of your mortgage quickly makes sense. But at 3%, it does not.

The raw math becomes ($mortgage payment)(ROI - Interest Rate) = Implicit Return.

The last thing isn’t numbers, really. You can live in a house, you cannot live in an investment account

In both scenarios, we’re living in the house. The amount you pay on the note doesn’t change that.

Not to mention the discipline bit that you mentioned.

That’s where the math ultimately gets fuzzy. Are you actually banking the $100/mo in mortgage savings as investment? Or are you just shoving it in your savings account and forgetting about it? Or spending it?

I find that periodic automatic transfers do a lot of this book-keeping for me. 401ks come out of my paycheck before it hits my savings account. I’ve got an automatic monthly deduction for my son’s 529 and my Roth IRA. And I try to do a sweep from my savings to investments roughly once a month, when I’m over a certain cash balance.

But I’ll concede all this requires a certain surplus income. If you’re stuck living paycheck to paycheck, its possible that paying down the mortgage faster is just less of a headache than juggling balances to make sure ends meet.

Getting above a 2.85% return is pretty trivial.

Paying off your high interest debt is a priority, because it’s very hard to find anything that’ll get you Credit Card Interest levels of return. We scrambled to pay down our student debt, which was in the 7-8% range. Maybe not the best move, but it was a conservative decision. If you’re into the double digits, definitely get rid of that ASAP.

When I renewed my mortgage, from 4.25 to 2.85, I was given the option of resetting to thirty years to reduce the monthly payment.

I took the offer, on the theory I’d be better off investing the difference than paying the principle. So far, it’s paid off.

One day USB-A will be so uncommon

Every USB-C to C connector I’ve seen ends up coming with half a dozen adapters, because cell phones seem like the only device that uses it reliably.

Maliki accused the Iran-aligned Houthis ​of indiscriminately shelling civilian areas in violation of international humanitarian law

Saudis upset any time you don’t engage via the humanitarian method of bonesawing your dissidents alive.

Whole new levels of brain rot.

Seems weird to resign if you know the allegations are false.

If you’re being harassed continuously, alongside the accusations? Not that weird.