The volume of material has grown faster than anyone has the ability to consume it.

Just… find things you like and discard the rest. You’re not required to watch bad TV.

Historically, it was just a cheap-to-access digital library of high rez streamable content. If you were binging Seinfield or Friends or ER or whatever, it was already kinda thin material you’d likely already seen a dozen times anyway.

Then the “Netflix Original” material was very hit-or-miss. A lot of it was Reality TV slop and nostalgia reboots out of the gate. A lot of it was just throwing their unlimited bucket of money at the wall to see what stuck.

The material that gets the “you have to explain what is going on in every scene” treatment the hardest tends to be very low budget RomComs and celebrity-driven self-promotion content anyway. Like, you’re already watching slop. Most of it is made-over native advertisements anyway. It’s bad TV even before this One Neat Trick.

I would simply stop watching Netflix.

How much TrumpCoin did the host country buy in advance?

Forming an agreement to protect Poland at all costs and calling it the Warsaw Pact.

What? No? Is that one taken?

Jesus this is a bad take

80 people were killed, cities were bombed, and we’ve got shits on here doing “it was an inside job, aktuly”

Fucking vile.

Look up the stats on defensive gun uses. Just Google it.

The vast majority (90+%) end with no shots fired- the criminal sees the gun and runs away.

Because it’s regularly over reported.

People call the police and claim they saw/heard a thing, then grabbed a gun. Police arrive to investigate and it is - predictably - nothing. Resident self-reports that they must have scared the ephemeral assailant of. Cops dutifully write it up without further investigation.

Gun-as-security-blanket is registered as successful defensive use.

They are so understaffed these days that they are no longer fast anymore.

The food itself is pre-prepared and re-heated on the spot. Go when there’s not a rush on and you can get your food in minutes. Go during rush hour and you’ll still be in and out much faster than at a sit-down establishment (that’s also inevitably understaffed).

They’ve got people addicted to 7,000 times the amount of recommended daily sugar, fat, and salt content.

I’ve heard this line and I think there’s an element of truth to it. Food really does taste differently if you’ve been eating the high salt/sugar junk for an extended period.

But you can get junk food anywhere. You don’t need McD’s to make it for you. Gas stations have soda fountains. Grocery stores have microwaved meals full of preservatives and sweeteners. You can just make yourself a hamburger at home, it doesn’t have to come from a store.

It just takes time, a certain degree of skill, and a kitchen with functional appliances that you’re going to need to clean up after you’re done. McD’s just goes in the trash afterwards. Far faster to buy a burger than cook one.

Historically, it was one of the cheaper items on the menu. In college (20 years ago) I could get a large fries for under $1. Back in the 80s/90s they were practically free. Like, loose-change free.

Also one of the tastier meal items given that they went so fast you could safely assume they’d be fresh, why the sandwich options could be sitting in the warmer for half an hour or longer depending on the speed of business.

I don’t get the point of fast food chains anymore.

It’s all in the name. You can get through a fast-food drive through in about 5-10 minutes. Dining in and cooking tends to take thirty min to an hour.

With 15€ i can go to an actual restaurant, why would I go to a fast food place?

Because you’re fighting traffic on your way home to feed your spouse and kids.

I suspect he saw the non-renewal as a threat he had to respond to

I’m sure folks in the US O&G industry are disgruntled. I doubt Trump can see past the next news cycle, and this wasn’t even headline news.

Venezuela happens to tick that box

Trump’s been wrangling with every nation on the designated US Enemies List since he stepped foot into office. Venezuela’s not selling light sweet crude oil. If anything, its a competitor with Canadian Balkan crude.

The backbone of the petrodollar is the deal with the Saudis where they agreed to exclusively trade oil in USD. That deal is no longer in place.

The non-renewal of the 50 year agreement hasn’t changed the Saudi wholesaling of their light sweet crude in USD. Nor has it discouraged the Saudis from accruing enormous volumes of US Treasury notes with those dollars. Nor purchasing US military equipment nor contracting with US energy companies for transport and refining nor gobbling up commodities in US agricultural and industrial markets.

This is the real reason the US wants to steal Venezuela’s oil now.

It’s not. The US is a net oil exporter. We don’t need Venezuela’s oil now any more than we needed it 20 years ago, when the Fraking boom began.

But Venezuela’s export markets help keep Cuba’s economy afloat and their power on. Cutting off the bilateral trade between Venezuela and Cuba helps further isolate Cuba. And that opens Cuba up to a similar encirclement and bombardment and eventual decapitation of national leadership.

If you look at the people running the Trump bureaucracy, Cuba is the real crown jewel of Carribbean foreign policy. It’s the prize everyone from Marco Rubio to Jeff Bezos has their eyes on and the reason why Trump’s Mar-a-Lago resort is crowded with guisanos looking to re-colonize the island.

None of this has to do with the petrodollar, which remains as strong as ever. The goal is to finally crack Cuba like the US cracked Chile, Argentina, and (for at least a little while under Bolsonaro) Brazil.

Okay, what I said before but totally unironically for everyone in this picture except Macy.

A bicyclist’s very existence is offensive. But I consider the .50 mounted on the back of the pickup a more sporting way to handle things. Alternatively, mini-gun mounted from a helicopter, and if anyone asks I’ll just say I was hunting wild hogs.

I’ve never set my house on fire, but I still feel better having a fire extinguisher flame thrower

The most likely person to shot you is yourself.

The second most likely person to shot you is a housemate.

The third most likely person to shot you is a loved one.

Victims of assault and abuse are overwhelmingly people closely related to the assailant.

So this does raise the question… do you feel safer living with your abusive partner if there’s a gun in the house?

Okay, but what if my self-esteem is predicated on the knowledge that I could kill anyone at a moment’s notice.

Surely that suppressed libidinal desire to inflict unimaginable pain and suffering on everyone around me is worth something.

Kinda like how the US, UK, and the Soviet Union were not aligned before the 1940s?

The US and the UK were flush with anti-communists who actively courted war with the Soviet Union even in the midst of WW2. Truman pivoted into the Cold War before the Pacific Theater was secured, in no small part because he didn’t want to risk Japan being divided North/South like Europe had been divided East/West.

If Trump thinks he can be an existential threat to a large number of countries in the world, it’s a FAFO situation.

Trump isn’t the only perceived threat.

It is absolutely not. The USD has enormous international buying power today, after coming off a bull running dating back to the '08 crash.

China is going to flip the script very soon.

They’re one of the few rapidly developing economies left, following the post Soviet stagnation.

But that just introduces another superpower on the world stage. It doesn’t eliminate the US in any material capacity.

America’s only real power remaining is the military

America’s biggest card to play is the Petrodollar. The military has facilitated destruction of competition. But our ability to dictate currency flow and command global trade via a monetary system our federal bank controls is so much more important.

Everyone keeps saying Europe and Asia will go their own way. Let me know when they finally do. Because I’m still waiting.