Oh, I’m so sorry, I figured that one out. The ADHD hit bad yesterday…

SO MUCH great information here! Bookmarked for later, so I can pick through it later and absorb all of your knowledge. Because I’m like a sponge. Or maybe more like a leech…

The same reason that DeBeers doesn’t flood the market with diamonds.

OPEC has always been about manufactured scarcity. It’s not a bad scheme, if you have a heavily concentrated, limited resource. The difference, of course, is that oil is actually useful. So might as well pump it while you can, store it where it’s easy to get and ration it out.

What is more, Saudi Arabia has 68 years of reserves at 2024’s production rate. The world will probably have stopped using hydrocarbons long before those run out. So any crude it does not pump today could be money lost forever.

1. Holy. FUCKING. SHIT! That is a lot of oil!

2. But the math doesn’t check out. The world uses about 37 billion barrels annually. Saudi Arabia has ~260 billion barrels in reserve. That’s more 7 years of global oil reserves. It would cover about 40 years of US oil use. And it would cover the modest Saudi annual useage for over 200 years. So no matter which way you slice it, the math is funky here.

3. Something else I just discovered. Saudi Arabia does not have the world’s largest oil reserves. That honor goes to…drumroll…yep, you guessed it. Venezuela.

It’s funny, I have very successful friends who used to say something similar. As one put it: “If you sell out at 20, you got no heart. If you haven’t sold out by 30, you got no head.”

That friend group are a great bunch of guys in their personal lives, family men and good providers, down to the last one. At the same time, they are 100% part of the problem. They are landlords and marketing execs. And every one of them has an exceptionally high EQ. (Except Jake. He’s my favorite and he fixes industrial baking equipment. Used to be a bartender. You know the type - staring daggers when you interrupt his conversation with a regular customer. Jake didn’t GAF about EQ.)

Anyway, it’s not that they are evil. They are just the “normal” amount of selfish. They have comfortable lives. They read their newsfeeds without ever thinking any deeper. They aren’t the Nazis - they are the people who empower Nazis by remaining laser-focused on their job and their family, ignoring politics unless their property tax is at stake.

I think it’s possible to be a good husband and an overall good person, but not a good citizen. Zombies, if you will.

Edit: It’s because I chose “Link” as the type of post. If I had chosen “Discussion”, a URL wouldn’t have been required.

I always do this - I ask questions first and click around later. JFC, I don’t know if I’ve got ADHD or just come down with a case of boomeritis.

Thanks for this!

The field was marked required, with a red asterisk. I tried posting without a URL, and it did not accept the webform. Said I needed to fill in the required field.

I took a screenshot: https://imgur.com/a/gbF3jP3

(And if Imgur doesn’t meet Lemmy standards, I’m happy to use a different service.)

Never thought of it that way!

Can “Iran fries” be a thing?

Or maybe since fries is already taken, we can rename “chili” to “Irani stew”?

it’s impossible to criticize Luigi on this platform without getting heavily downvoted

He sucks. I much prefer Princess Peach and I’ll fight all of you.

It’s a legitimate CONFUSING anti-abuse tactic.

How is a normal person, who’s never used reddit in the past, supposed to even know how to get karma? Or how the lack of karma is impacting their UX?

The only way is to game the system, get into a sub that allows shitposts and exists for the sole reason of boosting karma. Which immediately teaches the new person to game the system. Counter-intuitive and counter-productive.

I think it’s definitely an effective way to keep new users from spamming.

It chases away new users (or, at the very least, keeps them from active participation). Because of this system, a new Reddit user is more likely to be a doom-scroller with zero participation. And that’s what Reddit wants. Reddit doesn’t need another shitposter. Reddit doesn’t lack for quality content, since it aggregates the bulk of its content from other sites via powerusers. So fuck it if new people participate, as long as they see the advertising sponsors, Reddit is happy.

In fairness, that one does get a giggle from me. Every time. Even this one. Especially this one.

Giggity. (Please forgive me.)

The Pentagon has invited more than 3,500 employees to attend a Good Friday service at its in-house chapel. Except it’s only for Protestants, not Catholics.

About 25,000 employees work at the Pentagon on any given day. So, it’s pretty obvious that not everyone was invited. The article gives no information on how employees were chosen, which is concerning. It could be officers only?

“Just a friendly reminder: There will be a Protestant Service (No Catholic Mass) for Good Friday today at the Pentagon Chapel,” reads a Friday email sent by Air Force leadership, a copy of which was shared by an employee.

This states that the service will not include Catholic Mass. This seems pretty standard for a non-denominational observance of Good Friday. (Though, knowing Kegseth, it will probably be an evangelical service.)

The Pentagon Memorial Chapel is a 24-hour interfaith chapel that employees can use for prayer and reflection, and that is used for religious services.

The Pentagon Memorial Chapel only seats 80 people. SO WHERE THE FUCK ARE THE OTHER 3,420 PEOPLE GONNA SIT?!

All in all, some pretty shitty reporting on the part of Huff Post. Lots of unanswered questions here.

DLC expansion packs

You might not believe this, but there was a time before DLC expansion packs. Super Mario World, I love you.

Unless they are metahuman - probably, yes.

There are exceptions, like The Punisher, but he’s not really a “super” hero (at least, not in any of the media I’ve consumed, which is admittedly not very much). Heroes like this are great at saving the day, but its just not believable that they can save the world or the galaxy or the universe.

Iron Man without money is some dude in a garage who spends his lifetime building the arc reactor and the Mark I. By the time he’s gathered enough resources to build a Mark II, he’s already 60.

No.

“Throwing money” implies that the solution was indeed 75% useless. It’s why this expression exists.

It’s like asking “When is failure a success?” It’s literally not possible for a failure to be successful, that’s why we call it “failure”.

If they want to dive into the turkey first, they are welcome to it.

The sides are where it’s at anyway.

No. I said that retaining an immigration lawyer AND having the proper paperwork would mitigate the risk of ICE.

And it will. Here’s my analysis of the situation.

tl;dr: ICE is busy with other things, and will be for some time.

ICE pushes (and exceeds) the boundaries of both good taste and the legal framework of the Constitution. But it’s not random. There’s a method to the madness.

Now, check the headlines from the last week.

No, really! Please? Take a moment. Search for ICE in a fresh incognito browser, one that doesn’t track your personal preferences. Grab a newsfeed from Google or DuckDuckGo. Look at stories from the past week. Two weeks. Don’t see much, do ya? No high-profile demonstrations, no murder in the street, there’s even news of a detention center getting cancelled.

ICE is undergoing a shift. It’s intentional. The TSA wasn’t being funded during the shutdown, so ICE is now ‘helping’ out at the airports. They are on their best behavior. Squeaky clean, just trying to keep things running. Yay! It’s not an accident that ICE, of all organizations, was called in to help. (National Guard could offer the same level of expertise, which is absolutely zero.)

Another notable development is that Trump has, several times now, floated the idea of having ICE at the polls, to ensure election integrity. Again and again, Trump babbles about the dangers of mail-in voting and stuffed ballot boxes. And the misinformation parrots are all over that bandwagon, sowing seeds of doubt in the already gullible MAGAts.

So, here’s the play: Keep the world distracted by blowing up the oil supply. Shift ICE to high-visibility roles. Deploy them to the polling booths in the fall. Steal as much of the midterm elections as you can. Get a rubber-stamp majority in the House, Senate and Supreme Court. At that point, you can do whatever you want. Pass an amendment to the Constitution revoking the 22nd amendment? Sure, at the very least.

But whatever the case, ICE’s focus is no longer on terrorizing students in blue cities. They’ll be present and visible now, but they won’t be conducting raids en masse. They will now be low-key policing American citizens while pretending to be helpful, multi-purpose federal agents. Nazis disguised as Boy Scouts.

Right now, Illian Omar is leading the fight by holding up funding for DHS. Ilhan Omar said her caucus will ‘oppose all funding’ for immigration enforcement unless militarized policing ends. She understands what’s going on. She’ll lose, probably, just because sometimes politics is heart-breaking like that…

Here’s a neat clip of the same guy threatening to “beat the living snot out of” some random lady over Hunter Biden’s laptop.

https://youtu.be/1VCZhY7Dlm4?t=300

He seems like a very fun and stable person.

Perhaps you should consider that OP is not yet decided on the U.S.A. He’s doing a comparison of different countries. My replies are designed with him in mind, not you. Which is to say that your contribution to the discussion is certianly appreciated, just not by me. Hugs!

<shrugs>

I’m sorry, but ICE’s activities are the status quo in many countries. This person is looking at countries like Japan and China. How strict do you think immigration enforcement might be in China? Do you figure that Japan tolerates a lot of inconsistency when filling out an immigration visa?

It doesn’t matter how things should be, only that this is how they are. Today. RIght now. Yes, the U.S. has a hard-liner in office. Yes, ICE will discriminate - the color of your skin and your country of origin matter. But that’s not so abnormal on a global scale.

Yeah!

<grabs popcorn>