Hey, the British were bloody imperial colonialists, not fascists though. Get it right!

Except that Sodor is noted to be in the United Kingdom, which means Thomas was loyal to His Britannic Majesty and served his king and country, not those Nazi scum.

This is some gamble to make with unclear payoff. It costs billions of dollars to get the manufacturing contracts, hire the engineers, and obtain the procurement contracts. Not to mention the years of effort it would take. Unless you spend decades growing your own talent, the only way you’re going to be able to attract the talent needed to build this project is by poaching them from Apple, Intel, Nvidia, and Huawei by doubling their salaries. And by buying out their non-compete agreements or hiring the best lawyers in the world. You’re betting on two facts to remain true:

1. That the issue of avoiding American products will even be salient in three to four years’ time. By that time it’s pretty likely that America has either taken over the word or been reduced to rubble. Trump will either be god-emperor of mankind or leaving office a broken, defeated man (or perhaps in a coffin before that—the man eats more Mcdonald’s than can be good for him, especially at his advanced age)
2. That people care enough about this to pay double the price of an American-made cell phone.
3. That your customers don’t count the fact that their phones were made mostly by American or Chinese engineers against you. America attracted all the best tech talent in the world with high salaries and China basically brute forced it with sheer numbers.

Number 2 is really the problem here. Even if you could get a competitive cell phone to market literally tomorrow, it’d have to cost twice as much as an iPhone and four times the price of the latest Huawei or Xiaomi model. While customers are more than happy to pay $6 for Quebec maple syrup so they can avoid $3 Vermont syrup, the proposition of paying $3,000 for a Canadian cell phone versus $1,500 for an iPhone is a much more difficult one to accept. And one that not many people are likely to be able to afford.

It is not because of a shortage of asphalt that potholes exist. It is a shortage of attention and money to fill said potholes.

There is no limit in the Constitution that prohibits individual US states from exchanging representatives with foreign countries or from expressing or sending support to them. However, there are some caveats, of course, and it’s a very nuanced area of law that has interesting implications:

1. Accepting formal diplomatic representatives from another power is deemed under international law to mean recognising the independence and sovereignty of the power whose representatives you are accepting. Which essentially precludes formal diplomatic ties from consideration. This is why the US doesn’t accept diplomats from the Republic of China (a.k.a. Taiwan) and refuses official Taiwanese diplomatic and service passports, but is more than happy to accept “unofficial” representatives.
2. Any representatives sent would not have the power to contract treaties as US states are not competent under US law to enter into treaties or make any other binding obligation to other countries. This is problematic because that means they can’t even do as much as rent an office space in another country without the involvement of the US federal government.
3. The primary reasons that a country might consider hosting a diplomatic mission of a foreign power is so that they can (1) complain to the ambassador about that foreign power doing things that they don’t like, (2) so that the foreign power can issue passports and visas within the host country, (3) so that consular services can be provided by the foreign power to its citizens or subjects living within the host country, and (4) negotiate treaties. Since US states don’t really do anything abroad that can’t be handled or complained about through the US Department of State, and because US states don’t issue passports or visas, and because consular services to US citizens is already provided through the diplomatic missions of the United States, it is unnecessary for any country to consider hosting a US state diplomatic mission.

Paper money doesn’t exist

I don’t think a BRICS currency will be successful in replacing the dollar unless the governments of the participating countries force their businesses to use it. The reason why transactions are denominated and settled in US dollars is because of the perceived stability of its value and the openness of the US financial system to international trade. People use the US dollar because they trust the American government to not excessively devalue it and for it to be reliably useful later on.

And yes, I recognise that all of these are under attack by the current US government.

Direct link to the YouTube video in your comment

Try to avoid Facebook links whenever possible because not only does Facebook not share any of its advertising revenue with content creators but it’s also just a terrible user experience overall.

Tim Cotton admits that the sky is blue and one plus one is two

Flathub is almost the perfect distribution system for software on Linux. The only thing it’s missing is a billing system. If it had that, it would probably attract more game developers to make their games available as Flatpaks.

Okay, you got me there. I’ll admit that’s a pretty good use for cryptocurrencies

Blockchain is the perfect solution to none of life’s problems

My small credit union with nine branches offers TOTP 2FA

The entire point of my comment was to indicate that this had seemingly little to no impact on the company’s success. Even the best employees in the world can’t save a company that is shipping no product and run by idiots.

Unlike what the title would suggest, the “moving to Texas” part was basically immaterial to the company’s failure.

They never had any product to ship to begin with and were basically subsisting on loans and venture capital money to continue bullshitting with a theoretical product. Add in some dodgy regulatory practices resulting in fines from the Government and questionable business practices. When the funding dried up, they withered like a sponge in the California (or Texas) sun.

It’s not just for decoration. You can use it as a legitimate pointing device. Nudging it will move the mouse cursor and tapping it with your fingernail is clicking.

It takes some getting used to but you can definitely use it for normal office tasks if you wanted to. That being said, I still personally prefer a mouse. But I have known some people who like using the nipple.

Those who don’t use it are only mildly annoyed by it, but those who use it will raise holy hell now that it’s gone.

Dennis! There’s some lovely filth down here!

Oh well. I must confess though, watching a 1.5 hour video to make sure I didn’t say something they already said didn’t seem like an appealing proposition to me.

I see. That’s not technically the first sentence though. I stopped looking once I got to line 6.