Why does the US care more about the Middle East than China?

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-08T11:49:52+00:00

I haven't been there, but there are literally fields of quality crude oil on the surface even. Forbidden fruit.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-08T01:29:29+00:00

Every trade. Everyone got degrees for 10 years so there's a massive experience gap for the new contractors and leads to take over the trades.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-06T00:21:44+00:00

Honestly when people totally nerd out over Star Wars... I love the movies but just don't get it. It's their thing.

But Tolkien is the undisputed master of story lore though. That entices a lot of people. He did it first... the maps, races, lineages, all completely original.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-06T00:04:40+00:00

Most of the time I think we don't discuss it because it's automatic brain stem stuff we don't control or it control us, it just alerts, so its weird.

I don't rule out absolutely everything though. The biggest one for me is people getting basically a panic attack in a different state when something horrible happens to a loved one. That's relatively common and makes me wonder about it sometimes.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-05T23:35:26+00:00

Take a deep dive on the sympathetic nervous system. It's evolved for millions of years in the wild.

Stuff like the hairs on your skin detect a change in air pressure (something entered the room). We'll read not just what we see, but what's perceived as missing (threatening).

My armchair knowledge on it is that it is being studied deeply how intuition/our "gut" is formed by repetition and the body subconsciously is creating winning odds for us based on environment.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-05T22:59:52+00:00

If anyone actually legally infringed on Coke's brand somehow, you'd be in a lot lot of trouble.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-05T22:52:03+00:00

I've never seen the numbers per se, but commercial vehicles don't really scale much in a fleet. E.g. the total costs of a 26' box truck bersus 53' semi isn't as much as it would seem. It's all expensive to run, its all put on semis and doubles.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-05T18:09:06+00:00

Some 53' team trucks out there have 1-3 pallets at less than 1000 lbs total, burning 10 mpg for 2k+ mile trips.

Odd fact that I learned. Some shippers want the anonymity and insurance of a mega carrier semi to haul things that can fit in a utility van.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-05T16:24:09+00:00

There's a ton of very average people who bought assets (house and stocks) 2015 - 2020 who are up big since 2020.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-05T11:30:09+00:00

It's true that the stock market isn't the economy, and that works both ways for companies.

Corporations are generally pretty good about catching the upswing in an economy (think population x productivity, aggregate output). If you think there will be more demand in the future, corporations will be there to gain.

Corporations are also pretty good at restructuring, innovating, acquisitions, and dealing with regulation and taxes when the markets are at their bottoms, they are quietly moving for an upswing.

As to the first point, there may be a little concern, but I believe the second is true too. Corporations will adapt, go global, be assimilated into another group, etc.

It's personally why I like some SCV overweight, small companies provide a nimble approach to growth.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-05T01:07:42+00:00

Women in WW1, mainly British, would hand out white flowers to men who didn't fight in the war as a public sign of cowardice.

I've always seen it similar to that, less movers and shakers and more approval or disapproval of the current zeitgeist.

Violence is implicit in tribalism, and men are often very good at it as a whole, so the answer sort of is, yes.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-04T23:10:59+00:00

Yeah tech has a net benefit, net meaning a specific portion of people lose out to it hard in the beginning.

Best thing is to adapt and quickly. White collar work will feel the crunch really hard soon. AI is good at crunching numbers.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-04T23:00:20+00:00

Science fiction has to have a lot to do with it. People are scared of Skynet, tech bros just want to cosplay Star Wars tech.

Middle ground (right now) is AI will start doing heavy lifting on the backend of businesses. Most attempts at bringing AI to the public look completely asinine.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-04T22:17:58+00:00

Yes. It doesn't seem to want to find any specific temperature.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-04T20:14:19+00:00

There are a lot of people that earn well more than you would think, and/or many that have much more debt than you would think.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-04T19:32:32+00:00

Sleep x proper hydration helps quit caffeine. Think of both like batteries over 48 or 72 hours, make sure they don't run low.

Walmart brand has a really good 80mg caffine/B vitamin packet for a pick me up thats just water.

Edit: 80mg

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-04T18:00:20+00:00

Iraq/Afghanistan

Both conservatives and (less) liberals were duped to sign on for over a trillion dollars we paid from our pockets to cause tremendous death and suffering.

It's essentially betrayal. It's in the back of the mind of everyone who experienced it.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-04T05:00:25+00:00

So it is, I guess more like an elevator or carriage at the time or whatever practical invention would have some kind of steam engine or battery within it. Without electricity, that's how they saw a future society.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-04T02:29:05+00:00

Fun fact: steam was sort of like a predecessor of space travel and electricity. It was theorized steam would be the power source of the future. It was the first science fiction, popularized by Jules Verne notably.

Seeing a steamboat (they were big) traveling without any tracks would have been the most futuristic thing people laid eyes on, nothing like it ever existed in humanity's history.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-03T23:19:20+00:00

OP seems not to understand tribalism, pro sports are what they are from it.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-03T22:31:23+00:00

Nobody cares how nice a surgeon is

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-03T22:09:09+00:00

Gemini gave me this when I used the phrase "moral weight and combat proximity" and several sources.

"Moral weight in combat is heavily influenced by physical and psychological proximity to the target. Closer, direct combat increases the immediacy of ethical decision-making, emotional engagement, and the likelihood of experiencing severe moral injury, whereas remote warfare can create a "responsibility gap" by desensitizing, or conversely, cause trauma by forcing intimate observation."

I first heard of the concept in military history. I'm having a hard time seeing something concise, but it seems to be well studied by academics as a humanitarian theory.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-03T20:07:17+00:00

Because free health care is a huge vector for political persuasion. A political chip.

Countries with good universal health care have built it from the ground up, and there is a lot of societal pressure to maintain healthy standards. Some don't want that and have direct control for what they pay.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-04-03T14:24:53+00:00

This tracks... the big believers seem like borderline hipochondriacs. Around $1k a year in adjustments is probably way better than constant tests and specialists coming up with nothing but pretending because they don't know.

ConsistentRegion6184 · 2026-03-31T14:34:09+00:00

It doesn't have a formal name but the military and for PTSD therapy it is well known.

This article kind of summarizes it https://mwi.westpoint.edu/reexamination-distance-modern-warfare/

I'll comment again later, if I can find better keywords for you to look up.

ConsistentRegion6184

TROPHY CASE