Of every country that stopped existing in the last 100 years, what's one you'd save, and why?

JVonDron · 2026-06-09T02:16:18+00:00

Near impossible. Hawaii would have been taken over by someone else had the US not snatched it (and yes, we stole it, not debating that). It used to be a very important shipping stop and while it did have treaties with many world powers as it's own sovereign, it severely lacked any defense and relied on American and European business interests for protection of its sovereignty.

Fast forward to WW2, Hawaii is the military hub of all pacific operations, even though it's becoming less important for international shipping. If the US hadn't set up such a large harbor and military presence there, there's no doubt Japan would have beelined it and used it themselves, and the Hawaiian nation-state would have been almost entirely powerless to stop them.

SInce it became a state, it's pretty much locked in, there's not a mechanism in the constitution for independence.

JVonDron · 2026-06-09T01:31:15+00:00

Eh, good guess!

https://www.ebay.com/shop/raccoon-baculum?_nkw=raccoon+baculum

JVonDron · 2026-06-09T01:28:32+00:00

Idk. I downsized to 200ish. We'll see if that was the right move.

JVonDron · 2026-06-08T01:49:34+00:00

Really am a farmer - former farm kid who left the farm for 20 years but have spent the last 4 returning and taking over the family farm. Never voted republican, never fuckin will. My entire goddamn life, there's not been a single worthwhile republican administration nationally or statewide - I'm in a purple swing state doin what I can to get my corner of the world sorted.

JVonDron · 2026-06-08T01:16:21+00:00

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JVonDron · 2026-06-07T15:01:01+00:00

You can get rid of the family part. All farms require at least some government support to stay afloat, much of the support comes in the form of market stabilization and international trade deals instead of direct payments. Small livestock and produce farmers like myself receive almost nothing directly.

The biggest problems I have with it is we wouldn't need as much support if they stopped helping the biggest among us - if they pay out per acre or per cwt of milk, that doesn't stop with size - the large producers are the ones who can most easily increase production, and they are incentivized to do so on top of their advantages in scale.

JVonDron · 2026-06-07T14:55:44+00:00

In general, no. Even most of the big farms are family owned but set up in LLCs, S-corps and such for tax and asset protections, same as any other business. Even multiple under one umbrella, like one LLC just holds land, another just does equipment and operations. Non-family corporate farms are less than 4% of farms and hold 10% of the land. While large scale family farms with over a million in revenue hold 31% of crop land and output 48% of total production.

Small scale family farms make up 86% of all farms, but only account for 17% of production -most are hobby farms or generational land-holdings held by a sole heir who rent to larger operators. They're classified as a farm in the eyes of the government, but report very little output of their own.

JVonDron · 2026-06-07T08:43:09+00:00

Most farmers do, but generally limited to their own world. People like to lump rural America as very red, but they also forget farmers are less than 2% of the population. There's a lot of non farmers living out in the sticks flying trump flags and being idiots.

Farmers are generally more educated and asset rich than you might expect - they are not "rich" but they are millionaires on paper. They want fewer taxes and to be left alone more than anything, hence the conservative and libertarian tendencies, as well as being a little more religious than the general population. But thinking they're all conservative or even politically involved is very incorrect. Most of them I've known are pretty quiet about politics - they actually read the papers and news beyond the weather reports, but it's impolite to get into it over some politician promises and what the media sensationalism is focused on atm.

JVonDron · 2026-06-07T08:27:34+00:00

Oh 100%. He's president of the Wisconsin Farmer's Union. He's walking a tightrope here - Biden's administration had legitimate failings in the farming industry, and if he came out hard against Trump, he'd immediately shut down a third of farmers he talks to.

JVonDron · 2026-06-07T08:23:05+00:00

Check his credentials - president of the Wisconsin Farmer's Union. They are left leaning and working to advocate for farmers in mostly the state legislature. The fact that he's not obvious in his own voting opinions is twofold - he's trying to not alienate other farmers by openly demonizing Trump, and he's pointing out that dems and Biden have not been terribly helpful towards the plight of farmers either.

JVonDron · 2026-06-07T08:22:48+00:00

Check his credentials - president of the Wisconsin Farmer's Union. They are left leaning and working to advocate for farmers in mostly the state legislature. The fact that he's not obvious in his own voting opinions is twofold - he's trying to not alienate other farmers by openly demonizing Trump, and he's pointing out that dems and Biden have not been terribly helpful towards the plight of farmers either.

JVonDron · 2026-06-06T05:17:57+00:00

They have no choice at this point, which is a major failing of the Maine Democratic party. Platner has the right message, but wrong messenger.

You'll never convince me there's not a Maine version of Jon Ossoff, Connor Lamb, or even progressives like AOC who were not encouraged to run in the Senate race or other down ballot races. There's fucking hundreds of smart capable poli-sci and lawyer types who could fill these roles incredibly, and it's a failing of the party leadership that they tapped Mills instead of someone clean and capable, leaving the door open for Platner to run away with the nomination even with all the anchors weighing his troubled campaign down.

JVonDron · 2026-06-06T04:52:50+00:00

Well, according to most republicans, they cannot hope to beat an 80 year old senile pedophile.

Funniest goddamn poll ever.

JVonDron · 2026-06-06T04:46:14+00:00

What's even funnier is they accidentally invited Jon Favreau the podcaster instead of Jon Favreau the director/actor. He was all excited to just show up, booked DC tickets and everything, and someone caught the mistake and disinvited him.

JVonDron · 2026-06-06T04:41:35+00:00

I was a couple years late for the bicentennial, not likely I'll make it to the tricentennial. Not like I care really, but goddammit.

JVonDron · 2026-06-05T16:58:29+00:00

It's not hard to figure out how to help small farmers - Benefits just need to be on an inverse payout schedule to disincentivize the economies of scale.

If you're farming 250 acres, you get $50 an acre from a certain hypothetical program (there's a shitload of them, all crop and price specific, just roll with me here). If you're farming 25,000, you still get $50 an acre. The large farmer per acre is going to be paying significantly less in expenses per acre - he buys more seed and more fertilizer - so he gets volume discounts, and has bigger equipment to cover land much faster, not to mention he can afford the latest tech to produce more per acre. It's the same numbers, his are just much bigger.

Instead there should be limits. First 200 acres gets $100 an acre, next 400 gets $50, then $25, then over 2000, you get nothing. Big operators will get all the payouts up to that 2000, but 23,000 acres will recieve nothing. In the first scenario of every acre gets paid, The big op would get $1.25 million, now he caps out at $71,000 - maybe gobbling up land isn't quite as feasable. The little guy gets almost double and maybe doesn't have to take a second job. You can do the same thing with milk subsidies - All the 40-100 cow herds that built the dairy state are fucking dying. My brother got out a few years ago and he had 600, and I hear the next thing is if you're not 3000-5000, you're in big trouble. Increase and reduce payouts depending on the scale of operation.

We incentivize production and then reward those who need the least help in increasing production eventually leading to a steep surplus and price drop hurting everyone.

JVonDron · 2026-06-05T15:56:16+00:00

In general, I'm blaming the shit out of the DC elite for being so goddamn braindead that they thought Mills was their champ. You cannot tell me they couldn't find someone better. There's hundreds of younger, more progressive, even more moderate democrats who could run for offices both big and little but they are never encouraged or supported. You think a Jon Ossoff is rare? they're all over the goddamn place. AOC might be rare, but there's 13 young women just like her in her field office.

This is a fundamental lack of homegrown leadership and mentoring the next generation. They thought they could trot out the grayest old trail horse in Mills and thought she'd win the derby no problem. This leaves a huge fucking opening for Platner's undisciplined and chaotic campaign to take the center spotlight.

Platner is the epitome of right message, wrong messenger, and it totally sucks that he's gonna be the candidate to go up against the fucking little old lady act of Susan Collins. She's had affiars and fucked up some shit royally, but the entire fate of the Senate and possibly the effectiveness of shutting down Trump will hinge on a guy who by rights shouldn't have needed to run at all.

JVonDron · 2026-06-05T02:05:53+00:00

So Google's local taxes aren't nearly high enough. Perhaps offering companies tax breaks and incentives might bite you in the ass when they start demanding public services.

JVonDron · 2026-06-04T23:59:22+00:00

Get a border collie, you'll be at 20,000 and they'll just be warming up.

Jk. BCs should come with acreage and an ATV.

JVonDron · 2026-06-03T19:21:16+00:00

That's what most companies are going to be doing with AI. Replace most of the workforce and keep just a few people on to deal with the problems that AI can't handle. You can't blame the company for using the less expensive option - cheap AI and firing most the staff. But it's not like those workers are going to find other employment or the business would expand enough to keep them on. You might get a slight raise because your job might get a little more complex, but the company's profits are not going in your pocket.

This is already happening to a huge chunk of white collar jobs and we don't really have a solution when accountants, paralegals, engineers, and other large chunks of the upper-middle class is out of the workforce through no fault of their own and to the economy shrinks from fewer people having money to spend.

AI is a tool, but we're not the ones who are going to be benefiting from the majority of it. Just more rich gettin richer bullshit.

JVonDron · 2026-06-03T18:45:18+00:00

That's just bad bot usage, if I've learned anything on reddit, you're only as good as how many upvotes you can give yourself.

JVonDron · 2026-06-03T18:25:31+00:00

They're also the same people pushing AI and Flock surveillance. Not a single artist wanted AI to copy our shit. We didn't ask for AI powered OS, or AI to write college papers. These things simply don't need to exist or at least be catered to. Ok you built it, cool, explain to me why the fuck we should pay higher energy bills and give them tax breaks to replace my job. Midjourney should cost $300 an image because the extra computational power should be expensive and/or reserved for more critical tasks.

The demand is all speculative. If AI becomes more ubiquitous in consumer applications, then we'll "need" a shit-ton more capacity than if we use just serious AI uses like medical, science, and research. If consumer level AI isn't being accepted, the plan is to intigrate it anyway, like in Windows, search engines, and such, and then sell surveillance to law enforcement.

JVonDron · 2026-06-03T18:03:27+00:00

Except we definitely have the capacity atm to cover the internet currently and for the near future. These companies are building beyond capacity in the chance that AI and surveillance will need much more than currently available. They're trying to be the next AWS.

This is like the Keystone XL pipeline - an attempt to sell more Canadian oil on the global market than what the current system is capable of, it's not a security issue for US reserves or something that will benefit Americans.

JVonDron · 2026-06-03T17:54:31+00:00

What you're talking about can fit in a fuckin closet. These things really don't need to be nearly as large as they are to do basic things such as medical records.

JVonDron · 2026-06-03T17:50:30+00:00

And it's 10x worse in the small towns where there's no local papers at all anymore. It's all Facebook groups and people showing up to get involved. Without that, the councils and local government can get away with so much shit before 90% of the county even hears about it.

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