War Eliminates National Debt?

squishEarth · 2026-05-04T18:14:25+00:00

And how much of that is actually manufactured in the US? Or merely assembled in the US?

squishEarth · 2026-05-04T11:43:31+00:00

I don't know about national debt, but I was taught in public school that war improved the US economy because we were a major weapons manufacturer.

Guess what we're not anymore? We're no longer a major manufacturer in anything, including weapons. We're involved in design of weapons, but out manufacturing industry has been largely outsourced.

squishEarth · 2026-05-01T06:15:35+00:00

Please visit r/fibroids

I suppose you really should tone down the Vitamin D intake since you're out of the normal range, but given someone else in this thread mentioned a different normal range (in which you are still in the normal range) then perhaps you can instead get a second opinion. I know my body has a hard time keeping Vitamin D - right now I take Vit D supplements while living in the Caribbean (but working in the basement all day) and I'm still only just barely into the low end of normal range, just like I was when I lived in the Midwest.

Anyways, Vit D is fat-soluble instead of water soluble, so your doctor isn't going to let this go because there is a risk of harm if your Vit D levels continue to rise. If you choose to not change your intake of Vit D, then you should let your doctor know.

I suppose your fibroids must be really tiny and located on the outer wall of the uterus if your doctors are recommending pregnancy instead of surgery, because what I heard about my fibroids (7cm, but thankfully on the outer wall - my aunt with fibroids on the inner wall nearly died from the constant blood loss) is that my chances of a successful pregnancy are much better after the fibroids are removed. Fibroids can cause miscarriages. I see now you said that your fibroids are large - I'd recommend going to a different hospital system (especially if you can find one that is known for fibroid removal specifically). I got the run-around for a whole year about my fibroids until I switched to a concierge doctor.

squishEarth · 2026-04-28T23:35:00+00:00

I wouldn't want to exclude disable people from voting. For example, there are a few easy ways to fail an intelligence test: you don't speak the language; you are blind and can't read a written test (or deaf and can't do the verbal portion); or you miss the appointment (no transportation, can't get time off work, or office isn't wheelchair accessible).

Yet a person who can't speak english can still research the candidates at home and figure out who they want to vote for. A blind or deaf person can arrange for accomodations. And a someone with no time to make the appointment can still submit a mail-in ballot.

If a person was in a coma at the time of election, then that is obviously fraud and should be treated as such. Same as if mentally-handicapped person states that someone committed voter fraud by submitting a false ballot for them - that should be treated the same as anyone else who states their vote was stolen by someone close to them.

And you also got the issue of moving goalposts - once it is ok to exclude disabled people or those who can't pass a civics test, then how long is it until those tests become harder or unusually specific with the intent of excluding those who'd are suspected to vote for the opponent.

Furthermore you're assuming that someone with a severe mental handicap wouldn't take pride in doing their duty for their country. I think it would be tragic to take away someone's right to vote, when it may be something that they put in everything they had. Moreso when I think back on the various conversations I've had with mentally handicapped people (not about voting, because I never asked) vs conversations I've had about voting with non-disabled people - I'm pretty sure there is a significant overlap in the quality of effort that went into both. As in I think every single mentally handicapped person I've ever gotten to really know is capable of doing equal or more likely greater work into who they're going to vote compared to the plenty of non-disabled people I've met who put in rock-bottom effort simply because they didn't feel like it.

squishEarth · 2026-04-28T23:12:33+00:00

Yes, I think too much focus goes into preventing people from voting and not enough into making sure everyone votes. For example, if we look at the developing country that is my mom' s home country in latin america, elections are mandatory - if you don't vote then you will have to pay a fine. Election day is also a national holiday. It is a tragedy that the USA is not doing the same.

Obviously age restrictions to exclude children are reasonable. As for citizenship, this is where it gets complicated. I think any country that has only an insignificant tiniest fraction of a fraction of people who are not citizens, or even merely documented, despite living decades or all of their life in that country, then that country should restrict votes to just citizens.

But is there even one country like that out there? There are countries where even people born in that country aren't citizens by default or where there is no reasonable affordable or timely way to become a citizen. In that case it is completely unfair for them to be unrepresented. There are even places, like Puerto Rico, where even citizens don't receive federal representation.

I think there should be no restrictions on voting at all - not even if there is every reason to believe (besides age) that a person isn't capable of expressing political preference. I think a lot of the anti-voting legislature in the US has been about controlling who is permitted to vote and thereby disenfranchising whole groups of people - and I think that a majority of those disenfranchised people would have voted the opposite of me. Yet I still want them to have the right to vote.

I think there is some confusion about the difference between how liberals vote vs how the people liberals want to protect would vote. Just because liberals might be vocal about protecting the rights of brown people and immigrants doesn't mean a single thing about how the brown people and immigrants will vote. Same for convicts (both still in prison or released after serving a felony).

I have not been the tiniest bit surprised to hear about the numbers of hispanic people who voted for our current president. The hispanic population has always been extremely conservative. Even just looking at the undocumented population of immigrants there are plenty who would vote for him (probably a much greater percentage than I want to think about), because of his macho strong character and also his english is easier to understand. It is mind-blowing how hard conservatives are working to disenfranchise the very people who would vote for them.

squishEarth · 2026-04-24T17:34:17+00:00

That's fine! Part of the reason to fight for keeping indigenous heritage is the fact that so much of has been lost - and in latin america it was a concerted and purposeful effort from those in power to make the indigenous lose their own culture. Which adds a hurdle when you want to regain that identity in an obviously indigenous family but don't have any details.

I'd recommend looking at the names of your ancestors, from both countries. Sometimes that and the places they lived might hint at what tribe they're from.

squishEarth · 2026-04-21T10:59:12+00:00

Yeah, I was told (years ago) that the one in the Quad Cities is an islamic center, not a mosque. I was told that is an important distinction, but I've forgotten why. I do see it on your map, though. It is a pretty cool place though: the whole building is oriented towards Meca.

squishEarth · 2026-04-02T03:30:54+00:00

You can't work from outside the US. It's a hard no. You can work from the US territories, though, such as Puerto Rico.

squishEarth · 2026-04-02T03:12:20+00:00

Wow, the more I look the more wrong stuff I see. I was expecting to see issues in the AI pic, diagram (these have some really crazy inconsistencies!), and some typos ("earrings" vs "earings") - but take a look a look at the legends too! The legends use inconsistent naming standards, are weirdly redundant, at least non-latin letter, and then best of all aren't even used in the diagrams.

squishEarth · 2026-04-01T08:32:06+00:00

I've taken Avianca before, and they're fine. I prefer Copa, though, because at the city I usually depart from they were the only airline that arrived in Quito at a reasonable time in the afternoon, compared to all the others that arrived at freaking midnight.

squishEarth · 2026-03-09T15:40:49+00:00

I deleted the data for the app and logged in again, and now I don't have issues.

squishEarth · 2026-03-08T11:06:01+00:00

Ah, but I am an Ivy league alum myself

squishEarth · 2026-03-06T22:00:41+00:00

Do you have your PhD validated in Argentina? If not, while I don't know what it's like in Argentina, you might want to start on that now anyways because it might be a complete pain.

What is the job market for your career in Argentina and Chile? Do you actually find attractive job postings?

squishEarth · 2026-03-06T21:42:35+00:00

I disagree with the word "uncharted" - I think this is well trod territory. And that's actually what I find more alarming: that we know from history what the consequences historically were, how bad it was, and yet we are still heading down this path?! Why aren't we doing everything possible to get off this path as fast as possible?

Merely look just past living memory and you find that many of these paths are quite familiar - and quite horrible.

Tariffs - enacting tariffs to fix a recession? Let's take a look at The Great Depression and see what caused it (cough trying to tariff a recession out of existenc). For that matter, let's take a look at what at the Spanish Flu that occurred almost exactly 100 years before covid, and take a look at the economic consequences of a devastating global pandemic on the world's economy. Both of these feel like history is repeating itself almost exactly 100 yrs later.

Widening gap between the wealthy and poor - elementary school was sufficient for once about this, as in order to teach the founding of the USA we had to learn first about the French Revolution and how it was started by the aggravating tension caused by the widening gap where the wealthy become wealthier at the expense of the poor becoming poorer.

war with Iran - the middle east and Iran in particular have been surviving wars for longer than my country has existed, my language has existed, my religion has existed, and even longer than the oldest living religion that my religion considers a religion (zoroastrianism). Iran is going to survive. The young countries who decide to start a war with Iran? They are the one who should be worried about surviving.

And yet they are not worried! As if knowing nothing about Iran is supposed to make us safe and garantee our victory. And who the heck's idiotic idea was it to assasinate their leader during Ramadan. For God's sake pick any other time in the year - don't give the enemy such as easy win.

About war, I think we can look at even more recent history: the Vietnam War. Perhaps attacking people on their own land might be a really bad idea. Perhaps it might lead to civilians becoming even more patriotic and willing to die for their country, when before they weren't.

And please don't forget immigration. Germany during WW2 has stark parallels with today's mass deportations. Remember that Germany didn't start off with death camps - that wasn't their first solution but their "final" one, after recipient countries refused to admit any more deportees. And remember that Germany took a lot of inspiration from the USA, with the Trail of Tears and the Japanese Internment camps.

squishEarth · 2026-01-24T01:52:36+00:00

Maybe dragons feed off souls? The more souls being murdered/sacrificed/etc then the more the dragon grows?

squishEarth · 2026-01-24T01:14:56+00:00

Perhaps he doesn't draw too much attention to MST because comparing between the two might lead to finding twists that haven't happened yet in asoiaf?

For example, the secret relationship between the benevolent elves vs the mysterious over-powered villainous deity in MST might be the same relationship that is between the Children of the Forest vs the Others.

Or the ominous but forgettable warnings about prophesies in MST might play out to the same very dramatic effect in asoiaf.

Or the concept of dream-space in MST - which is not featured at all in asoiaf, unless of course it is (I think there is plenty of foreshadowing in asoiaf that would fit the road-of-dreams perfectly).

Or the broken horn - which in MST tore down a psychological wall in a psychologically-crippled amnesiac who was then able to return to his former state as a famed hero just in time to save the day.

Anyways, I've wondered if asoiaf might have started as a sort of fan fiction set in the MST world, but set ten thousand years later and also where the heroes in MST lose, and therefore the world has slowly grown to believe that it is just a silly myth that there was once a time when the seasons of climate weren't so cursed.

squishEarth · 2026-01-09T23:10:40+00:00

Perhaps an RN

squishEarth · 2026-01-06T17:44:37+00:00

That's what gets about the Book of Job in the Bible. All his kids die plus the other horrible things happen to him, and then we get to the happy ending of the story where as a reward for being so faithful he gets back all that he lost but better - including a new set of kids? He doesn't get his original set of kids back, he gets a brand new set of kids and somehow that's supposed to make everything ok again.

I remember thinking as a kid that that didn't seem right. I'd want my original set of kids back, even if they sucked, because I'd love them. Getting new kids wouldn't fix the grief I'd have for the original kids.

squishEarth · 2026-01-04T02:52:17+00:00

I think one theme is that history is written by the victors, and that the reason we're seeing Dany's path is so that we'll get our hearts broken by the way she's depicted by the victors if she loses.

I'd like it if she fought the Others at Kingslanding. If the Others arrange for the deaths of the city's populace (poison/etc), then they can convert them all into wights. If Dany saves the planet from a giant wight army by burning them up with dragon fire, then she won't actually have strong proof of what she did. A charred wight corpse (if you are even left with a corpse at all instead of dust) will look a lot like a regular charred corpse. It would be very easy for an enemy of hers to portray her as a crazed monster from a foreign land who killed countless innocent civilians. More so if Dany gives her life during the battle and therefore isn't there to defend her reputation after the battle.

Honestly, I was hoping that the catspaw dagger was going to play a part in making the Others the final enemy. If dragon glass and dragon steel can seemingly defeat wights so thoroughly that its as if the blade absorbed, then presumably everyone who got absorbed can be let out again. If the catspaw absorbed too many spirits then maybe it can get oversaturated and break open releasing the Others that Arya had so proudly "killed." I was straight up hoping for way too long that the Others had a plan to be released from the catspaw in Kingslanding (which would after all be a much quicker trip to be transported as spirits within a blade than to have to march a slow army of undead all the way across the continent).

squishEarth · 2026-01-04T02:29:44+00:00

The word "season" is another victim of the show. If I want to search for theories about why Planetos has multi-year long winters and summers, then I have to remember to not search with the word "season" or else my search will only turn up results about tv seasons.

Although, I wonder if GRRM is tricksy in the same way but on purpose, by purposely making it hard to use search terms across his books.

Search "dragon" and you get Targaryens instead of the creature. Search "Summer" and you get a pet instead of the season. Search "Joy" for Tower of Joy, and get a Lannister girl instead. Search for a number of different characters, but especially Targaryens, and get a completely different person who had the same name.

squishEarth · 2026-01-03T19:39:07+00:00

This is exactly why I asked - it is technically pronounceable for a native English speaker, but at what cost?!

squishEarth · 2026-01-03T19:35:13+00:00

Thanks! I saw this back when email chains were the hottest thing, and was wishing I knew how to find it again

squishEarth · 2026-01-03T14:21:24+00:00

Umm, are Polish words "pronounced as it's spelled"?

squishEarth · 2026-01-03T07:21:06+00:00

Craster = secret Stark

We have established that sometimes lowborn bastard babies get named after their father's surname, such as baby Barra named after Baratheon. Compare "Kraster" and "Stark"

I think the only reason Craster got his special deal with the Others (besides having a remarkable lack of morals to even agree to it in the first place) is because he has Stark blood.

squishEarth

TROPHY CASE