I can’t even imagine the headwinds that effort is facing as prices for literally every single component has skyrocketed and there seeming not being any compelling value proposition to use Xbox instead of PlayStation or Nintendo. Even Sony and Nintendo are probably sweating bullets with component prices, and they have many more advantages over ham-fisted Microsoft.
I was expecting that at $2,500 it was going to be some small tort case, but no, it was levied by the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals for “…frustration that lawyers continue to submit briefs containing AI-generated fictitious case citations and other hallucinated material…” (emphasis mine)
It’s astonishing to me the fines aren’t in the $30,000 range considering the immense potential for damage and the wasted time, resources and costs of several attorneys, clerks, witnesses, the judge/panel, administrators, assistants, etc.
Frankly, shouldn’t that be a clear reason to be disbarred? Imagine if before AI you simply just made up case law and fabricated claims/data! That would have been at the very least immediate disciplinary measures/suspension.
And these are people who charge anywhere from $300-2500/hr, just having AI generate their work. Imagine if an attorney, pre-AI had simply hired someone on Fiverr or something to write their appellate brief.
They can’t even be bothered to read and correct the filings? What is it they are actually doing for the billed hours??? Isn’t that also criminal fraud in several ways?
Hi. Nice project. One issue though; if you go to the Factbook for any year[1], the link to the entry for “Germany”[2] will take you to the entry for the Gambia for every year I have checked. I have not noticed any other countries where that happens.
Hi there, I have located the root cause and will be fixing the issue:
Root cause: CIA uses FIPS codes (CanonicalCode), which differ from ISO Alpha-2 for many countries. Templates and SQL queries prioritized CanonicalCode over ISOAlpha2, so URL codes like /archive/2025/AU matched the wrong country.
Australia (AU) -> American Samoa (AS = CIA FIPS for Australia)
Singapore (SG) -> Senegal (SG = CIA FIPS for Senegal)
Germany (DE) -> Gambia (GM = CIA FIPS for Germany)
I see the war propaganda slop is in full swing. Does anyone buy this nonsense anymore?
It is going to be quite interesting when the midterms put the Democrats into power. I don't expect it to change anything, because the whole system is just a fake democratic ruse, a facade, but it will surely introduce even more volatility when the blue team starts also realizing that it's just lies and the agenda of the parasitic Epstein Class continues unabated regardless of "our democracy".
I have no dog in a fight, in which you seem to really care about Iran, which is totally irrelevant, meaningless, and inconsequential to the USA or its national interests or national security; but the war machine relies on fools to fun smoothly. You do realize though that you are morally and ethically and spiritually culpable and responsible for the murder of the people that will die due to the support you provide to that end, you do realize that, right?
Maybe tell your children tonight when you get home that "I support that children like you be blown up and their families and communities be destroyed".
They may ask you "why would you support something like that, dad?" and you will only be able to say "because the colonial puppet Shah regime used to have good relations with the country founded by terrorists (the Haganah, the Irgun (ETZEL), the Stern and the LEHI) we call Israel today, you know, the ones that supported Epstein that liked raping children like you, which has manipulated me into caring more about killing other people children because I cannot think for myself or realize what awful things they have me supporting!" ... "Good night children. May there not ever be someone as awful as me in the world that decides to bomb you or your children in the future for others who have manipulated them to be awful."
but the war machine relies on fools to fun smoothly
There is nothing new under the sun. Interwar pacifists made these arguments 100 years ago. They have some merit, but they weren't then and aren't now the full picture.
You do realize though that you are morally and ethically and spiritually culpable and responsible for the murder
Inaction also results in death.
colonial puppet Shah regime
There is no point arguing from here on. To my liberal brain, it just comes off as Baader–Meinhof nonsense. We are not going to agree about anything.
I'm not at all a pacifist. If you knew something about me, you would realize just how wrong that is. I am merely opposed to being used, manipulated, played, conned, scammed, f-ed, and more colorful language I will retain for myself.
And sure, inaction may or may not result in death, but inaction is not morally obligated, especially when I am not even remotely involved or it does not remotely concern me. If I am understanding your perspectively correctly, the irony is simply that you do not understand that clandestine action is actually orchestrating and instigating the supposed death you imply could be prevented through additional action you are being manipulated into taking/supporting.
Yes, there is nothing new under the sun, including the very same playbook that is being used now that was used repeatedly over the lifetime of every very young children here, let alone anyone that has reached legal maturity.
What else would you call that the Shah was thick with the CIA. et al. and his son basically lives across the river from the CIA in Potomac, MD? I am also liberal in many ways, but these are just true things. Have you ever heard of The Grayzone with Max Blumenthal and Aaron Matè. They provide a good introduction to current and recent events focused on this topic.
If you knew something about me, you would realize just how wrong that is.
Yes, that dawned on me half-way down the comment, at which point I - maybe unfairly - put you in the radical box and gave up on communicating. I can tell we'd find each other's positions equally inhumane and naive, and the whole thing would be irritating for us both.
Man, you can’t use the word “colonial” in a serious discourse. This is not 2010, and we are not on campus.
If we stick to this colonial term we will never find an end. Arabs colonized the whole Middle East and subjugated all natives: Jews, Kurds, ezidis, Assyrians, etc. Moreover, Iran itself was colonized and Arabized by force. So, I would say any anti-Muslim anti-Arab movement in Iran is anticolonial by nature.
Where does it lead us? Nowhere. This is why this whole “colonial” vs. native etc is pointless — there was always some group of people living on a piece of land before some other group came.
Edit:
Also, I find it pretty hilarious that Shah was a colonial regime but Islamic Republic is not: France literally harbored Khomeini and the moment Shah fell they flew him back to lead the revolution. But since IRs rhetoric is anti west and anti Israel, the modern left completely forgives all the atrocities committed by IR: abuse of women, violent suppression of dissent, execution of rappers for a song, etc.
That’s because English and Dutch are basically German dialects that the ruling aristocrat classes worked hard to differentiate and abstract from their ruling aristocrat class competitors in other places.
You may want lol into that, since you are realizing and noticing things, but you are seemingly still not connecting the dots correctly. Another hint, Dutch comes from Deutsche, how the “Germans” refer to themselves, which is also where the “English” came from, Angles and Saxony, the latter still being a region of “Germany” today.
In other words, you really should be referring to themselves Germans as the Deutsche of you wanted to differentiate them from the Dutch, which are basically the same Deutsche people who just live on the coast, the lowlands, i.e., the Nether-lands.
The continuum of the North Sea languages is much more apparent if you undo the High German consonant shift... (and of course if you minimise the use of the words English have imported from France)
That seems to me like a really worthwhile effort, especially for the continental Europeans if they want to keep the EU alive, even if it needs major, structural reform that I am not confident it can implement without total deconstruction first. If the EU wants to survive it simply cannot allow English to dominate it, nor is even French ideal, making Dutch the official language is of course silly for obvious reasons (regardless of my affinity for it), contemporary German seems to be self-deleting in many different way for many different reasons, and nonsense like Esperanto speaks for itself. But a kind of merging or integration of the German languages of central Europe would be an ideal candidate to bring about European unity in a sustainable and healthy manner... a meeting in the middle, maybe a restoration of old high German even that is the common node.
I am generally even just sad writing this because even my proposal invariably means the total destruction of many languages, traditions, cultures, and true and healthy diversity that has defined Europe over all of recorded history; but at least if this effort of trying to mash Europe into a kind of neo-communist of uniform sludge, at least try to create something new and beautiful out of it, not some disgusting brown mush where the non-english EU speaks English, while by the end of the century the majority of people will not even be indigenous Europeans anymore.
It is sad realizing that what we are all currently witness to is a cataclysmic collapse and destruction of civilization in Europe on an order that humanity has not witness since the civilizational collapse of the Americas or even the Bronze Age collapse and minor cultural collapses and ethnocides that were perpetrated through the French proto-communist Revolution, the Russian communist revolution and the Chinese communist revolutions. It is astonishing knowing that I am living through a historical event that may even never be recorded, let alone well, because the likelihood that it will be recorded at all, let alone accurately is very low.
If a common German language could be created, along with maybe a common Romance language for Hispania and Italy, etc. at least there would be a kind of remaining legacy akin to how the Egyptian icons are enigmatic, even if their culture did not survive.
The Anglo-Saxons were not Germans, and their language was not a "German" language.
It was Germanic, derived from a common ancestor with German but absolutely distinct separate lineage and your weird ethonationalist quasi-fascist soup of of thoughts here and below is both factually incorrect and incoherent.
Actual scholars of Germanic languages don't share your bizarre biases.
That’s because Dutch is close to the original old german that it is derived from, just like English and modern German. English or as it is also known as Anglish, the language of the German tribe of the Angles, also known as the Anglo-Saxon group of Germanic people, are essentially Germans just like the indigenous ethnic people of modern Germany, as well as the ethnically German people of the Netherlands, aka the Dutch. That is of course also why the Netherlands is called the Nederlande in “Dutch” which is a reference to the lowland Germans. This becomes far clearer when you understand that the Germans refer to themselves as die Deutsche, which is where the “Dutch” get their English name, i.e., Nederland Deutsch, which means… self-referential… the lowland German people.
The unfortunate history of Europe is that the indigenous people of Central Europe are essentially all German people who have been divided and conquered by a ruling parasitic class that we all know moved around the continent, marrying into each other’s families and becoming the people’s aristocratic slave masters over centuries, which included linguistic divisions in things like naming, and even language “reforms”. Heck the English ruling class itself are Germans and they just changed their names when it was expedient to do so in order to continue filling the English people by not drawing attention to the fact that they were being set to fight their item bothers and sisters in WWI so that the British ruling class could remain their parasitic masters.
What makes you believe you have lost freedom of movement, I’ve met British people all over Europe. If I can meet a Russian living in Switzerland in Amsterdam and a British couple that took the ferry from the island, why are you not free to “move”?
On a related note; do you enjoy what America is right now? Because centralizing power and handing your country’s (American states are/were/should be essentially countries) sovereignty and self/determination to Brussels is how you get this, become the US of Europe, the next iteration in the centralized war machine of the psychopathic, narcissistic parasitic ruling class. When you lack diversity through separate, unique, district, and sovereign countries where people have oversight and control and can push back against horrible ideas and actions, you end up like us.
I’ve always found it unfortunate that the EU did not become a legitimate, constitutional form of the USA like it was before the Civil War that created this centralized authoritarian fake federal state that we know today. It would have been awe inspiring and really could have become the example for the rest of the world. Instead, the current version of the EU is strangling the whole continent.
The EU is right now talking about becoming a great military force to fight Russia. That’s the kind of movement you’re advocating for, my friend.
You think young people are kept down now, wait till they’re laying in some muddy battlefield as chopped meat or hiding from drone swarm or hypersonic missile attacks on their cities due to the belligerence of the EU aristocrats with no clothes.
>What makes you believe you have lost freedom of movement
Uh, the fact that I cannot stay in Europe for more than 90 days in a 180 day period without a visa?
As for all that other rubbish, every European city I’ve been to lives better than the people where I live in London. That’s proof enough for me that the EU is working.
That is one of the most idiotic things I have read. Obviously it's not impossible to travel for them anymore, but freedom of movement referred clearly to the rights of free movement between EU States as a citizen for Work, Education, Travel and Business
Obviously they can still travel to Europe, but they will need an ETIAS Visa Waiver in the future, instead of just going, they can't move for work and studying just as easy without applying for Visa/Permits and they don't have the same rights and access to services as Citizens of a country.
> The EU is right now talking about becoming a great military force _to fight Russia_ (emphasis mine)
Correction: to not have to fight Russia. The EU falling apart is Putin's wet dream because he's very afraid of a confrontation with the whole bloc, and wants to subjugate the small European countries piecemeal (and yes, on their own, they would have to submit or face missiles/drones or, even worse, human meatwave attacks by a foe that has been whipping its populace into a death cult for decades for exactly that eventuality).
You really confirm my theory that we’ve had AGI for a long time now as you output the system’s propaganda with no thought of your own. You are effectively meat AI, trained and tuned.
>separate, unique, district, and sovereign countries that can push back against horrible ideas and actions, you end up like us.
The separate, unique sovereign countries are the ones with the horrible ideas and actions. See Victor Orban's Hungary. The whole point is to not let some goulash mussolini control European affairs.
> The EU is right now talking about becoming a great military force to fight Russia. That’s the kind of movement you’re advocating for, my friend.
Would you rather... not be able to fight Russia? It's not like the EU is the one with the invasion plans and threats, they're just preparing for the changing world order.
You really don't see the inherent contradiction and disastrous concept inherent to your mentality? It's inherently authoritarian and supremacist, i.e., you or the ideological cluster you believe you are a member of; knows best and knows infallibly, perfectly so, what exactly needs to be done for any and all people, at all times everywhere equally? ... thus, there is no need for such a thorn in your eye as the elected leader of Hungary Victor Orban... you know better, as you repeat like a trained robot.
It is oddly concerning, scary, and amusing at the same time that you are totally unaware of your own "Mussolini" tendencies of imposing your will or those ideas you have been trained to repeat and parrot on others. Why does everyone, everywhere, in all countries need to bow to the will you have been trained to parrot? Why can't people of other countries decide and do other things?
You really don't see the problem in that?
Have you even ever visited Hungary? Do you speak Hungarian? Do you live there and are culturally invested through generations of ancestors there? Why do you care so much about what Hungarians do in Hungary? What happened to democracy?
Why then if none of those apply to you, would you have any right, let alone care or concern with what Hungarians want, do or who they elect outside of you simply being a useful idiot for the central power in Brussels that commands you to really really care about Hungary's elected leaders?
It's literally no different than the fools we have her in the USA who really really care about combatting and countering and bombing and invading Iran (and Iraq before) ... which has absolutely zero actual, direct national interest implications or effects on the USA in any way. You are quite literally just a "dumb American" now as you morph into the grotesque that is modern America.
> Have you even ever visited Hungary? Do you speak Hungarian? Do you live there and are culturally invested through generations of ancestors there? Why do you care so much about what Hungarians do in Hungary? What happened to democracy?
Yes. The part of Austria I live in used to be Hungary, it's still tightly linked to it culturally and through blood ties. My grandparents spoke Hungarian at home.
Difference is, it prospered, while Hungary proper is poor, run-down and has an antisemitic dictator. Hungarians are the cheap labor prevalent in Eastern Austria, similar to Mexicans close to the border in the US. They clean our toilets, because their government sucks.
I don't want that fate for my Hungarian brethren. Don't talk as if I didn't know, when it's clear it's you that doesn't.
It is you who is the useful idiot for fascists worldwide, out of some misguided sense of nationalism or whatever. The nation state is the obstacle to be overcome. It is what's keeping people back.
Who do you think those people are that are incarcerated in the USA?
I come across this rather frequently among people from sheltered backgrounds like those who graduated from mom and dad taking care of them, all the way through to Mega Corp/university taking care of them, and absolutely cannot fathom why everyone doesn’t just eat cake.
I have a working theory that this effect, whatever one wants to call it, of people being too abstracted from reality, is ultimately the source of collapse of all kinds of organizations of humans… including civilizations.
It is, for example also why America can have so many vile warmongering people, because not only do they not have to lead troops into battle, have their children drafted into the front lines, or pay for the invariable disaster and murder they perpetrated and orchestrated; but in the most grotesque way, they profit from it and immensely; usually also combining it with other types of fraud like “money printing”, i.e., counterfeiting, which they use to plunder the wealth they accumulated through murder, mayhem, and fraud.
Now you're getting it. You have exactly identified the problem.
Instead of identifying and addressing the real problems--mass unemployment, homelessness, hopelessness--your dystopic "solution" is simply more and bigger jails, more and better armed cops with surveillance cameras attached, more laws, more weapons, more bondage and discipline, more "you will do what I say or else."
Doesn't work. Never works.
Read the essay "Fate of Empires" by Sir John Glubb to see how things this time are not in fact any different than what came before.
This isn't a new complaint. People have been identifying this group as the source of a lot of bad stuff at least as far back as Marx. The petty or petite bourgeoisie, the professional managerial class, Karens, the name changes with the times. But the constant derision for these groups is rooted in people observing that these groups are disposed to the sort of "driving society off a cliff" behavior you are listing examples of.
> Everyone has the same and equal meaningless vote.
There is one vote that is not meaningless: the primaries. A lot of the issues y'all have is that Democrats and Republicans alike don't bother to vote in the primaries. That is how you got people like MTG or Trump, that is how you get people like Chuck Schumer stuck in office for far too long.
AOC/The Squad and Mamdani both proved that it is possible to succeed in a primary and offer voters an actual alternative to the corporate owned shills.
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