Honestly, I’ve kinda grown to hate these phones, yet I find myself constantly going back like it’s a digital addiction. Compared to entertainment media prior to these horror pocketbricks, seemingly everything had more novelty. TV/Movie nights were special and shared with family, and man it was always fun picking out what CD to pop into the player. Gaming sessions were entertaining because my brother would join, and we’d have a couch party with a GameCube, or even a Nintendo DS with a multiplayer game. He was such a screenpeeker.

It plagues me that the more I think on it, I truly dont feel it’s nostalgia, there seems to be a lost novelty, and the phone and internet largely seemed to replace it all. Now, couch parties are had as a Discord call, movie nights are supplemented with a customized YouTube feed. Even the era of personal websites are fading away.

On a side note, all those things are possible for us to have today, yet we don’t. It feels like a conscious decision to pursue convenience over connection, but why did we pick this path?

I do not know the internals as far as desired, but USPS was developed to be completely self-reliant, as in no funds should be extracted or provided to/from any government’s budget. Massively oversimplifying here, this means that managers are incentivised to push workers they do have, and avoid hiring new workers where extra aid is needed. Throw in a burecracy that does incentivize lower performing carriers to be promoted, and now there’s a a management issue.

For those looking to get into the postal service, the crappy management is a hurdle to deal with, and the hiring procedure is a manifestation of that.

Not to stray away from it, as some people enjoy it thoroughly, but USPS tends to be a very finicky place to work at. It often doesn’t lead into career growth, the workplace can get bogged by bad management, and the phrase “Going Postal” happened enough to become a common concept.

I’ll translate the other guy’s comment;

Israel and the US attacked because they were basically handed a golden opportunity in a world where they search for opportunity. The top governmental officials were present within the same room, confirmed by their intelligence officials, and during a vote for the next supreme leader. By attacking then, both the current government would be inept for days to weeks, and a new government would have a shoddy transition of power.

Tl;Dr: the goal is a long, drawn-out war. I realized after writing this whole thing out, It’s totally a tangent you didn’t mention, but fugget I’m not gonna let it go to waste.

Now, here’s the opportunity in that opportunity: A “short victory” is not the goal, this is a resource war. Venezuela was effectively captured by the US, Hegseth has stated intents to revitalize the Americas as the ‘American sphere of influence’ (paraphrased), Iran is unable to export significant oil, and with that goes most of the middle east’s production through the closed strait. This disproportionately favors the US, Russia, and Canada for oil production. Trump previously pushed his “51st state” agenda on Canada, and Russia is cutoff from trade with much of the world due to sanctions. This has the US in a position where it disproportionately benefits from having the Strait of Hormuz closed, and the longer it goes, the more reliant countries get on the US for energy.

As to why it happens now, Trump is in power, and the current admin understands the developed world is slowly becoming more energy independent without the need for oil (alternative energy). This explains why the narrative is maintained that “green energy doesnt work,” while Europe actively sees progress and positive outcome with it. It’s not about what’s best for the American people he speaks to, it’s more oriented around what he wants to leverage in the current state of global affairs.

I mean, it’d definitely have some baggage when it comes to the vacuum of space.

Ahh, reminds me of the gym membership I’d started just a few weeks ago. Small town thing, I knew the owner by name, yet they used an online service that required every little detail of your personal life to sign up, like why use such a thing? I asked him that, and its just because it’s convenient for his small-scale company to use.

Turns out, it didn’t actually care if your info was right, save for a card to charge. Put in some random driver’s license number and guerilla mail email, just sucks I didn’t have a knockoff phone number.

It really makes you wonder, why need all that? I know the answer, I just wish I could see it with my own two eyes, what all data brokers do dealings for that info.

I don’t know anywhere near the full scope of this industry, but what seems to’ve been the case so far is that Lithium Ion battery recycling isn’t really happening because not enough batteries have died yet, to sustain a company in that industry. Which y’know, bit of a good problem to have, but it’s also a problem that Lead-Acid batteries had toward the early phases of their use. As was the case then, it took time for enough batteries to die to sustain an industry in battery recycling, and even moreso exacerbated with Lithium car batteries having a longer lifespan.

The interesting part is that once we have enough batteries to sustain the market, a very small proportion has to be manufactured from raw materials to makeup for product lost in the recycling process. This has Lithium in a weird state where we currently heavily rely on its extraction, yet as far as the auto industry is concerned, it won’t be too terribly long in the future when we’d have the baseline supply we need.

Anyways, no clue if that’s truly their approach or not, but we’re at a point that I feel it wouldn’t be entirely unjustifiable to consider.