CapriciousDay

They were pretty well optimised, frequently sharpened and they had an angled blade with a decent amount of weight behind it. This means that there's reduced surface area at the point of contact so higher penetration. Guillotines don't miss as they've got a guide, unlike axes which were known for occasionally gouging the victim's back, because executioners did miss!

I don't really understand how this pans out like that. The US seems to be tanking its own economy at an alarming rate, Russia is still basically a heavily militarised Italy in terms of its economy. Europe is going to suffer but it seems like the only leverage Russia really has is military and gas reserves (which Europe has since hedged against after the energy price spike) at this point.

If you ask me the whole alliance between Russia and the US is notable mostly because it creates a one-sided nuclear hegemony where they each have significant missile defences and other countries don't have enough arms to overwhelm those, essentially undermining the MAD idea. But you know that's not economic, that's "might is right."

It might not be nutritionally optimal or particularly appetising but like 9 cans of tinned meal of your choice will get you through that kind of period and won't take a lot of space.

Potentially with experienced staff members they might try to call its bluff but then it seems like they've also been uprooting experienced personnel, making everyone unstable, replacing them with Trumper patsies etc. which probably minimises this kind of pushback.

"hey guys I was just chatting with the wives and they all think waging war is for guys with small dick energy"

I’m fine enjoying their leavings.

hello, .world! 👋

By the sounds of it the first point is handled by having essentially a year long probationary period, and then another two year period before someone becomes fully entrenched in the org as a full partner. This is almost certainly a long enough time to determine if someone is going to be a piss taker or not and so other instances of underperformance can be handled via supportive mechanisms.

It's worth highlighting that performance "curves" in some companies seem to lay off reasonably productive people and preserve people who are great at gaming the system/metrics.

For conflict resolution I don't know how they do it, but if I were in charge of this I'd probably have a dedicated body like an HR set up for this which would be democratically accountable but ultimately still deal with that kind of thing as a last resort (assuming it can't be sorted out between team members).

Many worker co-ops have been resilient to recessions as members often choose to temporarily lower their own pay/share of profits rather than having layoffs or other similar arrangements. https://www.yesmagazine.org/issue/new-economy/2009/06/06/mondragon-worker-cooperatives-decide-how-to-ride-out-a-downturn

I think there's another issue in that the agencies who receive the executive order are essentially obliged to act as if they are legally binding until they're shot down in court. This means there's a sort of time gap where an executive order can enact an essentially permanent change (e.g. delete a bunch of info, bomb something, etc.) and the court has no way to get it reversed by the time they rule on it.

The main thing about the prevailing circumstances is that it showed idiocracy was way too optimistic. Their eugenics-ish narrative happened over way too long a period of time. We just needed a bunch of billionaires to poison the information supply.

It's too easy to reply "it is" at this point for sure.

I hear this kind of thing a lot and I've been tempted to think it myself. But ultimately I have come to the conclusion that twice is too often to be a coincidence and this kind of thinking has been too complacent.

There's this whole alignment of the billionaire class taking long term, unveiled and direct ownership of the government sphere, in the most powerful, militarised country in the world, in a way that was even unprecedented under neoliberalism. And it really depends on how little backstabbing goes on between them which determines how long this show will go on for. It might be 5 years, it might be 500.

Think of it this way: the first term was reconnaissance. He and his team were probing all the weak points and creating the conditions for the second term, doing things like getting the right supreme court judges in place that now he's personally almost untouchable from a legal standpoint.

This second term is the main event so to speak, and I don't think the US should expect the pace of change to slow down any time soon.