CarbonIceDragon

Even there though, what is the actual point of a phone app controlled smart toilet, even if you open sourced the whole thing? Unlocking one's phone and tapping the app icon, and then presumably a button on the app, is going to take more time than one press of a lever that one is right next to anyway, and the latter doesn't present as many points of failure.

In the case of climate change and being a profit seeking business, I'd assume attempt to identify things whose demand will increase, like land in the areas predicted to remain most comfortable to live, farmland in areas least likely to lose productivity, companies that produce things like water desalination infrastructure, etc, and buy those things early before they become more expensive.

I've generally heard the origin explained as coming from an offshoot of the general scifi community in the late 70s to early 80. There are a lot of animal people in sci fi (things like aliens designed after animal people, or stories about animals given human traits and characteristics, or people being spliced with animal dna), and fantasy stuff which has a related audience, and some people particularly liked that trope.

I mean, the current borders of the US do include some former foreign states and land previously owned by others, that were taken over in the past, Hawaii for example. Does that not make it an empire, or does that stop counting after a century or so?

While I agree that its unlikely for him to go out that way, failed attempts dont make the chance zero. The people trying that only have to get lucky once, he has to avoid being unlucky every time.

I doubt they really have plans that far, and if they do, I doubt that a full on war to destroy western Europe would be that plan, vs trying the same tactics to manipulate the population as have been tried on the US. The US, and Russia, have the capacity, at least from their nuclear arsenals, to destroy Europe, certainly, but that capacity exists within Europe too. A full on war with Europe is unlikely for the same reason that a full on war between the US and the Soviet Union did not occur.

Beyond that, it should be considered that shared autocracy is not a particularly great incentive for alliance. It can represent a source of common interest for the elite against anything that threatens autocracy in general, but beyond that, there is no reason for an oligarch in one country to not see an oligarch in another power as much more than competition. If you want to own and control all you can, someone else also doing that is to be regarded with suspicion, not natural trust.

There is a long history of connection between cars manufacturers and fascists, to be fair. But beyond the history involved in them, car centric design contributes to it: Mass resistance is more difficult with physical separation, which driving promotes. Inefficient use of resources promoted by spread out design, and a requirement to buy, fuel, and maintain an expensive vehicle make people in even wealthy societies poorer, and people struggling to maintain a formerly comfortable quality of life are exactly the kind of people that fascists like to recruit, as they can often be convinced to blame scapegoat groups for their struggles and yearn for older times that the fascists can promise a return to.

Im not suggesting the one is entirely to blame for the other, you can certainly have fascists without car dependence, and cars without fascists, but they contribute to the conditions that fascism can take hold in, and make life easier for such regimes once installed.

It does have a useful definition I think in "a non-state actor using violence to serve some political goal", as that at least lets one categorize a murderer who just hated that specific guy as having something different going on with them compared to a murderer who wants their act to shock a nation into taking some action. It's commonly misused as "someone using violence that we don't like", but there is still some utility in understanding a person's motive for doing something.

Avoiding flushing the water is even harder

Isn't this the entire "dollar store" industry? My understanding was that these kinds of thing were the entire reason that business model was profitable. Or does this company do it worse than say dollar general or something does?

I mean, the whole "no ethical consumption under capitalism" or "all corporate ethics are fake" type stuff has plenty of truth to it, but at the same time, one does have to get any good or service not made oneself from somewhere, and corporations are made up of people with different views about what they're personally willing to do, or how much they think taking unethical actions even is the profitable thing. So, there is still room for some businesses to be worse than others.

To be fair, Hong Kong wasn't really large numbers for the government that would actually have had to have been affected to change the policy, that is, mainland China. Had every other Chinese city had protests similar in relative scale, things might have gone differently.