The US government system was set up to be better than the monarchies its designers had grown up under. In this sense it has been wildly successful. But… it wasn’t really designed to scale to the size it has, nor to account for the massive changes in technology that have occurred since it was written.

The leaders of the time decided to replace the first attempt only 6 years after it was ratified, and I believe they fully expected any future government to do the same if they found the current system wasn’t working. They did try to make the new system more adaptable by adding the Amendment process, which was frankly genius and unprecedented in government systems prior to that.

I think it’s very important to remember where and when the system we have came from, and to try to think like the people who wrote it, and to remember that at the time they had no other models for successful government beyond the writings of Enlightenment-period historians. It’s very easy to criticize the current system. It’s far more difficult (and substantially more important) to draft a better system.

What? there’s nothing important in Pine Gap.

Even the Pentagon doesn’t know where they are!

birdcage

chain gang

shot box

rollin’ rusty

grateful tread

chained to the wheel

“grill marks, bud”

cage against the machine?

Greenwashing.

This might be the right thing for you:

Avantree Resolve-C - USB C Wired Open-Ear Earbuds & Microphone (for Small-Medium Ear) with in-Line Controls & Over-Ear Hooks, Headphones Compatible with Samsung, iPhone 15 and Other Type C Smartphone (Amazon link)

Wraparound on-ear headphones with USB-C plug. I can’t vouch for them personally though.

USB C to 3.5mm Dongle Adapter (Amazon link)

If you need to charge and listen at the same time, they make split adapters for that too. Adding 2" of wire to your wired headphones is a very minor inconvenience.

There are also wired headphones with USB-C plugs if you don’t want to bother with adapters.

Well obviously they’re RGB LEDs.

Even if I did choose the company I applied to for work, I didn’t choose my coworkers, nor did I get to meet them until after I was hired. And, I certainly don’t get to choose the customers I have to interact with during my work.

Counterpoint: you can have high-quality human contact with people you choose to be around, not so much with people you’re paid to be around.

Just don’t walk behind them, or they might try to kick you.

This is really good advice for basically every animal with hooves. They mostly have a blind spot directly behind, like horses:

If you walk up behind them inside that blind spot and then move out to either side and suddenly appear in their vision, they’ll react defensively, usually by trying to kick you with their hind legs.

Basically if you can’t see the animal’s eyes then assume it can’t see you, and stay out of kicking range.

Or just reinstalls it in the next update.

Mozilla is the primary developer of the Gecko web engine which Firefox uses. Open source or no, web engines are complicated things to develop and maintain. Even Microsoft gave up and just started using Chromium.

Would it continue to work without a significant organization dedicated to maintaining it? Sure, probably, for awhile. Would it continue to be safe to use for things like finances? No.

Is there any point to switching web browsers to one that is based on the same engine? Not really, no, the browser application is basically just a wrapper for the engine… a skin, a theme, like having an SUV shell vs a pickup shell on the same frame and drivetrain.

it’s easy as fuck to change browsers these days

Is it? Switch to what, exactly?

This kind of action is more likely to make people reject the message.

You’re right that this doesn’t compare to the death and destruction in Gaza, but that doesn’t make it productive or helpful.

“Mostly harmless”

I’ll take “what is reductivism?” for $400, Alex.

Vetting the employees isn’t really important when an observer can just watch a higher-than-usual volume of delivery trucks showing up.

Well the point is more to poison the source of information with bad indicators for anyone watching.

Trying to remove the indicator is one strategy, and it might work partially, but it can also just move the problem somewhere else. To use your example, serving the food in house shifts the problem from takeout delivery to food delivery to the in-house kitchen.

Of course the best strategy would probably be to do both - increase the availability (and quality) of in-house food to encourage its regular use, and also order takeout in large-ish volumes sometimes when nothing is going on.