Would you prefer a more celebratory article? What’s your arguement?

This is a pretty simplistic, almost child-like take.

You can recognize the self-interested nature of the US, while also pointing out how they are not being efficient for their own goals (that also benefit us).

That’s not out of this world for the type of tech that is being discussed, especially considering costs in the US are very high.

If the US had true gumption, they would be testing their hypersonic missiles via launches out of Ukraine aimed at high value russian military targets, with a pretend excuse that it was actually Ukraine launching the missile.

I can guarantee you most of Ukraine would support this (I live in Ukraine) and the “red line” bla bla is just westerners falling prey to russian foreign propaganda initiatives.

Corrupt American oligarch thinks he can deal with incredibly complex issues just because he’s been able to run scams in the US for a few decade (a country which is arguably one of the most friendly places for oligarchs in the world, some smaller exceptions notwithstanding).

It is clear that Americans (not only Trump, but also Biden, and locals too) fundamentally do not understand how to deal with russians.

I was having a chat with a taxi driver last winter when the electricity blackouts were really bad (I live in Ukraine). I said, we should bomb the heating/electricity generation in Norilsk in the middle of winter.

The driver tells, that’s not going to work, if you do bomb russia, it has to be Moscow or at least Saint Petersburg.

To which I answer, “yes, you are right, they don’t care what happens outside of Moscow or Saint Petersburg. I am stressed out and not thinking straight.”

The vast majority of russians only understand believable threats and violence. You have to show them that you are able and willing to make them feel pain, otherwise they are not going to respect you or behave seriously.

And when you do show them that you are able and willing to make them feel pain, it has to be targeted primarily at their elite (i.e. Moscow and Saint Petersburg).

But since 2014, I’ve learned that Western elites (and not only elites) reflexively refuse to address reality. Not only Trump/Biden, the Germans with Angela Merkel too. Right after the annexation of Crimea she launched NS2. Hope she gets severe Alzheimer’s.

Perhaps this is cope on my part, but I believe we have leverage in this situation.

As the saying goes:

If you owe the bank $100K, that’s your problem. If you owe the bank $100M, that’s the bank’s problem.

The moves offer a new challenge to the Trump administration, which had previously cited lowering Treasury yields as a key policy aim, and could mark a loss of investor confidence in the world’s largest sovereign debt market.

“The sell-off may be signalling a regime shift whereby US Treasuries are no longer the global fixed-income safe haven,” said Ben Wiltshire, a rates strategist at Citi.

This is potentially a seismic shift in global finance/economics.

If US treasuries are no longer considered the “investment of last resort” (which they shouldn’t be, since even sane Americans lack the commitment and risk tolerance to fight corruption and degeneracy in their own country), this may result in the dollar losing its status as the global reserve currency.

If that happens, the Americans will be fucked.

With all due respect, sex is not a spectrum.

It’s a clearly a binary. Yes, there are many exceptions and edge cases, but they are all based around a universal binary biological structure.

You don’t have say three distinct sexes required for reproduction outside of sci-fi. It is a binary with some edge cases and variations in how exactly the two parts of the binary interact.