If there was an easy solution to the cartels someone would have done it already. Take obtainable wins.

Note: CPI was changed in the 90s with the not so subtle goal of changing the metrics to level out and reduce annually reported inflation, in part to reduce COLA (https://www.ssa.gov/history/reports/boskinrpt.html). It sure made politicians look smart and all the charts to go up! This sounds somewhat reasonable until someone who knows about exponential growth enters the chat, points to the Rule of 69/70/72, and notes that the ~2% under reporting of inflation for the past ~30 years means we’ve silently lost almost half our wealth. This will get exponentially worse yet few are talking about it.

Point being, $100 in 2026 is closer to $6 in 1970.

Median family income in 1970 was $9,870. Median family income in 2026 is NOT $164,500. Not even close.

Yes. Improvement no matter how small is still improvement. More importantly, improving conditions can have sideways impacts on those big problems. Cartels (and Putin, using your Russia example) feed off desperation. Improving material conditions tends to make things harder for the bad guys, which is why the bad guys work so hard to make materials conditions worse (/wave MAGA). In reality, most problems are multi-faceted so we’d be fools not to see the big picture and do what we can where we can. The alternative, hyper focusing on the big problems, lets other problems grow which ultimately ends up feeding the big problem.

The screwworm coverage so far is terrible.

First off, everyone is acting like this is a problem for beef prices (end of list). No, this is a problem for any mammal living in the southern US. FFS, some of the cases already are dogs- how are people not putting this together?

Second, Biden did whiff on the screwworm response in Central America. They should have pulled a Gandalf as screwworms spread north, but instead were modern Democrats and assumed the situation would fix itself until it was really bad.

Third, the real blame lies with whoever was POTUS before Biden (I can’t recall) for ignoring that the Panama facility holding the Darien Gap needed updates, more funding. We’re talking tens of millions of dollars to fix in 2018 what will now be a billions and billions problem. Trump- oh right it was Trump. Yeah, then when Covid hit they lost the Gap. To come back in 2025 and cut funding to to the program and re-open the border to animal disease vectors is insanity. Are we sure these people aren’t literal demons feeding on human misery?

Someone always thinks something else is more important. Doing that and making (wishfully) perfect the enemy of good are solid recipes for no progress.

Sort of, except they’re holding the guns and will shoot each other for praising God slightly differently.

The obvious flaw in Christian Nationalism - what kind of Christian? It’s such an easy way to turn MAGA in on itself. ention the Pope and they’ll fight among themselves. Billboards in Salt Lake City informing them of this decision. Every time Trump wheels out some spiritual con artist be sure to mention their denomination. This isn’t hard.

YES! Raw milk is ultra-omega-alpha. Any MAGA who isn’t drinking raw milk three times a day isn’t a real MAGA. Be sure to let them all know this.

How neat is it that the screwworm, which was a plague in the 1930s, is back just in time (well, a little early but when the history books are written they’ll zoom out the timeline) for our reenactment of the Great Depression? A little on the nose with history repeating itself, but still interesting. I guess we should be on the lookout for another Dust Bowl too.

Promising from a business perspective. Hughesnet was looking at a having a billion customers. SES looked poised to be the internet provider for Europe. Echostar exploded onto the scene. Teledesic, who back in the 90s pioneered the low orbit constellation you mentioned (possibly sent up with NASA’s VTVL rockets?), had a business plan that looks eerily similar to Starlink (speaking of, read up on all the people the Muskrat met with who pitched satellite internet, then he ditched them and did it “”“himself”“”) and was off to a solid start until dot.com crash wiped its funds and it fizzled. Yes, a lot of this was hype or promises of tech was nowhere near ready- “the future LOOKED bright”, not necessarily was.

No, no, no. You see, it all makes perfect sense because economics is built on the nobility of the rational thinking person. SpaceX is worth $1,500,000,000,000 because they have VTVL rockets! It’s the future! Wait, what’s that you said? Honda also has VTVL rockets and their market cap is only $35,000,000,000? Also, NASA has VTVL rockets in the 90s but keeps getting their budget cut? Ok, but the xAI has got to be making [searching] negative several billion dollars a quarter. Nevermind- what about Starlink? They’re making money. Haha, check and mate. Adding in all the money Starlink has made puts SpaceX at [searching] just over negative one Honda in revenue. That… could be worse. Also, I mean, sure, satellite internet providers have been around for 30 years and each one had a period where the future looked bright before upkeep costs or technical issues hammered them into oblivion, but… mhhh…

Look, it’s a very real, very serious, very professional system that is very grounded in reality. This is definitely not a huge scam with several giant red flags of unethical and possibly illegal rule changes to weasel into the NASDAQ-100 to fleece index funds.

Oh good, so they’ll be taking on domestic forced labour next, right? Right?!

Geez fellas, I’m starting to suspect these GQPedos actually have no values whatsoever and are just saying whatever feels convenient to get what they want.

Good catch. Thanks!

As likely as that is, it’s important to note that was step 3 in the screwworm failure.

1. Covid supply chain issues raised alarms that hey, that little lab we have in Panama protecting ~100M people and the livestock industries of several nations might need some emergency support, funding. The Trump Administration did not raise to the challenge. [note: the cause of the Darian Gap failure is “contested” because some people think it just, you know, happened or something, man]

2. The Biden Administration’s initial position, as is the Democrat way, was to assume the status quo their predecessors strived to create was good enough. When it became obvious this was not the case they sprung into forming a committee to create a plan to monitor the situation and collaborate with foreign entities who were completely incapable of handling this issue, since institutional knowledge of a problem solved 40 years ago was gone. Apparently process documentation is a problem in all human endeavors. To their credit, when screwworms hit Mexico the administration did halt livestock border crossings and quadruple the Panama facility’s output.

3. Trump takes over, does fuckall for half a year, then USDA announces they’ll build a $750M screwworm facility in Texas. Experts note this facility is about 3,000 km from the Darian Gap, but hey, can’t be sending American money to some shithole amirite? Luckily the facility will be online in late 2027 barring certain delays, so as long as the screwworm’s northern spread slows by orders of magnitude for no reason we’ll be covered.

Texas is wet right now and projected to have a hot, wet summer. This is ideal for screwworm spreading within the state and yes, droughts elsewhere mean Texas will probably be exporting screwworm filled products to a neighborhood near you soon.

People think the sunbelt population boom was all about AC becoming widely available. Yes, AC played a huge role. Also, not having extremely painful fly larva burrow into any open wound, mucus membrane. Believe it or not, that was something of a turn off for people prior to the eradication campaign of the 50s. Time to start wearing long sleeves and layers again.

But hey, at least we saved a few million dollars by not adequately funding the facilities that kept screwworms south of the Darien Gap. It should only cost a few billion to repeat the eradication campaign this time around.

Do You Want To Know More? https://storymaps.arcgis.com/stories/8e4617f337af41b1a083ab17deb95e2a

Yes, because these people are not bound by nations. They are part of a global community that very much wants to keep itself free from global government for, more or less, the same reason bandits operate away from cities.

It’s the religion of peace!

White House spokesperson Anna Kelly said: “Farmers suffered for years under Joe Biden, who increased the United States’ trade deficit to over $1.2 trillion, raised input costs, and pushed woke DEI agricultural policies." I love that official US policy has become fundamentally not understanding trade deficits and running as far as possible with that lack of understanding. Follow that up with the vague claim of raising costs when the baseless Attack on Iran raised costs by more in a month than four years of Biden. Then finish with the absolutely irrelevant to family farmers woke boogeyman. Are we great yet?

progressively making it impossible for trans people to exist