Not all that much larger. It's going to be upscalled 1440p textures that look like a smeared mess. But people will eat up the 10k claims.

And then cheap chinese knock off brands push the products through Amazon, and other online retailers and by the time they are stopped the company has made bank, rebrands, and continues to do the same thing.

And because China doesn't care, and the retailer is generally considered oblivious to the situation until proven otherwise they have zero incentive to vet the product.

Ya: This is an actual real problem.

Now if quality product made in a western aligned country was actually cost competitive and had good rep for being locally made or at least made in a country with actual enforcement mechanisms that can go after the people/factory when they pull this crap - then, the standards applied will actually matter.

I mean: Just go look at how many knock off apple products there are - and realize anything of potential value has the same issue going on.

Lets, for a moment, presume Iran has Nuclear weapons - and uses them. Lets just remind that Israel is known to have at LEAST 90 nuclear warheads, and several of those missiles are likely prepped ready pointed at Iran.

To put it simply: That move DOES NOT end well. If anything, it ends strictly worse then simply accepting that Israel crippled Iran's infrastructure. And any hope for normalization and opening trade up on the global market outside of China, Russia, and North Korea becomes basically zero until the regime is overthrown. Even worse - if Israel opts for nuclear strikes to follow up their conventional ones after being attacked with nuclear weapons,there is a good chance it's not just several years of repair work, but decades of set back that could easily lead to mass scale discontentment and open revolt against the regime by several factions simultaneously.

The reality is: Israel is not a force capable of sustained occupation of an entity like Iran. But they are a force capable of a decapitating strike. And the entire reason is, Israel has VERY LIMITED force projection capabilities - and, because of a lack of land boarder with Iran, would need cooperation with other states that may not be thrilled with opening themselves up to direct conflict in the short to mid term. The only real reason Israel has room to do a strike is 1. It's retaliatory, and 2. entities like Saudi Arabia are liable to be just fine with their regional rivals basically offing each other, as Saudi Arabia is in a MUCH better position to take advantage in the event of Iran's regime collapsing.

Which brings us to: Just because you have nuclear weapons, does not mean you use them. The reality is, nuclear weapons are a weapon of last resort - unless you are France, and then it's a nuclear warning shot... Because France is just different.

I think we are on the same page as Immigration: Can be good, too much is generally bad, and the Immigrants unfortunately get flack when the problem is the government. And unfortunately - fixing the problem is going to suck for a wide number of prospective immigrants. What so many on the left don't seem to get: It is not the American tax payers job to give a rats ass about people who WANT to move to the US. It is the US's duty to ensure the people being allowed to come in WILL BE a NET BENEFIT to the society. And this means: They must end up being a net contributor. As it stands - we see government funds going to support migrants illegal or legal. We see growing crime rates - with information coming out that statistics were manipulated purposefully or accidentally to look better: But the truth wins out.

Smaller Government - not small government - I want to clarify this: I don't think a small government works. I mean, if you are in a hamlet where everyone knows everyone, everyone comes together to solve issues as they crop up in a big town hall that encompasses everyone: Sure, small government works. But we are talking about an entity that has to deal with hundreds of millions, over a vast area, with various regional concerns and interests... it's a NIGHTMARE. But Big government is also not the answer.

When I talk about reduced regulation - I'm not talking NO regulation. I mean: If you want to tax - flat rate it, have it low, get rid of as many deductions as you reasonably can. No longer do you have "I pay 35% income tax in my bracket but have 23000$ in deductions" - instead you have "I pay 20% tax rate on everything made over 30,000$". And that can work - really damn well. You can do it for business as well - first, I dunno, 500,000$ in revenue isn't taxed, at all - anything over 500k is taxed at 3%. I know - insanely low. But a company right now that makes 50 billion in revenue through tax games and loop holes can end up paying 0%... and that is more common then not when you get into large corporations. So: Simplify the tax code. People will be mad at first, until you state "This will help small business by reducing their tax burden, while ensuring large corperations like Google, Microsoft, Wallmart, and so on will pay their share for the benefits they reap for operating within this nations economy. We understand that some of them may feel the need to pass the costs on - but we strongly feel the market can, and will be better able to compete with these entities as a result - which will, in time get you better paying jobs, better prices on your products, and more option in where you shop". And for once - the argument that corperations are greedy assholes might have some merit.

Why I like Medium Sized Governments

Maybe I should define what I mean.

If small Government is one that does basically nothing, and Big Government is one that expands itself whenever it wants to do more - then Medium Government is a government that looks at it's current activity list and decides: Is any of this non-critical? Can we simplify and attain the objective?

to me: That is what government should be constantly doing - If it has staff pushing paper around for all intent and purpose, and that paper needs 5 signatures, and it needs 8 audits before it's approved: Why? Can you do it with 2 audits, and 2 sign offs? Well: Probably. And considering the sheer amount of errors and mistakes that make it through the overly bloated systems we have today - my guess is less is actually more, and the entire reason? Because with less - people are forced to take ownership: They can't just pass on the buck, they are accountable to what they sign off on, what they do.

And so we get to the core of it: Big Government is accountable to no one and no one person is accountable to anyone. Small Government does so little it doesn't worry about accountability. And so, we get to another reason why medium sized governments are better: They are, by their nature, far more accountable to the people.

Why would people that benefit from forced labour want to end it? Cheap labour benefits the wealthy - more money to make money with. And to those who think criminals should face actual punishment and pay back society - well: Why would they have a problem with forced labour. And, we have the political spectrum nicely tied up there - at least a majority of it.

If you want to get reform in: You need to address two groups - the "tough on crime" crowd, and the "abuse of prisoners is unacceptable" crowd - and that CAN be done. We need some core changes:

1. Restrict Solitary Confinement to violent outburst - and restrict it's use. After all, our goal is to encourage people to participate not drive people into nonfunctional insanity.
2. Create base rate pay that is tied to minimum wage (like 2/3's of it) with 1/3 going towards a savings fund, and 1/3 for the individual to use on whatever is allowed for them to buy. In effect: There should be a reason to work.
3. Increase base rate of repeat offences BUT tie in a labour + rehabilitation program participation as a way to reduce that sentence across the board.

Those three things - increase penalty for uncooperative individuals; It creates an environment of owning responsibility for actions; and it means that prisoners aren't being paid a fraction of the minimum pay rate of the 1960's. We can go even further with this:

1. The 2/3 of minimum wage is for low security prisoners.
2. Medium security prisoners have a lower rate of pay - say 1/2 of minimum wage, with the difference going directly towards restitution costs.
3. Violent criminals and high security prisoners gain no rate of pay for 10 years or until restitution is fully paid - whichever comes sooner, and their pay rate is 1/3 of minimum wage with the difference going to restitution costs.

In this way: There is a STRONG incentive to take actions, and efforts that will get you transferred to a lower security prison. We can also do things with half-way houses - and support training programs, and perhaps even voluntary association with a case worker post conviction for individuals that FEEL like they need extra support avoiding re-offending. This is not about reducing, or removing the existing system - but expanding it.

In effect: This entire set of changes is not about reducing the punishment on crime, nor straight up reducing the incarcerated population. Instead: It's all about PERSONAL responsibility. And maybe, you could actually get THAT kind of reform through.

Ok: PeerTube is interesting. But: in terms of replacement? No. non-viable.

The problem you have is multifold - and one of them is constant content availability, and total bandwidth. The value of Youtube is on demand streaming - you click a video, it plays, basically anywhere in the world. The other value is... copyright: Because of the way youtube is set up, you don't have the same kind of copyright problems as you would without the back end negotiating and systems youtube as put in place. You can think copyright as it stands is oppresive and sucks -and I agree; but with the law the way it is - youtube is the best work around that is feasibly possible.

Mirroring all of youtube needs piles of terrabytes of new storage DAILY. and it's in the hundreds of thousands as a low end estimate. You need the computational power to do the transcoding. You need the distribution of servers to load balance and avoid over saturating and d-dossing any given server cluster.

The reality is the Torrent protocol has been around forever - and there is a reason it never really took off, despite live watching while streaming was feasible: It has too many pitfalls.

And then, there is the content creator side: If you want to make money - youutube is kind of the place to put your content up with youtube premium sharing, ad revenue sharing and so on once you can monetize your channel. And while there are all kinds of BS in regards to what can and can't be monetized - there really isn't a replacement, not for the average person just getting started - and not if you are trying to build your following.

I don't think you understand the capabilities difference - Israel has the nuclear option if they are threatened existentially. But lets take that off the table a moment.

Iran's capabilities are their missiles, manufacturing capabilities. Their Refineries, and strategic energy reserves are in known locations and are the lynch pin of Iran's economy. And finally, the Nuclear R&D facilities are in known places. All of those are the targets - and Israel absolutely has the capacity to take it out- just not the strong justification.

If Iran continues striking Israel, Israel is going to feel the pressure to decapitate Iran as a threat to them.

The fall out of this is more interesting:

1. China loses access to Iranian Oil for the short to mid term - it will take time to restore capabilities.

2. Russia loses access to Iranian missiles - without production capabilities, and depleted stocks, Iran will not be able to sell missiles to Russia let alone drones.

3. Iran's economy will be in shambles - that could very well open the door to coup or revolt.

4. Iran would unload as many missiles as it possibly could - which could be devastating. But that would come down to just how many interceptor missiles Israel would have available, along with other air defence options.

If you want a "Why would trump support this" - there you have it. It reaffirms US obligation to support it's allies, It puts economic pressure on china, and denies Russia access to weapons - which should help push them to the negotiating table.

In reality, I would more expect Iran to back off. Then again - With Israel obliterating Iran proxies, Iran may feel the pressure to complete a nuclear deterrent and Israel may end up wanting to decapitate Iran as a threat BEFORE they gain that capability... what a bloody mess.

When the dollar has lost 99.9999% of it's value, not just 97%. (as compared to 1970 vs. price of gold).

Do you have one reason to not vote for Harris, or Many reasons not to vote? Lets say in this Trolley like problem scenario that Flipping the lever to run over one is voting for Harris, flipping it to roll over the list is voting for trump - and rejecting making the choice is walking away.

Thing is - this gets complicated: Just because someone publicly says they aren't voting because of Gaza does not mean 1. they didn't vote, and 2. doesn't mean they don't see all the other problems - because left organizations/groups have a tendency of vilifying anyone that opposes their view points excessively - because they have the moral high ground supposedly - the end result is: People won't speak up about the real reasons, they will stick to the socially acceptable one and move on. It's far easier, simpler.

So: What is on the long list of problems?

1. Biden ending the "Stay in Mexico" Agreement.

2. Tax payer dollars being sent to illegal immigrants in various ways.

3. The way deaths were assigned to Covid - even when the person had stage 4 cancer, and covid was maybe a contributing factor.

4. Catch and Release policies found in a number of Democrat stronghold cities - to a point that stores are giving up trying to operate in the regions. And I'm not talking small locations - I'm talking big businesses. Small ones end up going belly up because they can't eat the costs, insurance premiums for protecting your inventory in the areas have gone up and that means small businesses can't afford to insure, and that raises their risks.

Should I continue?

Trumps anti-sanctuary city, record on putting in effective policy to deal with the southern boarder problem, and take on the fact that US cities should be sanctuaries for US citizens - well: That resonates with people. It resonates in California (where voter support from previous years to today went up ~8%), it resonates in New york (comparing previous years to today is ~+7% over previous years), even in Texas (~3% uptick). Trump WON the popular vote with fairly high voter turn out.

The Truth is

No person struggling in their own life, cares all that much about people in another country. When the government can find money to fund a foreign war - people are going to start wondering why they can't find money to fix roads, law enforcement, housing, and other issues back home: It would be far cheaper over all.

In a world where crime has gone up since 2020, while being down from 2013: People are going to see it. And if you live in Seattle, or New York it's difficult to ignore massive stores closing locations and a growing number of vacant store fronts. And should that problem continue - it's going to cause further knock on effects. After all: Blank store fronts are not attractive, and if you make them look full - those looking for space are going to presume it's filled. And these buildings are often times leveraged - and if they reduce lease rates to draw in interest, they may very well have debts called in: And that will hurt the current owners. Worse yet - without revenue coming in, it's very likely that SOME of the maintenance needed is being avoided.

So while some the Gaza issue is JUST the Gaza issue - my bet, is that to a lot of people, it's just the socially acceptable excuse. But honestly - it has some legitimacy as well. After all: Supporting the war effort with a lot now, or a smaller amount over a bit of time nets the same result.

Lets be honest: The Not trump vote, probably made the election results as close as it was. And that might be difficult for some to wrap their head around - trump is unlikable, but: To anyone dealing with the fall out of certain choices Biden made attacking trump era policies (I'm thinking of one in particular), it's a bit of a no brainer. This brings us to three key issues that are causing problems in US politics, but western politics in general:

1. The Stay in Mexico agreement is the perfect example of how Opposing political representatives have a "everything the opposition does is mostly evil and bad, and it needs to be killed as soon as possible" - and this goes for EVERYTHING. If we could have sane, nuanced discussions and come to agreements and policies we would see a LOT less whip lash, and a LOT MORE cooperation. But people who think they have the moral high ground - doesn't matter the side - uses that as a justification for their actions, no matter how harmful those actions are. To say that illegal immigration is a problem is an understatement - it creates downward pressure on ceertain wages, which is then used as justification because hard working americans don't want piss poor wages.

2. We have seen migration problems bleed into regional crime issues, tent cities, and so on.

3. There are a handful of very democrat cities that are suffering dramatically from catch and release policies to the point that corperations that provide necessary essential services to make a city viable are leaving the city. They are simply closing up shop. And the attitude from the democrats is not to solve the underlying problem - it's to try to make it illegal to close up shop in the city or area. Well: The only other option is to drive up prices, or basically make it impossible to get in and out without exactly what you have paid for.

All of this comes to a reality that we have seen a march towards Institutional Authoritarianism for DECADES, since about 1970... well, a little sooner, but if you look at a lot of shifts you are going to find that about 1965 through to about 1975 is a big shift in a lot of governance decisions, and this is no different. More, and more federal agencies were created - and laws were more and more written such that it was agency rules that dictated the specifics instead of clear written law by congress. In function, it was a divestment of power from Elected officials to Appointed agencies - and over time, the Bureaucracy has been ever more empowered to dictate the direction of many of these organizations, not the elected officials or congress: And yes, Democrats are the biggest fault in this, though republicans are... barely better in this regard.

So: How do we fix this?

The answer is: Smaller government. Simpler regulations are cheaper and easier to be in compliance with, and require less resources to audit. Simpler taxes are this with added benefits - in that, by simplifying, you crush the legal loopholes used to hide money from scrutiny. And part of the simplification is you remove basically everything that is eligible as a tax credit.

And this applies for EVERY SINGLE regulatory body, every government agency, all of it.

You can't tax a nation into prosperity, you can't regulate it into prosperity. You can tax a society into equality by making everyone miserable - but since the politicians are human beings as well, you can bet they will NOT be living a miserable life meaning it will never happen. Those two things are the core of stratifying a society - and again, they have increased in count and size consistently. And if you think taxing the rich is a great idea - income tax on the rich was the first income tax in the US, levied to pay the debts of the civil war. Pretty soon governments decided that taxing everyone else would be better then taxing just the rich: After all, it's just fair... right? And pretty soon, the regulations, and rules shifted such that the rich pay significantly less as a portion of their income as does literally everyone else: Oops?

It's almost like Equal opertunity serves society better then trying to force equitability. It's almost like Free association, is better then trying to force everyone to associate. It's almost like Freedom from government oversight is better then a government up in every bit of your business. And it's like Free trade is good for the wealthy - and bad for about everyone else in the long term: Because it's not about YOUR benefit, it's a bout the owner classes benefit.