Tom Aiello

@UziCryptoo Totally agree. Business should be taxed only on profit, and individuals should receive a standard deduction that is large enough to cover living expenses.

HOT TAKE: IF BUSINESSES ONLY HAVE TO PAY TAXES ON PROFIT, NOT REVENUE, THEN I SHOULD ONLY HAVE TO PAY TAXES AFTER I'VE PAID ALL MY BILLS AND RENT.

@ajlamesa Rome to Naples is fast enough that I have woken up in Rome, had breakfast in Naples, spent the day in Pompeii, and had dinner back in Rome. If the US was able to build that, it would be amazing. But I very much doubt it could be done in California.

The California high-speed rail journey should have started with a line between Los Angeles and San Diego -- downtown to downtown. It's about the same distance as Rome to Naples, which is connected by a 300 km/h (186 mph) line. Yes, they'd have had to do some challenging tunnel construction, but it would have been good and necessary practice for the line to San Francisco.

@mitchellvii Vance as Tweeter in Chief with DeSantis actually running things and Rubio in charge of foreign policy would actually work very well. Ron DeSantis is the most effective public executive in the USA, and it's not even close.

One reason for a potential 𝗝.𝗗. 𝗩𝗔𝗡𝗖𝗘 - 𝗥𝗢𝗡 𝗗𝗘𝗦𝗔𝗡𝗧𝗜𝗦 ticket in 2028 is that Marco Rubio might want to remain as Secretary of State because it's really a better job than being Vice President.

@SandyofCthulhu The major failure of the Japanese naval leadership was that their very best admiral was assassinated by the USA. That one action helped the allies immensely in the pacific, even though that admiral's best advice was routinely ignored by his government. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isoroku_Y…

The problem for navies, of course, is that if you beach your ship or get it damaged in peacetime, your naval career is over. Dead in the water. But in wartime you want captains and admirals who will lean into danger & put ships at risk. America was lucky in WW2 to have Admirals King, Nimitz, Spruance, Leahy, and Halsey, who understood this, and steadfastly removed & replaces men with the “peacetime” attitude. One reason we bested Japan was that throughout the war they clung to some “peacetime” admirals who were overcautious. I know it sounds crazy to say the Imperial Japanese Fleet could be cautious, and of course it was recklessly courageous at times, but look at the decisions of Kurita or Nagumo. Or on the failure of Japan to use their greater numbers and superior skill to destroy our navy in the Guadalcanal campaign, instead dithering and wasting their efforts in night supply runs while we kept getting stronger. I’m glad they did, of course, but their troops and lower-level captains deserved better.

@avidseries It might be more accurate to group the EU together in this chart, though. If you broke the USA out into states, it would also not be in the top 20.

Of the 22 most populous nations in 2100, only three or four are currently relatively high-functioning.

@KavehMadani Universities are centers of technological research, which can be developed for weapons. If the Iranian government bombed MIT or Caltech, those would be legitimate military targets.

Universities are centers of learning and hope, not battlefields. Targeting them, whatever the justification, erodes norms that protect civilians, knowledge, and future generations. We must not allow this to become normal.

@JohnWight1 Which side is the civilization that invented the atomic bomb on? What about the civilization that landed a human on the moon?

The civilisation that invented algebra is currently doing battle with the one that invented the hamburger. This is all you need to know.

@ryangrim During WW2, men in engineering fields at technical universities were exempted from the draft because they were a 'talent pipeline' for military development.

Callings schools and universities “talent pipelines” for the military is genocidal language

@gueyespera @TheKevinDalton I guess that depends on if the train gets federal funding (from those other people who don't matter?) or not.

@SnakeRiverBASE @TheKevinDalton Everyone outside of California (except the people in Las Vegas obviously) don’t really matter in this case? lol were going to be the ones using this train and these aren’t just little details so idk why what you said has any relevance here

I’m not sure who needs to hear this, but Rancho Cucamonga is not Los Angeles.

The 2024 GAO report estimated that total annual fraud across federal programs ranges from $233 billion to $521 billion. Cut 2% of the fraud and you can fund free insulin in America for everyone who needs it plus free school lunch for every kid in Texas.

@Devon_Eriksen_ European nation states were only ethnically based from the end of WWI onwards. Historically, they were multi-ethnic empires.

Europe's disease is not a disease of America. It is a disease of World War 2. In 1946, after we rescued them from themselves and each other, Europeans crawled out of the rubble they had made of their continent, looked around at their mess, wept for a bit, and then formed the wrong conclusions. They decided that ethnic nations are bad. That patriotism is bad. That supporting your tribe, in preference to random strangers, is bad. They decided that these things had led to the horrors of global war and genocide in Europe itself, and so all vestiges of loyalty to one's own people must be stamped out. Nations were, forever afterward, to be post-ethnic, post-cultural legal and economic units filled with... well, anyone, really. A bunch of people who didn't, in fact shouldn't, share values, goals, morals, customs, or even a common language. Nations were to be mere fiefs, their boundaries determined by which set of political elites controlled them. America, having not been smashed to rubble in WW2, did not share this view. We saw WW2 as an expensive adventure in bailing out Europe, which we spent our treasure and our blood on (including my own grandfather's life, and his chance to ever see his grandson) precisely because we shared cultural and ethical values with the people we were rescuing. But they hate us for it. They see our patriotism as fascism precisely because they see all patriotism as fascism. Psychologists have long understood that humans respond to favors with gratitude only up until those favors become so great that they have no hope of repaying them. At that point, their gratitude turns to resentment. How dare we believe we did them a favor? How dare I believe that my father gave up his father so Europe could be safe, peaceful, and free? Don't we know that, because ${ELABORATE MENTAL GYMNASTICS}, we didn't do them any favors by fighting that war? Don't we know that, because ${ANY PATRIOTISM = HITLER}, our love of our country and favoring of its interests makes us fascist and problematic? Well, no. I don't know that. I don't think any European nation is our ally any more. Certainly, we have shared interests, but how much does that really matter, when they refuse to act in those shared interests, because they have come to believe that acting in your people's interest is bad? They hate us too much to work with us. They resent every ounce of the burden which they are asked to share. Our support has made Europe into a pack of idle welfare recipients, complete with sense of entitlement and self-destructive behavior. But if we didn't defend them... who would? Their native populations have been purged of all patriotism, and who would blame them if they didn't fight for ruling elites that hate them? Their imported third-world barbarians won't fight for them. The very idea is laughable. What's left? And what will make them wake up and think about these questions? Perhaps they need to dig themselves out of the rubble of another war.

@techtoby__ My (boomer) parents still live in the house I grew up in. My dad spends a lot of time gardening. My mom has memory issues and becomes disoriented in any other place. She needs to be in that house. My dad built that house after hours and weekends (while working full time).

Majority of all the 4, 5 and 6 bedroom homes in my area are all occupied by boomers. They spend all day from Spring to Autumn gardening. Some of them can barely bend down. I’ve no idea why they wouldn’t just sell up. Instead they complain about being unable to heat the property. Any time a home comes up for sale, it’s because someone has died. Then a lot of people don’t even want to buy them because they’ve not been decorated since 1985 and have no bath.

@JesseKellyDC > And then they will collapse. No, they won't. They will get bail out by the Newsom administration. That's how politics works.

But they can. And they will. And then they will collapse. This is how communism always works. Members of the Party get rich while promising great things for the public. The great things never come, people die, then it all collapses.

@hissgoescobra Your objection to this war is the language being used in social media posts?

Iran invented algebra and has some of the most unique, beautiful architecture on the planet. Their geography is unspeakably beautiful. The regime blows, but it is the most evil hubris imaginable to talk down to a gem of the ancient to modern world this way.

@Samra_D @mtracey And those are valid military targets.

@SnakeRiverBASE @mtracey I can think of a number of universities and colleges that also receive Dept of defence $$$

Imagine if Iran had the capacity to bomb any US university that in some way "cooperated" with the US military-industrial sector. You wouldn't have many universities left

@PhilipGreenspun @sandygrains I wasn't commenting on Iran's actual policies. A wartime adversary would be wise to target MIT, Caltech, and many other US universities. Those schools do military research and also train engineers who can build weapons. If Iran could bomb MIT, they would do so.

@SnakeRiverBASE @sandygrains What difference would that make to Iran? Aren’t they missiles at civilians?

Alma mater of Maryam Mirzakhani, the first woman to win the mathematics Fields Medal.

@sandygrains @PhilipGreenspun MIT is a valid military target.

@PhilipGreenspun I suppose that’s why they call it MIT of Iran

@David_J_Bier The argument that 'I have successfully broken the law for 20 years, so I should be allowed to continue doing so' is very odd. If I have successfully robbed banks for 20 years, should I not be arrested for robbing banks? The husband on active duty is a much stronger argument.

A U.S. Army staff sergeant and his wife arrived at his base in Louisiana last week, expecting to begin their life together as newlyweds. ICE has arrested and caged her instead. She was brought to the USA as a toddler. These people should be citizens.