TankovayaDiviziya

God, I remember the 00s era with that haircut being so popular.

Honestly, I hate iterations of Batman where he is a dick (pun intended). A lot of the times they come out of nowhere like this one. That's why I prefer the early 1990s Batman: The Animated Series because Bruce is well adjusted, more hopeful and understanding. But in the subsequently revamped The New Batman Adventures animated series, Bruce is gloomy even when he's not wearing his costume, and he is kind of a dick for no reason, which is completely different from the first series.

Short on the AI stocks before it crash!

On short term the Nazis may have profited, but on the long term, all the potential talents were killed and brain drain occurred even before the war.

Yup. I have a similar argument before. If one reads more about Hitler and the Nazis, they are actually not different to any of the standard third world dictators like Idi Amin and Muammar Gaddafi. The difference is that the Nazis were only more powerful because they inherited a working institution-- especially the Prussian-based military-- while third world countries had to start from scratch after decolonisation.

The Nazis like other dictators are very inefficient. I am reading Hannah Arendt's "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil". The book goes through the convoluted bureaucracy and logistics of the Holocaust. Different pen pushers and administrators arguing who should be able to use the trains for their own departmental needs. What struck me the most is that the Nazis wasted so much effort transporting so-called undesirables to concentration camps, when their own soldiers are struggling to get supplies and reinforcements to the frontlines!

More importantly, as you correctly mentioned, Nazi Germany struggled to feed their own people. As a matter of fact, there is strong evidence that Hitler started the war in Europe to stave off the looming economic crisis, which his own economic minister warned him of, thanks to endless government spending particularly with the re-armement. That economic crisis had been warded (temporarily of course) by plundering the resources of their conquered territories.

Yes, for the general population. Otherwise, companies will stop the psychological pricing. Same with corporate snooping to see our shopping and grocery habits and then send us with targeted ads.

It never works on me. I was taught at a very early age that pricing down by one cent of one dollar is a psychological trick and that I should round up to the nearest whole number.

You should read "Utopia for Realists". It gave countless examples in history where providing unconditional basic income works. Even as we speak, other countries in the past decades did trial on universal basic income and it worked. In one experiment, twelve homeless folks were given regular unconditional cash grants. Except for one, all cleaned themselves up and are renting an accommodation.

UBI works unquestionably. But how has it not been implemented yet? Aside from the "fuck you, got mine" attitude, as well as I hypothesise that in evolutionary psychology, because energy upkeep is high-demanding, it makes us think not contributing to a group in any capacity is being a dead weight, UBI is still not implemented because many say that property owners will abuse unconditional income by raising rent prices. Instead, many propose universal basic utilities, meaning everyone would get free housing and utilities, but still working to get their own food presumably.

But I do not know about the arguments on UBI and basic utilities because of the emerging and inevitable usurpation of humans by AI on the labour market. The current thinking on both UBI and basic utilities is making presumptions of operating under the current free market framework-- that everyone will still be working in some ways and contributing to society. Sooner or later, with the coming of AI, the current mindset about working as a default behaviour is becoming obsolete and being relegated, in my opinion, as a relic of evolutionary psychology.

All these government benefits programs are ready to deny 100 valid people benefits if it means they stop one instance of fraud.

That's my criticism of conservatives obsessing and crusading over welfare fraud. Sure, fraud happens, what system is fool proof? But conservatives make it as though it is prevalent when statistics show that it's not (I don't know about the US but in UK welfare fraud is statistically not a big of an issue as it is made out to be). I met a guy who is nice and intelligent, and a conservative based from the views he espoused during the conversation, but he obsess over welfare fraud like many conservatives. Just because he personally saw few instances of fraud, he makes it as though it is a pervasive issue.

To be fair, Giorgia Meloni has somehow been acting more moderate than expected.

Some people are just that daft. They change or adopt an entire worldview simply because of one pet peeve they have.