American security guarantees are the only thing propping up that stupid narrative.

They’ve always made the claim “TSMC will blow up their own fabs in the event of an invasion”. So, they’re dependent on a lose/lose spite play. If an independent Taiwanese state survives, they’ve demolished one of its major economic engines. If, as far more likely, it falls, everyone involved gets locked up or worse for gross sabotage, and you bought, what, 5 years of global economic distress (oh, no, it might pop the AI bubble…) before everyone else gets back to par with your top-line process? Or maybe you successfully blackmailed bigger and more equipped militaries to fight WWIII for you, and even in the unlikely event Taiwan survives the carnage intact, irradiated corpses buy very few semiconductors.

If America washed their hands of the situation, they’d pretty quickly switch to angling for a deal, perhaps expecting that they’d go for a HK-style “one country/two systems” play, which continues to let them make out like bandits. HSBC doesn’t seemed to have suffered too badly after reunification…

We can test. Send a lander with Palestinian tardigrades and see if they experience discrimination and attempts to expel them from the lunar surface.

I’m taking my next vacation to Rand McNalley!

GE no longer makes appliances. It’s a licensed out name now.

I figure their star finally fell when they stopped making locomotives. What kind of giant industrial conglomerate does that?! EveN Hitachi, a brand mostly known for marital aids, makes locomotives!

Not necessarily precise, just a more resonant presentation. She didn’t have a killer sound bite. If details actually mattered, we’d be in the closing months of the second Warren administration after all.

I literally saw scads of signs saying “Trump - Low Prices/Kamala - High Prices” and one that specifically claimed “Want $2.15 gas, vote Trump.” She didn’t counter well at the slogan/vibes level. There was no “Harris/Walz/$2-per-pound ground beef” signage.

It’s also an audience problem. The Democrats, as incumbents, were stuck with higher expectations. They couldn’t pad their numbers with low-hanging “I just want different” and “let’s burn it all down” crowds, so they have to chase voters who are harder to activate.

Democracy can be both a mechanic-- “we have elections”, and a philosophy-- “the state responds to and serves public interest.”

Ironically, fixation on the mechanic can hinder the philosophy. Winning elections can come through short-term plays that sell long-term outcomes out (for example, low taxes by scrimping on infrastructure and state services) or dueling sabotage to sink the other party’s prospects.

The message was weak though. The policy was fairly limited-- like limits on gouging in emergencies-- and not expressed in terms of a tangible achievable metric. And it’s not like we have direct economic control that would allow for specific deliverables-- how exactly are you goung to get Kroger to bend the knee? A fine that’s 12 seconds of their turnover?

‘I’ll get the 99-cent Taco Supreme back’ (or the $2 gallon of milk/dozen eggs) would have helped-- a graspable specific rallying cry. “We’ll tax gougers back into the stone age” maybe too. ISTR there’s some rightwing scumball in Canada who achieved most of his political rise by literally campaigning on $1-per-can beer. Again, a tangible goal, and one more achievable because there’s direct state controlled alcohol sales in much of the country…

We need to convince Trump that the way to win a legacy is to deliver something like universal health care. Present it as a display of personal power and his unique talents, and as a branding moment like no other (beyond Obamacare). 'The Democrats couldn’t do it in 50 years, but I rammed it through in 2. Got the chair of Cigna on the phone and fired him personally. Now we all have Trumpcare and even Hillary has to praise it through gritted teeth…"

The GOP tied themselves so tightly to his star that they’d have to own the pivot, or find some way to retract their allegiance. And the rest of us could at least enjoy the historic worst-person-you-know-makes-a-greatipoint moment.

While prestigious, I have to think the type of lawyer who wants Trump for a client is hardly goingbto want to do heavy government work for a civil servant’s salary. Surely there’s way more cash in skip-and-falls and “get six divorce punches on your loyalty club card and the 7th is free”.

What I hate about the current situation is that there’s no room for “Russia is a significant power that won’t suddenly vanish, so maybe if we can avoid being at complete loggerheads with them 24/7, it might avoid decades of tension and expensive military grandstanding.”

You must either fellate Putin or demand the entire 82 billion square kilometres of the Russian state turned to glass. No other options. It worries me that any more nuanced takes on Russia get pushed into the “Kremlin talking points” file.

Not that she isn’t a screwball all on her own, but we could use a less militaristic take here.

ISTR having some hallucinogenic colour issues when Vulkan wasn’t properly installed.

Thr death wave virus that crippled mankind requires a tech hegemony beyond belief.

The Apple II’s big selling point, compared to the other two big brands introduced in 1977 (the Radio Shack TRS-80 and Commodore PET) was colour.

But it was a weird and colour scheme that took advantage of clever Wozniak hacks to make it viable on a cheap machine. Good video hardware, and enough memory for the colour display, were spendy. That’s why even into the 1980s you’d have machines like the ZX Spectrum with limitations like “every 8x8 block can only have 2 colours” which used less memory, and 40-column screens that were readable on TVs instead of dedicated high-res monitors…

If we can pick home computers that lean into cartridges, the Atari 800XL is a real winner. Nice two-tone finish, classy silver buttons with a plexi trim oiece covering the power light.

As a reptile keeper who knows full well they don’t know when to stop eating, I find this story charming. I want to feed her a basket of eyes (pre-frozen to kill parasites)

One hour from new classic myth to kawaii. I think that’s near Rule 34 turnaround speed.

Trident TGUI9440 on a VL-bus card. Surprisingly peppy on a 486/66 overclocked to 80.

Gargoyles. It aimed incredibly high for its target audience.

If you had released it with a Japanese voice track and baked in low-quality subs as $30-for-two-episodes VHS tapes to a ‘grown up animation enthusiasts’ audience, it would probably have outsold freaking Naruto.

I was always disappointed that celebrity and character voice packs weren’t a thing for the voice-assistant platforms. I’d pay literal ones of dollars for a voice assistant with a Sebastian Michaelis intonation and theming.

Cortana for Windows Phone came closest, I think they did use the same voice actress as the game character.

I doubt they enjoy having their balls in TSMC’s vice.

Intel is the only option remotely available to leverage against them.

• Starting from zero will cost bajillions and take decades to get competitive
• Samsung’s probably not divisible in a way that makes their fabs buyable
• They can’t buy into any of the 7nm/5nm level players in the PRC and fund their modernization due to sanctions
• Does anyone else have sub-10nm at anything buy lab scales?

Genocidal Shark Pirate, with sidekicks Octopus Swordsman and Karate Stingray.