I did human intelligence. It was literally my job to interact with the people. And we did. And not just to hear what they say to our face, but to get sources and find out what people say behind our backs too. I can, with high confidence, say that close to 90% of the population wanted the taliban gone. It was the other 10% that were the issue. And they were the very loud minority that news stations loved to interview just to claim “accurately showing both sides”.

Under taliban rule Afghanistan was economically devastated and the second poorest country in the world. They had one of the lowest literacy rates in the world. And they had no healthcare system to speak of other than what was gifted to them from Iran or Pakistan depending of what half of the country you were in. No to mention their lack of infrastructure with the not even completed one highway ring around the country.

That all changed under ISAF and the people noticed. And now their past is about to become their future.

Lol. I did two tours over there. The people loved us. They loved the government. They loved the schools for women. The problem is culturally, they didn’t see a need to fight for it because of apathy. They figured “ISAF was always going to be here, so why need to fight for ourselves? And is ISAF isn’t here anymore, then we can’t support our selves, so why try?” As far as the schools go, they are voluntary. There are no truancy laws. They don’t even take attendance at most of the schools. It was completely up to the family if they wanted to send their boys OR their girls. Under pre-ISAF taliban the literacy rate was about 15% and at the time of withdrawal it was almost 40%. The people wanted to go to school, the taliban just didn’t let most of them or the schools that they did keep open were so severely limited in what they could teach.

The biggest red flag of this post, to me, is the use of the word Afghani. Any time someone says it with an ‘i’ at the end, you know they don’t know what they are talking about. Afghani is a currency, Afghan is a person.

To be fair, gas stoves put out a lot of benzene and are known to increase cancer rates in those who live in homes with natural gas stoves. If anything they should be taxed to pay into cancer healthcare costs.

I have learned to also use the washer cleaning packs. It is like a detergent that you put in by its self and run on high heat. It helps a lot with the buildup and mildew smell over time. It also descales the heating coils.

I knew some guys in the air national guard; for their drill weekends they would have the planes prepped Friday, fly all day Saturday, refilling in the air, drop bombs, turn around, and fly back Sunday, in time to go to their normal jobs on Monday. That was their drill weekend. In the air for almost the entire time.

Meanwhile I’m in the army national guard and we are just looking over some humvees and sitting in some shitty admin briefings all day.

It was.

Increases in other contracts that funnel tax money into oligarc pockets but provide no value to tax payers, decrease in revenue collected to offset expenses due to IRS cuts and tax code changes, and the other big one is from judicial fund settlements that have already surpassed pre trump levels.

You either lost money, or you lost time. If you are implying that you lost nothing because you didn’t cash out and therefore can wait for a rebound, then you are going to lose the time you have to wait for the rebound. In economics that is also called an opportunity cost. You have now lost the opportunity to invest that money into something profitable because you have now tied it up in something that is unprofitable. You still lost. You are just too dumb to realize it with this mentality.

Worst case is when people with this mentality ride a stock to the bottom insisting it will just take more time to come back, and it doesn’t. Then forcing the person to lose both the money and the time.

I miss HEB. family owned and private. Thus why they get away with treating their employees so well, paying them well, and supporting their communities all while also being the largest private employer in the state of Texas. That company is a great example of how a company can both grow to a large size and not be evil. If they ever go public you know all of its charm will instantly get cut in the name of shareholder value.

Missing bottle caps…

I’m going to be honest here, as an American I fully support you in this and hope the best for Canada. Many of us totally understand the resentment and know that our government and republican party asked for this. I hope the boycotts work and I hope they send the clearest message back. At the same time I don’t have much faith I our leadership to react rationally.

This article is written with some wild speculations by both the author of the article and the source they are quoting. When cell phones are cracked for evidence they have to use write blockers when they copy the phone. They do the analysis on the copy. The original is then re-copied in court to show what was found. This way the original is never tampered with and made inadmissible, and whatever analysis bullshit you did isn’t mixed in with your court room copy. What this also means is that your AI can hallucinate all it wants and make up any evidence you can imagine all day long, but when you get into the court room and have to then point to where the conclusions came from and you can’t-you will be standing there with a dick on your forehead and with a case being tossed out.

Think of a more direct democracy. I will oversimplify enough to annoy those from Switzerland:

Differing levels of law require differing thresholds. Country votes on a law, the majority above the required threshold vote it in. It becomes a national law. That is easy. What about when it fails? Then look to the state level. Did it pass the threshold for your state? Yes? Then it is a state law. Failed state level? Let’s look at your county/city/local level. Passed threshold? Local law.

Again, over simplified, but general idea.

I have a bunch of coworkers who were contractors in a position for about a decade, then transitioned over to GS employees doing the same job. They were classified as probationary due to being “new” to their positions and were put on notice.

While I have progressive ideas and believe the Republicans rule with malace, I also strongly believe the democrats rule with incompetence.

I would love to run for president on the party of burn down the two party system and restart from there. Make politics boring again and not some partisan winner take all spectacle. We keep pushing to out ‘wing’ the ‘wing’ and it is driving us to some bad extremes.

So yes, I will vote straight ticket Democrat for 99% of the time, but I am also disgusted by the fact anyone is even allowed to do that and people have little party letters by their name. If you didn’t research your candidate to at least know their name, then you shouldn’t be voting for them.

It is mind-blowing to me that some things are not seen as human rights and are instead seen as political posturing. In Texas we had barbed wire intentionally strung up in the Rio Grande river with the intention to drownd people and it took multiple rounds of court cases to make them take it out. Somehow killing people is acceptable rather than booking, ticketing, and sending back. Politics have now taken a place above literal lives. At the same time, when I express this I have democrats immediately agreeing and adding “just let them in!” Or “just let them stay and we will figure it out” and that is where I stop them and ask, is that what I said? No. Simply that human life is worth more than politics. Again, stringing up barbed wire in a river to intentionally drown people it true malice. But saying let them all in and figure it out later is naive at best, and incompetence at its worst.

I saw patients this past week. Like I do every week. That is my one bullet point. I still need 4 more bullet points??? This is ridiculous. I’m doing my job, that I have been asked to do. He doesn’t know what my job is. The AI they are going to feed my answer through doesn’t know what my job is. The people who do know what my job is know that I am doing it just fine. We already have an evaluation system that I have to sign every 6 months and submit bullet points with.

My supervisor, and their supervisors, are now going to have meetings about us responding. Then we are going to be told in meetings about how to respond. Then I spend some arbitrary amount of time responding. Do you have any idea how much combined time across the entire government is being waisted on this? This is literally millions of dollars in total time waisted just for the whims of a mad man. This is a prime example of wasting tax dollars.

I was already going hard on AI stock, then day of inauguration when he sent the clear message of where tech companies stand in running this country I dumped ALL investment money into AI stock. If I have to live in this hellscape I better at least get to retire in it.

You were so right, let me tell you about it. If you can’t stop the entire genocide, then don’t stop it at all. If you can’t stop all of climate change, then don’t take any steps to stop any of it. If you can’t end poverty or income inequality then you shouldn’t even help the starving.

What a cunt.

The Kirkland brand of hearing aids is the same as phonak. It is the same company. Sonova. The biggest two things are oing to be getting them fit by a good audiologist, and picking out a set that fits the needs of the person.

Totally agree. In the US- Real ear verification is actually required by law in several states. Unfortunately the laws about it are a little gray on details, but they at least require it.

Trial periods are also required by law in every state, but the time period varies. When I was in Texas it was 30 days, which is the minimum several states have. A few state offer longer periods.