Actually this goes back to the early days of Hershey’s. As part of their drive to produce affordable chocolate, their main formulation was developed around slightly spoiled milk, which has an acidic taste. That’s why all Hershey’s chocolate since the beginning of time has had that ‘vomit flavor’. Obviously they’re not allowed to use spoiled milk anymore, but they wanted to taste the same as it always has. So they add the acid as an ingredient to replicate the same flavor.
Welcome to the world of electronic gadgets. You’re right there’s nowhere near $100 worth of hardware in this thing. I’d also love a color touchscreen. But I’d rather a color touchscreen that I could integrate in HA than one running some proprietary cloud connected ThermostatOS.
You could do that yourself- put an old tablet on the wall, run power to it, then get something like a zooz zen16 multi-relay or an ESPHome relay board to drive the hvac. Then the thermostat becomes a totally software defined virtual thing in Home Assistant that pulls data from a temp sensor in the room and controls the HVAC as appropriate.
https://www.amazon.com/Honeywell-Home-TH6320ZW2007-Programmable-Touchscreen/dp/B0BHTQF8NL
That is the one you want. Honeywell t6 pro Z-Wave version, specifically that link which is the newer Smart start version.
Z-Wave is 100% local, not Wi-Fi, and secure.
I use these in my house and couldn’t be happier.
American here…
Easier said than done. He is still in his presidential term, which means the only way to get rid of him anytime soon would be with an impeachment. That is not based on popular vote but rather by vote within our legislative body. And that body has become relatively corrupt because Americans don’t pay attention to representatives they vote for other than selecting one party or another. And there are really only two parties that have any chance of getting elected, both of which suck in their own special ways.
That means it is unlikely we will be rid of him before 2028, when his term expires. He has already had two terms in office so our constitution prohibits him from having a third so in theory that should be the end. In practice he has made mention of “deserving” a third term and some of his supporters have ‘Trump 2028’ flags and stickers.
Should he attempt to run again that would likely create a constitutional crisis.
You should however be aware that from what I can tell, this war does not have the approval of the American people. We have seen what happened in Iraq and Afghanistan, how a ‘short victorious war’ usually ends up being anything but. We spent 10+ years and $trillions on Iraq and Afghanistan and got little or nothing of value in return. And this looks an awful lot like the same shit happening again. A great many Americans are not happy about this.
The best thing that is likely to happen is a revocation of the ‘Authorization for Use of Military Force’. Per our constitution, the President is Commander in Chief of all US armed forces. However, he cannot declare war on another country without Congressional approval. AUMF sidesteps that, it was a bill law passed after 9/11 which gives the President broad authority to initiate combat without Congressional approval or an actual declaration of war. Since 9/11 it has been used to create military action in 22 countries. That could be revoked by Congress with a lower barrier to entry than impeachment.
Look up a product called Thrift. You can get it on Amazon. It’s a type of flake drain cleaner, comes in a bottle. Basically run your shower on super hot for a few minutes to heat up the pipe, then pour a bunch of this stuff down, and a bit more hot water. Leave it alone for a few minutes, then flush with hot water. Unlike Drano, this stuff actually works. Originally I found it on a plumbing subreddit. I’ve done it to my shower a few times and it seems to have a longer lasting effect every time, like it’s actually cleaning out the pipe.
The other countries can simply not oblige (and thus kill NATO). That’s the more realistic option.
I don’t see it.
Sure, the various NATO countries who aren’t Denmark can simply say ‘sorry man we’re out’ and dissolve NATO. Or just refuse to comply, damn the consequences.
They won’t though, because in many cases the threat of NATO is the only thing protecting them.
Look at Eastern Europe on the Russian border- Finland, Estonia, Latvia. Belarus is a RU puppet and Ukraine might lose their war so we can include Lithuania, Poland, Slovakia, Hungary, and Romania too. Russia has Navy assets in the Black Sea so you can also consider Bulgaria and Turkey.
If NATO went away tomorrow, do you really think Russia wouldn’t try to gobble one or two of them up? You really think they wouldn’t succeed in at least one or two cases?
And what about Canada? They’re a NATO member and they have real military force. Same with UK, Norway, Sweden, Germany.
Do any of them WANT to go up against USA? Of course not.
If the US truly went rogue and invaded a sovereign nation, would they do it? Probably, because if they didn’t, there’s no guarantee they wouldn’t be next.
Lol no they wouldn’t. Neither would they care about who owns Greenland (except probably Russia), neither would they waste immense amounts of money and manpower to fight the biggest military and economy in the world for no real gain, and neither would 2/3 of the listed countries (Ru, NK) be able to do anything serious against US anyway (outside of suicidally throwing nukes at it).
They DGAF about Greenland. Greenland isn’t worth shit.
But for any of them to reduce the US’s role in the world economy or worldwide diplomacy, that’s a golden opportunity.
Thing is they needn’t commit huge resources to the war. Just a small force that would be able to make it hurt for the US, and the real war is fought in the media. It gives them a chance to be the heroes and paint US as the villain.
American here (not a Trump fan).
There’s three things we should be looking at IMHO.
First- Trump is a publicity man, an actor. He understands the camera.
Think of a magic show. You have the magician and the cute assistant in a swimsuit. So when they set up the trick the assistant is flourishing her hands and dancing over the stage to distract you from noticing that the magician palmed your card instead of shuffling it back into the deck.
Trump understands this. And he knows how to play both the magician and the assistant.
So if he says something wild like this, understand he WANTS attention on that statement, which probably means he DOESN’T want attention on something else. Like Epstein. If those files have any kind of actual proof he partook in Epstein’s services, there’s a good chance that an impeachment might actually succeed to conviction. Because it’s easy to ‘stand with your party leader’, it’s a lot harder to say ‘yes I stand by my vote that the guy in the picture with his dick in a 14yo girl should stay President’.
Point being- whenever Trump says something outrageous like this, your first question should be 'what DOESN’T he want me paying attention to?
Second- understand that USA literally cannot annex Greenland by force. Greenland is a territory of Denmark, and Denmark is a member of NATO. If the US invades Denmark, all other NATO companies are OBLIGATED to provide military support. So that would basically kick USA out of NATO, and you can bet your bottom dollar that not only NATO but also Russia, China, North Korea, etc would all fall over themselves to ‘help respect and defend the sovereign territory of Denmark from illegal invasion’. That very quickly becomes a ‘US vs Rest Of World’ war and even with our giant military there’s NO chance we win against the entire rest of the planet combined. Plus militarily we would be isolated, ostracized from the world economy.
Americans understand this. Our government understands this. Congress understands this. Even if Trump does not, Congress would not authorize such a war.
As for tariffs- Congress is much more hesitant to curtail Trump’s tariff powers, but their tolerance has a limit (somewhere). It’s one thing to enact tariffs ‘to protect American manufacturing’, they’ll generally tolerate a ‘good faith’ effort like that. But when the tariff becomes punitive to countries that aren’t supporting an annexation that obviously isn’t going to happen, I think Congress might step in.
Third- While this all may well be a distraction or a strategy, it is doing actual harm to our international relations. If I was a citizen of EU, AU, Asia, etc, I would be saying 'the US can no longer be trusted to lead the world economy, the rest of the world needs to find a solution where the US is ‘one among many’ not calling the shots. And a big part of that would likely be a different worldwide reserve currency. Because right now this is like being on a bus where every few minutes the driver jokes about swerving in front of an oncoming semi truck- even if he won’t do it, you still don’t want to be on that bus.
What this also means is that the next Presidential election is important not just for American internal politics but for determining what our place in the world will be going forward. While Trump is ineligible to be re-elected, I think it’s important that the US send a clear message this isn’t the sort of statesmanship that we want representing us. That DOESN’T mean blindly vote blue. It means vote in primaries, vote for candidates who act like statesmen.
You think I am actually advocating for this nonsense?
As an American I certainly hope not
Pro succession movement in Greenland? I very much doubt it. They can influence all they want, and if they are that only shows imho that they fundamentally misunderstand how other countries work.
I doubt it very much also. But I am saying in concept, if the vast majority of the people in one place don’t want to be a part of the country they are part of, in general they should be allowed to leave.
Given that it is a part of our mainland continent, I would be less enthusiastic than if, say, Hawaii or Alaska wanted to secede.
Nonetheless, self-determination is a solidly American value. If an overwhelming majority of Californians wanted to leave the union, then in general I believe the rest of the country should let them. Otherwise we are forcing them to be subject to a national government they don’t want.
American here. I’m sure annexing Greenland would be very useful to us for all kinds of reasons. I don’t want to do it.
Unless the people in Greenland want to become part of the United States, I don’t believe we have any more right to declare Greenland ours than Hitler had a right to declare France his, or Russia has a right to declare Ukraine theirs.
If the people of Greenland want to become part of the United States, verified with an election monitored by multiple disinterested third parties, then by all means welcome to the party guys.
However given the timing of this ridiculous idea, I can’t help but think the whole thing is just a distraction from the Epstein files.
Or that Ukraine is holding them off with basically scraps of obsolete Western military equipment, very little first line hardware. Attack Europe and you find the full weight of NATO’s first line military hardware shoved up your ass. Somebody pushes a button somewhere and a few dozen Tomahawk missiles destroy your ability to wage war in an afternoon. Nukes not even needed if every airfield and military supply depot within 500 mi of Europe is a smoking crater.
Hey I really appreciate that, seems like these days most people double down on the cynicism rather than walking it back. Sending tons of good vibes your way.
I agree it would be difficult to complete a democratic process in an authoritarian state. I think the process would have to be those areas revert to Ukrainian control, and the election will happen in 4 to 6 months or something.
It might also be totally impractical, for the simple reason that those areas have been contested for so long they are probably largely war zone rubble and much of the civilian population has fled. So you would have to restrict voting to anyone who lived in the area before the fighting started, because if you allowed anybody who lived in the area at vote time to vote you no Russia would just pay a whole bunch of people to move there and vote to switch to Russian rule.
Basically my thought is Russia should not get to expand its territory by force, but at the same time if people in those areas genuinely prefer to be part of Russia that should be taken into account too.
US is certainly no angel. Saying that as an American.
At the same time, there’s a difference between shit we did in the 70s (and so did many other nations including RU) and today. In this millennium the closest we came to conquest was Iraq but we dumped that pretty fast.
‘We’re going to conquer this territory by force and add it to our own’ hasn’t been an internationally recognized valid move in decades. We should not validate it.
Have you seen Russian ‘democracy’ before ? Gee whiz 100% of people voted to join Russia shocked
Obviously there would have to be some kind of neutral 3rd party overseeing the vote…
Yup. And the only reason for Russia to insist Ukraine never join NATO would be so Russia could attack them again in the future without consequence.
Exactly.
It is not ‘LLM companies’. It is OpenAI. And not from buying memory either. Last year they made two deals with two major memory manufacturers, which together meant they were purchasing a significant percentage of the world’s memory production. And they negotiated these two deals in secret, each company not knowing that the other was in discussions, and announced the two deals on the same day. They weren’t even buying memory chips you can put in a server, but finished wafers with memory chips printed on them. These wafers then have to be cut up into chips, those chips have to be put in packages, themselves tested, and then soldered down to memory modules. As far as I know, OpenAI has no ability to do this. So it seems likely they purchased a significant portion of the world’s memory production just to drive up prices and keep their competitors from having it.