Icarus27k

The Ukraine war has messed some people up. Some decided to throw in with Russia in this conflict and are thus sprouting Russian government talking points on other topics. It's loyalty in a way, but loyalty to Russia.

China does have higher annual GDP growth than the U.S., but my point is China's growth has been declining for over a decade. Will China continue to have higher than the U.S. in the future? Maybe or maybe not.

This is China's annual GDP growth since 1990. 2019, the last year before COVID-19 skewered the data, was China's slowest year since 1990. In 2007, China's annual growth peaked at 14.2%. In 2012, it was 7.9%. In 2017, 6.9%. So it's been on a steady decline for 15 years.

I said ...

Are you guys familiar with BRICS? It's the geopolitical grouping of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, but China is the largest, most power member by far. It's actually a very bizarre story. It's envisioned as a counterweight to the Western world order of things like the G7, NATO, the World Bank, IMF and UN. But in practice, its members and biggest cheerleaders are people who hate the USA and want it to see the US lose its status in the world, which they see as unfair. I call BRICS the Club of US's Angry Exes. It makes as about as much sense.

An odd WH press briefing featuring John Kirby (spokesman of the National Security Council) just ended. It's odd in light of a NBC News report saying the U.S. is going to declassify info about the dam that indicates Russia is responsible. No declassified info was given by Kirby and he says U.S. hasn't determined who is responsible for the dam. But an observation: there were two monitors behind Kirby but that weren't used. As if they planned to use them to display something but then couldn't or decided not to. My opinion: the WH was going to present some evidence of Russian responsibility for the dam at today's WH press briefing but didn't. Perhaps because of the process of declassification taking time.

There is a decent chance this was an unintentional failure of the dam.

Hmmmm.....

I thought Kerry was going to win up until election night, so that brings back memories. But Kerry definitely lost, and I realized that by like midnight. It's kind of quirky that RFK Jr. is still fighting that fight though.

Today... And shortly thereafter....

True story: a schoolteacher once made fun of me for using a typewriter. Hey, he said he required the paper to be typed, but didn't specify on what.

I'm old enough to remember when this thing was supposed to revolutionize human existence.

Can we move on to the next thing now?

Musk supports DeSantis and Dorsey supports RFK Jr. This generation of tech business people are not as smart or good as their predecessors.

Okay, I'll try to explain this with just my memory. It's from a Doom Patrol comic. The voice speaking is Danny (a.k.a. Danny the Street). Originally, Danny was a sentient city street who had the power to teleport to any locale and who assists all superheroes. In later comics, they have other forms. They have been a brick (when their body was demolished), an ambulance and an amusement park (Dannyland). Here, Danny is talking to Casey Brinke, the main character of this volume of Doom Patrol and her origin is being revealed. Casey is a character in a comic in a comic shop that was open on Danny the Street. Danny gives Casey free will and lets her live her life.

I know this is supposed to sound impressive, but more realistically it means "look at what we hastily managed to throw together in only a few months." Expectations management is important, you guys.

There's a famous comics version of the Snickers "You're not yourself when you're hungry" ad where some kid turns into Doomsday and gets changed back once given a Snickers.

Nope. Mine is DC.