USAid was pretty good. And our roads are pretty reasonable, mostly.

Where federal taxes are spent was fairly reasonable until this year. Could, of course, always be better. Obviously too much went to the military and the MIC.

They’ve often (in the 90s) voted against statehood because they’re currently exempt from federal personal income tax. I guess my info is a bit dated. More recently they’ve (non-binding) voted about 56% for statehood.

Benefits of statehood include an additional $10 billion per year in federal funds, the right to vote in presidential elections, higher Social Security and Medicare benefits, increased minimum wage, and a right for its government agencies and municipalities to file for bankruptcy.

I think Europe is a more valuable target for fascism than Greenland, and tilting the vote would help with that.

Of course this is all kind of silly and a distraction anyway.

No, the ones voting against exactly that.

PR also doesn’t want to pay federal taxes.

Placebo can work even if you’re aware it’s a placebo.

Now that’s real GDP.

Shouldn’t it be called Microsoft 250? There are 250 working days in a year. As soon as I’m home I’m using Thunderbird or Libreoffice, certainly not the product formerly known as Microsoft Office.

It’s already happening, in part because of this and in part because of the unstable, unpredictable US government.

Several European countries are looking towards investing in open source as a way to get away from American big tech because they’re suddenly considering US sanctions against them a real possibility, or at least a real threat.

Honestly I’m more concerned with domestic law.

On the other hand, you know the Fortran works and you can break it.

The vibe code is already broken.

I’m still pounding the Fortran button as hard as I can.

he is still poor at the language after many lessons.

Getting old sucks.

Huh. I wonder who would want Poland out of the EU and why.

Don’t get complacent. The EU countries are toying with the idea of collapsing with us. AfD doesn’t seem to be shrinking, and there will be a lot of money and propaganda dumped that way soon.

I hope you’re better at resisting it than we were, but seeing as how we’re all still on vulnerable social media…

The latest Libreoffice update has ribbon menus (optionally).

Difficult and stupid aren’t the same thing. There aren’t many goals on the same scale of human progress.

The attempt would likely teach us lessons about our own atmosphere and maintaining it. Learning the failure conditions of a biosphere and how to avert disaster seems extremely relevant for the upcoming decades.

[removed minor grammar nitpicks]

It’s absolutely the difficulty I faced learning French as an American in the Midwest. My high school self thought it’d be more useful than Spanish because native English speakers who know French are more rare, but it also meant I never got immersion, even when I’d do my best to converse every chance I got.

Your phone craves info, not indo.

The big US national parks had a reservation system for a bit. It was great.

If I get a ticket, I’ll go and it’ll be a pleasant experience. If I don’t, well, I can take a tour bus in or I can just not go.

I appreciated that systemic fix, even if it sucks when you don’t get a ticket and get to drive in exactly how you want. (You can still enter on foot or public transit.)