The US administration quite explicitly leaked, in the chat discussion between Gabbard, Hegseth, Vance etc while they were bombing Yemen last year, that they wanted to exit the middle east. They complained that they were policing the strait to keep it open, while not getting paid appropriate amounts by the Gulf states and by European beneficiaries of that trade route. Some of the moves the US made with regards to transferring missile tech etc to places like Saudi Arabia, are part of this plan to try and pull back from the gulf – they want those local players to take on the burden of maintaining order.

The US’s goal in this conflict hasn’t been to liberate the Iranian people, nor has it been to establish any sort of order/function in that region of the world. Its broader goal was more likely to trigger the exit of US military assets from that area, or to gain significant financial contributions from gulf states to remain, either would likely be acceptable. Their goals generally align with Russia’s view of the world, in which there are like 4 major powers each controlling a region – with the States controlling all of the western hemisphere (the greater technate of America that Hegseth likes to go on about).

The humiliation of US forces in the gulf, will likely result in the states’ administration invading Cuba next, is my guess. Cuba is less likely to be able to defend against US aggression, and proximity makes logistics much simpler. Plus its distance from Europe and other regional powers, makes Cuba a target they can, and have been, bullying with general silence from the international community. If/when NATO nations are appalled by the actions, that’ll give the administration justification to seize part of Greenland from Denmark – “They clearly aren’t our allies anymore”. That’ll potentially set Canada up to be blockaded similar to how Cuba is currently, forcing Canada to capitulate due to economic isolation.

Just a guess, obviously, but I imagine that’s the sort of ‘plan’ they’re aiming for. The USA is overtly hostile to democratic principles, their administration members have literally published and endorsed books/strategic plans that praise fascists/fascism. They see things like the French revolution as a lesson that the rich should make sure the poor are never able to rise up again, even if it means butchering poor people… “cause that’s what they’d do to us if they could!”. Attempting to parse the USA’s actions based on the ethics/messaging of the “old” USA is misguided. They’ve clearly announced their new motives, the media should be evaluating their ‘war objectives’ based on those new motives, not the US’s motives under past administrations.

*just an edit to add that the conflict also achieved another broad objective of the administration – by disrupting the oil trade, while simultaneously lifting sanctions on Russian oil, the USA is working to destabilize the European Union, whom the USA views as an enemy now It also helps to bolster Russia/Putin, whom the administration views as an ally. You don’t need to look further than Vance attempting to meddle in Hungary to get the pro-Putin candidate elected, to see other examples of this very blatant, and intentional shift.

These types of articles are annoying at this point – the sort of appeal to morality things, based on essentially dead ‘world order’ concepts. Even when there was a quasi functional set of agreements in place, America just veto’d any attempt to hold it accountable anyhow. International law, or any law really, is largely based on some sort of ‘force’ that gives it authority – in a country, that force is generally the state/police, and internationally it was generally the US-lead coalition of western nations. That authority died in 2025.

We’ve already seen the USA/Hegseth drag all his generals into a room and tell them to not be ‘burdened by rules of engagement’, encouraging them to commit war crimes openly in order to instill terror in others. Anyone who disagreed with his speech was basically shown the door. This was like a year ago even, it’s not ‘new’.

The USA basically shredded any moral dilemmas/debates in the process, and burnt the soft power they’d been cultivating for decades/generations in early 2025. What’s the point of saying it’s wrong based on an old, defunct system that they’ve already abandoned? If anything, the American right wing will likely cheer that they’re getting these sorts of angsty pearl clutching responses from the left / foreign liberal powers. Trump quite literally bragged about America’s war crimes in Venezuela during his state of the union address, cracking jokes to which all the republicans laughed and applauded. Trump’s threats about Iran’s civilian infrastructure, and the bets on whether he’ll drop nukes – these are things that the right wing / Americans want to see happen. They think it’s right to do it.

So really, the article shouldn’t be about “Oh No!! International Law may be violated!”, but rather, “Why should people care about international law being violated, when they’ve already asserted that they disagree with that law and its results?”. Like if/when Trump drops nukes on Irans civilian power plants/water desalination plants etc… what then? Is there some sort of accountability that’s gonna suddenly show up? Prolly not.

The note at the end of the article doesn’t get enough discussion: a cnn poll showing 100% of MAGA people polled approve of Trump. Including people outside of MAGA, he’s got the worst approval rating ever. But MAGA is all that matters to the administration, they view the rest as terrorists/enemies anyhow – just like how they view other western democracies as enemies these days. CNN may as well say that his approval rating is negative in the IRGC, for all the administration cares.

The Reuters article isn’t doing this justice in my view – in part because they’re still measuring the conflict by past US administration standards, not the new reality.

Last year, Hegseth and Gabbards chat leak, while they were bombing Yemen I believe, included negative remarks about Europe, and what they felt was the unfair role of ‘world police’ that the USA had in keeping the SoH open. Even back then, they wanted to pull back, to force Europe to pay more to maintain that trade route, to force gulf states to pay more for protection, etc. Their animosity/aggression towards Europe has not been subtle, they openly make claims that Europe faces civilization collapse as a result of ‘too much multiculturalism’ and so on. The US relaxing Russian oil sanctions, was done intentionally as part of the USA’s open hostility and aggression towards the EU, and wanting to splinter the EU block. The US isn’t just “not much of an ally” anymore, they’re an active threat against western democracies.

Like Hegseth literally dragged all the generals into a meeting last year, and did a speech telling them to commit war crimes, not to be ‘bound by rules of engagement’. Anyone who didn’t like it, was fired. He likely setup a war crime tracker to measure as a KPI for the military – blow up a girls school, sow terror, get a bonus. Hell, they blow up fishing boats in Venezuela, and joke/laugh about that war crime at the state of the union. This is America now.

So in terms of conflict goals – destabilizing Europe has been pretty successful so far, though it is a long game. The US is also using the conflict to extort gulf nations for large sums of money to continue protecting assets, so they’re getting paid more for their presence in the region – another win, based off that leaked chat. The wars also quieted Trumps Epstein stuff domestically, so it’s succeeded in his personal reason for the timing. Israel’s using the cover to conduct even more brutal campaigns in places like Lebanon and the West Bank; the USA is using the cover from the conflict to try and pull a Gaza on Cuba. All progressing well, by the new American calculus. Media needs to revamp their scorecards, still measuring success by antiquated things like humanitarian relief/improving peoples lives etc. Pain and suffering for Iranians, Europeans, and anyone that’s not a Republican elite, is likely one of the measures by which they deem the operation a success.

And Trump’s broadcast repeatedly, clearly, that he doesn’t respect military personnel. If you die in the Iranian conflict, you’re basically a loser in Trump’s view, just like POWs he’s made similar statements to in the past. He doesn’t give a shit if troops die, or are wasted, so long as they secure more money for oligarchs from rich gulf nations etc.

Hell, even something like the fluctuating oil prices – a win for American oligarchs, given they just beat the shit out of Venezuela and are now pilfering their oil. “We secured a new source of oil by committing war crimes in South America, so now us Americans are ready to fuckup the oil trade in the middle east, as it’ll mostly impact those stupid Europeans that we hate”. Another “success”.

Building on US tech means the US generally has control over whether you can deploy your military assets, and gives a foreign, militaristic/fascist trending power, deep insights into your military operations. Pretending like these risks are not greater than, or at the very least on par with, “its hard to integrate systems/build our own” is silly.

It’s sorta like Canada’s former liberal leadership hopeful Chrystia Freeland acting like China’s the biggest threat to Canada. While the US administration is actively and openly trying to dismantle Canada using economic warfare, is ignoring former international conventions like those pesky ‘human rights’, and so on. Like there’s this old joke about Canada being in bed with a sleeping elephant given the disproportionate sizes and risk of that elephant rolling over and accidentally squishing you. Except the elephant woke up now, and is actively trying to harm you. Meanwhile idiots like Freeland go on about some Chinese Bear that’s a threat primarily on the other side of the world, ignoring the elephant in the room.

The USA is a threat. They are actively attacking anyone they feel like. They are actively antagonistic towards their “allies” and neutral nations. Their tech oligarchs actively talk about setting up their own baronies, aka “Freedom cities” in the hollowed out carcasses of what remains of nations. Their state department actively opposes foreign nations pursuing data sovereignty, because the USA doesn’t care about privacy, especially not for non-republicans – they want that data to target “terrorists” (non-republicans) more easily with the use of AI. Their leadership quite literally called all their Generals in to a room last year, said “We expect you to commit war crimes, cause we want the world to fear you” and fired anyone that objected. The USA isn’t just a ‘risk’ of being a threat, they are an active threat undermining western democratic nations. Why anyone would think there’s a greater risk ‘not’ to give these folks more power/control over you, is beyond my understanding. My closest approximate comparison on a day-to-day relatable level would likely be something like an abusive relationship, where the victim rationalizes staying in the relationship because “If I left, they’d outright kill me”. That ain’t healthy, nor a desirable position for a military.

Like even the Iran / Hormuz stuff, is basically intentional pain inflicted on the EU. Last year, as part of their chat leak during their strikes on yemen – the chat that leaked on whatsapp or whatever – Hegseth, Gabbard and them were complaining about how they felt they were policing the area, even though all the benefit went to Europe in the form of open trade routes. They wanted Europe to be more actively involved. Trumps made clear references of a similar nature, with his regular bravado/crassness, in his recent “we probably shouldn’t even be there” comments.

The current US administration also has a focus on isolating opponents (which they tend to talk about as ‘containment’ in their ideological writings if I remember right). It’s what underpins things like what they’re doing to democrats in places like Minnesota, and building concentration camps for “illegals” (non-republicans, and non-whites) – they want enemies isolated, cut off from outside aid. Even more, they want those people to suffer, and make noise as they suffer, as it helps to keep other blue states in line and lets them point at the suffering to appease their base. A similar approach underpins much of their international relations, cutting off nations from trade opportunities to weaken “opponents” (non-nuclear / smaller nations) – see Cuba as an easy example currently, or the ongoing attack on international trade norms. Attacking Iran cuts the EUs oil supply (among other trade gaps), exposing a strategic weakness and providing greater opportunities for the US to sow discord amongst EU block members: enter the relaxing of Russian sanctions to further sow animosity, as some EU nations are pressured to resume Russian trade. Trying to distract from his Epstein atrocities is part of the reason Trump may’ve agreed to the plan and rushed the timing a bit, but pretending like it’s the only reason for the current shit going on is naive – there’s a whole fascist administration, full of out and proud Christian white nationalists, backing the actions of Trump, and using his antics to distract from their goals.

Rubio literally sent out a memo in december if I remember right saying to aggressively counter any tech sovereignty pushes, as the trump admin wants access to all foreigner data for AI integration and “national security” of the USA. They want to hold/have access to it, cause they like using it as part of their AI surveillance and snooping regime. Again, if I remember right, that was circulated to embassies and lobby firms etc etc.

So any news story about how hard it is, is likely a US influence campaign. Using their oligarch control of media to magnify issues, think tanks publishing unprovoked ‘white papers’ that support the US narrative, and on and on.

It’s a failed democracy / humane state. It’s doing wonderfully as a dictatorship. The rich are profiting quite a bit off this I’m sure.

these people act entirely on impulse, with only the immediate satisfaction of their instant gratification as their objective.

So they’re Americans, a product of America’s instant gratification consumer culture. Shocking!

Yeah, but this breach is specifically about KYC, about financial industry stuff. The company that got porked, was the company the banks used for their KYC stuff.

KYC is typically a due diligence process tied to regulated financial industry participants – the restaurant example has a much different function. Banks and FIs have much broader retention (and disclosure) obligations.

Here, let’s put it slightly differently. I’ll reference Canadian regulations/processes more, as those are the ones I’m most familiar with. If you’re a bank, you’re required to flag suspicious transactions related to the customer – and in order to know when those transactions are suspicious, you need some way of reviewing it within the context of the customer. You may even have an obligation to second guess / question / try and advise the customer ‘not’ to make a transaction, based on knowing your customer.

The most basic example of that, is where Credit Cards will decline payments / request a call if you try and make a purchase in a totally abnormal location – like you “know your customer” lives in Toronto, but suddenly see them spending money in Mexico? Or if they called you before they took a trip to mexico, that’d also go into a KYC type file to let people know to expect those sorts of charges and let em get processed. That’s tied to KYC.

The media will often run stories about seniors getting scammed, with the general message being “WHY DIDNT BANKS DO MORE TO PROTECT?”. Well, that’s KYC too. You gotta ‘know’ your senior members, and their spending habits to some extent, to find those outliers. You also need to be familiar with them enough to know whether its “normal” for them to come by and take out cash, and in what quantities and for what purpose, cause seniors will sometimes ‘show up’ with a person pressuring them to take out cash to ‘pay a bill’ (scammms galore!). All part of KYC due diligence.

Or the somewhat obvious elephant in the room – if you have a “personal” account member, who keeps receiving etransfers to his “jeevacation@gmail.com” account for some reason, you gotta look into it a bit and sort out what all those payments are related to, cause it isn’t a business account. And if you see anything suspicious, it gets reported to the authorities, where, most likely, Trump shits himself and Americans ignore the crimes.

People want surveillance options. One of the highest/most obvious features required, unsurprisingly, is the ability to see your cameras on your smart phone – which generally means you need a Smartphone App + a centralised server/system connecting the different ends. The alternative being that end users would likely need static IP addresses / Dynamic DNS setups to have a Smartphone app point “directly” to their exposed CCTV ports – which I don’t imagine regular consumers are keen on, likely why basically no such options seem to exist in the retail space (afaik - if there are widely used brands i dont know about, by all means clue me in).

Options that are fully local/closed/under user control, are almost impossible to find. This isn’t so much a consumer-specific problem, from my perspective, at this point – there aren’t enough options for consumers to choose differently. It’s sorta like how you’re generally ‘stuck’ with US-tethered Smartphones. It’s not so much a ‘choice’ that consumers get to make, as it is that these big businesses have effective monopolies and consumers are stuck.

KYC isn’t evil. It’s literally the operational piece that says stuff like “If someone named Vladimir Putin tries to open a bank account with you, you should know if he’s THAT putin or not, especially as it may get your business in serious trouble related to gov sanctions etc”. The government, quite literally, sends auditors to Banks and Credit Unions every 2-3 years to make sure you do this sort of due diligence.

The issue with KYC is that it’s farmed out to third parties that focus on scale and cutting costs. It’s in the same general space as something like Credit Scores – Banks/Credit Unions don’t maintain their own credit scores for people so much, as they just buy that score information from Equifax / Transunion etc.

Really, what I imagine people should be pushing for instead of this piecemeal whining, is something closer to what Estonia has for its citizens. A highly integrated government-based portal that allows citizens to do things like Register a New Small business in 15 minutes, and to see which organisations have access to their gov ID info. From what I understand, citizens basically get given PINs as part of their gov IDs, which they can disclose to banks/businesses, who can subsequently access basic required read-only details about that person via the gov portal. So your bank needs to know who you are? No problem, you let them know your pin when you setup the account – and the banks system is then able to pull just the basic info from your gov account to meet the banks operational needs / regulatory obligations whether you’re there in person or not. And as a citizen, if you want to check your privacy disclosures to third parties, you just log in to the gov site, and see a list of which businesses have access to your data – and I imagine you’d get the option to cancel their access if you wanted to (so when you close an account at a business, you pop in to the gov site and also clip their ongoing access). From what I gather, that sites a one stop shop for all gov stuff, so it’s also where you go for tax stuff, drivers lics, the works. Makes it a LOT simpler for citizens, as you don’t need to sort out what esoteric stupid sub site / domain you need to visit to see if you qualify for a rebate or whatever – so it seems like a big improvement from a user experience side.

ALL THAT SAID, that shift would put more onus on the consumer in some ways, as they’d need to log in to a gov site etc – like it’s bad enough trying to explain MFA to old people, imagine trying to make this shift! You’d also need a government that was willing to actually do stuff for the people – I think Estonia only went that way, as an attempt to shield themselves from massive attacks from Russia. They want their gov fully functioning in the cloud, including elections etc, so that even if they end up like Ukraine, they can still “function” remotely. Consumers are a big issue for anything security related too, as practically no one changes banks / FIs based on security – it’s almost entirely rate oriented for mortgage holders. Tell a consumer they can get a 0.2% better rate by going with the bank that doesn’t fuss security, they’ll take it. Try and market your bank/FI as being more security conscious, it won’t generally draw in new members based on that alone.

Like, again using Canada as an example, we’ve had a year of the US antagonizing us and threatening economic ruin / annexation. Lots of Canadians are keen not to buy American products as a result. Almost all of Canadas banks/CUs use US partners/outsourcing within their stack: places like Vancity Credit Union, for example, are using Intellect Design’s product for their online banking, which is a partner owned by an India parent company (with little/no presence in Canada), which hosts its stuff on Microsoft’s cloud. Most Credit Unions in the country are likely going to go the same way in the next couple years – even though it’s a huge security risk, and highly likely that both India and the USA will gain access to all your data, let alone sketchy third party’s like India’s fraud centers. There are a couple Credit Unions in Canada that actually maintain stuff (almost entirely) in Canada. But that’s not enough to entice people to use those organisations, so they’re all dying out / merging as a result of a lack of members (and regulatory overreach / decrees).

Tax records are required to be kept for 7 years in North America (generally, as far as I know - def in Canada). So you order something online from a business, they have a business need to keep your data on hand for 7 years in case an auditor / tax person comes asking about it. Be that someone auditing the business, or someone auditing a customer. That’s a requirement from the government.

I’ve seen customers ask for tax stuff going back up to 20 years from a business. In those cases, if there’s demand for data going back that far for whatever reason, the business can internally say “We have a business reason to retain data longer” because people ask for it – there’s demand. So they can justify to auditors/legal sorts retaining that information indefinitely, based on user demands/requests.

In some cases when I’ve seen those ancient requests, it’s also tied to legal disputes from customers – eg. Trying to prove in a divorce that such and such was bought by party A in 2005 for X amount. In some cases, there’re class actions that go outside the 7 year window, and require data from further back to sort out – for example there’s a case in Canada currently where a financial lender is paying back ~$2000 per person that took a loan from them from 2016-2021 (so ~10 years of personal data needs to’ve been kept, to verify early claimants). Part of needing to keep data so long, is that the court cases are often so drawn out that the 7 year window would make some crime/wrong-doing much more difficult to prosecute due to a lack of evidence. I know of one class action lawsuit in the Financial Industry that’s been ongoing since the 90s, and still isn’t fully resolved – most of the potential class action recipients are deceased at this point, and the only people profiting are lawyers, but still. Lawyers are a part of the problem, and a reason why data is often being held longer and longer. Honestly, Lawyers are also terrible at securing their data --they tend to rely on paper-controls to prevent their unsecured data from getting used, rather than actual hardening. Like there was a guy who spent a few years in Colombia or something, his personal laptop being used for all sorts of nefarious stuff, and when he came back to Canada and the border people took his laptop, it was totally unencrypted/unsecured. They guy just argued it was his “legal work” laptop and everything on it is confidential and can’t be used in court.

Idk. I think your approach is overly simplistic for the issue. There’s a lot of “stuff” related to corporate data retention policies and methods, and I don’t really see much nuance in what you’re proposing. Hell, if they only kept your data till you got your item, youd NEVER be allowed to get a refund, cause they’d have no record of you purchasing the item.

Well, both China and the US tech billionaires are feverishly working towards having a personal army of unthinking killing machines that they can deploy unilaterally to a region to massacre a population without any of that annoying “soldiers refusing to kill children”, or “people back home objecting to risking soldier’s lives” shit.

And while what was demonstrated likely didnt include much sensory perception/reaction, it still demonstrated a marked improvement over last years models – similar story when you see their more human-looking things with those weird flesh/muscle wraps that’re like straight outta terminator. I’m also not totally sure about the perception stuff myself, as a few times in the performance it looked to me like the robots responded / adjusted to variances in their partners moves – like a kid who did a flip a bit too low over a sword, and the robot adjusts a bit lower at the last second to avoid a collision.

I don’t think I’ve seen any similar such videos from American companies – like I recall one video from boston dynamics where they had a robot doing a simple obstacle course, and some pre-defined basic acrobatics/dance moves. I haven’t seen anything like what China seems to have available in the (admittedly very high end) consumer market space coming out of western countries lately, though I suppose that could be a marketing bubble/blitz issue.

In the end it prolly doesn’t matter – whether it’s china or the US tech bros, the tech will be massively abused one way or another. Like based on the speed of advancement, you could imagine them having their automaton armies in production by 2030 easy. Then it’s just ‘whoever has more manufacturing power for killer humanoid robots wins’ (paired with ‘who has control of the production stack for those killer robots’, hence the push to grab more land by many major powers). I wouldn’t even be surprised if the ‘elites’ were explicitly aiming for this to occur, to suddenly and drastically reduce the population of the world thinking itll help buy time related to climate damage. Wipe out people in third world countries (see israel, cuba, looks like iran soon), wipe out the poor, thinking itll lower things like gas emissions etc – cutting programs like USAID also fits with this general goal, as it clearly has a negative impact on life expectancy rates “in target countries”, while also freeing up resources for a global superpower to execute things like land grabs while also cracking down on their own citizens aggressively. The tariffs too, trying to re-shore manufacturing and advanced chip fabs, would almost be a pre-requisite, as deploying a killer robots army somewhere would ‘likely’ cause a backlash and supplier cutoffs, if they’re still originating from more democratic states (or ones without killer robot armies of their own). Starlink’s basically a global network allowing control of robot armies dropped anywhere in the world – if countries can’t block it, they can’t easily interrupt robot control functions.

Ok a chunk of that ‘may’ be paranoia, but it’s not implausible in my view. So… yeah, yes I think we should all be a bit worried / concerned. Not that I think there’s much we can do about it.

To be fair, the dems also want, and use, authoritarian levers these days. Also, historically, they’ve been very ineffectual when it comes to pushing through progressive items – see the USA as the only advanced economy without public healthcare as an easy example, or them being the only country without basic gun laws.

Heck, one of the very few legit points Trump made in the one weaksauce debate he had with Biden, was along the lines of “If tariffs are so bad, why’d you guys leave all the tariffs in place from my first term?”. If there’s an election, and if they win, I doubt the dems will really do all that much.

Idk. To me it’s starting to look increasingly like there are irreconcilable differences between what the majority seem to want, and what a small rich minority wants. There are maga dads shooting their daughters, in maga states, over political shit, and they get let off by their maga jury. You’ve got red state ICE troops deploying to blue state cities explicitly to terrorize the population – those same troops are shooting people in the streets with zero accountability, protected by a group of people who are increasingly looking like ultra rich pedophiles of a very depraved sort. A group of individuals who are basically Americas ruling class, with likely ties between their pedophile island crimes, to Israel and Russia, and the USA’s unquestioning support of the atrocities being committed on the other side of the world.

It’s really difficult to picture what you’d need to do as a politician, to ‘make this right’ for the people in blue states/cities. If the people demand accountability for all the shit that’s gone on, it’ll enrage the right further. If you don’t hold them accountable, well everyone’s seen the result of not holding Trump accountable for the Jan 6 insurrection – it just gets worse and worse. They’re already at a point where they’re shooting dem civilians in the streets with impunity, and with ‘righteous fury’ automatically labelling these people terrorists/enemies of the states. Even using AI to alter photos of protesters to feed the propaganda machine.

Really feels like there’s increasingly a chance for a civil war in the usa.

Good for them.

Though I really doubt fascists actually care about women’s sports all that much in general. And if they do it isn’t “GASP Wokies won!!!”, it’s more “GASP who let them out of the kitchen!!”.

America isn’t a country of laws anymore. The supreme court rubber stamps anything the administration wants to do, and the administration “declines requests from the judiciary”. You’ve got administration officials that don’t know what Habeas Corpus means, suspending Habeas Corpus. You’ve got a military openly/brazenly committing war crimes on the international scene (blowing up unverified “narco boats”/civilians). You’ve got a paramilitary gestapo-like force quite literally shooting citizens in the streets, your own government aiming to terrorize its people – which’s the whole point of the violent Ice operations targeting blue states.

But yeah, sure, Google and the big tech bros who have been supporting Trump’s actions throughout all of this will totally draw the line at disclosing data.

Put effort into finding someone as a romantic / life long partner while you’re young. Be critical and aggressive in the search (ie. don’t just “be open and let things happen if they happen!”).

Most of the systems and life goals of society are tied to having two people or more in the family unit. Ideally aim for a partner that has similar economic outcomes as yourself, or at least positive ones overall, and who’s personality is tolerable / you can see yourselves staying friends indefinitely. If you’re a reclusive sort, find someone else who also values their space but is still willing to comingle finances/lives. Doing this young is important as there are more options and it’ll generally be easier to find people that ‘fit’ with your lifestyle. Finding someone close to you in age also helps to keep your life-events (such as whether to have kids, when to retire, etc) better aligned.

Everything from paying off mortgage debt, to income tax breaks, to even just having a secondary “fail safe” income stream from your partner, are really significant. Heck, with the right partner you even cut down the costs of things like Groceries (can buy in bulk = savings), chore-times, etc.

The younger you get that leverage, the better the results later on. Consider something like the time crunch many adults feel, between work, chores, sleeping, etc. If you have a solid partner, you can do something like alternate chores and workouts, so that you both maintain better overall health as you age. Eg. one partner does a workout while the other buys groceries/cooks, then the first partner does the cleanup and some light cleaning around the house while the other hits the gym. Having that sort of balance in your 20s / early 30s, will give you a better chance of maintaining your health into your 40s and 50s. There’re good reasons why single people die younger.

I’d laugh if the USA deported this “violent drug user criminal”. Like the situation there sounds bonkers right now, but if they deported this idiot as part of their overall stupidity, it’d be instant karma for the shit he’s done over the years.

Read a chunk of the article, though I admit I stopped part way.

Specifically, after the part where they note this guy had been kicked out multiple times already. Got kicked out in 2013. Again in 2015. Came back in 2019 and just started working with no documentation/authorization. So kicked out twice during Obama’s terms, the guy fully knows what he’s doing is ‘wrong’ by the govt/rules, yet took the risk anyhow.