Ironically, Parks and Recreation is my biggest, “I watched all of this and enjoyed very little of it” show.

I see it as an extension of the myth of American purity and external corruption. “This person is evil, some outside power must have compromising info on them.” “Immigrants are violent criminals preying on innocent americans.”

These attitudes ignore the reality that bad people can come from anywhere. There are plenty of villians with very mundane origin stories. What matters is if everyone else has the will and ability to keep bad people in check and hold them accountable.

The grifters in charge need no other motivation than a sense of superiority and an opportunity to make a buck.

It’s a bit early for April fools product announcements.

Not to brag, but I can get angry without even reading comments these days.

They’ve been doing this with “natural intelligence” for ages.

The scavenger predator formerly known as Avago Technologies Limited currently wears Broadcom as a skinsuit to disguise hostile takeovers as normal tech mergers.

Producing energy is not the goal of this facility which is why they don’t report on it. The useful output is in refining control and heating methods so that when power producing facilities are built, they can operate continuously. On that front, 17 minutes is very impressive. At the speeds at which the particles in a fusion plasma move, that time frame is essentially an eternity.

The United Nations collectively runs a lot of aid programs. The EU and China also independently run aid programs. The US is far from being the sole provider of aid.

Multiple countries provide aid, but all these programs always operate on tighter budgets than they would like. So a big contributor suddenly pulling out is going to leave gaps that are hard for other groups to fill on short notice. Even if the US needs to reduce aid spending to balance the budget, it should be done gradually with coordination of other groups to best preserve coverage. Acting impulsively leads to suffering that could potentially be avoided with a more level-headed change.