In pre-industrialized nations the amount of resources it takes to raise each child is minimal. People have so many children because the resource requirement for each one is minimal or even a positive addition to the income of the parents.

In industrialized nations that math reverses. The amount of resources each child requires to become a functioning member of society increases dramatically (up to 10,000x more). Children are a pretty much universally a net cost to the parents not a source of income.

The birthrate is Japan and S. Korea have plummeted recently because of extreme wealth inequality.

S. Korea - the bulk of the countries economy is controlled by 5 families. The average 20 year old is in debt, working obscene hours per week and is barely making ends meet.

Japan - Has had 30 years of wage stagnation as the wealth inequality has steadily been growing. Young Japanese face the same issue as the S. Koreans. Long hours of work for little pay and no benefits.

As the standard of living rises, the birthrate initially increases. This was the boomer years.

Then birthrate falls because an industrialized society requires more resources per child. Eventually you reach a period of stagnation when the resources available match the number of children born.

Then in all capatilist societies, the standard of living declines which triggers the birthrate to free fall.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/jpn/japan/birth-rate

Japan peaked in the 1940’s, stagnanted in the '60-'70s and has been in free fall ever since.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/kor/south-korea/birth-rate

South Korea peaked in the 1950’s, stagnated in the '80s and 90’s and has been in free fall since.

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/usa/united-states/birth-rate

The United States peaked in the 40’s-50’s. Stagnanted from the 1970’s to early 2000’s (bouyed by 1st generation immigration) and is now in free fall (due to immigration idiocracy).

https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/fra/france/birth-rate

France followed the U.S. due with an extended period of stagnation due to 1st generation immigrants. It also has had a much slower decline in the standard of living versus the other countries which has bouyed up the birthrate.

My guess:

It shows an deep penetration and destruction of Russian defenses. They don’t really give too many specifics on how they did it but what they accomplished.

Russia would prefer not to broadcast how Ukraine was able to hit them this hard. The leadership likely already has reports of how bad of a screw up this is on their side.

Ukraine needs all the positive news from the war it can get for both internal motivation/recruitment and external funding/resource procurement.

Not likely.

Fixing the birthrate is pretty simple in theory. The government needs to meet the needs of people having kids. The details are a little more complicated.

In order to have more kids in their 20’s people need:

A higher income in their 20’s. If they work full time they deserve to be able to afford a 3 bedroom place, food, etc…

A place to live - Build affordable housing that people can own and build a life. These need to be 3-4 bedroom places that one income can cover.

Medical care: free quality medical care to cover little things like birth cost and the doctor visits a child needs.

Time: Hard to make babies when you are working 60+ hours a week. Mandatory 40 or less work week. 2 months of vacation every year.

Childcare - Free or heavily subsidized childcare for working parents. Currently childcare for 2 children is more than the net average income for one person in many areas. Earlier retirement programs are also highly effective.

Quality schools and education: ban private schools, invest heavily in public schools increasing teacher wages and requirements, reducing classroom sizes, and providing quality educational material. Free college and trade schooling as well.

Hope: Stop fucking up the planet for temporary gains. If we started to reverse our environmental damaging behaviors more people would be willing to have kids

I setup a raspberry pi 5 minicomputer box with a small hard drive and Pi OS installed. I then browse to whatever pirate streaming service I want and use Firefox with the adblock installed. Works like a charm.

The RII K06 mini keyboard works very well.

I originally got the system to run tradeshow videos at the booth. It does that very well and is quick and easy to setup.

I doubt this is it. It happened on February. Numbers were already spiking before it…

What is going on with the UAV interception rate?

All of last year there was a gradual on increases from 2563 in January to 12,163 in December.

Then this happened:

January 21,682 February 31,225 March 59,537

April is on track to match the March numbers.

It’s called Bi-color corn. It’s made by creating a hybrid between white and yellow corn inbreds. The seeds are all yellow. The resulting corn (F2 seeds) display a yellow:white ratio of 3:1.

The color has zero impact on flavor, texture or sweetness. It’s all for visual impact.

I like how they don’t give a verbal response to the stupid request. Instead they publish reports of more strikes on critical facilities.

Putin has to be cursing every morning he wakes up in his hardened bunker and another oil facility is a smoking ruin.

30+ years ago in school I was tasked with writing an essay on Israel. In just a few days of researching I noticed that everything the Palestinians were doing looked like desperate guerrilla warfare against a superior force. Their tactics made no sense otherwise.

That’s when I asked… Why? And started researching what Israel was doing. Holy Fuck… Today it’s more obvious with their open genocide but they have been doing this shit for 50+ years quietly. This isn’t something new. This isn’t the current leadership. This is a fundemental cultural belief that they are superior and can kill, maim, abuse and steal from any other ethnic group. The zionist group is as bad or worse than any other extremist group around.

A-10 is live target practice for Iran’s domestically produced manpads. It should not be anywhere near this conflict. That they are using it at all shows massive incompetence.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Misagh-2

Recoilless shotgun type weapon. That drone barely shifted when it fired.

The survivor one was the best.

I took every history course this professor taught even though I was a science major.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alireza_Shapour_Shahbazi

Most of my college professors had very little impact on my life. His classes fundementally changed how I understand the world to this day.

It was manufactured in Ukraine and discontinued back in 2002. So I would say replacement is unlikely.

No severance doesn’t effect your eligibility for unemployment. It does often reduce the number of claims however. Many people live off the severance until in runs out, then claim employment. You can also claim unemployment while still actively receiving severance pay.

Severance is usually tied to a non-disclosure agreement. If they want to enforce them, compensation is usually required in most states.

Tunis, Tunisia. The old town was something else.

Two lawyers got in a pissing contest on developing the land they owned.

My great-grandfather apparently had a story about it. It involved lots of booze, a prostitute, and a horse. Then again most of his stories had the same theme so the truthfulness of the story is up for debate.

Missoula is a bit odd on a few things. I attended Hellgate elementary - yes that’s the name of the school.

AN-26 plane… Hmmmm. Manufactured in Ukraine.

I would guess Russia is having a difficult time keeping up with routine maintenance and acquiring parts.

This is why I have learned to immediately max out the RAM on the motherboard for my wife when I replace her machine.

Some of these webpages are absolutely stupid in how much they load. She likes to have 40 or 50 tabs open all the time.

Her current desktop has 64gb