The shit people do for a gold medal... I get that in their social circles, it's everything. But. It doesn't seem all that prestigious. It's not like the judges are gonna go "Hm, poor performance this year, nobody gets anything". There's always gonna be a first second and third. Like, whats the most you get out of it? An advertising deal with Nike? You're gonna fuck up your junk just so you can be in a YouTube ad that gets skipped at the first opportunity?
There's a lot less difference between a mob and any other form of government than most people are comfortable admitting.
It's all just organizations of people. "Mob" "business" "government" "social club" "union" -- fundamentally, they're all just groups of people. An organism defined by its structure, scope, and interpersonal norms.
It's also cherry picking instances of "legal" acquisition (Manhattan "sold" for fucking beads), while flat out ignoring all the treaties that have been and still are violated.
Does kinda seem like if it wasn't actually policy before, it's gonna become so. Or, at least, scare off enough potential investors that it might as well be.
Removing anti-circumvention is such a good idea, such an easy slam-dunk win... which is why I'm convinced the EU will be the last place to rescind the laws.
The last breakdown I saw, only El Salvador had an incarceration rate to rival the US. It even broke down the union and listed each state individually, so the top thirty incarcerates were all US states, then El Salvador, then the rest of the US states and only then did other countries start appearing on the list.
Example in real life
Further information: Veronika (cow)
Veronika, a Swiss Brown (Braunvieh) cow, uses a broom to scratch herself, using the coarse brush on her tough hide and the wooden handle on her udders and underbelly.
On January 19, 2026, the first scientific report of tool use in cows was published in Current Biology. The paper, which references the Far Side cartoon, describes a pet cow named Veronika that scratched herself with a stick or wooden broom, using different ends to scratch parts of her body that she could not otherwise reach—a rare example of flexible multi-purpose tool use by non-humans.[7][8]
The research suggests a previously unknown sophistication in livestock intelligence, which the deprived environments of industrial farms may typically hinder. The authors note that Veronika "did not fashion tools like the cow in Gary Larson's cartoon, but she selected, adjusted, and used one with notable dexterity and flexibility". The paper concludes: "Perhaps the real absurdity lies not in imagining a tool-using cow, but in assuming such a thing could never exist."[9]
haha as if there weren't enough pressures to stay out of US medicine, becoming collateral in the drug bust of your colleague sounds like a nightmare.