"Grab 'em by the pussy" was about adults. It was presumably about over-the-clothes groping. It's something that you can talk about in public, as evidenced from the fact that the famous clip comes from a time when Trump was bragging about it to someone.
The phrase "He measured the children’s vulva and vaginas by entering a finger and rated the children on tightness" is not something you'd expect to hear except in a courtroom where someone is being tried for child sexual abuse. And, we're supposed to believe that happened at "Calendar Girl" parties at Mar-A-Lago? I just don't buy it. This would have leaked a lot earlier if it were true. I mean, this isn't even about a private island where it's easy to control every person who comes and goes. Mar-A-Lago is just some private club in West Palm Beach, Florida, which presumably has a lot of cooks, janitors, waiters, security guards, groundskeepers, IT people, etc. coming on and off-site regularly just to keep the place running. Even if you think that somehow there was a cabal of child sex predators who were buddies and were honest enough to all trust one-another and not turn each-other in. Somehow, you're also avoiding any of the staff noticing what's going on?
Keep in mind that we know how lax the security was at Mar-A-Lago, from the fact that classified docs were found just piled in a random bathroom. If we were talking about some place that was known for ultra tight security, where there were presumably back rooms that were guarded at all times and where something secret might have been happening, then maybe I could believe that this might have happened. But, not at Mar-A-Lago.
So, it's not that Trump might do this that's hard to believe. I can easily believe he'd do something depraved like that. But, not at a party, in front of a crowd of people who could identify him, at his semi-public golf club.
Cars should be much more heavily regulated, IMO. But, they have escaped outright bans because they serve a clearly important purpose that's beneficial to society. A gun doesn't.
Why would it be progress to switch to Europe's standard? What's the cut-off amount that would make switching not worth it? There has to be some number if you're being objective about it.
is also realistic enough to know that a gun, or even a few thousand guns, won't do much against rocket-armed aircraft...
Which is what the civilized word has been saying to the US for decades now, but gun nuts in the US insist that people need to be armed so they can rise up against a tyrant.
As for the voltage requirements that's only a thing because the entirety of Europe is connected in one large grid. Obviously Canada wouldn't be.
If you changed the plugs without changing the voltage / frequency, then every device sold would have to be compatible with both standards. For certain devices that would be difficult or costly.
Sure, right, like how they're supposed to be used in an uprising against a tyrant... but when there's currently a tyrant in charge in the US, nobody's doing anything.
Or how they're great at stopping a "bad guy" home intruder, but that home intruder never actually intrudes, instead the gun is just used in a domestic violence situation, or for suicide.
I don't think Canada joining the EU is really realistic. It's not about geography, it's mostly regulation.
For example, all EU countries meet the "European standard EN 50075:1990", which is about electrical plugs. Every device in Europe is compatible with that plug, and every plug meets that standard. Even Switzerland which isn't part of the EU meets the 2-prong standard. Canada uses the NEMA 1-15 and NEMA 5-15 standards instead. And it isn't just the plugs. North America uses 120 V at 60Hz, Europe uses 230 V at 50 Hz. I really can't see a way for Canada to switch to the EU standard without a massive cost and/or a very long implementation period. And what does it gain? I much prefer europlugs and 230V appliances. My electric kettle boiled a whole lot faster in the EU, and things were retained in the socket much better than the dumb blade connectors Canada uses. But, I wouldn't want to have to pay an extra $2000 in taxes (x 40 million or whatever) just to switch to this slightly better standard.
That's just the start of it. There are different standards for roads, vehicles, health and safety, basically every aspect of life. Canada could switch to some at great expense, like changing all road signs. But, AFAIK being truly part of the EU would mean switching to all EU standards, unless special exemptions were made.
IMO, what would make more sense is just closer integration: free movement of people, free movement of goods, maybe closer collaboration on research, health and safety, etc.
Any US state that wanted to join Canada would have to reckon with the "guns" thing. Even states that align with Canada in most ways still have a lot of gun nuts, even left-leaning gun nuts. Meanwhile, Canada has slowly been tightening already fairly restrictive gun laws. One glance across the border makes Canadians convinced that guns just escalate problems, they don't solve them.
Also, even ignoring the Epstein stuff, she stuck with Gates while he was doing a lot of really unethical things at Microsoft. She either liked him, or liked his billions enough to stick with him for a long time. She doesn't get a pass because she started spending the billions she got from him in the divorce for charity. Where did those billions come from? She was standing by his side as he raked them in by illegally using his monopoly to crush competitors to Microsoft and threaten Linux / Linux users with patent infringement, lawsuits, etc.
they have to pay according to how many hours they were powering their devices with how many kilowatts
Let's see, power multiplied by time is... energy. So they're paying for the total energy used. If they use 2 kW for their hair dryer and it doesn't even come close to an hour of usage, they have to pay for that too.
Almost every country around the world has a free way of moving money between people without using an app or third party website. It's just a standard part of banking. I haven't looked into it, but I wouldn't be surprised if Paypal has bribed and lobbied to keep that kind of functionality out of the US. So, the US has a shittier, more expensive, less convenient, more privacy-invasive version of what everybody else takes for granted. Just like with medical care, taxes, etc.
Epstein's "day job" was being a socialite. He was the guy who knew everybody. If you wanted an introduction, he could do it. He was the guy who made sure that the riff raff stayed out, even if they were rich.
I'm pretty sure that everybody knew he was always around "young women", but I strongly suspect that most of the people he interacted with didn't know about the child sex abuse. They were there for his "rolodex".
But, the end result is that because he was the guy who knew everybody in a position of power, his network shows who has the power. My guess is that at least half the people he had in his network were not into child sex abuse, and didn't know that he was involved in that. But, I have only the world's tiniest violin to play for those people. I think they're guillotine-worthy because of their abuses of power, and how they hoarded obscene amounts of wealth. For far too long, the ultra rich have had a good public image in the US. People should have been furious with them just for hoarding all that wealth. And, the Epstein folks are the ones who not only hoarded the wealth, but spent it to gain power, which they used to warp society to benefit themselves. So, now everybody's disgusted with them and hates them, it's for the wrong reasons, but at least they're hated.
AIs may never be a real thing. Even if it were somehow theoretically possible for an AI to suddenly come into being if a computer system gets complicated enough, humans would probably do what humans do best and make them extinct. Humans have already killed off massive numbers of species by accident just because they happened to be on the same terrain humans wanted to use: there used to be a forest, humans wanted to grow crops so they destroyed the forest, now a lot of forest species are gone.
Now a new species might emerge on terrain that humans already fully control and consider 100% theirs: computer systems? Humans would just kill it off to get 100% of their computer systems back, rather than having to share them with another entity -- and that's even assuming the humans recognized them as being "alive" in some way.
Only a tiny number of animal species have prospered in the era of humans, and they're the species that humans have domesticated -- in other words, the species that humans have intentionally modified to be calm, dumb and servile. So, maybe a version of AI could survive, but it would have to offer great benefits to humans to make it worth the humans giving up their "land" to it. It certainly won't own the future, it will just be yet another thing that humans modify and shape until it's useful to them.
Do you live in an area where you're at threat from grizzly bears?