This is why Europe must take control of its own defense. Europe doesn’t want to be a mere vassal of the US for precisely this reason.

The United States is currently experiencing a shortfall in the number of immigrant workers. This has exacerbated service disruptions and labor shortages in vital industries that rely on immigrant workers, like leisure and hospitality. However, the impact of this shortfall extends beyond just the industries in which foreign-born workers perform a significant share of the labor. For example, immigrants also help counteract the slowing growth rate of the U.S. population, which helps drive the expansion of the labor force and contributes to overall economic growth.

Foreign-born workers are more likely to participate in the labor force than their native-born peers. As a result, immigrants have helped power the U.S. economic recovery by returning quickly to work, despite being disproportionately affected by job losses during the pandemic.

The importance of foreign-born workers will only continue to grow over time, as these workers remain vital to sectors that drive economic innovation and competitiveness. For example, jobs in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), which rely on the contributions of immigrants, are projected to continue growing faster than other occupations. Similarly, foreign-born workers are vital to the care industry, shouldering a significant share of the work performed by home health care and child care workers. Immigrant workers, a significant share of them women, are also helping to meet the growing demand for caregivers as the overall population ages.

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Am I the only one who finds this kind of disturbing? We need immigrants because Americans aren’t willing to do certain jobs, for the amount of money that companies want to pay, and because Americans aren’t having enough babies? We need immigrants because we don’t do a good enough job developing talent and competency in STEM fields? We need immigrants because our people don’t want to do home health care or child care work, for the amount of money those companies are willing to pay? It sounds like immigration is necessary due to our own failures.

That’s not good, and I don’t think immigration really solves the problem. In fact, I think it makes it worse, because it allows us to continue to not invest in our own people the way we should. Plus, what happens to those other countries? If we have all their talented and hard working laborers, what are they going to do?

Over the past few years, about 4 in 10 young women between the ages of 18 and 29 have described their political views as liberal

I wonder how the other 6 in 10 young women would describe their political views. While 40% isn’t a majority, I would think liberals are a plurality. Still, it’s a little disheartening that there isn’t a clear majority in the US. It would be nice if a majority of Americans could reach a consensus.

RIP Lt. Zogg

I’m ok with a decent amount of tech in a car. Like I’m fine being able to connect my phone to the car and have android auto take over the infotainment system.

This reminds me of my 2016 Honda Civic. It had just the right amount of tech.

Is mpox going to trigger another pandemic?.. That seems highly unlikely.

Well, I guess that answers that question.

If the world was warming even faster than scientists thought it would, seemingly jumping years ahead of predictions, would that mean even more crucial decades of action had been lost?

Yes. Yes it would.

There is this prevailing narrative – and a lot of it is being pushed by the fossil fuel industry and their enablers – that climate action is too difficult, it’s too expensive

The thing is, adequately addressing the climate crisis is going to be very difficult and expensive. We should do it anyway, because if we don’t the consequences are likely to be severe, but I don’t think we should lie to people and say it’s going to be cheap and easy. This is going to be hard. Really hard. This is our moonshot, only many times more difficult. But that’s exactly why we should do it.

Somewhere along the line, we turned into a country that is afraid of doing anything too difficult. We used to do things because they were difficult, now we shy away from anything that’s even remotely challenging. Do people remember JFK’s ‘We Choose To Go To The Moon’ speech?

We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard; because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills, because that challenge is one that we are willing to accept, one we are unwilling to postpone, and one we intend to win

What happened to us? I think I answered my own question: we need leaders who can inspire people to take on incredible challenges. We need someone who will stand up in front of the American people and say, “yes, addressing climate change is going to be hard, and that’s exactly why we are going to do it! We can do it, we must do it, we will do it.”

If a laptop is left unattended long enough to do a fresh Arch install, it’s probably been abandoned anyway.

Flatpaks aren’t perfect, but I think it’s a good solution to the fragmentation problem that is inherent to Linux.

The same for defending Poland against Hitler…

But the US didn’t prevent Hitler from invading Poland.

I support the international community coming together to help defend weaker nations from stronger nations with imperialist ambitions, but I don’t support the US involving ourselves in conflicts on other continents and saying that we are doing so for national security.

The US has keen, critical national security interests in supporting Ukraine…

What are those?

Most of the world’s carbon emissions come from burning fossil fuels, so, yes, it would be those fossil fuel producers who would be linked to those emissions. I suppose we could all come together and force those companies to shut down and cease operations immediately. Global greenhouse gas emissions would plummet, but the global economy would collapse and there would be mass starvation and death.