As a Canadian who’s (very) thankfully becoming American I can guarantee you that American government is very incompetent. At least in comparison to a Commonwealth one. The wait times, the level of uncaring, the general attitude was jarring when I first moved here.
I even worked as for a few years for the gov, and the bureaucracy is even worse inside!
The IRS support line used to be pretty good about 10 years ago. I once called their help line to to clarify some complexity in filing and they routed me to a tax specialist who knew exactly how to resolve my issue and saved me $5k vs what the tax preparer did. But since their budget has been cut back a lot so that rich people have a harder chance getting audited. So its not incompetency but a deliberate effort to weaken is powers.
Ive grown to love Americans (of all walks of life) in way I have never loved the people of any other country I’ve lived in. Not even the people of my parent’s country - the loss of which I still mourn.
Canadians, Ive loved least despite having a best friend and close family.
I have never heard a Canadian say that, in fact as a (also) Latin American immigrant it was made clear to me that “Canada is not America you retard” in high school.
I agree with Latin Americans, for what its worth. USA is “United States of America” not “United States, America”. But its a useless fight. In Spanish Ill be precise.
Even Brazil is in America. This is why I dislike using the term "American" when referring to US citizens, it's hopelessly ambiguous: are you talking about the country or the continent?
Among native English speakers, “American” almost always means someone from the United States. That’s partly because, unlike every other country, the US doesn’t have a convenient adjective for its residents.
However, after a few years in Central America I’ve broken myself of this usage. Spanish has an adjective for US people (aside from gringo, etc.) that I can use in Spanish, and when speaking English I find some other phrase. Note also that for many people in South and Central America “America” is what US people call “the Americas”: one continent, not three.
The problem is that the adjective “United Statian” is a mouthful; Yankee (my dad’s favorite) unfair; gringo refers (used to?) to Italians in Argentina.
United States doesn't have an adjective. Colombian would be nice, but its also taken and now problematic.
>The problem is that the adjective “United Statian” is a mouthful
Even that can be confusing. United states could also refer to Mexico, which has the actual name "United Mexican States". Someone from Mexico can rightly call themselves from united states.
In 1933 Congress unilaterally devalued the dollar by nearly seventy percent, rewrote the gold clauses in private contracts, largely forbid the private possession of gold, and managed to get away with it. The Supreme Court conveniently decided to ignore the Constitution on that occasion.
On the flipside, at least it ultimately resulted in laying the background that politically enabled private ownership of gold again. I'd rather be able to trade away my pieces of paper for gold than play a rigged game where I buy pieces of paper that 'represent' gold I can't own.
If a state did it, it would be a straightforward violation of the Contracts Clause. With regard to Treasury bonds and gold certificates it was the government rewriting its own contracts. It was a violation of the contract on every Federal Reserve Note and bank deposit as well. Redemption in gold had been suspended before, but the value had not been, and in the late nineteenth century the government started redeeming gold certificates again at full face value after an interruption during and after the Civil War.
So if you start out by issuing an executive order requiring everyone to turn in their gold in exchange for certificates denominated in dollars and then a few months later you decide that those certificates and all other deposits are worth 70% less in gold then they were before it amounts to a systematic taking that looks like the worst violation of the Takings Clause ever. i.e. "Nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation" (from the Fifth Amendment).
In theory states could do something similar under the taxing power, but Congress doesn't have the power under the Constitution to enact property taxes in any way that is practical. We have the 16th Amendment so they could do that in a practical way on incomes.
Congress just decided to jointly repossess 70% of the financial wealth of the country, and ignore every solemn representation they or anyone else had ever made to the contrary. It that is not unconstitutional it should be.
There were alternatives, they could for example have recapitalized the Federal Reserve system, with a debt for equity swap at the cost of wiping out the original shareholders, of course. The banks held title to a worthless enterprise and Congress sanctioned a massive levy of their depositors to keep them afloat.
All on 5-4 votes, which is not exactly a compelling vote of confidence for a contract case.
"Justice McReynolds wrote the dissenting opinion. He protested that gold clauses were binding contracts, and that allowing the administration's policies to stand would permanently damage faith in the government to uphold its own contracts and those of private parties. McReynolds distinguished the cases at hand from the Legal Tender Cases, arguing that in the earlier cases the government sought to continue operating until it could meet its obligations, while the Roosevelt administration apparently sought to nullify them."
Of course. And the SCOTUS under FDR was ruling under the threat of court packing. A lot of rulings from then are risible.
My favorite is telling a farmer his homegrown pig feed is illegal because it effects interstate commerce.
The one that best illustrates bad law with good intentions is the migratory birds act: protect wildlife -> good. Doing so by making international treaties supersede the constitution -> not good (that ruling has been cut back)
“metrics like debt to GDP indicate they're currently fighting a bigger war than WWII,”
Meaning that the GDP trends as if we’re in a WW3 situation and loosing, not that we are. I.E the GDP/debt metric appears to be as bad as if we were loosing a war when in fact we’re not even fighting one.
Ironically I disagree with both points. Yes the economy is bad, yes it will get worse but:
- I don't think the economy is as bad as losing a world war; the US has too many fundamentals in her favor (namely resources and a strong Navy to prevent outside threats).
- Ironically enough we are in fact loosing a low intensity world war, mostly fought in diplomatic relations with third world countries. Just like the first Cold War, but with weaker fundamentals on our side.
Weaker fundamentals? Do you really think the relationships with third world countries are more strained than were during active colonization? Russia and China did a lot of work with their infrastructure programs but I am still not sure they have the upper hand.
Our industrial base is gutted and we don't have enough resources. Not enough to sustain our extravagant lifestyles.
Europe has to find a way to buy Rubles quickly or choose between freezing or damaging capital goods (there are industries that cant be shut down because they get damaged).
There’s not enough American LNG to rescue Europe, and if there were there arent enough ports to import it. Anyway, nascent American populism will make sure Americans get (cheap) gas first.
Even if we assume the measurers of inflation are honest, using honest metrics, inflation is hard to measure and the measurement has a natural skew downwards.
We’ve all heard about shrink inflation by now. Theoretically that’s measurable by taking the Oz. into account.
But how about the drop in quality of goods? Raisin Bran with few raisins, cars with thinner door panels, etc. This is impossible to measure, obviously happens, and is systematic in one direction resulting in a lower reported inflation rate.
Ya, that happened to me once (Im almost 6’2’’). A guy who couldn't have been 5 10 was insisting he was 6 and that I was taller than stated. What was weird was that we were alone. He was only lying to himself.
And you know what, he was a bit weird looking. He had bad posture. But he was a good guy. A smart, hard working guy with a big heart.
This height thing is annoying. Id gladly trade inches of height in exchange for other inner character traits (courage, perseverance, conscientiousness). Intelligence I have to spare, but what good is it without character?
Sometime in the middle of last year I was seated outside a coffee shop and a guy comes up and he's like "how tall are you?" So I say I'm 6'2", which I am, approximately (age shrinking does not seem to have set in last I checked) - and he goes "oh cool I'm 6'8"." and then just turns around and leaves. Though I wasn't checking, I don't think his height was actually much different from my own. Apparently he needed to feel ultra tall or something.
When I consider all the cheaters in online video games who do it solely to "subtly" pad their stats, it's not really that astonishing that widespread height cheating would be a thing too.
one thing that people don't realize is that they shrink as they age past a certain point (common to lose an inch), and I believe that bad posture can increase this. When I was 18 I was 6'4 but I'm pretty sure I must be around 6'2 - 6'3 by now. So maybe he got measured one time, without taking shoes off, and stood up really straight and he got told 6 when he was 5'11.6, and it's been like that in his head ever since.
While this does happen, and someday it will happen to me if I survive long enough, I gained close to two centimeters in height within six months of starting a regular weightlifting program which is heavy on squats. Apparently there are enough small support muscles along the spine that bulking all of them up buffed my height stat.
This is distinct from the practice teaching me a more upright posture, which it also did, this isn't subjective height, it's the kind you can measure at some gyms on the weight station in bare feet.
Edit: occurs to me this raises... certain questions! Nothing more biochemically interesting than creatine.
to clarify, because that is what I was last measured at, don't know if I shrank, and anyway don't want conversations, oh people shrink with age about 1 inch so I am probably 6'3 seems too much for someone who asks what height you are which is just filler conversation.
Im a quarter inch shy of 6’2’’. So, indeed, 6’1’’.
My old man is 6’4’’ and when I was young he’d rib on me that I never got past 190 (we’re metric background). Now I don’t care much about height. At 70, he’s shrunk to my eye level and of all his traits height is the one Id rather not have inherited and gotten his monastic character instead.
Its not the height, its the strut. Online women cant see you strut so heights the proxy.
My wife's cousin’s 5’6’’ but Ive seen women go up to him and strike a conversation by the way he walks. Ive been in parties where he’s nailed every girl (including sisters and wives) in the room. Me? Nothing much, and Im 6’2’’
OP was ironic restating verbatim what “conservatives” have been told over the last four-five years when they got ostracized for disagreeing with “liberals”.
“Build your own Twitter!”
“Build your own ISP!”
“Build your own DNS”
“Build your own copper lines!”
And now Chomsky has gone as far as to say that people who disagree with him (vis a vis vaccines) should be put in a desert and build their own societies. When asked if those people wouldn't die of starvation he shrugged it off.
"Conservatives" also believed that there is a "liberal bias" in social media. Pretty ridiculous seeing that there is an rise of autocracies world wide.
This is Germany doing something to not be seen doing anything. Doing something for lack of a plan is usually a mistake.
Everything of value of this subsidiary has (pipelines, stored gas, etc), is physically in Germany and already subject to German law. The stored gas wasn’t going anywhere without the German regulator’s permission and the regulator can always force Gazprom Germania to sell German stored gas to Germans.
Nor does seizing this magically solve the problem of lack of gas. The Germans either abide by Russian rules for gas, or pipelines coming in from Russia remain empty.
This was a boneheaded move. The Russians can now seize a comparable German asset in Russia
to recompense Gazprom; say a VW plant, a real asset that can continue to produce real things while the Germans are left with old laptops, empty pipes, a salt cavern and unheated offices in Berlin.
Well, Gazprom changed ownership of Gazprom Germania without any approval from German government. So, apparently, it's not impossible that they would be able to do other things as well.
changing company structure while the assets remain in Germany (in fact they are immobile) is peanuts. Pretend change.
If they (the Russians) had tried to vent Germany’s gas reserves (which wont happen because the employees are German) to kneecap them (the Germans), then you would have seen the German regulator do something.
The answer to your actual question is rather simple - Maxwell’s law. But there’s a more interesting point in your question “how do you reference a signal?”. If you want to really understand this, Id read about diff mode and common mode signals.
Layman answer:
the signal is not DC so you can reference it to itself.
More specific:
The EMF must cause a current in the antenna (Maxwell’s law). This current causes the antenna to have a potential gradient along the length of the antenna. You can define any point along the antenna to be “ground” and take opposite ends of the antenna. (or not; ground is a conversion)
The receiver itself is just a fancy amplifier, it doesnt need a reference (you can keep everything as a differential value) but if you want to keep things simple, you can transform a differential signal to one referenced to an arbitrary DC point. Choose a battery terminal and call that “ground”
