I’ve generally heard the origin explained as coming from an offshoot of the general scifi community in the late 70s to early 80. There are a lot of animal people in sci fi (things like aliens designed after animal people, or stories about animals given human traits and characteristics, or people being spliced with animal dna), and fantasy stuff which has a related audience, and some people particularly liked that trope.
I mean, the current borders of the US do include some former foreign states and land previously owned by others, that were taken over in the past, Hawaii for example. Does that not make it an empire, or does that stop counting after a century or so?
While I agree that its unlikely for him to go out that way, failed attempts dont make the chance zero. The people trying that only have to get lucky once, he has to avoid being unlucky every time.
I doubt they really have plans that far, and if they do, I doubt that a full on war to destroy western Europe would be that plan, vs trying the same tactics to manipulate the population as have been tried on the US. The US, and Russia, have the capacity, at least from their nuclear arsenals, to destroy Europe, certainly, but that capacity exists within Europe too. A full on war with Europe is unlikely for the same reason that a full on war between the US and the Soviet Union did not occur.
Beyond that, it should be considered that shared autocracy is not a particularly great incentive for alliance. It can represent a source of common interest for the elite against anything that threatens autocracy in general, but beyond that, there is no reason for an oligarch in one country to not see an oligarch in another power as much more than competition. If you want to own and control all you can, someone else also doing that is to be regarded with suspicion, not natural trust.
Screaming is just as exhausting and meaningless as not screaming.
My cats start 2 full hours or more before their feeding time, so that would be quite inaccurate
Has this kind of thing literally once in history ever ended well?
I mean, it’s more of a threat than it was. In all likelihood, this won’t be the last time reddit does something to really anger it’s userbase. There is a much higher chance of people leaving in future incidents if there is an alternative platform with enough users to actually have the content people want.
Even there though, what is the actual point of a phone app controlled smart toilet, even if you open sourced the whole thing? Unlocking one’s phone and tapping the app icon, and then presumably a button on the app, is going to take more time than one press of a lever that one is right next to anyway, and the latter doesn’t present as many points of failure.