Hi there! Thanks for your answer, I'll do that!

America was always an empire, they just didn't call it that.

Which strawman are you flailing against? I havent said anything about human caused destruction, where are you getting that from? We act like we are the only emotional animals, only animals who think, etc. Who made that claim? Listen, if you want to say we are destroying certain species, environments, etc. ?? if humans were out of the picture there is nothing that would prevent another species from evolving and becoming sapient like humans. Of course not but there's nothing forcing it to happen either. Dinosaurs ruled the planet for far longer than mammals and they never got where we are You say we aren't that special but show me one other species that has created a civilization like humans, I'll wait.

Yet somehow that's a pretty big percentage of comments here.

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There are lots of such recordings on youtube. IDK what are on albums. Here, try some of these: https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=brautigam+beethoven+pianoforte

Depends how much you use it. I work in IT and plug my thumb drive in multiple times per day. In the past, most of my failures have been physical failures where the drive and the USB connection physically separate, or the USB connector just breaks. I have rarely encountered flash storage failures but I don't just put them in drawers for years, they get used a lot.

Find your local news sources, whatever they are, and add ALL of them. You can usually filter by local news so you don't get a bunch or repeat national/international news. Aside from that - this is a decent list to start from. <outline text="Ars Technica" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://feeds.arstechnica.com/arstechnica/index" htmlUrl="https://arstechnica.com/" description="Serving the Technologist since 1998. News, reviews, and analysis."/> <outline text="BleepingComputer" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/feed/" htmlUrl="https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/" description="BleepingComputer - All Stories"/> <outline text="Bloody Disgusting!" type="rss" xmlUrl="http://feeds.feedburner.com/BloodyDisgusting" htmlUrl="https://bloody-disgusting.com/" description="Horror movie news, reviews, interviews, videos, podcasts and more"/> <outline text="Deeplinks" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.eff.org/rss/updates.xml" htmlUrl="https://www.eff.org/rss/updates.xml" description="EFF's Deeplinks Blog: Noteworthy news from around the internet"/> <outline text="iFixit" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.ifixit.com/News/rss" htmlUrl="https://valkyrie.ifixit.com/" description="Fixing the world, one gizmo at a time."/> <outline text="Krebs on Security" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://krebsonsecurity.com/feed/" htmlUrl="https://krebsonsecurity.com/" description="In-depth security news and investigation"/> <outline text="NPR Topics: News" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://feeds.npr.org/1001/rss.xml" htmlUrl="https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=1001" description="NPR news, audio, and podcasts. Coverage of breaking stories, national and world news, politics, business, science, technology, and extended coverage of major national and world events."/> <outline text="Schneier on Security" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.schneier.com/feed/atom/" htmlUrl="https://www.schneier.com/"/> <outline text="Science &amp; Health – FiveThirtyEight" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://fivethirtyeight.com/science/feed/" htmlUrl="https://fivethirtyeight.com/" description="FiveThirtyEight uses statistical analysis — hard numbers — to tell compelling stories about elections, politics and American society."/> <outline text="The 19th" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://19thnews.org/feed/" htmlUrl="https://19thnews.org/" description="The 19th is an independent, nonprofit newsroom reporting at the intersection of gender, politics and policy."/> <outline text="Universe Today" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.universetoday.com/feed/" htmlUrl="https://www.universetoday.com/" description="Space and astronomy news"/> <outline text="Deeplinks" type="rss" xmlUrl="https://www.eff.org/rss/updates.xml" htmlUrl="https://www.eff.org/rss/updates.xml" description="EFF's Deeplinks Blog: Noteworthy news from around the internet"/>

So now we've established the comment was about countries, and you don't need to question it... I guess we're done here then

One finger curls on the monkeys paw, wish granted

I'm probably older than you: Nazis held a rally in Madison Square Garden once. Gitmo held people in cages, set dogs on people, did water boarding torture, then even more extreme torture was done via extraordinary rendition. The patriot act changed people's rights, invaded people's privacy, as did PRISM. Obama killed American citizens, as did the Move Bombing. America has done lots of stuff like this before, lots of it's been ongoing since before Trump... For instance Border Patrol existing in a grey area of legality, and having basically no oversight.

You make it sound like optical mouses were a no-brainer, but they were very much non trivial: it required both ingenuity and fairly sophisticated tech to make them work well.

Teenagers have always challenged the social norm. For example the work OK originated from teens purposely misspelling words in letters to one another to annoy the older generation. Do I feel like teenagers today are worse behaving than when I was young? Yes, just like the older generation probably thought my generation was behaving when I was a teenager. The internet just let's it spread faster, so maybe in that extent the answer would be yes, but I don't think their behavior is the Internet's fault.

2.5k€ for a house in Italy still sounds like a pretty wild deal tho ::: spoiler Tap for spoiler ~(its probably not, unless you are very aware of what you are actually getting yourself into!) :::

There are other examples of possibilities than the USSR. Western Europe gave up most of their colonial possessions after WW2. They ended up fine. Arguably better off, even. Ancient Rome went through many periods of crisis and getting their shit back in order. The Eastern half of the Empire went on for about another 1000 years after the split--it lasted almost long enough to see Columbus get completely lost and stumble on some land. At one point, it held almost the whole territory of the original Roman empire, albeit briefly. There are a million ways this can go. Liberal America could reassert itself more or less as it was. It could break into coalitions of loosely affiliated states kinda like Prussia. It could undergo great reforms and fix a lot of problems with its structure of government. I couldn't even guess which is more likely right now.