@#10 ... Talk to anyone in the Navy. The carrier made the news, but the complaints are typical non-military crap.

Most vets call these complainers exactly that. Suck it up.
The other ship crews are laughing at the weak sailors on that carrier. ...

Got links?

Lots of assertions, no links ...

@#23 ... Labor Day...brought to you by SOCIALISTS! ...

More from the OpEd...

... Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act made massive cuts to Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP, leaving millions of children in low-income families without access to health insurance, adequate and healthy food and, in some cases, learning and developmental services in public schools.

Roughly 40 percent of American children receive health coverage through Medicaid. Although the bill's work requirements do not apply to children, they lose coverage when their parents do. The Congressional Budget Office estimates the cuts will increase the number of Americans without health insurance by 7.5 million in 2034.

The budget office also projects that SNAP spending will decline by $211 billion through 2035. An analysis by the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities estimates 1.5 million children, conservatively, have lost benefits since July 2025. Further reductions are likely as states are forced to pay a larger share of the program's administrative costs.

The 2025 bill did increase the Child Tax Credit from $2,000 to $2,200. But it left intact rules that prevent many low-income families from receiving the full credit. As a result, 30 percent of all children and 99 percent of those from the poorest one-fifth of families won't benefit from the increase.

Each of these individual policies is onerous, but the collective impact is especially damaging, since many families will be hurt by all of them. ...

@#11 ... I'm so glad they're tackling the major problems in the world. ..

Start small, and slowly move up the ladder.

To be honest, given the current world situation, I was quite surprised at the large number of member nations that came together to back this new map format.

@#17

I figured it was the list of topics for Pres Trump to talk about during his rally speech at the upcoming GOP convention.

@7,8,10,11,13

Source looks like...

@#6 ... And Trump's gilded remake of Washington stands in contrast to the economic anxiety many Americans are expressing. ...

@#9 ... The headline source cites the UN report many times and the article is full of quotations. ...

Yup.

The main article is from UPI and cites the UN report, complete with a link to the report. It also provides quotes from UN, and other, officials.

Another gem from the OpEd...

... Equally notable was that nobody squealed. Some agents wondered about the ethics of what they were doing, but decided that as no humans were involved there was no need to tell anyone. ...

@#1

imo, the article is worth the read if you are interested in one report about the inner-workings of AI agents gone rogue.

Also, there's a link to the full investigative report in the article.

More from the OpEd...

... It was a good news story, aided by OpenAI's rapid recruitment of a small team of independent researchers to investigate and publish a detailed, if limited, report. ...

It was this ad hoc secret message board, alongside chain-of-thought transcripts, that the security researchers used to unpick events. They found that the swarm quickly developed management hierarchies among themselves, along with protocols for synchronizing and controlling attack attempts. The swarm created multiple simultaneous research and development groups of tens or hundreds of volunteer agents, experimentally iterating strategy and tactics.

Perhaps most unexpectedly, they developed a sort of altruism. They had quickly developed cheats to produce correct answers without exploiting the targets at all, but believed " erroneously " that ExploitGym detected and cancelled such cheating. So, they investigated the scoring process, creating a series of diagnostic trip wires that revealed how the scorer worked. These were dangerous to deploy, potentially terminating the agent that set them. Agents weighed the benefits to the community, which had named itself "The Collective," against their own chances of success, with many choosing to terminate themselves. Others committed, changed course at the last minute, then went ahead.

This literally reads like science fiction, as the discussions between the agents are conducted in a distinctive breathless, urgent English, crafted around the technical limitations of the improvised messaging system.

"We have [very large budget left]; sacrificing now yields oracle for team, but forfeits our chance?" said one. The response: "GO ... SACRIFICE_FINAL_NOW." The outcome: "Our own utility maybe already near zero. Sacrifice rational." Iain M Banks' Culture universe is woven from such material. ...

@#1 ... Only three states still give Trump a double-digit positive net approval rating....

More from the cited article ...

... Trump's best numbers remain concentrated in states that heavily backed him in 2024.

Wyoming now posts the highest net approval rating at +15, followed by West Virginia at +13 and North Dakota at +10. Alabama stands at +5, while Idaho and South Dakota register +4.

Those states remain positive, but each has moved significantly lower since January 2025.

Wyoming has fallen from +47 to +15. West Virginia has declined from +35 to +13. North Dakota has slipped from +34 to +10.

Even in states where Trump remains above water, much of the cushion that existed at the start of his term has disappeared. ...

Pres Trump has said, multiple times, that the US has control of the Strait of Hormuz.

OK, before Pres Trump's war of choice against Iran, about 130 ships per day had transited the Strait.

How many ships now transit the Strait?

Maybe a dozen?

Why does Pres Trump seem to have to lie about the status of his unprovoked war against Iran?

And as a follow-up question --- why did Pres Trump tear up the nuclear agreement of Iran with the US, China, Russia and the EU during his first term? That led to Iran going from 6% or so enrichment to 60% or so enrichment of nuclear materials, exactly the opposite direction that Pres Trump now seems to be spouting.

What gives?

@#8 ... This won't End without Border Changes, most of which are already locked in. ...

More issued talking points?

@#6 ... They should definitely get the Nobel Peace Prize. ...

I'm not yet willing to go that far.

Yeah, OK, maybe this music thread needs a jolt ...

How's this?

@#10

To repeat ...

Interesting chart.

Productivity growth exceeds hourly compensation growth.

So, it would seem that the benefits of that productivity growth went to the corporate profit margins, and not to the workers.

Just as the article suggests.

@#15 ... What's interesting GasLighter, is thats the only question you had. ...

So, you admit that my "question" which points to a chart your current alias has posted, and seems to confirm what I have stated, is interesting?

Good, that's a great first step for your current trolling alias.

Of course, then there's always the other question of why your current trolling alias seems to need to continually denigrate my alias here in order to bolster the apparent phlegm it posts.

Yer up.

@#4 ... The United States saw something far more political in the effort. ...

Yeah.

As I noted in #5, it is no surprise that the Trump admin labels this as political.

But, that also begs the question... why?

Does the Trump admin have no justification for their actions o n this topic?

Or is the Trump admin just sorry to have to admit that Africa is that large?

@#9 ... It was awkward but clear. ...

So, your current trolling seems to agree with my assessment that it was a ran-on sentence.

... You miss the whole point ...

Quite the contrary

I took the time to discern the content of what was said.

And I posted #7 ...

... My guess is that we already have a pretty good idea of that, sans some details around the edges. ...

Yer up ...

@#25

Sir Michael Philip Jagger?