A lot of people on here are making the point that war is profitable in many cases. They aren't wrong, but it's much simpler than that and has nothing to do with money. The entirety of the sovereign state based system we live in is predicated on the premise that to consolidate power you have to have a monopoly on use of force. And when you have a bunch of individual states claiming sovereignty over a bunch of individual territories, the only way that sovereignty is actually worth anything is if that state is willing to put up a right to prove it. I think the only way we will ever get away from war in the way we see it now is by moving onto an Earth-encompassing single state. We are a long, long way off from that.

So full disclosure: I am not trans but I have a legitimate question. Why is there so much pressure on trans people to put themselves into one box or another? Isn't the recognition of gender fluidity supposed to free people from sex-based boxes and social norms? This is not me saying at all that people shouldn't be able to express themselves as they want or shouldn't be able to identify in whatever way makes them most comfortable, but I find it hard to reconcile these two sides to what I see as the same coin. Maybe you could provide some perspective to me? I wish you the best and hope you get some good answers from people much more knowledgeable than me!

Used to scroll endlessly when bored but now I try to force myself to open up a book on my Kindle app when I have free time...or I gett on Lemmy/kbin 🫣.

This is sound advice. I'm under no illusion that you owe any company any "loyalty," but a little bit of professionalism goes a long way. People talk, and many industries are much, much smaller than they seem.

Currently making my way through The Guns of August. It's pretty dense compared to what I usually read but something about the writing style makes each chapter fly by faster than expected!

I think the issue is packing SCOTUS isn't even a band aid fix to the problem. You'd have to completely overhaul the way the Court works to get a meaningful impact on the way it operates currently. I've seen ideas floated like expanding the judiciary and then choosing a certain number of justices randomly to preside over each case, but that is probably worse than our current system because you could end up with an even more radical Court presiding over a very impactful case.