The US Constitution gives the Executive official responsibility for the enforcement of all federal law.

Bout time.

Well, a lot of them were purged over the past few years. Fascists doing their thing you know. Things change though, that is one certainty. Not very predictably either.

Also note, I didn’t exactly say it would be easy. Simply possible. Where, say, an amendment that made voting mandatory would be actually fully impossible.

It’ll definitely take some time, effort and big time coalition building. I doubt this specific one would be as impossible as it might seem though, due to the specifics.

Small govt types could be convinced to support something limiting executive power. That’s all the libertarians and some conservatives. In a bloc with liberals and progressives, it could reach 2/3rds support with the populace. Barely. Then 2/3rds the states would have to ratify.

The fact that it would be for limiting the power of govt, is critical though. Fascists don’t want small govt and just lie about it, but many people actually do. That becomes a middle position liberals can work with in a case like this, since we support separation of powers.

It’s a battle that’s been going for centuries, bigger than any one of us. Taking it personally only has drawbacks, it’s not required for motivation. Breathing exercises can help.

Ah. Well, if all official duties of the Executive are immune to all laws lower than the Constitution itself, which itself bars him from very little and gives the Executive responsibility for enforcement of all laws, I guess a Constitutional Amendment is ultimately required then.

Authoritarians are irritating.

I know someone up there in years that enjoyed the Far Cry series. Didn’t really expect that. shrug

More generally I think it’ll commonly be something that relates to their interests when they were younger. Someone that retired 20 years ago from aerospace engineering might actually really enjoy Kerbal Space Program or even Outer Wilds, a former industrial foreman might like Factorio, for a retired military historian, bring on that Total War.

I can see games like Big Game Hunter and Truck Simulator being more broadly popular with certain segments. Some sports games maybe, like a tennis game or some golf thing maybe, I don’t know much about those. A simpler, realism-leaning racing game maybe. Flight simulator works great here.

The main thing is I’d avoid games with lots of layers of game design and abstraction. It should do what it says on the tin, and there shouldn’t be many steps or abstract mechanics between them and getting into the meat of the game and the core gameplay loop.

Minimal menus is probably a good idea. Like, a Paradox Interactive game would probably be a poor choice, just because they have so much you need to learn to become a proficient player. Fine text can be hard to read too, so menus and tooltips and complex status interfaces are usually gonna be pretty meh for most people. Can’t play Starcraft if you have to squint and lean in every time you want to know how many minerals you have.

Want that learning curve to just get into the initial gameplay to be pretty gentle overall. The experience should be fairly intuitive to real life, and real life doesn’t have that many menus and buttons. Usually, depending on their former career I guess.

Kudos for doing this btw.

(oh, and sorry I couldn’t answer your core question)

Very well summarized, I think this hits the majority of the most relevant points.

If you look at the Trump candidacy and things like qanon, it’d be hard to argue that the internet isn’t making inroads. My generation let this go on for long enough, it’s not about the lulz anymore. Lots of people are getting hurt, and it can still get worse.

I occasionally go through my old comments to see how things got received, see if I could improve my wording, things like that. General communications skill polishing. It’s not consuming as much as critically reviewing, but whatever.

Since I’m adding engagement on lemmy, and I do put some effort in to be amusing or informative or whatever (usually anyway), yes I do feel like I am helping. If I was on reddit or something, not so much.

I agree, that does sound plausible, if they had a listening station nearby.

While I agree with the broad strokes of what you’re saying, we do have enough intelligence penetration into the Russian military to predict an invasion even their own soldiers did not know about. We could potentially find out where their listening stations are. One would have to be very nearby.

Also, we have multiple subs. Revealing one temporarily does not compromise our deterrence. Nor is this move without any value, I think it’s important that we occasionally sabre-rattle back at them. It seems to be a language they understand.

All that said, I doubt nuclear WW3 is around the corner with MAD still being the case. I doubt non-nuclear WW3 is around the corner unless China joins Russia in a military alliance. What I do think is within the next few years is chipping away at the Russian economy and morale of the populace until they sue for peace in Ukraine.

After WW2 everyone felt really bad. And it was a west-leaning country in a region full of oil and big trade routes.

Most of the calculus has slowly changed over the years. The Congressionally-passed treaties all still remain though.

Certainly, a journalist could be an asset or informant or whatever you’d want to call it, for an intelligence service. He’s putting himself and his professional reputation at risk though. If the intelligence service wanted x piece of information about whatever, there are simply easier ways to get it. Bribe a Russian.

You don’t need to ask the American guy that everyone already knows about and is probably being watched to go look at it for you.

I also haven’t heard of any journalists being arrested for espionage in the west.

I see, I wasn’t aware the last outbreak had actually spread beyond the region. Thank you for the correction.

That said, I do not think reporting on every possible future pandemic actually helps more than it harms, in the grand scale of global mental health.

To me it looks like N Korea wanting to acquire some direct combat experience to continue to develop their skills and capabilities.

But yes, personally I was not expecting this.

We have vaccines, the last outbreak was contained. New ones can be contained as well. There is nothing mobilized support is needed for.

Unless they don’t have enough vaccines or something?

Funniest comment I’ve read in a pretty long time, props.

I just don’t really see the value of stories like this.

There is a vaccine, and it’s not capable of becoming a pandemic when it can only be transmitted through contact.

What is the benefit of updating us every time it mutates? Asides clicks for BBC.

Well, yeah, of course I cannot be certain. I am not that guy. That’s why I’m just trying to apply some basic sense. A spy to me is a person doing espionage work specifically for their government. The difference with a journalist is a journalist is not working specifically for their government, and will publicly publish their findings where a spy would usually not.