When I bought my Windows 11 laptop a month ago, I was able to set up a local account after turning on airplane mode. (I had entered my wifi password in an earlier step since I thought it was just for installing updates.)

People seem to hold computers to a higher standard than other people when performing the same task.

Well, at least it’s literally true, which is a standard the things he says don’t often meet these days.

The dolphin was diagnosed only a few weeks ago, but it died over two years ago in March 2022.

This isn’t a proposal to have the government pay for medical care. It appears to be a proposal to have nobody pay for medical care.

They’re on the windowsill. Just open the window and help yourself…

So, uh, who will actually be paying for medical care?

If I recall correctly, when trade is considered to be zero-sum, the net exporter gains and the net importer loses. Therefore if what’s bad for Israel is what’s good for Turkey and vice versa, this is worse for Turkey.

Maybe I’m wrong - I wasn’t very good at macroeconomics.

It sounds like it’s worse for Turkey than for Israel.

If I were him I would want to lose the mullet too, but he still looks better with it than I do with my bald spot.

The summoning circle is broken! You’re free!

I’m not saying that the US will attack Iran - I’m saying that the US will send ships to patrol the waters where this happened. There won’t be violence unless Iran messes with them, but I don’t see what Iran has to gain either from capturing a single freighter or from an increased buildup of American forces in the region.

I think it’s the other way around - the US is having a hard time suppressing the Houthis because there’s nothing in Yemen that’s worth blowing up other than the missile launchers themselves, which are mobile and easy to hide. Iran, on the other hand, has lots of valuable infrastructure.

This move keeps the U.S. out of the conflict

I’m not sure why you think so. The US usually treats freedom of the seas as a pretty big deal. I don’t think that there will be violent retaliation solely for seizing this ship, but I do expect American naval patrols in the region with authorization to fire on Iranians that try something like this again.

Strong black tea with a wedge of lemon (but I messed up my teeth so now lemon would make them very sensitive).

Did you know that turtles scream when they, uh, copulate? Imagine how loud a dinosaur would have been.

I don’t necessarily disagree with you, although I think Iran has a lot more ambition to expand its sphere of influence than the other Middle Eastern theocracies do and this would naturally bring it into conflict with the USA even if there wasn’t a historic enmity between the two countries. (Consider Russia as an example of a country that the USA had no particular hostility towards, despite the Cold War, but now actively opposes due to its ambitions.)

As the article states, a war with Iran would not be good for anyone but it would be worse for Iran than for the USA. If the USA and Iran were purely rational agents, the USA would push back against Iranian influence and Iran would back down - its options would be to lose without a fight or to lose even more if it fought a war.

Of course in the real world rulers are often irrational, or more concerned about domestic affairs than foreign ones. (Maybe it’s better to rule an Iran battered by war than to be overthrown in an Iran that passively accepts containment.) Even rational rulers can miscalculate or underestimate their enemies.

Still, I think much of Iran’s recent success in growing its influence is due to a lack of political will in the USA for any sort of foreign intervention after Iraq and Afghanistan, rather than to a deliberate decision that allowing Iran to expand its influence is in America’s best interests.

My dog loved being covered by a blanket but he never managed to figure out how to get under it himself so when he wanted to go to bed, he would come to me and whine until I tucked him in.

They might be some kind of cigarette/drugstore/pantry beetle, in which case they’re pests that live wherever humans do rather than a local species.