I particularly liked the underlying assumption throughout the article that Trump absolutely has to have Iran capitulate and therefore the only thing they can do is to continue to escalate. That "declare victory and leave" isn't something they've even considered.
The way they pushed through the "renovation" (aka destruction) plans was by secretly voting beforehand that anyone who was non-Trumpian wasn't allowed to vote (that's why they were all muted on the call). I fully expect this to go a similar way: she'll get access to the plans, but not be allowed to vote. Or perhaps she'll be the only non-Trumpian allowed to vote.
I'd rather the Chinese still owned TikTok than a bunch of corrupt Techbro billionaires who have already admitted they want America entirely owned by themselves and their friends and the rest of us as slaves - if that. All the forced sale of TikTok stuff was to give them another tool to pacify and brainwash the masses while they consolidate their control.
Yeah, there was another site I checked with a couple months ago, and it was showing one local company supplying office equipment and another one selling training munitions; neither of those are listed here.
Initial thoughts, which shouldn't cost much if any money:
Check your hard drive: how full is it? Clear out caches and programs you never use. Maybe run a check for bad sectors. Way back in the day, I'd suggest defragging the drive, lol.
Update your definitions and run a virus check on your laptop: you may have picked up a virus or PUP that's slowing you down.
Take a look at Task Manager at various times: are you close to maxing out RAM, processor, or disk cache? Figure out if there are processes running that you can kill.
Go through everything that's set up for Quick Start and set it to non-Quick Start if you're not using it regularly. [I just set everything to non-Quick Start.]
If your browser supports it, install Ublock Origin. If you can do it, install a pi-hole.
While you're at it, check your router. This is a laptop, so I'm assuming it's not wired to the internet, but if it is, try switching out the wire in case it's worn. Check the cables between the router and the wall while you're at it.
Unplug your router for at least a minute, then start it up again.
Are you running a lot of different devices that may be interfering with your connection, or running against potential high-bandwidth applications (streaming, livestreaming, torrenting)?
Is this problem specific to one or more areas? It's possible that you're too far from the router or there are things obstructing the signal.
Are there times that you get better speed (either times of day or times of the month)? Your ISP may be congested or they may be throttling your connection.
Did you leave your wifi open and other people are piggybacking off it? Is it running recent firmware?
Consider contacting your ISP and asking them to run a line test to see if there are issues external to your home. (Be prepared for them to try to upsell you.)
Switch to a lightweight browser like Firefox, Vivaldi, or Cromite.
Things that you can do that will cost money: increase the memory in your laptop (you have 4gb, it can take up to 12gb). If it's not already on an SSD, switch to an SSD.
What I miss most are the (physically) local communities. On reddit, there was a subreddit for my general locality, and the nearby big city, and several subreddits on different aspects of life (the music scene, the food scene, etc). I miss that - randomly finding an event or something interesting simply because I came across a random post.
I know it's a function of the fact that it's still (comparatively) early days, but I do miss it.
You know how there's always this one lingering childhood resentment that's hard to let go of? Here's mine:
I don't remember exactly how old I was, just that it was some age when candy and presents were really important. But however old I was at the time, I got chicken pox as a kid (no vaccines for it back then).
I got it around Halloween, and my parents wouldn't let me go out trick-or-treating. I objected strongly because, you know, candy! So they sent my sisters out with a spare pillowcase to collect candy for me, which they dutifully did.
When they got back, instead of coming into the house, they sat down on the sidewalk a couple houses away and dumped each pillowcase into it's own separate pile. Then they traded out all of my chocolate for all of their Mary Janes and Bit o' Honeys. I had literally no chocolate or other preferred candy in my bag, it was all the crap candy no one ever wanted. I complained to my parents and was told that I should be grateful just to be getting any candy at all.
Two months later, both my sisters got chicken pox. My grandparents, saying how awful it must be to have chicken pox over the holidays, gave them extra Christmas presents. This is my lingering childhood resentment, and the injustice of it still stings.
I mean, you can, but the cases in the US were imported from elsewhere: the ones in the Northeast are generally from heavily Orthodox Jews traveling to or from Israel; the cases in the southwest started among the Mennonite community and was imported from Mennonites in Mexico. Unfortunately, vaccine resistance is pretty high among both groups.
The better way to handle it would be to require that travelers to your country have been vaccinated, and that refugees and asylum seekers are kept in quarantine and given vaccinations before they're paroled to the general public. There'll still be people who slip through the cracks - immigrants who manage to avoid processing, people traveling on small boats or small planes, etc - but it would be a start. Unfortunately, I don't know how well that plays with all the various "free travel" rules.
QAnon people would go absolutely rabid conspiracy minded.