Agreed. One day I realized my computer was completely out of space, was barely still running. Turns out Microsoft store had dutifully downloaded many copies of a game until the entire drive was full. Uninstalling got rid of only one copy of the files. Store said it was no longer installed even though all the files of many copies were still there. Deleting them manually was a horrible mess of permissions issues, involving the need to edit the registry and things too. I think I ended up needing to boot into Linux from a usb stick to finally fix everything up. Anyways, steam for me if I have the choice. Let me just delete files if I need to Microsoft, geeze.

It shouldn’t be a big deal, but prior to the Biden administration, Betsy Devos under Trump was doing everything possible to block even already available student loan forgiveness and throwing up as much roadblocks as possible. The department education had to be sued in court to get loan forgiveness granted for things they should have been helping with not blocking. And even after all that they repeatedly failed to follow their own settlements and court orders for years, just refusing to grant forgiveness. So even though a lot of forgiveness was technically already on the books, having a administration actually helping this process instead of actively trying to prevent it is a huge breath of fresh air. They also previously changed many terms in public service loan forgiveness to help it apply to more people and made lots of other positive changes that luckily the supreme court did not block. At least not yet.

Just this one small part of the massive nationwide conspiracy of sedition is already much worse than Watergate.

Just to be clear, it’s not like a protective order for their person (though Jack Smith and others already have to travel with large security details because of the stochastic terrorism of Trump and most other Republicans), but a protective order of the evidence in the case given through discovery. So before the trial the prosecution has to show the defense all the evidence it has, which is called discovery. The prosecutors here are concerned that Trump is going to leak that info in some way, like witnesses lists, so that his supporters can harass and intimidate witnesses on his behalf. Or maybe even bribe them or something. What the prosecution is seeking is a protective order to prevent trump from releasing publicly any evidence that they obtain through discovery. Normally there wouldn’t be anything preventing a defendent from releasing that info, though most sane people wouldn’t generally want their incriminating evidence released publicly. If the order is granted and Trump violates it, he could theoretically be held in contempt and go to prison where he no longer can violate the order.

Exactly, Putin is constantly describing Europe as a vassal state of the US and tries to drive wedges between European and US cooperation, especially when our interests clearly align like in Ukraine. In fact the biggest per capita contributions to the Ukrainian defense effort come from European countries. It’s not like the US dragged Europe kicking and screaming to defend Ukraine, it’s pretty obviously even more important for Europe than for the US. This is why so many European countries like Germany have made major ramp ups in military spending and defense. All these calls about Europe being a vassal state are basically telling Europe to shoot itself in the foot to show how independent it is. If they want a more unified foreign policy, the answer isn’t stopping cooperation with the US and the defense of Ukraine. The answer is they have to work on more cooperation with their own member states so they can speak with a unified voice. Something Russia in reality actively works to prevent, using influence in countries like Hungary to drive a wedge in the EU and preventing unified foreign policy in the EU and from them becoming a more independent player.