Well, in Accounting terms, once you sell your investment you have realized the gains on it (and if you’re a person or a company, are now liable to pay tax on those gains), even if you use the money from the sale to buy the same thing again.

Gains on an investment which hasn’t been sold yet are unrealized gains (in common parlance “paper gains”) and don’t really count in accounting terms until you sell that investment so you don’t have to pay tax on it.

Amongst other things billionaires use this to pay no tax when the share value of the companies they own goes up: if they need money rather than sell their share holdings they take loans using the shares as collateral, and because the shares aren’t sold any gains aren’t realized, hence no tax is due.

The number of combinations of choices in social and human affairs is pretty much infinite so politics in a real Democracy could theoretically be infinite-sided (though only if there were no “representatives” of citizens and people directly voted on everything - i.e. direct Democracy)

Because the US isn’t really a proper Democracy (more like an attempt at one), the vote itself in American has only 2 real options, but there are other ways to expand the number of choices because the two main parties in America are umbrellas for ranges of possibilities and they do have somewhat democratic (rigged, but still with more choices than the actual vote) internal selection systems in the form of Primaries.

If one properly analyses it, it turns out the presidential selection system in the US is really a multi-stage affair in which two of the stages - the Primaries and the actual vote - are open to the public (though there is quite a lot of selecting going on behind closed doors even before the Primaries).

So if people participate in both Primaries and the actual vote, they de facto have more choices than 2.

Also another thing to keep in mind is that this is a cyclical process and the outcomes in one cycle - i.e. who won and by how much - influence what happens in the next cycle so the vote itself defines not just what happens in one election, but also which choices will be made available - i.e. which candidates will be fielded - in the next.

All this means that if one actually cares and makes an effort, there’s more “Democracy” to be had than it might seem at first sight and the vote itself has more influence than just that immediate choice, so anybody claiming that “you have no choice but to vote lesser evil” either has a simplistic view of things or are purposefully trying to deceive others.

This is without going down into the whole local politics and civil society participation, which in the US is almost as livelly Democratic as in Europe.

Only true if you think the entirety of politics fits in 1 bit.

It’s pretty sad that we didn’t even got a straightforward Dystopia like, say, Mad Max.

Instead we got a 1984-wrapped Stupidocracy.

If America and especially Israel were treated as pariah states, this shit would’ve been less likely to happen.

As it so happens Australia is one of their biggest cheerleaders.

Now is a very good time to exercise one’s Delayed Gratification ability.

Personally I think the canary was Britain with Brexit, but I grant you that unless one has lived there for a while it’s hard to really understand the politics of it all since due to their cultural favored image style, the Fascists in England are sleazy posh types kniffing others in the back rather than loud, obnoxious types punching others in the gut.

As I see it, America’s Iran is the violent and loud country version of Britain’s Brexit.

According the the lastest polls over 110 million Americans still think Trump is great and doing the right things.

Just keep unwaveringly supporting America and Israel mate!

The cost of the Artemis II mission is estimated to be $4.1 billion

Each day of the Iran war is estimated to cost $2 billion.

There is plenty of money, just not the will.

And this is not just a Trump thing: all US Administrations in the last couple of decades spent many, many times more in war than space exploration - for example the Iraq War was estimated to cost in total $1100 billion, whilst the one in Afghanistan was $2300 billion, which would be a lot more money in today’s terms.

Just not going to Iraq would, directly (so, not counting indirect costs due to increased terrorist threats as result of the growth of ISIS that happenned due to Iraqi military being put in the same prisions as Islamic extremists) have financed 275 Artemis II missions and that’s without taking in account Inflation (if done back then Artemis II would’ve been cheaper)

America, fast going backwards, has today reached 1969 1968, assuming that this mission succeeds.

(Edit: this is not even a moon landing so more Apolo 8 than Apolo 11).

Most headlines about America in the international press in the last month could just have been “Liar lies” and “Liar was once again proven to have lied”

All it needs is a bit of spit and polish.

That plane is resting.

It’s pining for the fjords.

- The BBC

“There were Hamas tunnels under that girls’ school!!!”

Sure mate, the Zionists are just gonna go “No, we don’t want it because this territory belongs to the Iranian people!” if they ever got a chance to capture it.

After all, Israel’s track record on what they do with any territory they capture in that area is not at all “hold it when they can and then when the locals fight against the occupation call them ‘violent’, ‘terrorists’ and even ‘vermin’ as an excuse to kill them, men, women and children” so clearly only an anti-semite^TM would dare think that Israel would take over somebody else’s territory and mass murder the locals whilst putting up Israeli “settlements” there.

Don’t tell us: for your next trick you’re going to click your heels 3 times whilst saying “there’s no place like home” and be teleported from fantasy land to your kibutz in “Occupied Territory”.

Sure mate, Israel isn’t at all trying to conquer all the territory it can and there is no such thing as Greater Israel plan.

On a similar note, there’s this river-crossing piece or realestate for sale in New York which would be a wonderful investment for the likes of you.

If they ever manage to conquer it, Israel would do in Iran (a country of 90 million people) a Genocide so large that it would make the NAZI Holocaust look like a minor footnote in History.

The ultra-racist extremelly violent Jewish-supremacist modern day version of the NAZIs have only not done even worse things than the NAZIs themselves because so far they have yet to occupy enough territory inhabited by people of the ethnicities they openly call “vermin”.

They could just target any ships from or to Iranian ports or of nations which support Iran with artillery or drones.

It’s exactly because it’s so stupidly easy to attack civilian ships in a space like that whilst it’s very hard to defend against it that Iran is able to do so even whilst under attack by American and Israel, so the country on the other side could do the same thing and only target Iranian or Iran-related ships.

Two can play the “fuck the other side’s ship” game there.

By international treaty, in a maritime border were one country is in one side and a different one in another, like that, the border sits right smack in the middle, equidistant of both sides, so soverignty over that Straight is divided.

What Iran has at the moment is the power to limit what passes there, but Oman could have the exact same thing if they so chose, since Oman too could do the same thing - for exactly the same reason Oman cannot stop Iran from attacking ships there (it’s a lot harder to protect civilian ships in range of land-based artillery/drones than to attack them), Iran would not be able to stop Oman from doing exactly the same.

So if Iran tried to have actual sovereignty over the whole Straight (full control, not just the ability to stop traffic there), Oman could fuck them up by doing exactly the same thing that Iran is doing now - it’s a game that two can play.

It’s generally agreed to officially put the border (and assign sovereignty) right in the middle in a situation like that exactly because otherwise the country on the side which “lost” would start fucking things up in that channel for all users.

The only way for Iran to officially get sovereignty of the whole Straight would be to conquer and occupy the land on the other side, and I doubt Iran has the capability to do so.