Actually, the first thing we tried generally WAS ethanol. The company that made TEL discarded it as a fuel additive because they couldn't patent and control it.
We poisoned the world with lead because it was more profitable for a single company.
There's an entire microcosm on youtube of former games journalists, generating a variety of content from good to slop. Most of them are from when "Games journalist" was still a classically trained journalist, and had real credentials and knowledge of how to critique the art form. Which is why they were generally pushed out, to be replaced with know nothings who are just there to parrot a script.
Both Itch.io and GOG are alternative platforms, as is just doing your own thing
Many games I own started their life distributed exclusively through a platform other than steam.
Arguably, you don't even want to approach steam distribution until you've already collected your hype. Steam no longer can surface gems, because it's just far too flooded, so you should seek alternative channels in general.
While Bush Jr was definitely doing it to give yet another handout to corn growers, it solved a real problem.
After we phased out TetraEthyl Lead from gas, we still needed an octane booster, because for gas to be cheap, it uses low octane components. So we used something called MTBE. The problem is that your average corner gas store has terrible infrastructure, and their gas tank leaks a lot. MTBE kept getting into water sources and hurting people.
Ethanol is a good octane booster, and it doesn't poison anyone or the environment. It also slightly reduced dependence on foreign oil at a time when that was still an issue.
So it's wasteful, not at all "Green", and inefficient, but do we have a replacement octane booster that wont poison people?
It's not at all a jobs program. Corn growing is extremely mechanized. It's done entirely by megacorp megafarms. They are very wealthy companies owned by very wealthy people who continue to vote for republicans exclusively for lower taxes on wealthy people. They don't do it for better policy, as Trump alone has cost that industry over $30 billion in lost sales during his two terms, from poorly run trade wars.
It's a million times worse than that. Drones have commoditization accuracy and precision and dramatically improved ISR, and that has produced a dramatic jump in lethality.
You used to be able to take a hit and survive a war. Those days are gone. Now you die because 1kg of C4 blew up your entire ass, or you take a less dramatic hit but you will never be dragged back to a field hospital.
Eventually the US or similar will have to get into this kind of war, and there will be a come to jesus moment for all the hoo rah americans who think your chances of surviving a war are based on anything other than sheer luck.
This is Bad, man.
Nukes already showed you can't make a weapon so crazily deadly and destructive that man would end war, so things will be bleak for the rest of humanity's reign.
To be frank, you seem to have a cartoon's idea of war.
US is the only country that maybe has a capability to carpet bomb someone to rubble. Russia has always preferred to do it with Artillery anyway, which they have done to many many Ukrainian cities.
A prolonged strategic bombing campaign that can "Wipe a city off a map" takes weeks, hundreds of bombers, and tens of thousands of tons of explosive, and either air supremacy to protect your bombers (not sufficient against a target with SAMs) or the ability to build hundreds of those bombers fresh.
Literally nobody can do that anymore. America can maybe do that once or twice. Only 60ish B52s even remain.
Russia cannot fly a plane into Ukrainian airspace. They barely even fly over Russia's side of the line right now.
They toss bomb from miles back.
Flying conventional bombers over enemy cities requires the ability to replace most of your bombers per year, or air supremacy, neither of which Russia has even a hope of doing.
WW2 was industrialized the likes of which nobody has ever seen again.
Because "Flatten a city" actually takes dramatically more scale than anyone has seen in decades.
40k Tons of bomb were dropped on Berlin in WW2. That's nearly all explosive payload too.
That's about equivalent to 80k modern cruise missile warheads.
The US has built less than 5000 Tomahawk missiles ever.
Russia has fired approximately 6000 missiles into Ukraine in the course of the war.
This is why the US still maintains a fleet of ancient "Bomb Truck" style bombers in the B52. Nothing compares to 100 B52s flying over a target for weeks. They allowed us to drop 20k tons of bombs on Vietnam and the surrounding countries. A horrific capability.
Gaza is a combination of Israel being utterly fucking insane and apparently desiring to terrorize people, and the fact that Gaza is super tiny.
Tens of millions of Americans, usually supporters of the 2nd, have openly declared that having a firearm on you while at a protest is a crime punishable by death, and have done nothing to stand up against Trump, who has openly declared his hostility to the 2nd amendment multiple times now.
Bringing a rifle to a protest you expect to get hot, brandishing it about, and then shooting someone in self defense is perfectly fine, but having an every day carry firearm, getting held down by the president's personal paramilitary org, and being shot execution style is apparently fine.
I'm sick and tired of the stupid claims about how important the 2nd is while the very advocates of it only bring it up to talk about how much they want to shoot democrats.
They were the ones complaining that we were "brainwashed" when we decried Trump in 2016. They were the ones complaining we were overreacting to him being elected again. They were the ones cheering for DOGE while we pointed out how obviously stupid it was.
Now they feel safe to be loud and proud of their ignorance.
You mean the thing that held Screwworm at bay for decades and kept our beef prices low? That we will now need to spend $Billions re-curtailing because we don't have as much of the capability to do that anymore?
The world runs on Siemens, Bosch, Rolls Royce, Bayer. Even adversarial countries buy German Marine Diesels for their warships. Europe makes better warships than the US, who has spent the last 40 years twiddling it's thumbs and can no longer make modern frigates apparently, and prefers to spend it's naval efforts on the Tsar's moronic toy boat.
Unilever makes up half of the non-food items in your grocery store. Nestle makes up half the food items.
Novartis played a huge part in the Covid vaccines and also is just a giant medicine company in general. Novo Nordisk should be familiar to you.
ThyssenKrupp. It's twice the size of US Steel, which recently had to be sold to a US subsidiary of Nippon Steel because they sucked ass at keeping up with the times.
Britain makes better gas turbines than China and Russia for example. Europe reliably produces top tier weapons systems and infrastructure, competitive with American, often surpassing American systems currently. Thales, BAE, Airbus, Saab, Rheinmetal. The US Abrams tank uses a clone of a German gun. The Bradley is a BAE design. The US has always loved using European produced and designed large guns, such as from Oerlikon or Bofors, because they are always world class. Most of their military industry is.
Michelin tyres is a french company.
A lot of these names survived WW2. Thinking Europe doesn't know how to build big stuff, important stuff, etc, they seem to do a better job than the US at maintaining essential industry talent and continuation of industry. By value and jobs, the automotive industry facing competition will struggle, but Europe survived the rise of Japanese automakers far far better than US automakers did, primarily because they didn't just sit back and twiddle their thumbs for decades as the rest of the world advanced. Well, okay, Britain automakers struggled, but that's a good thing.
You are wrong. Nothing in the US stops a landlord from preventing you from installing an AC and plenty do, for any reason they want.
My previous US apartment banned window mount air conditioners. I was stuck with a "mobile" AC unit that could barely handle a little humidity. Even someone in a "Historic" property in Europe that isn't allowed to touch anything would have that option as well.
People who say they use gambling to "dream" or "Hope" are just coping.
You don't have to spend a single penny to dream or hope some sort of better outcome for yourself in the next few days that has much better odds than winning the lottery.