I’d lean towards it being a case where routine expenses are presumed to be covered, and cancelling the card would just mean people payba different way. Setting a cap would change the definition of reasonable. I believe it also leaves existing already approved recurring transactions unchanged, since they probably don’t want to get sued for suddenly not paying bills.

https://smartpay.gsa.gov/

The government doesn’t run their own CC infrastructure, but they issue their own cards so cancellation is basically free. It’s kinda weird to say, but the government is bigger than any bank, so it makes sense that they would do things that even small banks are capable of.

Even then I don’t think so. It all took too long, so much so that a lot of people wouldn’t even say that it had happened. Like the modern world, people in Rome consistently said that it was in dire condition and was better in the past golden era. Like, for 500 years before it fell people were saying that they were on the brink. People are really quite bad at judging where they are in broad historical terms.

Personally, I doubt this is actually the fall of the US as a superpower/empire/whatever. Too much territory with too many resources with too many people who all identify as the same broad national identity.
How history views this time is anyone’s guess. Hoover, for all the damage he did, is largely mentioned because of how he pissed people off enough to elect FDR. It doesn’t seem likely at the moment, but it wouldn’t the first time an isolationist president has slapped dumb tarrifs on everything to blow-up an already concerning economic situation to try and protect american business while pissing off the world both economically and diplomatically, only to be followed by a president who significantly changed things and made the country better and stronger.

The process of change can be so slow on the historical scale that we still don’t know if FDR or trump is the weird one, and they’re separated by a long and full life.

However, I will say that if Germans sack DC and depose trump that out of historical consistency we’re obligated to declare the fall of the eastern American empire and send a symbolic vestige of power to California, which we will then refuse to call America.

Heh, fair enough. I took a look at some pictures of US grocery sections at European stores and applied the huristic of:

• if it’s there, it’s not super popular.
• If I would buy it regularly, chances are a European would too, just not as many, see point one.
• if it’s awful it’s being sold as an amusing novelty.
• if I wouldn’t buy it often but I recognize it’s American it’s a fun novelty or comfort food for the homesick.

Based on that metric, I concluded there was a contingent of Europeans who viewed American peanut butter, BBQ sauce and hot porridge as superior enough to justify spending extra on. That spray cheese was correctly regarded as a disgusting novelty, and that pop tarts, lucky charms and marshmallow fluff are noveltys that are “fine”.

Wouldn’t have expected you to put relish there though! I kinda figured that was one everyone had that they tweaked a little for regional taste, like mustard.

Oh absolutely not. The collapse of the Roman empire took decades. If you limit it to the western Roman empire it started in roughly 375 and took 100 years. If you look at the full Roman empire, it took from around 375 to 1450, since we sometimes like to pretend that the Byzantine empire isn’t just part of the Roman empirecthat spoke Greek more than Latin. (They called themselves Romans, were called Romans by outsiders, and it was created when an emperor split the empire to ease regional management, and both sides viewed it as still being one empire).
Beyond that, the Roman Republic lasted for hundreds of years before the empire.

If we assume the US will follow the same pattern as Rome, we still have centuries of political upheaval, dictators, democracy, splits, unification and odd hats to develop before we’re gone. You’ll also get weird relics of our government scattered across the world, as places that get pulled into the downfall try to pick pieces up to gain some of the legitimately for using the name of the US. Something like Canada, shattered by a flailing empires attempts to exert control, sees Ontario promise protection to the supreme Court in exchange for ruling that Doug Ford is the new president of the US to legitimize the Ontario-Manitoba alliances seizure of US nuclear weapons in the upper Midwest and taking the seat on the security council. 2000 years from now the supreme Court will still be around issuing legal decrees that staunch believers will strive to live by, even though the government it came from is long gone and DC is just a weird city with insular backwards laws distinct from the surrounding nation(s).

Most of the collapse of the empire was filled with normal lives for the people in it, so that’s something to take heart in at least.

I’m imagining peanut butter, BBQ sauce, pumpkin pie filling, and maybe a few breakfast foods like cream of wheat. Not all of our foods are terrible nightmares, they’re just either available in different aisles or not super popular to justify being everywhere.

The intersection of “American”, “novelty” and “popular enough to import but not enough to fully stock” is probably mostly candy, pop tarts and Lucky charms.

https://www.thetimes.com/article/us-trade-war-german-peanut-butter-lovers-feel-crunch-q55bs3r8t

The last time trump was around and pulled this type of shit peanut butter was one of the things people had issues with, since the US produces a lot of peanuts and peanut butter.

I’m sad that it’s children paying the price though. They don’t have any say in anything. It’s child abuse to intentionally infect them with a preventable disease.

Ants use oleic acid to identify other ants as dead, which is also commonly found is plants, although usually not in any notable concentration until we press the plant for oil. Trix use canola oil which contains a lot of oleic acid (compared to other oils, it’s not objectively a lot). I wonder if something in the cooking process or combination with one of the other colors or flavors makes it enough to mess them up.
Skimming a research article it looks like oleic acid isn’t what they use to mark the burial pile, just what goes in the pile.