To be officially accused of a crime. That's it.

It can be by a grand jury or a prosecutor, but the long and short of it is often phrased as "charges have been filed." Doesn't have to mean a warrant for arrest has been issued, or the accused has appeared in court, or anything else besides "legal action is being sought against the accused."

It owes most of it to its own citizens.

At some point in the past, the government needed to borrow money. Your grandma (for example) loaned it money with the promise it would pay her back in 10, 20, or however many years plus interest.

Loans to the government are very safe for the same reason you mentioned: it’s the most powerful country in the world and the chance it is still here to pay you back in 20 years is pretty damn high.

As such, loans to their own government are a huge part of citizens’ retirement plans, college funds, pension programs, insurance programs, you name it. It doesn’t pay very well, but it’s an extremely “safe” investment.

US citizens hold about 70% of all the federal debt in all these various forms. Theoretically, they could vote to forgive the debt and just never pay it back to themselves. Poof. Gone.

But good luck convincing grandma to agree to never get that money back. Especially when grandma votes. A lot.

Most of it is owed to us - the American taxpayers.

Between the 2008 Great Recession and the Covid stimulus, more than $15Trillion was added to the US debt. Throw in a few wars and underfunded federal budgets, and you quickly get to $32T.

We basically just print all that money to maintain a comfortable standard of living. Eventually it will come due… whether it’s your kids, or your kids’ kids… somebody will eventually have to pay it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/11/24/the-single-chart-that-shows-that-grand-juries-indict-99-99-percent-of-the-time/

Edit: this shows indictment rate, not conviction rate. I can't find a good source for the conviction rate.

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A Grand Jury basically is a court trial where the Defense is not present at all. The Prosecution presents it's evidence and tells it's story without any arguments. The idea being that if the prosecution presents the best case it can and they still can't convince a jury to convict, then there is no real point to going to a trial. They are confidential in order to protect the defendant in the case that there isn't enough evidence to convict.

I don't mean full, as in packed full to the brim. It is teeming with energy and virtual particles. There is no space that doesn't have energy and particles. It is a property of space itself.

Also yes, you could say space is nothing because it is an emergent phenomenon. But that is besides the point as pretty much everything in physics and therefore reality are emergent phenomena of more fundamental laws and properties. IE QFT pretty much says that no particles exist and its just all waves.

If you can properly explain gravity, step up and claim your noble prize. It is one of the most hotly studied areas currently in physics. Quantum loop gravity is a theory attempting to explain gravity at the quantum level by stating that spacetime emerges from quantum interactions.

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United States debt is one of the most sure bets in the world. If you buy US bonds, you're sure to get whatever you were promised when you loaned the money, without currency manipulation designed to make you lose. The certainess of being paid back is part of what makes the US the most powerful nation. Of course if you want to start a world war and a civil war at the same time, you can say we're not paying anybody back.

Because people who lent the government money want to get paid and the government has an interest in not being known as a deadbeat that doesn't pay back their loans. If the government doesn't pay back it's loans then all future debts will be at a much higher interest rate making it harder for it to borrow money in the future since people who lend the government money will be less inclined to do so in the future without the government offering a large interest rate.

What's the UK equivalent of "indict"? We don't use that in British English.

Dopamine is like a treat for your brain, and not always for things we would consider "good." The serotonin-dopamine feedback loop is the good feelings.

Anger and aggression feelings trigger adrenaline and noradrenaline/norepinephrine, but that rush of heightened awareness can also cause a dopamine response. People can get addicted to anger and aggression because of it.

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Most of the debt is owed to US citizens. If you've ever owned a US savings bond or similar, you've owned a portion of the US national debt.

>If it’s the most powerful nation in the world, can’t it just get rid of it?

The US borrowed money from people with the understanding that the money would be repaid in the future, plus interest. Announcing that they're not going to repay those debts would screw over everyone who was planning on being repaid, and would destroy the US' ability to borrow any more money in the future—because who would be dumb enough to loan their hard-earned cash to a government that can't be trusted to repay its debts?

On top of all that, there's a provision in the US Constitution that states that "the validity of the public debt [...] shall not be questioned," so the US couldn't legally default on its debt even if it wanted to.

It's a fairly complex issue. A lot of the debt is owned by Americans or american companies. Many of the holders are our allies, like Japan and Belgium. By suddenly removing it, many of our friends both inside and outside of the US would be hurt. This would also hurt our reliability. Who would want to work with us or buy our future debt if we did this?

They have an indictment rate that high.

Any source on conviction rate being that high?

It is. I don't know about New York specifically, but state/county prosecutors often have the option to defer to a grand jury and it tends to be done in high profile cases or situations where the prosecutor wants distance or cover from the decision to charge or not to charge.

It's less common for state charges and the process varies more by jurisdiction so the conviction statistics aren't as reliable as the federal ones.

Nice, basic definition.

I'd only add to make clear that the defendant usually gets no representation before a grand jury. Only the prosecution gets to make their case. That's why it's extremely rare for a grand jury not to indict someone. An article from a few years ago notes: "U.S. attorneys prosecuted 162,000 federal cases in 2010, the most recent year for which we have data. Grand juries declined to return an indictment in 11 of them." That's why there's a famous saying that goes, "if a district attorney wanted, a grand jury would indict a ham sandwich".

Not as nicely succinct as you, but an important point to keep in mind about indictments!

I get it now, thank you.

Is the emptiest space still full of matter? That doesn't sound right, could you elaborate?

Also, if it is emergent then it would indeed be "nothing" by itself, only existing when occupied.

How does spacetime as an emergent property explain gravity?

So, because the hush money was paid for illegally, the NDA is void?

I'm not sure about the cause and effect, but epinephrine and other chemicals that are released by the adrenal gland are elevated when you're angry. Some emotions are caused not by chemicals, but by the lack of them, like depression. Anger may be the same. A lack of serotonin can cause irritability, that could easily lead to anger. Anger is associated with the flight or fight survival response, which is why the adrenal gland is involved.

Space is something. It is not made of "nothing". The emptiest space is still buzzing with matter and energy.

Also quite a few physicists suspect space and time are an emergent property that reflect quantum scale interactions and relationships between matter. IE, space literally manifests itself as an illusion of quantum interactions. So if space exists, it's for the express purpose of displaying the result of material interactions that define it, it couldn't be empty if it tried.

For further information: lookup quantum loop gravity.

Yes.

Mugshot? That'll be on the cover of every magazine in the world. Wow! I'll be happy when that happens.