If you spread the content across streaming sources with exclusive licenses; the cost is not your $15/mo subscription. The cost is ALL the freaking $15/mo subscriptions.
"War on drugs where the USA is assisting other nations with the fight against the drug lords is the reason for the Narcotics fund. The construction fund is common sense for any military. "
First is obviously a multi-billion dollar waste of funds. A construction fund is common sense although you gave a poor example since re-outfitting a carrier, ship of war, or other weapon wouldn't be paid out of it. The military needs construction funds, what isn't clear is why they need better than $3 billion when they have domestic structure and we aren't going anywhere new. You could replace all the embassies we have around the globe with $3 billion.
It's actually surprising he needs to declare an emergency to do this at all but it probably has something to do with it technically being domestic use of military resources.
Both the President and Secretary of Defense are in the chain-of-command. They can give you orders, their specific responsibilities isn't really the concern of who they give the orders to. SecDef does not automatically get a salute, the President does. The President outranks the SecDef.
Here is a link to a deck used to help recruits in the Navy learn their chain-of-command. The top parts are universal and then it starts getting navy specific with the top ranks being over pretty much the entire navy and then of course it starts to branch into something more specific to the recruits.
"but there are flowers which are pollinated entirely by mosquitoes. Then again, there are plenty of mosquitoes that don't bite people or don't spread disease."
Indeed, and if there is no other mosquito that will pollinate these particular flowers I'm sure there are other flowers too.
I'm all for preserving life but I do believe in self-defense. These mosquitoes threaten, endanger, and kill in large numbers a creature that is potentially capable of wiping them out (in theory, I suspect it would depopulate but not wipe them out). This is just a form of natural selection.
We are used to professional level environments but at this income level this is more like restaurant or call center level crowd and these are probably mostly young people like those jobs. Their managers are probably parents as much as bosses.
This all sounds pretty similar to earlier in life when I worked in those kinds of environments. It's less people having sex and using drugs to cope with work than just people having sex and using drugs because sex and drugs are a great way to pass the time with coping as an excuse.
Indeed, you could theoretically change the way we allocate funds and make reforms to military spending in ways that dismantle the industrial complex that surrounds it without getting rid of the military itself. Decoupling billions from the military and moving it into funding for civilian research and infrastructure IS something that could be done without actually reducing the military at all.
For an example look at the current "national emergency." It isn't to raid emergency funds of any kind, it is simply to access the military narcotics and construction funds. Why does the military have enough funds to build a freaking wall across the border in narcotics and construction funds? Why do they have a "narcotics" fund at all?
"Because I'm pretty sure that's not quite how it works."
No, that isn't SUPPOSED to be how it works. It definitely is how it works. Another alarming phrase "corporate citizen", last I checked corporations are not citizens.
Not to mention any tech company today has dumped the lion share of its US workers and replaced them with foreign imports to cover the "talent shortage" dumping US employees created. The foreign imports don't want to contribute to the US military and dominance. Suprise suprise.
"But in general, people working in research tend to have a good idea of what the current possibility space is, and secret military projects that come out later are rarely more than 'oh wow,they got that thing we all knew could be done but was engineering hell to actually work?'"
Fair enough but they do fund some pretty out there stuff if previous declassified work is evidence. Just because some generals who definitely are not scientists thought it was plausible and Trump bought it doesn't make it real but it might mean it makes the grade for a closer look. His room temperature semi-conductor doesn't look that hard to attempt to replicate. It won't be as exact as replicating a scientific paper explaining exact methodology but it should be an easy publish if you spent 72hrs in a decently equipped lab and can't make it work. On the flip side if it seems to work well that just becomes more impressive when you publish.
Just trying seems like a shoe in for DARPA funding.
"I'm curious. Do you actually know this or just suspect it? Some animals are really, really picky about what they eat (e.g. blue whales only eat krill)."
Look, I tend to be honest and technical to a fault. So that depends on the level of commitment you are looking for. I'm not a biologist and I'm not swearing there isn't a single species anywhere on earth like a particular spider species that only eats this particular mosquito. I don't think a biologist with my level of technical honesty would claim that either because there are undoubtedly millions of species we haven't even discovered. I'm asserting a reasonably educated guess based on logic and not claiming something beyond that. However, I am reasonably confident there will plenty of other spiders which serve the same role in the food chain as that special spider should it exist.
If that isn't true and there is some special bubble ecosystem somewhere (some high slope of a mountain or isolated pocket valley ala arachnophobia) I'm confident it is isolated and small and while I'll shed a single tear for its loss well... there are things that meet that level of significance lost every day. I respect all life but also adopt a certain pragmaticism coupled with that. If a life causes more chaos than peace for other lives at a certain point the best course of action becomes to expel it and sometimes that might be to end it. After all, you end life when you use antibiotic soap.
There are plenty of things done on a daily basis that could have some unexpected or unintended consequence that results in a cascade of problems leading to disaster. I don't think we should make a habit of seeking them out, in fact we should avoid them and hedge slightly on the edge of fault but no further. We should exercise a certain level of caution approaching something to minimize that risk but at some point short of zero is suitably low and there is a high benefit. I'm not a fan of killing off anything but I'm still part of team human and not looking to die of malaria or see others suffer and die and other blood born diseases kill A LOT of humans. Something people may not consider is that a biting mosquito in a populated area is basically the same as an involuntarily shared needle. We may even dodge that issue because we are trying to minimize social stigma on certain groups but there it is.
"The only way for this gene to "kill everything" would be for it to spread asexually between species by a virus. But if that was a danger, it would have already happened, since the mechanism is already common in procaryotes, including trillions of the bacteria in your intestines."
Not in engineered forms with the sole purpose of eradicating hard to eradicate species. There are dangers in the form of unintended natural chain reactions and our very poor understanding of genetics on the whole.
The food chain isn't a single rope, it is crosslinked and has loops all over the damn place. Anything which eats mosquitos will happily eat a fly and with less mosquitos around there will be more of the flies.
"yeah a failure could result in mosquitoes that are mostly sterile being released into an environment where there is nothing for them to mate with, and that they can't survive in...
The outcome here could be catastrophic..."
That is pretending this entire exercise isn't just intellectual masturbation and a waste of effort and funds if they don't release them in an environment with none of those limitations sooner or later. Since they obviously plan to do that anyway I say just get on with it. My back yard is fine. I give permission, don't even have to tell me when you do it.
Species die out all the time due to our actions and without us it isn't like the ones which bother us are somehow the magical lynchpins of life and the thousands of random species wiped out every day are insignificant. If you eliminate the biting mosquitoes there probably will be effects we don't anticipate. Just because there is change doesn't mean its all going to end.
"And if somehow something like this was created to affect humans, well we breed a lot slower than mosquitoes, which would give us lots of time to create a remedy."
In fairness, it would also take a hell of a lot longer to figure out it was happening.
Slashdot Mirror
The term you were looking for is sell-out. Those come from everywhere. One exception is statistically insignificant.
CRISPR is not just in the hands of Italians.
Nope, can't hear a Russian accent when reading that at all. Much better.
If you spread the content across streaming sources with exclusive licenses; the cost is not your $15/mo subscription. The cost is ALL the freaking $15/mo subscriptions.
"War on drugs where the USA is assisting other nations with the fight against the drug lords is the reason for the Narcotics fund. The construction fund is common sense for any military. "
First is obviously a multi-billion dollar waste of funds. A construction fund is common sense although you gave a poor example since re-outfitting a carrier, ship of war, or other weapon wouldn't be paid out of it. The military needs construction funds, what isn't clear is why they need better than $3 billion when they have domestic structure and we aren't going anywhere new. You could replace all the embassies we have around the globe with $3 billion.
It's actually surprising he needs to declare an emergency to do this at all but it probably has something to do with it technically being domestic use of military resources.
Both the President and Secretary of Defense are in the chain-of-command. They can give you orders, their specific responsibilities isn't really the concern of who they give the orders to. SecDef does not automatically get a salute, the President does. The President outranks the SecDef.
Here is a link to a deck used to help recruits in the Navy learn their chain-of-command. The top parts are universal and then it starts getting navy specific with the top ranks being over pretty much the entire navy and then of course it starts to branch into something more specific to the recruits.
https://quizlet.com/184847149/rtc-chain-of-command-as-of-january-1-2019-us-navy-dep-study-guide-flash-cards/
Your manner of phrasing is very typical of Russians.
"but there are flowers which are pollinated entirely by mosquitoes. Then again, there are plenty of mosquitoes that don't bite people or don't spread disease."
Indeed, and if there is no other mosquito that will pollinate these particular flowers I'm sure there are other flowers too.
I'm all for preserving life but I do believe in self-defense. These mosquitoes threaten, endanger, and kill in large numbers a creature that is potentially capable of wiping them out (in theory, I suspect it would depopulate but not wipe them out). This is just a form of natural selection.
The $29k/yr
We are used to professional level environments but at this income level this is more like restaurant or call center level crowd and these are probably mostly young people like those jobs. Their managers are probably parents as much as bosses.
This all sounds pretty similar to earlier in life when I worked in those kinds of environments. It's less people having sex and using drugs to cope with work than just people having sex and using drugs because sex and drugs are a great way to pass the time with coping as an excuse.
Indeed, you could theoretically change the way we allocate funds and make reforms to military spending in ways that dismantle the industrial complex that surrounds it without getting rid of the military itself. Decoupling billions from the military and moving it into funding for civilian research and infrastructure IS something that could be done without actually reducing the military at all.
For an example look at the current "national emergency." It isn't to raid emergency funds of any kind, it is simply to access the military narcotics and construction funds. Why does the military have enough funds to build a freaking wall across the border in narcotics and construction funds? Why do they have a "narcotics" fund at all?
"and when combined with pulses (beans and peas) or supplemented with meat, fish, eggs, or dairy, it is nutritious."
Then again those things, not supplemented by corn are also nutritious.
"Wrong. The DOD is not actually headed by the President"
No, it is headed by SecDef who works for the President.
"Because I'm pretty sure that's not quite how it works."
No, that isn't SUPPOSED to be how it works. It definitely is how it works. Another alarming phrase "corporate citizen", last I checked corporations are not citizens.
In his defense, the military industrial complex is not the military.
Not to mention any tech company today has dumped the lion share of its US workers and replaced them with foreign imports to cover the "talent shortage" dumping US employees created. The foreign imports don't want to contribute to the US military and dominance. Suprise suprise.
"the US military was one of Microsoft's first customers and even used Windows and SQL server on ships in the 90's.
The Army was buying tens of thousands of Exchange and office licenses in the 90's."
So it is their fault. Now we all know.
"But in general, people working in research tend to have a good idea of what the current possibility space is, and secret military projects that come out later are rarely more than 'oh wow,they got that thing we all knew could be done but was engineering hell to actually work?'"
Fair enough but they do fund some pretty out there stuff if previous declassified work is evidence. Just because some generals who definitely are not scientists thought it was plausible and Trump bought it doesn't make it real but it might mean it makes the grade for a closer look. His room temperature semi-conductor doesn't look that hard to attempt to replicate. It won't be as exact as replicating a scientific paper explaining exact methodology but it should be an easy publish if you spent 72hrs in a decently equipped lab and can't make it work. On the flip side if it seems to work well that just becomes more impressive when you publish.
Just trying seems like a shoe in for DARPA funding.
"I'm curious. Do you actually know this or just suspect it? Some animals are really, really picky about what they eat (e.g. blue whales only eat krill)."
Look, I tend to be honest and technical to a fault. So that depends on the level of commitment you are looking for. I'm not a biologist and I'm not swearing there isn't a single species anywhere on earth like a particular spider species that only eats this particular mosquito. I don't think a biologist with my level of technical honesty would claim that either because there are undoubtedly millions of species we haven't even discovered. I'm asserting a reasonably educated guess based on logic and not claiming something beyond that. However, I am reasonably confident there will plenty of other spiders which serve the same role in the food chain as that special spider should it exist.
If that isn't true and there is some special bubble ecosystem somewhere (some high slope of a mountain or isolated pocket valley ala arachnophobia) I'm confident it is isolated and small and while I'll shed a single tear for its loss well... there are things that meet that level of significance lost every day. I respect all life but also adopt a certain pragmaticism coupled with that. If a life causes more chaos than peace for other lives at a certain point the best course of action becomes to expel it and sometimes that might be to end it. After all, you end life when you use antibiotic soap.
There are plenty of things done on a daily basis that could have some unexpected or unintended consequence that results in a cascade of problems leading to disaster. I don't think we should make a habit of seeking them out, in fact we should avoid them and hedge slightly on the edge of fault but no further. We should exercise a certain level of caution approaching something to minimize that risk but at some point short of zero is suitably low and there is a high benefit. I'm not a fan of killing off anything but I'm still part of team human and not looking to die of malaria or see others suffer and die and other blood born diseases kill A LOT of humans. Something people may not consider is that a biting mosquito in a populated area is basically the same as an involuntarily shared needle. We may even dodge that issue because we are trying to minimize social stigma on certain groups but there it is.
"The only way for this gene to "kill everything" would be for it to spread asexually between species by a virus. But if that was a danger, it would have already happened, since the mechanism is already common in procaryotes, including trillions of the bacteria in your intestines."
Not in engineered forms with the sole purpose of eradicating hard to eradicate species. There are dangers in the form of unintended natural chain reactions and our very poor understanding of genetics on the whole.
The food chain isn't a single rope, it is crosslinked and has loops all over the damn place. Anything which eats mosquitos will happily eat a fly and with less mosquitos around there will be more of the flies.
"yeah a failure could result in mosquitoes that are mostly sterile being released into an environment where there is nothing for them to mate with, and that they can't survive in...
The outcome here could be catastrophic..."
That is pretending this entire exercise isn't just intellectual masturbation and a waste of effort and funds if they don't release them in an environment with none of those limitations sooner or later. Since they obviously plan to do that anyway I say just get on with it. My back yard is fine. I give permission, don't even have to tell me when you do it.
Species die out all the time due to our actions and without us it isn't like the ones which bother us are somehow the magical lynchpins of life and the thousands of random species wiped out every day are insignificant. If you eliminate the biting mosquitoes there probably will be effects we don't anticipate. Just because there is change doesn't mean its all going to end.
"If it was going to wipe out humans, it would have done so long ago."
It wasn't in the hands of humans with an interest in wiping out other humans long ago.
"And if somehow something like this was created to affect humans, well we breed a lot slower than mosquitoes, which would give us lots of time to create a remedy."
In fairness, it would also take a hell of a lot longer to figure out it was happening.