....said the horse-whip maker in 1890 before cars.... said the account clerk in the 1960s before desktop computers.....said everyone in 1990 before the interwebs.
Notice that no job having to do with the internet even existed in its current form before 1990, basically.
I thought I was glad that there were no camera-phones during my stupid college years; this is so colossally bad... I can only hope that there remains a faint flicker of resistance in today's youth, such that this spawns an entire generation of people adept and practiced at breaking ubiquitous surveillance.
The fact that climate is changing (I believe this is irrefutable, basically) doesn't ipso facto mean that humans are changing it.
To me that's where the Cult of Climate Change fails in their argument. And just screaming ever louder "well duh, it HAS to be humans!" isn't convincing anyone. That and immediately demonizing anyone who has doubts.
Personally I believe systemic warming IS happening. ("Climate change" is a vapid, meaningless mealy-mouthed phrase.)
It happens with a startling spike in temps and CO2 about every 120-140k years. The last one was about... 120k years ago. This is right on track with that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
What I dispute is the almost-Aristotlean humanicentrism insisting "well humans MUST be at fault because...we're here, OBVIOUSLY! Duh!".
To assert that today's spike in warming is largely or wholly anthropogenic would mean that either a) all the other previous spikes (about every 120k years for the last 3+ million years) were also human-caused (which is not likely), or b) those spikes had some OTHER cause which has both i) spontaneously STOPPED functioning, and ii) been replaced at precisely a synchronous time and magnitude by this wholly-new mechanism caused by people....which while not impossible seems pretty damned unlikely.
Finally, this further disregards that something - apparently nobody's really looking much at it - natural kicked in to mitigate those startling spikes back down to the anthropocene norm. (My amateur money's on increased warming driving more clouds, causing both more general precip across the landmasses and greening great swathes of today-desert while pushing up earth's general albedo, both causing more cooling...) How are we assuming that mechanism is no longer functioning?
I mean, does anyone designing mission-critical shit ever think of this crap? It's not like wireless hacking was invented yesterday.
Maybe police body cams should be recording into an encrypted drive and simultaneously streaming to a drive sealed away in a black box in the cop car for error checking? And have NO ability to adjust the system in any way but with physical contact with some sort of unique dongle that registers infallibly when it's been used.
Nobody said you couldn't have "subversive" (or "independent", or however you want to characterize them) thoughts, or do such things.
What is being said is that flaunting such opinions is idiotically egotistical virtue-signaling. To shout "I hate the government" and then NOT expect extra scrutiny...is colossally dumb.
SS is not people putting money away, and then getting that money. There's no "account" of what you've paid in. SS is a shell game where today's workers pay for today's retirees. One doesn't need to deep-dive the numbers to see that the demographic bulge will have more retirees than workers by 2030. Further, when SS was implemented that retirement age was basically the cohort's life span...now with retirees drawing on SS commonly for TWENTY MORE YEARS than planned, the thing is a botch.
Personally, I disagree with the defense budget increase. I think we could sufficiently fund our forces with a far lower focus on big-ticket luxuries (or stupidities like the Littoral Combat Ship). But it's tendentious and mendacious to suggest that defense spending is anywhere near the first priority to have some fat trimmed - the biggest savings are going to be in marginal improvements in the biggest PRORAMS: entitlement and social spending.
Those were loans accumulated because they were GIVEN money that they hadn't earned, and and which they really only had speculative abilities to ever pay back? Whose fault is that again?
Considering defense is barely 16% of Fed spending, and social programs (SS, medicare, etc) is around 57%, I think I know where we should really start cutting.
...coral is one of the oldest, most durably-tolerant species on the planet, and not (generally) this delicate snowflake of a clade that will suddenly die because temps ticked up a degree or two?
Coral is HUNDREDS of milions of years old. It has tolerated MUCH warmer and MUCH cooler conditions. It has tolerated MUCH *faster swings* in temperature. It will be here long after the last Green Ecomarxist's voice insisting that "coral is all dying!!" has faded away.
It wasn't their country; it's pretty clear anthropologically that they took it from someone else.
They were a stagnant, Stone age culture. Any other culture they'd have run into would have overrun them like a lawn mower. There is no moral or ethical mandate that they must be preserved for all time as some sort of sacred object. Dissolve the farce of extra-legal tribal territories, and sweep them into the melting pot with everyone else. It would be better for everyone in the longer run anyway.
It's probably doing the people of China a favor, letting them become better human beings than to wade through that internet-swill. It makes Fark look sober by comparison.
So what's the result...fewer American businesspeople go to China, fewer enablements for China to steal tech and IP.
Fewer companies want to deal with them. Maybe fewer US firms building factories in China that the Chinese-Army-owned front companies can take over / plunder for talent and tech to develop their own businesses competitive with those in the west.
Maybe taking off the mask and letting China look like the bloodthirsty totalitarian regime it is might not be a bad idea in the long run.
Liberal Arts and the Humanities are indeed as important as Engineering. However, Liberal Arts DEGREES are not as important as Engineering DEGREES.
Yes, it's important to have art and music and an appreciation for history, but I really would like someone to be ACTUALLY TRAINED AND CERTIFIED when they start calculating the load-moment on that bridge they're building.
The entire midsection of the country is facing unemployment levels the lowest they've been in 20 years. Real wages are going up, and the cost of living is HALF (or less) than it is on the coasts.
Find out what REAL "quality of life" means when it's not measured in Starbucks per square mile. Where you can actually see the stars?
Are they like, 8 years old? Because it's going to be at least 2 decades for the clusterfuck that is our government funding (with priority-changes in budget at LEAST every 4 years, if not less) to actually get this to happen.
Slashdot Mirror
....said the horse-whip maker in 1890 before cars. ... said the account clerk in the 1960s before desktop computers. ....said everyone in 1990 before the interwebs.
Notice that no job having to do with the internet even existed in its current form before 1990, basically.
I thought I was glad that there were no camera-phones during my stupid college years; this is so colossally bad ... I can only hope that there remains a faint flicker of resistance in today's youth, such that this spawns an entire generation of people adept and practiced at breaking ubiquitous surveillance.
I fear not, honestly.
The fact that climate is changing (I believe this is irrefutable, basically) doesn't ipso facto mean that humans are changing it.
To me that's where the Cult of Climate Change fails in their argument. And just screaming ever louder "well duh, it HAS to be humans!" isn't convincing anyone. That and immediately demonizing anyone who has doubts.
Personally I believe systemic warming IS happening. ("Climate change" is a vapid, meaningless mealy-mouthed phrase.)
It happens with a startling spike in temps and CO2 about every 120-140k years. The last one was about ... 120k years ago. This is right on track with that.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
What I dispute is the almost-Aristotlean humanicentrism insisting "well humans MUST be at fault because...we're here, OBVIOUSLY! Duh!".
To assert that today's spike in warming is largely or wholly anthropogenic would mean that either ...which while not impossible seems pretty damned unlikely.
a) all the other previous spikes (about every 120k years for the last 3+ million years) were also human-caused (which is not likely), or
b) those spikes had some OTHER cause which has both
i) spontaneously STOPPED functioning, and
ii) been replaced at precisely a synchronous time and magnitude by this wholly-new mechanism caused by people.
Finally, this further disregards that something - apparently nobody's really looking much at it - natural kicked in to mitigate those startling spikes back down to the anthropocene norm. (My amateur money's on increased warming driving more clouds, causing both more general precip across the landmasses and greening great swathes of today-desert while pushing up earth's general albedo, both causing more cooling...)
How are we assuming that mechanism is no longer functioning?
...It was 65 degrees f this morning at 9 am, and 90 by noon, so we should expect it to be 115 by 3 pm, 140 by 6pm, and nearly boiling by midnight!
If you don't actually understand a mechanism, extrapolating its behavior isn't a very sound method for analysis.
"Americans prefer that someone else do their thinking for them, and are angry that it's not already doing it."
...but seriously, what the ever-living fuck?
I mean, does anyone designing mission-critical shit ever think of this crap? It's not like wireless hacking was invented yesterday.
Maybe police body cams should be recording into an encrypted drive and simultaneously streaming to a drive sealed away in a black box in the cop car for error checking? And have NO ability to adjust the system in any way but with physical contact with some sort of unique dongle that registers infallibly when it's been used.
Nobody said you couldn't have "subversive" (or "independent", or however you want to characterize them) thoughts, or do such things.
What is being said is that flaunting such opinions is idiotically egotistical virtue-signaling. To shout "I hate the government" and then NOT expect extra scrutiny...is colossally dumb.
No, SS is not self sufficient, that is a lie.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/j...
SS is not people putting money away, and then getting that money. There's no "account" of what you've paid in. SS is a shell game where today's workers pay for today's retirees.
One doesn't need to deep-dive the numbers to see that the demographic bulge will have more retirees than workers by 2030. Further, when SS was implemented that retirement age was basically the cohort's life span...now with retirees drawing on SS commonly for TWENTY MORE YEARS than planned, the thing is a botch.
Personally, I disagree with the defense budget increase. I think we could sufficiently fund our forces with a far lower focus on big-ticket luxuries (or stupidities like the Littoral Combat Ship). But it's tendentious and mendacious to suggest that defense spending is anywhere near the first priority to have some fat trimmed - the biggest savings are going to be in marginal improvements in the biggest PRORAMS: entitlement and social spending.
Those were loans accumulated because they were GIVEN money that they hadn't earned, and and which they really only had speculative abilities to ever pay back?
Whose fault is that again?
We're borrowing the entire defense budget? That's terrible. We need to cut spending.
https://www.politifact.com/tru...
Considering defense is barely 16% of Fed spending, and social programs (SS, medicare, etc) is around 57%, I think I know where we should really start cutting.
...coral is one of the oldest, most durably-tolerant species on the planet, and not (generally) this delicate snowflake of a clade that will suddenly die because temps ticked up a degree or two?
Coral is HUNDREDS of milions of years old.
It has tolerated MUCH warmer and MUCH cooler conditions.
It has tolerated MUCH *faster swings* in temperature.
It will be here long after the last Green Ecomarxist's voice insisting that "coral is all dying!!" has faded away.
It wasn't their country; it's pretty clear anthropologically that they took it from someone else.
They were a stagnant, Stone age culture. Any other culture they'd have run into would have overrun them like a lawn mower. There is no moral or ethical mandate that they must be preserved for all time as some sort of sacred object. Dissolve the farce of extra-legal tribal territories, and sweep them into the melting pot with everyone else. It would be better for everyone in the longer run anyway.
I thought we were working to make everyone treated the same?
Now, women need preference quotas to fill chairs.
Got it. I'm SURE that will give them the respect they precisely deserve.
Have you been on reddit lately?
It's probably doing the people of China a favor, letting them become better human beings than to wade through that internet-swill. It makes Fark look sober by comparison.
How conveniently vague and unprovable a statement to support your pre-existing bias.
Good riddance.
So what's the result...fewer American businesspeople go to China, fewer enablements for China to steal tech and IP.
Fewer companies want to deal with them. Maybe fewer US firms building factories in China that the Chinese-Army-owned front companies can take over / plunder for talent and tech to develop their own businesses competitive with those in the west.
Maybe taking off the mask and letting China look like the bloodthirsty totalitarian regime it is might not be a bad idea in the long run.
Liberal Arts and the Humanities are indeed as important as Engineering.
However, Liberal Arts DEGREES are not as important as Engineering DEGREES.
Yes, it's important to have art and music and an appreciation for history, but I really would like someone to be ACTUALLY TRAINED AND CERTIFIED when they start calculating the load-moment on that bridge they're building.
....here's a tip: MOVE.
The entire midsection of the country is facing unemployment levels the lowest they've been in 20 years. Real wages are going up, and the cost of living is HALF (or less) than it is on the coasts.
Find out what REAL "quality of life" means when it's not measured in Starbucks per square mile. Where you can actually see the stars?
https://www.washingtonpost.com...
Actually, better: no. Please DON'T move to the midsection of the country. It's terrible here. Much better to live in your car.
...so you're saying we CAN'T just dump our shit in China and let them deal with it?
That's so...unAmerican.
Are they like, 8 years old?
Because it's going to be at least 2 decades for the clusterfuck that is our government funding (with priority-changes in budget at LEAST every 4 years, if not less) to actually get this to happen.
....when do we get to start executing spies?
I'm serious. China's been blatant in their ongoing efforts to steal both US gov't and private IP.
And the world is having a hissy because a US president is telling them to knock their shenanigans off?
Maybe it's about time.
...QED?
While simultaneously ardent Federalists on the Left are now INSISTING that States' Rights are now as sacrosanct as any un-Reconstructed Confederate.
So both sides are tendentious hypocrites.
Your point? Or were you just asserting that your enemies were the only ones who did that?