In practice this is a minor and pointless change - almost anyone who sees evidence of child pornography will already be inclined to report it voluntarily if given an easy and anonymous way to do it.
The real point of the law is to strengthen the idea that people in non-law enforcement professions can be forced into acting as police. Next, teachers who hear students talk about violence are forced to report the student to the authorities. Librarians who lend out books about Islamic extremism must notify DHS.
It's a path to curtail civil liberties, and of course it starts with child pornography. Because who's for child abuse?
Facebook's scheme is analogous to giving people a Star Trek replicator that's been programmed to only produce heroin.
One one hand, replicators are sweet and it's great to get them to more people. On the other hand, since these replicators are obviously just being handed out to get people hooked on heroin, I feel safe saying folks are better off with nothing.
And by the way, how diabolical do you have to be to take a technology that's already, out of the box, capable of producing virtually anything, and deliberately restrict it to producing only your product?
Really? You're going to end the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics by out-fundraising them?
Having money is the one thing corporations are good at, and they're really, really good at it. If your strategy hinges on using money as influence, you're always going to lose, because they are FAR better and more practiced at that game than you are.
The only way to advance this particular agenda is to exploit the strengths that we have which corporations don't. We can fill the streets with real people, we can make disruptive spectacles and speak earnestly about social problems. Unlike corporations, we don't need to hide behind spokespeople and PACs, because we have authenticity. We are genuinely concerned about the future of our democracy, and though corporations can try hard to simulate that concern, it's never as authentic as the real thing.
The MAYDAY PAC is like David trying to beat Goliath in a fist fight. Don't fight on his terms, use the sling, idiot!
When you're called before a Grand Jury in the US, you don't have the right to remain silent. The prosecution can effectively force you to answer questions, and if you refuse, you can be jailed for years.
It's still good advice to say absolutely nothing, but it's not as simple as most of you seem to believe. By saying nothing, you are condemning yourself to jail.
This is why pretty much only anarchists refuse to cooperate with Grand Juries, because they have a fundamental ideological opposition to the legal system and will never cooperate with the prosecution, even when their right not to cooperate is suspended. It's one thing to legally exercise your rights, it's another to be willing to go to jail for them.
In addition to being a very sharp security researcher, you seem to have a strong interest in issues of social and political control. What emerging security trends do you see as being most important or helpful for authoritarians (at home and abroad)? What security trends are most important for anti-establishment movements?
They certainly are a better training ground for learning to spout pseudo-intellectual-sounding commentary. And hey, that does have its place, especially when you need to sound smart about something you don't know much about. But I already knew how to do that just fine, so when I went to school I studied how to actually do useful things.
They did tell what happened. In fact, they release the entire raw footage to the entire internet, so that any random person could analyze it independently or make their own edited version. That's way WAY different from how the mainstream media operates.
But they also released an edited version, and that's all you watched, because you don't actually care enough to do the work of reviewing the primary source yourself. If you're too lazy to interpret the raw footage yourself, you're going to be stuck with someone else's interpretation.
Good evening. This is your Captain. We are about to attempt a crash landing. Please extinguish all cigarettes. Place your tray tables in their upright, locked position. Your Captain says: Put your head on your knees. Your Captain says: Put your head in your hands. Put your hands on your hips. Heh heh. This is your Captain--and we are going down. We are all going down, together. And I said: Uh oh. This is gonna be some day. Standby. This is the time. And this is the record of the time. This is the time. And this is the record of the time.
Uh--this is your Captain again. You know, I've got a funny feeling I've seen this all before. Why? Cause I'm a caveman. Why? Cause I've got eyes in the back of my head. Why? It's the heat. Standby. This is the time. And this is the record of the time. This is the time. And this is the record of the time.
Put your hands over your eyes. Jump out of the plane. There is not pilot. You are not alone. Standby. This is the time. And this is the record of the time. This is the time. And this is the record of the time.
I dunno, if just solving it was prize enough for him, why would he have told anyone? Obviously there was a desire there to have people take notice of his accomplishment.
That's not a logical response. If having money obligates one to use it to "correct wrongs", then he is pretty clearly already saddled with that obligation. Just because he doesn't legally have the money in his name doesn't mean he doesn't have access to it, and therefore the power to use it to "correct wrongs" if he so chooses. It's like if Bill Gates turned down a starving kid because he didn't have any money in pocket. If he really cared, he would go get the money he has access to and share it. When you have the possibility of accessing tons of money with little effort, the excuse "I don't have anything to spare" is no excuse at all.
On the other hand he could just say "I really don't care about charity or the well-being of others, I'd prefer if everyone just left me alone." Which would at least be honest. After all, his work for the field of mathematics is more charity than could reasonably be expected out of anyone.
That's a very official sounding restriction, but has it ever been tested in court? Because it seems pretty absurd to think you can tell users "you can download our data, but if you don't delete it again right away, it's illegal".
I see that you have produced 4 quotes, only 2 of which are actually relevant to the idea that women are better than men (a.k.a. sexism). Based purely on these quotes (though I'm meant to believe that "there's tons more") you claim to have accurately represented the entirety (or at least "the bulk") of feminism, and the many differing schools of thought and movements which make up "the feminist movement".
Why make such generalizations? If those quotes piss you off, why not hate the people who said them, or the people who agree with them? Why instead put words into the mouths of a huge group of people who don't hate men, nor think women are any better? Why equate feminism with misandry? My guess - and that's all it can be - is that you hate feminism for other, unrelated reasons. That when women are assertive, uncompromising, and demand respect and recognition, it feels threatening. It feels as though they must hate you and all other men, because otherwise they wouldn't be so disruptive and annoying. So you make assumptions about their motivations. Because it's much easier to dismiss people who simply irrationally hate you than people with legitimate points to consider and discuss.
You describe an extremely antiseptic environment, where nobody ever talks about anything not directly related to the code, and they only talk about it in a bland tech-manual style. That's not reality.
Reality is that people in the FOSS community enjoy FOSS, but they also enjoy community. Community often involves informal discussions, jokes, etc. and as you mention, interaction outside official channels. And that's all fantastic, and a big part of what keeps people engaged and excited about a project. Even something as simple as being informal and silly in the way you comment your code or explain your algorithm on the dev list can make the project more fun and satisfying, less like corporate work.
The problem is that the very community so many men enjoy is currently alienating for the vast majority of women. Because currently, some of those jokes, discussions and silliness are misogynistic. So while women technically can participate in the coding, the "reward" of getting to be part of a fun community and getting respect from peers is worthless or undesirable to them.
That's an interesting point, but sometimes, you have to draw attention to a particular kind of "bullying" because most people don't even realize it's going on. Maybe they're not even doing it on purpose, they just never stopped to think. For example, if I'm American and so are all the other coders I know, we're not necessarily going to notice if we're doing things in a way that are inconvenient or annoying or offensive to people from other cultures or parts of the world.
Often, we don't fully get these things even when someone mentions it. We're just like "Huh." and move on to the things that actually affect us directly. It takes a pretty high-profile and involved community discourse to a) get enough attention drawn to the problem and b) work out as a community how we should respond to it.
There is a place for playing the "passive victims of police violence", and that strategy has worked at certain times in the past and sometimes still in the present. But I ask: did you see any significant coverage of passive victims of police violence in the corporate media? Because there were a lot of such victims. I mean a lot: uninvolved college kids just trying to get around their campus being beaten, sprayed with chem weapons, tackled and arrested, and they just took it. They wandered around helplessly, being abused by police, pleading for them to stop.
Where was that coverage? It's largely a myth that passive victims of police violence are mediagenic. We think of such things as the perfect story, the perfect thing to arouse public sympathy, mostly because we were raised on the powerful images of the civil rights movement. But it happens all the time these days and nobody hears about it, let alone cares.
People like you say that the reason is that we're not getting passively abused enough, but we've been doing this for decades now. At what point do we look at the old strategies and say "this isn't working anymore"? At what point do we straighten our backs and have enough self-respect to defend ourselves when attacked?
Oh, it happens. The ACLU or NLG brings lawsuits during/after many major protests like this. And sometimes they even win (years later). I've actually heard of more cases where people successfully sue for damages than where people successfully convict cops on criminal charges.
A cynic might say this is because criminal charges actually have a significant negative impact on the police department and would force them to change their policies, wheras civil damages are just a minor inconvenience.
...and then the courts say "Yes, what the police did was illegal. They must now pay $X in damages and say they're sorry." And so the police department gets some money from the city government, or dips into its "lawsuit slush fund" (public tax dollars, either way) and hands out the dough, a bullshit apology statement, and then turns around and buys more weapons for the next protest.
Large summits like the G20 have a security budget, and you can often see a significant amount of money factored in for "legal settlements and costs". This is money they set aside in advance for the fines and damages they know will have to pay for violating people's rights.
"Black bloc" anarchists originally developed as a response to police violence against peaceful demonstrations. Activists got tired of their people getting attacked all the time, and so they organized their own group of black-clad militants who were prepared to protect the crowd with barricades, shields, and physical force.
These so-called hooligans have been responsible for keeping less-organized protesters safe from brutal police many, many times. Of course, it doesn't work out that way, some groups of militant anarchists have had negative effects as well. But it's not as simple as just disassociating from anyone who has the courage to stand up against the cops.
While agent provocateurs are a very real phenomenon, and have been used to discredit political dissidents in the US countless times, you can't chalk everything up to them.
There are genuine, honest activists out there who sabotage storefronts, recruitment centers, police stations, etc during demonstrations. They do it because it's the only way to get the attention of the public and authorities. If it weren't for their actions, we wouldn't even be having conversations about whether the G20 summit and the policies of G20 countries are fucked up or not. Condemn them all you want, if you need, but they started a conversation that badly needs to be started about the path our nation and the global elite is going down.
That article just blames all other problems on population. Global warming? Wouldn't be happening if there were fewer people. Famine? That amount of food would be plenty for fewer people. Warfare, environmental devastation? Fewer people!
We've been destroying the environment, starving, and killing each other for generations. These are not new problems, and they're not created by overpopulation. Certainly the more people there are, the more of all these things happen - but the solution is to fix the problems, not create less people.
I even agree that having less people is a desirable thing, but it's not the root of all our problems. Acting as though it is will just distract us from addressing the real issues of concern here. Unfortunately, those issues are more political and nuanced than just "people should stop breeding!".
...and yet people are still starving and/or dying of poverty-related illnesses in droves. All this overflowing prosperity and we still can't (or won't) share the benefit with those who are dying from lack of it.
Ever think that maybe it's not the number of people on earth that's the problem, it's just the particular ones who happen to have the most power?
You're right that my perspective is a very US-centric one - I can't really speak to what's appropriate for a country like France, since so much of their infrastructure is already nuclear. In general, I think any country that hasn't already sunk huge amounts of money into nuclear would be foolish to start doing so now, because that money could be spent better on other tech.
I'm unclear on why (a) it is an "either / or" with nuclear power to you
I wish it weren't, I wish we had a blank check to do whatever it takes to kill coal, but unfortunately that's not how the US government seems to be approaching things. There's a limited amount of money available for non-coal subsidies, and the nuclear industry is getting/far/ more than its share of it. A cynic would say that it's because the same energy tycoons who've been burning coal all this time are now having their lobbyists draw up proposals for nuclear plants in an effort to keep the government cheese flowing and their business model undisrupted for as long as possible. The problem is that businessmen and politicians are presenting (and funding, respectively) nuclear power like it's the central solution to our problems, when in reality it has a peripherally supporting role at best.
So that might explain where I'm coming from better - you thought I was arguing in favor of coal when I pointed out problems with nuclear, but really my concern is to combat the overly enthusiastic way that nuclear is being embraced over sustainable tech in the US.
and (b) why you think nuclear power has such a longer lead in time than renewable.
I guess it's just a function of the complexity of the technology, and perhaps the safety precautions necessary. A solar or wind farm can be set up and operating at peak production quite quickly, whereas building a nuclear reactor and getting it online is a very long-term proposition. I'm sure that the time could be shortened by eliminating or weakening safety and environmental red tape, but I'd hope we're all against that.
let's also clear up exactly what we mean by subsidies here. That money is primarily going into R&D.
Again, not in the US. Energy companies (most of whom are running coal plants) are seeking government funding for the construction and operation of nuclear plants. Maybe they have a position on it, but I've never heard environmental groups like Greenpeace object to funding nuclear R&D, just the building of new nuke plants.
If you are arguing in favor of solar power in place of nuclear, then you'll find no argument from me as far as you are able to provide solar power to me. But if you can't provide me enough power from renwables, then I want the shortfall made up in nuclear power until you can,
Engineers concerned with energy efficiency sometimes talk about the "low hanging fruit". Basically, we need to start by optimizing the things that provide the most optimization with the least cost, and then move on to whatever is the next "lowest hanging fruit". Right now, solar power during the day and wind power during wind is really, really low hanging fruit. When it's day, a solar plant really does provide almost free energy, and similarly for a wind farm when there's wind. Granted these technologies aren't the full solution, but they're very clearly the most effective place to start. Once we're getting as much energy as possible out of renewables, then it makes sense to look at how to optimize the remainder of our coal use, with nuclear or what-have-you. But until we've tackled that low hanging fruit, devoting so much resources to other optimizations is inefficient. And in some cases, it's being used as deliberate misdirection by business people to distract us from the sustainable solutions which can severely cripple their coal-based business model right now.
Slashdot Mirror
To explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations...to boldly go where no man has gone before.
In practice this is a minor and pointless change - almost anyone who sees evidence of child pornography will already be inclined to report it voluntarily if given an easy and anonymous way to do it.
The real point of the law is to strengthen the idea that people in non-law enforcement professions can be forced into acting as police. Next, teachers who hear students talk about violence are forced to report the student to the authorities. Librarians who lend out books about Islamic extremism must notify DHS.
It's a path to curtail civil liberties, and of course it starts with child pornography. Because who's for child abuse?
Facebook's scheme is analogous to giving people a Star Trek replicator that's been programmed to only produce heroin.
One one hand, replicators are sweet and it's great to get them to more people. On the other hand, since these replicators are obviously just being handed out to get people hooked on heroin, I feel safe saying folks are better off with nothing.
And by the way, how diabolical do you have to be to take a technology that's already, out of the box, capable of producing virtually anything, and deliberately restrict it to producing only your product?
Really? You're going to end the corrupting influence of corporate money in politics by out-fundraising them?
Having money is the one thing corporations are good at, and they're really, really good at it. If your strategy hinges on using money as influence, you're always going to lose, because they are FAR better and more practiced at that game than you are.
The only way to advance this particular agenda is to exploit the strengths that we have which corporations don't. We can fill the streets with real people, we can make disruptive spectacles and speak earnestly about social problems. Unlike corporations, we don't need to hide behind spokespeople and PACs, because we have authenticity. We are genuinely concerned about the future of our democracy, and though corporations can try hard to simulate that concern, it's never as authentic as the real thing.
The MAYDAY PAC is like David trying to beat Goliath in a fist fight. Don't fight on his terms, use the sling, idiot!
When you're called before a Grand Jury in the US, you don't have the right to remain silent. The prosecution can effectively force you to answer questions, and if you refuse, you can be jailed for years.
It's still good advice to say absolutely nothing, but it's not as simple as most of you seem to believe. By saying nothing, you are condemning yourself to jail.
This is why pretty much only anarchists refuse to cooperate with Grand Juries, because they have a fundamental ideological opposition to the legal system and will never cooperate with the prosecution, even when their right not to cooperate is suspended. It's one thing to legally exercise your rights, it's another to be willing to go to jail for them.
In addition to being a very sharp security researcher, you seem to have a strong interest in issues of social and political control.
What emerging security trends do you see as being most important or helpful for authoritarians (at home and abroad)?
What security trends are most important for anti-establishment movements?
They certainly are a better training ground for learning to spout pseudo-intellectual-sounding commentary. And hey, that does have its place, especially when you need to sound smart about something you don't know much about. But I already knew how to do that just fine, so when I went to school I studied how to actually do useful things.
They did tell what happened. In fact, they release the entire raw footage to the entire internet, so that any random person could analyze it independently or make their own edited version. That's way WAY different from how the mainstream media operates.
But they also released an edited version, and that's all you watched, because you don't actually care enough to do the work of reviewing the primary source yourself. If you're too lazy to interpret the raw footage yourself, you're going to be stuck with someone else's interpretation.
Good evening. This is your Captain.
We are about to attempt a crash landing.
Please extinguish all cigarettes.
Place your tray tables in their
upright, locked position.
Your Captain says: Put your head on your knees.
Your Captain says: Put your head in your hands.
Put your hands on your hips. Heh heh.
This is your Captain--and we are going down.
We are all going down, together.
And I said: Uh oh. This is gonna be some day.
Standby. This is the time.
And this is the record of the time.
This is the time. And this is the record of the time.
Uh--this is your Captain again.
You know, I've got a funny feeling I've seen this all before.
Why? Cause I'm a caveman.
Why? Cause I've got eyes in the back of my head.
Why? It's the heat. Standby.
This is the time. And this is the record of the time.
This is the time. And this is the record of the time.
Put your hands over your eyes. Jump out of the plane.
There is not pilot. You are not alone. Standby.
This is the time. And this is the record of the time.
This is the time. And this is the record of the time.
I dunno, if just solving it was prize enough for him, why would he have told anyone? Obviously there was a desire there to have people take notice of his accomplishment.
That's not a logical response. If having money obligates one to use it to "correct wrongs", then he is pretty clearly already saddled with that obligation. Just because he doesn't legally have the money in his name doesn't mean he doesn't have access to it, and therefore the power to use it to "correct wrongs" if he so chooses. It's like if Bill Gates turned down a starving kid because he didn't have any money in pocket. If he really cared, he would go get the money he has access to and share it. When you have the possibility of accessing tons of money with little effort, the excuse "I don't have anything to spare" is no excuse at all.
On the other hand he could just say "I really don't care about charity or the well-being of others, I'd prefer if everyone just left me alone." Which would at least be honest. After all, his work for the field of mathematics is more charity than could reasonably be expected out of anyone.
That's a very official sounding restriction, but has it ever been tested in court? Because it seems pretty absurd to think you can tell users "you can download our data, but if you don't delete it again right away, it's illegal".
I'm going to say that you're a robot which interprets everything it reads in the most literal way possible.
I see that you have produced 4 quotes, only 2 of which are actually relevant to the idea that women are better than men (a.k.a. sexism). Based purely on these quotes (though I'm meant to believe that "there's tons more") you claim to have accurately represented the entirety (or at least "the bulk") of feminism, and the many differing schools of thought and movements which make up "the feminist movement".
Why make such generalizations? If those quotes piss you off, why not hate the people who said them, or the people who agree with them? Why instead put words into the mouths of a huge group of people who don't hate men, nor think women are any better? Why equate feminism with misandry? My guess - and that's all it can be - is that you hate feminism for other, unrelated reasons. That when women are assertive, uncompromising, and demand respect and recognition, it feels threatening. It feels as though they must hate you and all other men, because otherwise they wouldn't be so disruptive and annoying. So you make assumptions about their motivations. Because it's much easier to dismiss people who simply irrationally hate you than people with legitimate points to consider and discuss.
You describe an extremely antiseptic environment, where nobody ever talks about anything not directly related to the code, and they only talk about it in a bland tech-manual style. That's not reality.
Reality is that people in the FOSS community enjoy FOSS, but they also enjoy community. Community often involves informal discussions, jokes, etc. and as you mention, interaction outside official channels. And that's all fantastic, and a big part of what keeps people engaged and excited about a project. Even something as simple as being informal and silly in the way you comment your code or explain your algorithm on the dev list can make the project more fun and satisfying, less like corporate work.
The problem is that the very community so many men enjoy is currently alienating for the vast majority of women. Because currently, some of those jokes, discussions and silliness are misogynistic. So while women technically can participate in the coding, the "reward" of getting to be part of a fun community and getting respect from peers is worthless or undesirable to them.
That's an interesting point, but sometimes, you have to draw attention to a particular kind of "bullying" because most people don't even realize it's going on. Maybe they're not even doing it on purpose, they just never stopped to think. For example, if I'm American and so are all the other coders I know, we're not necessarily going to notice if we're doing things in a way that are inconvenient or annoying or offensive to people from other cultures or parts of the world.
Often, we don't fully get these things even when someone mentions it. We're just like "Huh." and move on to the things that actually affect us directly. It takes a pretty high-profile and involved community discourse to a) get enough attention drawn to the problem and b) work out as a community how we should respond to it.
There is a place for playing the "passive victims of police violence", and that strategy has worked at certain times in the past and sometimes still in the present. But I ask: did you see any significant coverage of passive victims of police violence in the corporate media? Because there were a lot of such victims. I mean a lot: uninvolved college kids just trying to get around their campus being beaten, sprayed with chem weapons, tackled and arrested, and they just took it. They wandered around helplessly, being abused by police, pleading for them to stop.
Where was that coverage? It's largely a myth that passive victims of police violence are mediagenic. We think of such things as the perfect story, the perfect thing to arouse public sympathy, mostly because we were raised on the powerful images of the civil rights movement. But it happens all the time these days and nobody hears about it, let alone cares.
People like you say that the reason is that we're not getting passively abused enough, but we've been doing this for decades now. At what point do we look at the old strategies and say "this isn't working anymore"? At what point do we straighten our backs and have enough self-respect to defend ourselves when attacked?
Oh, it happens. The ACLU or NLG brings lawsuits during/after many major protests like this. And sometimes they even win (years later). I've actually heard of more cases where people successfully sue for damages than where people successfully convict cops on criminal charges.
A cynic might say this is because criminal charges actually have a significant negative impact on the police department and would force them to change their policies, wheras civil damages are just a minor inconvenience.
Your alignment: Lawful Neutral.
...and then the courts say "Yes, what the police did was illegal. They must now pay $X in damages and say they're sorry." And so the police department gets some money from the city government, or dips into its "lawsuit slush fund" (public tax dollars, either way) and hands out the dough, a bullshit apology statement, and then turns around and buys more weapons for the next protest.
Large summits like the G20 have a security budget, and you can often see a significant amount of money factored in for "legal settlements and costs". This is money they set aside in advance for the fines and damages they know will have to pay for violating people's rights.
"Black bloc" anarchists originally developed as a response to police violence against peaceful demonstrations. Activists got tired of their people getting attacked all the time, and so they organized their own group of black-clad militants who were prepared to protect the crowd with barricades, shields, and physical force.
These so-called hooligans have been responsible for keeping less-organized protesters safe from brutal police many, many times. Of course, it doesn't work out that way, some groups of militant anarchists have had negative effects as well. But it's not as simple as just disassociating from anyone who has the courage to stand up against the cops.
While agent provocateurs are a very real phenomenon, and have been used to discredit political dissidents in the US countless times, you can't chalk everything up to them.
There are genuine, honest activists out there who sabotage storefronts, recruitment centers, police stations, etc during demonstrations. They do it because it's the only way to get the attention of the public and authorities. If it weren't for their actions, we wouldn't even be having conversations about whether the G20 summit and the policies of G20 countries are fucked up or not. Condemn them all you want, if you need, but they started a conversation that badly needs to be started about the path our nation and the global elite is going down.
That article just blames all other problems on population. Global warming? Wouldn't be happening if there were fewer people. Famine? That amount of food would be plenty for fewer people. Warfare, environmental devastation? Fewer people!
We've been destroying the environment, starving, and killing each other for generations. These are not new problems, and they're not created by overpopulation. Certainly the more people there are, the more of all these things happen - but the solution is to fix the problems, not create less people.
I even agree that having less people is a desirable thing, but it's not the root of all our problems. Acting as though it is will just distract us from addressing the real issues of concern here. Unfortunately, those issues are more political and nuanced than just "people should stop breeding!".
...and yet people are still starving and/or dying of poverty-related illnesses in droves. All this overflowing prosperity and we still can't (or won't) share the benefit with those who are dying from lack of it.
Ever think that maybe it's not the number of people on earth that's the problem, it's just the particular ones who happen to have the most power?
You're right that my perspective is a very US-centric one - I can't really speak to what's appropriate for a country like France, since so much of their infrastructure is already nuclear. In general, I think any country that hasn't already sunk huge amounts of money into nuclear would be foolish to start doing so now, because that money could be spent better on other tech.
/far/ more than its share of it. A cynic would say that it's because the same energy tycoons who've been burning coal all this time are now having their lobbyists draw up proposals for nuclear plants in an effort to keep the government cheese flowing and their business model undisrupted for as long as possible. The problem is that businessmen and politicians are presenting (and funding, respectively) nuclear power like it's the central solution to our problems, when in reality it has a peripherally supporting role at best.
I'm unclear on why (a) it is an "either / or" with nuclear power to you
I wish it weren't, I wish we had a blank check to do whatever it takes to kill coal, but unfortunately that's not how the US government seems to be approaching things. There's a limited amount of money available for non-coal subsidies, and the nuclear industry is getting
So that might explain where I'm coming from better - you thought I was arguing in favor of coal when I pointed out problems with nuclear, but really my concern is to combat the overly enthusiastic way that nuclear is being embraced over sustainable tech in the US.
and (b) why you think nuclear power has such a longer lead in time than renewable.
I guess it's just a function of the complexity of the technology, and perhaps the safety precautions necessary. A solar or wind farm can be set up and operating at peak production quite quickly, whereas building a nuclear reactor and getting it online is a very long-term proposition. I'm sure that the time could be shortened by eliminating or weakening safety and environmental red tape, but I'd hope we're all against that.
let's also clear up exactly what we mean by subsidies here. That money is primarily going into R&D.
Again, not in the US. Energy companies (most of whom are running coal plants) are seeking government funding for the construction and operation of nuclear plants. Maybe they have a position on it, but I've never heard environmental groups like Greenpeace object to funding nuclear R&D, just the building of new nuke plants.
If you are arguing in favor of solar power in place of nuclear, then you'll find no argument from me as far as you are able to provide solar power to me. But if you can't provide me enough power from renwables, then I want the shortfall made up in nuclear power until you can,
Engineers concerned with energy efficiency sometimes talk about the "low hanging fruit". Basically, we need to start by optimizing the things that provide the most optimization with the least cost, and then move on to whatever is the next "lowest hanging fruit". Right now, solar power during the day and wind power during wind is really, really low hanging fruit. When it's day, a solar plant really does provide almost free energy, and similarly for a wind farm when there's wind. Granted these technologies aren't the full solution, but they're very clearly the most effective place to start. Once we're getting as much energy as possible out of renewables, then it makes sense to look at how to optimize the remainder of our coal use, with nuclear or what-have-you. But until we've tackled that low hanging fruit, devoting so much resources to other optimizations is inefficient. And in some cases, it's being used as deliberate misdirection by business people to distract us from the sustainable solutions which can severely cripple their coal-based business model right now.