HN user
I'm not interested in what you think it does. I'm not interested in what you say it does.
I'm interested in what it does.
Three levers are available, and they require action simultaneously.
The article fails to mention the fourth lever: cessation of hostilities, recognition of Iranian sovereignty, reparations for the displaced peoples of the region and curtailment of Israeli expansionist ambitions.
If achieved, none of the collosal amounts of capital expenditure and effort required to immediately secure redundant alternatives to the Bromine supply chain would need to be exerted.
bookslop! get your bookslop here!
Worth it to keep in mind as well, that Iran was committed under the NPT to limit nuclear development to non-weapons based usage. They were inspected regularly by UN bodies like the IAEA and the conclusions of our own intelligence agencies did not support the assertion that they were developing a weapon.
They were using it to support a legitimate nuclear energy and radiotheraputics industry. They are in the part of the planet that will be most impacted by climate warming, so nuclear is critical for them to support baseline power needs.
The United States striking these sites throws the entire international system of non-proliferation into question. If there is no commitment any country can make to any system of governance that allows for peaceful development of nuclear energy, there is no controlling nuclear weapons development and proliferation.
Nowhere in this CNN brief are we informed about whether the sites were or were not used for weapons development. If we take the lessons of mainstream media's coverage of the Iraq war, it is likely CNN is stating this because their owners have been told that it would be better for their bottom line to manufacture consent for a second round of strikes than to preserve the President's assertion that the strikes were successful.
its people have the freedom to choose personal transportation.
A lot of American choice is an illusion. The national expressway network was created to serve national security purposes. Beloved trolley systems in medium density cities were unceremoniously ripped out. Car and tire companies pushed the bus-ification of public transport in order to kill any notion that it should offer comfort and reliability.
The American government refuses to invest in density because its sees sprawl as a deterrant against nuclear threat. (A threat that it takes an active role in escalating, mind you.)
It’s because Americans, even poor Americans, overwhelmingly choose personal transportation.
If you take notice, much of the most expensive and valuable property in this country is in dense regions where it is possible to live without a car. If Americans truly had a choice, they'd pick the kinds of walkable communities they can only experience now on university campuses and in theme parks.
I don't think this is about convincing anyone that she's a good person. She's forthright about her instincts and values and the institutions she worked at that fostered her understanding of the world.
She documents in detail critical moments where Facebook executives made decisions that exemplified their incompetence and damaged their potential impact.
That the "cultural purge" in big tech is flushing out people with these instincts is precisely why the industry is flailing and groveling at the feet of power, for they have no internal compass save for growth for growth's sake.
Everyone can see that now laid bare on these pages, and these companies that rely on their user's willingness to exchange details about their personal lives for cheap dopamine hits may find that generosity well run dry.
i think you should keep in mind that both parties have very smart people in them that care about the country and are trying to do the right thing.
I think this is an absurd claim that is not supported by the facts. DOGE staff are young Elon sycophants[1] that have openly and explicitly supported eugenic policies[2]. There is no reason to believe that they are trying to do the right thing.
1. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-government-young-engin...
2. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/06/nx-s1-5289337/elon-musk-doge-...
they are preparing for automation.
This isn't preparing in the slightest. This is impulse-response. Taking a sledgehammer to our institutions and seeing what happens. A cruel child picking apart the legs of a spider just to see how many it can before it dies.
Adding performance guidelines has been done before. It was done in a systematic way that tried very carefully to avoid disruption to functions[1]. DOGE is forcing its way into offices and physically compromising internal data systems in order to feed data into an experiment.
1. https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/papers/bkgrd/bri...
Musk just yesterday asserted that it was time to deorbit the ISS.[1] Decommissioning telescopes would not be out of the question.
This tired trope fails to capture the accelerationism at play. Elon is firing the most ambitious people in government. 8 years in one position, 1 year promoted fired over the person 9 years in one position.
This is not the nature of union employment, it is a structural weakness in the way employment has been negotiated. Musk is exploiting that weakness.
We have made incredible improvements in alleviating poverty and suffering over the past 50 years
We have also made incredible strides at capturing the productivity and free time that would have fed innovation and effectively transferred it to the financial services industry.
Since schools in the US were desegregated for people of color and women, America embraced a radically neoliberal approach to education. Rather than funding higher education for every citizen who wanted to pursue it now that everyone could, those in power chose to systematically and cynically de-fund higher education and replace it with a degree-for-debt model.
State universities that used to provide low/free tuition to white men, now offer their services to all, for an ever-increasing price.
This has created a society where smart people get on the edu-debt treadmill in search of a better life, only to then be beholden to existing, stagnant profit-maximizing entities to try to pay that debt off for the rest of their lives. This is how innovation has stalled: a top-down systematic defunding that has ensured both gifted and special-needs kids have to fight over scraps.
ACTUAL crisis of HUMAN OVERPOPULATION which is at the root of every problem e.g. climate change
False. The rich disproportionately pollute. Climate change isn't a population problem, it is a resource allocation problem. If the poorest 50% of all people disappeared tomorrow, emissions would only decline by 10%[1].
1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-r...
State-run grocery stores[1] are where changes are actually starting.
https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press...
Incredibly important for the comfort and wellbeing of space travelers. Imagine being in an enclosed box compacted as efficiently as possible next to thrusters and life support equipment. The noise must be insane. At the same time, current noise suppression materials have to be heavy. Every gram saved is worth its weight in gold.
a tax on unhealthy food to help fund Medicare and Medicaid.
Fully 13% of the population lives in an area with restricted access to grocery stores[1]. Couple that with car-centric anti-pedestrian development[2] and you have a definitively societal problem. Addressing that with taxes on the individual will not address these causes, only shift the burden further onto the poor.
1. https://www.aecf.org/blog/communities-with-limited-food-acce...
2. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/11/09/i...
That said, I'd still make the same point that people who value art and the artist will buy from and support the artist.
The chances anyone will come across the artist when their marketplace is flooded with increasingly plausible simulacra become more and more slim as time goes on.
AI is choking off any hope for artists supported by patronage, simply by virtue of discoverability being lost and trust being eroded.
But now we're on a larger scale.
It's simply a bad problem, made worse!
A majority of homeless people do not have access to even basic healthcare.
The only way to do this is to give the person a place to live. Ensure the person has healthy and decent food.
This will require time and treatment so build up a new sense of safety.
In many ways, just meeting people's basic needs would go farther to address mental health than any miracle drug.
The concept of a sociological critical mass was first used in the 1960s by Morton Grodzins, a political science professor at the University of Chicago. Grodzins studied racial segregation — in particular, examining why people seemed to separate themselves by race even when that separation was not enforced by law.
Curious where this researcher found examples of white flight in the 60s completely divorced from the reality of explicitly incentivized depopulation and segregation[1]. Very weird that it is used as an example of "spontaneous" sociological critical mass here, because it very much was catalyzed by real economic policy.
But, alas...
Please try your best to resist apathy. Contact your representative and let them know your priorities, especially in light of a looming government shutdown that threatens funding to exactly these kinds of initiatives.
It remains to be seen whether these controls will have an impact on the second-order / emergent effects of rampant social media. Would prohibited words or time-limitations stop the algorithm from making an embarrassing moment viral?
What happens when these strict restrictions cut someone off from their support systems?
Why would they unionize when most of their comp is stock? The fear mongering, uncertainty and doubt stoked by their CEO's fully-owned press[1] would tank their stock value.
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/22/business/media/jeff-bezos...
EXISTENZ IS PAUSED!
That would rival the speed of on-die processor caches. Right now the Apple M3 offers 300 GB/s or 2.4 Terabits / sec.
A 1 terabit /sec network connection would allow you to basically allow your machine to train and tune arbitrarily sized models completely remotely.
the people in SF likes such conditions
The people in SF like their million dollar shoeboxes to appreciate in value, with zero regard for the externalities that scheme creates[1].
1. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...
Blame the homeless and people trying to help them, take the blame off the real problem: few available homes with high prices[1].
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10574586/#:~:te....
This has been one [unintended?] consequence of AI promulgation. A direct disincentive toward the kind of open access that so used to be common and provided a lot of low-hanging fruit for independent developers trying to increase interoperability within their favorite niches.
So now not only is AI filling the web with garbage that poisons future model development[1], it provides incentive to further close and wall off access to (user-provided!) data.
San Francisco just built a short subway to Chinatown. Not quite clear why.
Largely to set the stage for service to the Richmond.
It's mostly a retirement village.
A testament to the resilience of the community in the face of an ongoing housing supply shortage. There is no doubt immense pressure from our typical economic processes to displace retirees from the place that they've lived their entire lives. You'd rather see old folks trapped in car-dependent suburbia, eventually unable to drive themselves to their basic needs?
"Excuse to delay" is not a cynical read at all.
Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.[1]
He knew it would delay CA-HSR and political will for it nearly died.
1. https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions...
There is still concerted effort from both within[1] and outside the party[2] to push back against rushing the process. His fate is by no means guaranteed.
1. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/16/pelosi-biden-2024-e...
The original post asked what can you do. Apart from hopelessness, you can put your body on the line. Hold a sign. Be present. Take up space. It's something.
if they're blue congressfolk they'll already want to make sure that NOAA survives
Even the blues will want to know that their constituents are paying attention. Swing state blues especially tend to lose their spine without support from their base.
Call them anyway and tell them to replace Biden with someone that can actually make a coherent case against Trump. These backroom discussions are happening right now.