I just feel extremely sad about the mass quantity of events like this happening right now because they are all aggregate to huge negative effects but the average person knows nothing of it. It feels so unfixable.
They certainly want us to feel like its unfixable, but it's not. Were govt to put the effort into the energy transition that we saw in the early days of covid we could zero our emissions, and relatively quickly. The technology is largely available, it needs to be implemented.
The ties between the fossil fuel industry and the far right are clear. Apathy, indifference, inertia, they are all products of propaganda and updated Cambridge Analytica methods.
Fossil fuel interests will stop at nothing to further their greed.
I was hoping this would be the one silver lining of having Elon in government, that they would keep the renewable subsidies or at least keep the fossil fuel lobby in check, but no, Republicans gonna Republican.
The US is just going to become irrelevant for the next few decades. Anything important will move to the EU and China. No one can trust the US to function properly anymore.
Wishful thinking. Ukraine losing the war will be the end of Europe, and Europe will increasingly be ran by right-wing autocrats shredding the social state and blaming immigrants.
You being down-voted is more testament to the orientation of thinking clouding judgment here in HN. Ukraine losing the war will be a massive blow for Europe. Sibling commentator mentioned doubling of the military budget but this disregard readiness of engagement and unity[1]. Nato was the creation of the US and the US pulling out requires, probably, another entity with committed members.
That a Ukraine loss is seen as the end of a free Europe (because Russia wouldn't stop at least until at least DDR Germany borders), is why the other European nations are collectively increasing military spending.
So if (when) American support disappears, I expect Russia to continue to not go anywhere fast while wasting a lot of lives in the process. I also expect this to surprise Putin, as he thinks Russia is a Great Power and therefore can only be stalling if Ukraine is supported by another Great Power and doesn't recognise that (1) Russia isn't, and (2) the EU kinda is, sort of, when it feels like acting with unity rather than as 27 different nations.
So it will be the end of Europe or we will have right wing autocrats? You need to make up your mind. US has trump and I see no end of US anytime soon, sure some self-harm is happening right now but thats about it, that nation is stronger than that.
Compared to hard focus on socialism that was (and still is) prevalent in EU, some better balance is required in these times. Pendulum has swung too far to the left, while the best long term place is as usually somewhere in the middle (which would still be extreme left by US standards but who cares about that).
And russia... well they are bleeding their future right now, in a place they thought they could conquer in 3 days and failing to do so in 3 years, a place they will never really own without a proper genocide (which I think is part of the plan now). I am more than happy about that despite human toll, russia is a mafia state which wants to see the free world burn (or at least subjugate us subhumans, I've lived my childhood in one such state and let me tell you its utterly destructive to whole society on all levels even decades after it ended). Nah I am not worried about them, they are consistently unable to wage modern war to benefit of us all.
In the meantime we arm and train ourselves, stronger Europe is always better for any future scenario, internally and externally. Strength is something even such simple people like puttin' understand. Plus economy will get some boost
> US has trump and I see no end of US anytime soon, sure some self-harm is happening right now but thats about it, that nation is stronger than that.
That remains to be seen. Trump and his goons are breaking apart the foundations of society as we speak, not to mention the decades of Republican gerrymandering. The complete and utter loss of trust in the US on the geopolitical stage is another huge issue, it will be a long time before Europe or Southern America trust the US again - the hope that Trump would be a short-term one-off event went out the window last year.
> Compared to hard focus on socialism that was (and still is) prevalent in EU, some better balance is required in these times.
Where outside of Spain does Europe actually have socialists even as part of the government?
Most countries here are run by the far-right (e.g. Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, the Netherlands), centrists/conservatives (Germany, Poland, Croatia), Social Democrats, neoliberals (France) or coalitions of these.
> Nah I am not worried about [Russia], they are consistently unable to wage modern war to benefit of us all.
Never underestimate the willingness of Russian leaders to sacrifice their population for meat-grinder wars.
> In the meantime we arm and train ourselves, stronger Europe is always better for any future scenario, internally and externally.
Agreed, the problem is we can't be arsed to actually evolve to a truly federal society anywhere close to the US. Economically there has been a lot of integration happening, but politically... oh that's one hell of a clusterfuck.
Australia’s social security system costs each working Australian about $11,600 per year.
That’s $5.80 per hour for a 38 hour work week over a year. That means every working Australian is working something like one day a week for social security, and another two days a week for the tax system more generally.
It’s not until Thursday I’m working for my own benefit.
Ok, let's just take your facetious argument on face value.
So that's $5.80 / hr in our land that has a minimum wage of $24.95 / hr. Still, a bit over 20%, crappy for sure (if it was true).
Now, of course, most people are not on the minimum wage, and definitely not here on HN. The tax system benefits those at the low end more though, so let us look at median wages.
Median hourly wages (in main job) are $40 / hr (Source: ABS - August 2024).
Median incomes are actually a touch higher (because not just main job), at $102,742 / annum, which attracts a tax rate of 21%, before the MANY MANY middle class welfare rebates we get (Source ATO tax calculator for 2024-2025).
So, for most of us, maybe we pay approximately our Monday to the State, but that gives us free school education, one of the world's best health systems per $ value (seriously, there are studies!), not to mention a relatively well functioning society (roads, police, firefighters, etc), on top of that we get the horrendous welfare state that you are bemoaning.
That welfare state includes things like the NDIS, which is out of control and needs to find an equilibrium between all the rent-seekers, but the ambition is amazing! We SHOULD support all our disabled people to be the best they can in society! Meanwhile, even with such a fuckup, we're doing ok. Pull your head out, mate.
Do we have issues? Hell yeah. But our terrible "social security state" is not the start of them at all.
> The number of elderly Australians who live alone with no family, or no family nearby, is truely disappointing.
That's a thing across all Western societies, and we got unchecked rabid capitalism and a complete lack of industry structural politics to thank for that one. Young people not living in an urban area have little choice but to leave there to find employment and higher level education.
> The US is just going to become irrelevant for the next few decades. Anything important will move to the EU and China. No one can trust the US to function properly anymore.
Haha, care to elaborate? I'm legitimately curious how in the heck you came to that conclusion.
You‘re right! #1 among high income countries in Cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, drug overdose deaths, Deaths from violence and accidents, Infant mortality, Obesity-related mortality.
It also has its lowest-ever World Happiness Rankings.
The U.S. is currently leading in global declines in reputation, trust, happiness, and perceived positive influence.
> #1 among high income countries in Cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, drug overdose deaths, Deaths from violence and accidents, Infant mortality, Obesity-related mortality.
It's all originates from each person's decisions. If a person wants to pay attention to their lifestyle and health, then in the US he will get one of the best results in the parameters you listed. That is just a fact.
And if we want to maximize these parameters among everyone, we need a ultratotalitarian government that will put all the people into concentration camps where they will work under threat of execution in the open air and eat a specially designed low-calorie diet.
> It also has its lowest-ever World Happiness Rankings.
Yeas, and North Korea has the highest.
> The U.S. is currently leading in global declines in reputation, trust, happiness, and perceived positive influence.
And that's good thing. For decades US has been doing atrocities all over the world, to the approving cries of other Western countries. So the only problem with US declines in reputation, trust, happiness, and perceived positive influence I see is that this should have happened decades earlier
Record numbers of US citizens seeking to relocate to Canada & the UK. In the last couple months I remember seeing several news stories variously about Doctors, Professors and students applying and/or relocating.
Layoffs in the tech sector haven't slowed at all, and couple that with the DOGE Govt layoffs and the recent jobs numbers stories.
I feel quite certain that if the U.S. is actually measured "at #1" for anything good, it won't retain it much longer.
Bias Disclaimer: I'm a former software engineer working an hourly labor job.
Probably not prisons per hamburger, because both the numerator and denominator are unusually high. Prisons per days-of-maternity-leave, maybe? Hamburgers per preventative-healthcare-checkup, possibly?
Pulling back on federally-funded research grants for the sciences does not address how the economy, hard power, and culture of the States will completely fall off the map leaving an "irrelevant nation" though.
The US has no real exports. All of its economic might was because it has its top tier market, and all that wealth is essentially from its soft power and position. The more you peel off that soft power, the weaker that position especially as wealthy and educated people leave.
I don't agree that the US won't be relevant, it's more like the US will resemble the position of Russia in the next decade than the position it is in right now.
The US exports aircraft, vehicles, and medicine, and the rest of the exports are just raw stuffs, like oil or corn. How's Boeing looking these days? Is the US auto industry where exciting new technologies are coming from? Unless the US is going to be great because we export more coal, then I too expect some decline.
The last big round of global innovation was internet services, of which I'm pretty sure (not having looked it up) that US exports represent the majority of world exports.
Apple keeps half the sales price of every iPhone whereas the last I saw Foxconn gets only a few dollars per phone for the final assembly. It used to be that most of the expensive components (display, memory) in the iPhone were supplied by Japan, S Korea and Taiwan, but I admit that that might have changed over the years.
It looks like cell phone exports are about 30 billion dollars, which is 1% of the 3 trillion dollars mentioned earlier. I'm surprised it's so low. (I'm open to corrections on these numbers.)
Currently, but even then by nominal GDP not PPP (China's way ahead of the USA already by PPP). Nominal being different from PPP is not just about cost of living though: the US dollar is artificially high by about 10% due to being a dominant reserve currency, and China has a policy of keeping their currency weak. Flip both of those and China would be about equal nominal GDP as the USA.
Also consider that the comment you're responding to said "next few decades", and consider that China's GDP grew at four times the rate of the USA economy in the two decades between 2003 and 2023: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=Nominal+GDP+China+2023+...
But the real critical thing, is that economies can fall very fast when an a poor leader is empowered. Trump is purging anyone who says "no", which is already a dangerous place even if he was competent, rather than someone who tells such obvious lies on multiple health reports (recently his height(!), previously saying an exam had "only positive results" without knowing what positive means in a medical context), or facing a court case because he misrepresented the size of his penthouse apartment.
You remember right at the start of his term, there were fires in LA? And he ordered dams in NoCal opened? That aren't hydrologically connected to LA? When that kind of decision is criticised, it gets stopped. When people around are afraid to say "no", it doesn't stop, and the dams empty. In this case, it would have led to Californian agriculture approximately ending for several years due to the drought, and consequently to food shortages.
Same deal with the currently in progress attempt to deporting all the (Biden's team's estimate) 10-11 million undocumented migrant workers, many of whom are in low-paid agricultural roles, so kicking them out directly leads to less food and higher prices.
Worse than that. Consider that he got RFK Jr as the health secretary: by itself this is likely to have a measurable negative impact on US life expectancy.
Or the trillion dollar healthcare cuts (have they fully passed into law yet? Reporting from abroad is unclear how your system works): also likely to have a measurable negative impact on US life expectancy.
Then there's the incompetent attempt at tariffs, not just Penguin Island, but also that they were without any commensurate attempt to support local industry.
Or choosing a (defence) team so lax that they accidentally invited a journalist to a Signal discussion about active military engagement.
Or consider the reports that Iran's nuclear project wasn't as utterly destroyed as he likes to publicly claim: what happens if Iran does rebuild it all over the next few months, as others say? Does his ego prevent him from responding, letting them get their nuke?
And of all this, only two examples ("positive results" and penthouse size) are more than 6 months old. When does congress get a chance to change, with the possibility of him being impeached (for a third time)?
The big problem is people tend to look at history as a singular event, or the final consequence of a series of events.
When such events are clearly ongoing, people roll their eyes and say you're overreacting. Then when it all ends and consequences happen, people say now is the time for healing, nobody could've foreseen this, and it's too bad nothing could've been done.
It's the same as being sober and trapped in a car with a drunk driver and their drunk friends. To them, it's fine. They're comfortable with what they're doing. You're the one being annoying for complaining. But their every action is not only endangering you and themselves, but it's endangering people on the perimeters who don't even know about the crisis that's happening within that 2 ton box. Some can see the swerving from far away, but there's nothing they can do. The only hope is the passenger trying to reason with an angry drunk to pull over, but it'll never happen. They'll just get more pissed off and drive more erratically to mess with you and to get some laughs from their friends. So it's a struggle between closing your eyes and hoping it's over soon, or trying to fight back and hope you can stop them. But neither option is easy and both shift the responsibility to someone other than the ones causing the chaos.
For those who prefer their news without pop-overs galore, autoplaying unrelated animation/video, requests to enable notifications with only yes/later options, claims to care about your privacy despite wanting to share your details with hundreds of other companies, etc.: https://archive.is/Tu51y
I liked the idea behind the movie, but the movie itself wasn't very good. It was a bit like the movie Mickey 17, it didn't quite know what it wanted to be and tried to be a lot of things, but none of it really stuck and it ended up being a bit incoherent. The ending I thought was powerful though.
> about science by a population of people who probably mostly failed high school science
Your assumption that actors (and writers, those where the ones “preaching” more than the people on screen) have failed highschool at a higher rate than the general population is, I think, rather flawed¹. There are some very bright people in the entertainment industries for one reason or another (doing what they enjoy, and presumably are good at, instead of something else they are good at, being a common situation, there being more money in stardom being another).
Hence a number successful stand-ups who have degrees (in the sciences, not necessarily “media studies” before someone pipe up with that), PhDs, law certifications, and such.
Hedy Lamarr is the best known poster child for this, but too many think she is a singleton exception rather than an indicator that we shouldn't make too many assumptions about what acting talent might imply about other mental abilities.
----
[1] And, in fact, more snobby than the film you are critiquing as being snobby!
> Being preached at about science by a population of people who probably mostly failed high school science is not a good time.
I agree with the part about preaching, but fair is fair: they were preaching scientific consensus. They preach what is said by the overwhelming majority of active scientific researchers in this field.
You didn’t say they were wrong I agree, but still .. they were (/ are) right. And why should they be perfect, anyway? They are who they are, flawed and all, but they are right about this and they were right to make that movie and they were right about people being selfish.
Ironically you could say that we are now basically reenacting the movie, proving its point. There’s an asteroid heading for us and here we are, judging the high school grades of the people telling us about its trajectory.
I thought it was very depressing and surprisingly self reflective and poignant in that sense.
Why would you assume people that went on to have successful film careers failed high school science? Just because someone doesn't pursue science as a career doesn't mean they received bad grades in it, especially at a high school level.
I’m not assuming anything - this is why I used words like “probably” and “mostly” - but let’s just say that I’ve known my share of actors, and I’m willing to take the odds.
It's so funny to me you'd whine about "preaching" and then take such a needlessly judgemental and demonstrably false stance, and then double down and lie when it's pointed out. Truly, a person of science.
C'mon bud, you've got a PhD. You don't really need some uneducated filth to point out how you were disengenous.
But just in case: you made a prejudiced assumption and then boldly claimed you didn't. And you didn't state an opinion, you presented it as (probable) fact. You can couch it with all the adverbs you want, your own snobby disdain shines right through.
Without regard to the broader point* in the particular case of Leo, I’d be surprised if he had great k-12 science education. He was a child star already at that point, right? Only so many hours in the day.
Of course, it isn’t a universal rule, see Dolph Lundgren, etc etc.
* I don’t care if the actor delivering an environmentalist message in a movie is actually good at science for the same reason I don’t care if Keanu Reaves knows king fu.
I loved the concept for that movie. I found the execution rather lacking, though. In the end, I wouldn't recommend watching it. Just watch the trailer instead, yo'll get the point without needing to finish the entire thing.
The section of the population that needs to think about the Inconvenient Truth didn’t watch the movie, because they don’t watch documentaries unless it’s about a Poop Cruise, or a celebrity.
I think we rely too much on government mandated websites than we do practical common sense that could save lives.
For instance, over 175,000 people die from heat exposure each year across the WHO European Region. Compare that to 1-2k in the US.
In this case, the Don't Look Up scenario is that people don't want to get A/C and governments sometimes make it very hard for them, killing hundreds of thousands because... I don't know why. But at least EU has nice proclamations and accords on the risk of climate change.
The first number is based on statistical observation of mortality rate the second is based on classification by doctor at death. It's not comparable at all. For example, if there is an increase in heart related death when it's hot it's not accounted in second stats.
WHO European region also covered Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and other countries from central Asia so I don't see how you can conclude anything about EU with this piece of statistic. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WHO_regions)
> Several EU countries have mandatory temperature limits for air conditioning in public buildings. Spain, Italy, and Greece have all announced that A/C in public buildings cannot be set lower than 27C (80F) in summer
How does that make it "hard" to get A/C in private homes? And are there a lot of heat-related deaths at 27C?
> The EU's F-Gas Regulation creates significant restrictions on refrigerants used in air conditioning
You should maybe look into why those exist. Air conditioning refrigerants are themselves major greenhouse gases and many deplete the ozone layer. Try also comparing those regulations to American ones. They're likely not very different.
> 90% of US homes have AC while only 20% of European homes have it
The US is richer and hotter. There's nothing like Florida or south Texas or Las Vegas or Phoenix in Europe.
> There's significant red tape when installing AC due to building regulations
Do tell...
> some EU countries even have laws telling you how much you can open your windows! In the UK...
Did you write this with an LLM or something? The third link you provided says nothing of the sort. It's about tint regulations on automobile windows FFS.
Not the GP, but there are some regulations about windows, not sure if local or EU-wide. Windows at floor level above ground level must not be fully openable or must have an outside barrier. But thats a pretty sane restriction, given those windows are basically just glass doors to nowhere.
I would be amazed if much of the US didn't have a similar building code that there must be a railing if there's a possibility of easily falling out the window/door.
What does this have to do with government mandated websites? Seems that the US had a government website about climate and few heat deaths. If the number of heat deaths goes up this year without the websites would you think that is because the website went away (obviously not).
Seems like a website with information about climate change without a mandate about max AC is a pretty conservative strategy all things considered.
As a non-American, the most painful thing about all of this is seeing how much the world has relied on America's charity for so long.
Had other supposed economic powerhouses invested in their geographic and atmospheric science the same way the USA has, this would've been a rather annoying blip on the radar. We'd need to quickly get our backups out of storage and host them elsewhere, and go without American data points for a couple of years, but most things would be fine.
Instead, it's now becoming clear how much just about any country but China, Russia, and Iran has relied on American scientific investments, and even those seem to freely incorporate American data when it's provided for free.
I have no doubt that all of the atmospheric, oceanographic, and environmental science the American government has all been for strategic purposes, either directly providing information useful for the military of providing a believable excuse to install sensors all around the globe, some of which have been "enhanced". Still, as long as your country is friendly to the American regime, you were getting huge amounts of useful scientific data out of that deal, enough not to set up local alternatives.
Here in the EU, scientists have been scrambling to safeguard data like this since the day of Trump's reelection, but it seems like governments here don't seem to be all that interested in funding any of the work the Americans have been doing.
i think what contributes the most to my sense of dread is the feeling that if you were to tell these decision makers in govt right now "but this'll kill people!" they'd respond "good"
They don't care about people. Senator Joni Ernst when told that people would die due from the spending bill responded with, "Well, we are all going to die."
> Senator Joni Ernst when told that people would die due from the spending bill responded with, "Well, we are all going to die."
reply
Well, how many times has she seen a doctor in her life so far? Of course, more than one. Then, why did she do that if she is eventually going to die one day?
They’re not stupid. These voters see government as a means to enact cruelty on outgroups they don’t like. That’s why they vote for cruel people who don’t care about hurting others. They are not stupid. They know exactly what they are voting for and are overwhelmingly supportive if it.
We shouldn’t excuse these voters as merely stupid, like they’re just innocently ignorant or uninformed. They are deliberately malevolent, and vote specifically for cruel, terrible politicians because they, themselves are cruel and terrible people and desire such representation.
And they are not just supporting cruelty. They are cheering and screaming for it. They want more.
If this administration doesn't want to do anything to solve climate change, that's their choice. It's a terrible choice, but it's in their power to do so.
However, there's a huge difference between dismissing the severity of the evidence vs. going out of your way to hide evidence. The first is born of arrogance. The later is naked cowardice - they know exactly how wrong they are. If they wanted to project strength, they could simply leave the reports up and say "we don't care". Instead they scurry around behind the curtains trying to cover their tracks. Fucking pathetic.
How in the world did Juche become our national philosophy? I'm not sure, but I think about it all the time now.
I'm on HN, so I tend to want to blame the ad industry. It's pretty nebulous to think that "made in America" directly snowballed into this; so many things did. The freakier nativism in advertising really could use a break right about now though.
I do think USA-flavored Juche does some explanatory power for the group as a whole, even if the individuals lack any specific philosophy beyond hill climbing.
Likewise, “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer describes some of the political processes that got us here. That along with “The Family” by Jeff Sharlet to provide a little color to the religious side.
I think the "advertising" was the billions spent on what were effectively anti-brown ads to help sell the Iraq/Afghan wars. Meanwhile in the 2000s the GSEs did not disclose their financials bc if they had perhaps the people would have felt the wars had a cost.
Since then it's been gradual attacks on press freedom (WL exposed fraud/propaganda in the Iraq/Afghan wars) and massive profits by the defense industry, resulting in dramatically more lobbying money. Not to mention the US automotive industry and major banks getting bailed out and preventing many small economic corrections that should have occurred.
Then 20 years after 9/11 when the US has spent 10s of TRILLIONS on wars and virtually nothing on infrastructure, industrial policy, etc., everyone wonders why China appears to be close to leapfrogging. The anti-brown propaganda and "USA USA" jingoism back in the early 2000s is still fresh, benefitting candidates with xenophobic and jingoistic messages. Many feel real economic pain but don't understand that you don't spend $20T without consequences -- plus scapegoating the weakest members of society is apparently more emotionally satisfying.
By the time we got the pandemic both parties realized that they had more to gain from fiscal irresponsibility, and the tribalism of the government's anti-brown propaganda combined with the "multicultural solidarity" focus over class warfare by Dems, led to increasing tribalism and tribe-focused media. Now a large percentage of the population lives in a complete information bubble and is close to worshiping its political favorites as though they are religious icons.
Thus now regardless of which party is in power, there will be a shift to censor and suppress information that is viewed as harmful to society. I honestly blame both parties for their share of this, but the ultimate culprit is feed algorithms that are optimized for emotionally potent content that creates engagement (and ad dollars) and nothing more.
What is actually fascinating about the orignal TikTok is that the algorithm was so much more useful at showing interesting/appealing content that it pretty much overtook Insta, YouTube, and Netflix and required government intervention to stop its growth. This shows us clearly how the major social media platforms were not just wrong about how to maximize profits but wrong on how to entertain and engage people, mistakes that are only possible when there is really not much competition, which is how we now do capitalism in the US -- and by the way if you win you get nationalized.
It's actually where the Heritage Foundation has been trying things out before using in America. The connection between Heritage, Orban, and Trump's circle is concerning. At this point, Trump is more their useful idiot who can be the populous frontman. He's a symptom of the larger frustration with govt and growth in inequality
Right, nice savings and opportunities for fossil energy industry. Good job.
So what is the plan for handling the US nuclear warhead stockpile as the empire crumbles? I'm worried about billionaires with nukes. Maybe not the person directly but people behind all that envision super wealthy city-states and I totally expect those to have nukes.
The nuclear codes won't stop anyone with time and engineers. These are intended for physically arming the strong link in the warhead that is supposed to send the signal to the exclusion zone but someone with unrestricted access should be able to override it and send the signal directly. Although over the years the mechanical systems were replaced with electronics that eventually become encrypted microelectronics, IIUC the actual device that does the kaboom remained with its original design and applying voltage will be able to trigger it. Safe against rough handlers(i.e. crazy solders) but won't stop people with unrestricted access.
> IIUC the actual device that does the kaboom remained with its original design and applying voltage will be able to trigger it
That is not my understanding. My understanding is that the proper implosion requires very precise timing of signals for each shaped charge element otherwise the implosion ends up being lopsided and the nuke fizzles instead of exploding. These timings depend not just on the shape of the charges, but also on the relative wire lengths from the detonator to the explosives. (In theory these wire lengths can be unique for each warhead, thus making the timings for each warhead unique). The detonation circuit is not just comparing the code with an expected one, but using it to create the right signal timings. In other words the right code plus the information in the electronics together gives the timings for the signals with which they propagate through the different length of wires such that they form the right implosion.
To reverse engineer this you need to figure out when each explosive element needs to be triggered to form the explosion. Then you need to figure out when the signals need to leave the electronics such that it travels through the wiring looms just right to create the desired explosive pattern. And then you need to figure out what code you need to supply the electronics so it produces this desired electronic timing to achieve the above.
That is three wickedly hard challenge. And you will only know if your people pulled each of them off corectly, when you try to detonate the warhead.
> won't stop people with unrestricted access
That is true. But it is not like all they would need to do is to apply voltage on a single line, like some crazy hot-wiring car tief. Their best and easiest bet is to dissasemble the warhead and use the fissile material from it inside of an implosion device of their own design.
You may be right, the reason I assumed that the controller that controls the detonation itself was contained in the exclusion zone since earlier safety mechanisms were mechanical. So if they modernized the safety mechanism maybe they didn’t change the exploding part and all they need is power to prepare the device and then a simple signal to trigger it ?
I think there must be a plan after the USSR collapse. Somehow they did not let rough agents obtaining the warheads but there were enough rumors, literature and media around it to prompt a consideration IMHO.
By the time you could act it's too late, if you don't want to dismantle the nukes independently. It's a consequence of the existence.
Just imagine Biden having commanded to trigger a process which destroys the nuclear material (by triggering some degeneratio process or something) would that have been accepted or would everybody have said that limits U.S.'s strategic options permantly in too high degree?
tl;dr: the Soviet state didn't collapse in the manner of a zombie apocalypse or environmental catastrophe, it collapsed politically; there was continuity in command / control until the weapons were all moved back physically into Russia.
It's a real shame but at least there other nations still doing this work like China and various Euro countries. Sad to see the USA transition to a banana republic. This belief that MAGA party has that the US can't do big things any longer and only corporations and broligarchs know how to lead us forward is just sad.
> This belief that MAGA party has that the US can't do big things any longer and only corporations and broligarchs know how to lead us forward is just sad.
Especially given the Musk/DOGE recent experience.
Musk takes over Twitter, fires 40% of the workforce, and nothing much happens.
Musk takes over the US Govt, fires <10% of the workforce, and things stop working.
From this we should conclude, obviously, that the government is run much, much more efficiently and with less slack than any of the Big Tech organisations (who are also all busy laying off 10s of % of their workforces, apparently with no ill effect).
I guess they see themselves as high officers in those states. I fail to understand how someone could read about living in a dictatorship and go "yeah, I would like to live like that"
Evidence suggests ~30% of people are content to be worse off in order to inflict a larger loss upon others. This paper makes for rather grim reading but imho provides a very useful heuristic for understanding the political enfironment in an era of mass communication.
Humans display a reduced set of consistent behavioral phenotypes in dyadic games
> Evidence suggests ~30% of people are content to be worse off in order to inflict a larger loss upon others. This paper makes for rather grim reading but imho provides a very useful heuristic for understanding the political enfironment in an era of mass communication.
Pinning this on human psychology is ignoring how the game is set up. If you structure something in such a way that the person who gets the most points wins and gets a prize, a move that causes you to lose one point but causes your only opponent to lose two points will put you ahead. That's arithmetic, not psychology.
The issue, then, is when we allow things to be structured that way -- as zero sum games. Instead what we should be doing is stamping out anything that fosters artificial scarcity.
Moreover, as the paper points out, that's what happens in dyadic systems. Which is to say, two party systems. If you have the option to cost yourself a point but cost one of your opponents two points, that's an advantageous move in a two-party system, but not in a five-party system even with a zero-sum game, because then you've cost yourself a point against three of the four other parties. So if you want to get rid of that, have your state adopt score voting (specifically score voting, not IRV or any of that mess) instead of the existing voting system which mathematically constrains us to a two-party system.
You don't have to see yourself as a high officer. You just have to imagine that you will be restored to your deserved state. In that state you are slightly better than average, and only those who are morally defective suffer. (Those are the ones who are now unjustly keeping you from succeeding on your merits.)
The high officials are the truly great ones who have restored the natural order. You don't need that. You just require being recognized as somewhat better than most.
This is how the entire history of racism worked in the United States. You may be a poor white person, living in a crappy neighborhood, with a crappy job, but atleast you're not black with things like Jim Crow, police, and redlining making sure legally your life is even worse. Plus your boss looks just like you and said you're a cultural fit so you may even be rich like him one day!
You reminded me of the Lyndon B Johnson quote which seems more relevant that ever. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
The trouble with this quote is that it's too easy to misinterpret it exactly in favor of the people it's criticizing.
Racism is a system for pitting poor white people and poor black people against each other. But the perpetrators are not the people in the other tribe, they're the people telling you that there should be separate tribes.
Bacon's Rebellion [1] in colonial Virginia, 1676-7, was a a multi-race and cross-class uprising against the colonial government and the aritocratic planter class. The rebellion's failure was followed by measures that served to alienate the poor white population from the enslaved black population.
Democracy is complicated. The world is complex, but you get only a limited set of choices (in some implementation a few more, in others a few less) which means the burden in the end is on you. Now you take the wannabe dictator, which takes that all of you "I'm like your dad and will care about all those problems, so you only have to care about your direct environment, doing your job, taking care of your family, all else will be handled"
> I fail to understand how someone could read about living in a dictatorship and go "yeah, I would like to live like that"
fwiw there are religious people who read about the great kings in the bible and wish they had one of those today, and they vote (not endorsing, just sharing my experience)
More importantly, US oligarchs are religious. Mostly evangelical, mormon or some postmodern derivative, like Thiel, Yarvin, Musk and their ilk.
In the US, even people who aren't very religious in practice still harbour religious beliefs like the state of Israel being a divine entity. I.e. like Ted Cruz, who knows some english biblical phrases but isn't religious enough to stop himself from playing golf with the pharaoh, and yet strongly holds on to the antisemitic zionist belief that jews must move to the state of Israel and eradicate their neighbours.
Wow, that's possibly the bleakest set of opinions I've ever seen detailed.
I can't help but think that this is typical self-loathing and ensuing self-destruction turned towards society itself. I need to read his actual writing, though. I'm sure there's also some element of actively pandering towards people in power desperate to justify their hold through some ideology.
Although it seems more robust in the long term*, anti-intellectualism probably has a cliff of adaptivity, just like academia, ideology, or indeed any collection of values
*The foundations of China's rise can ultimately be traced to the cultural revolution? Now we wait.
Of course I know Thiel is probably one of the most evil people alive. But I suspect he's a lot more evil than he's let us know. But this guy seems to have built his career off of actively propagating resentment and hate. If you read about Thiel's upbringing it's entirely unsurprising the two get along so well.
> Swakomund was known for its continued glorification of Nazism after World War II, including the celebration of Hitler's birthday and "Heil Hitler" Nazi salutes given by residents. In 1976, The New York Times quoted a German working in a Swakopmund hotel who described the city as "more German than Germany". As of the 1980s, Nazi paraphernalia was available to buy in shops.
Just read his Gray Mirror posts or watch a podcast with him. If you really want to get the full experience you need to go back to his unqualified reservations stuff but it can be VERY tedious.
He is simply not that smart nor that interesting. Just a mega cringe-lord loser who got the ear of other cringe-lord losers who happen to be unfathomably wealthy.
The administration is so devoid of any value it staggers the mind. The only thing that I can agree with is that our dependence on China is not a good thing (Oh yes, and minimizing governmental fraud and waste) -- the concepts, not any of the actions done to address these concerns.
What makes this mess even more disheartening is that about of third of the population loves it.
There is a very large amount of redundency in enviromental data gathering and reporting, plus given.the most basic facts that it is impossible to close source the information source, and that there are now countless sensors on.earth and in orbit that can be re calibrated to provide conitiniousl'y consistent new data to older ongoing studies, there is essentialy nothing that can be effected by a political directive to actualy stop reporting, short of martial law, and then people would start printing pamphlets with potatoes and coffee dregs
>NOAA was caught using data from weather stations with faulty equipment and positioned next to new heat sources and only moved to correct the issue when confronted so I'd say this is entirely justified. The first step in any scientific process is clean data.
Assuming this uncited assertion is true, why would it be "entirely justified" to simply remove it without any particular reason as to why, nor discussion around the concern over data accuracy? Seems to me that the scientific community would be better served with an open dialogue rather than mute removal.
Yes, normally in a case where data were later shown to have been taken incorrectly, you would remove just the incorrect data but leave an unmodified copy of the old data available somewhere. Or, just leave a very prominent note about the change with a detailed explanation somewhere else. You would not take down everything because 1. That would deprive taxpayers of the correct data they had already paid for, and 2. That would mess up the data ingestion pipelines of the researchers who depended on the data.
Yeah we should definitely make policy based on claims from 15 year old Fox News articles, which are famous for their even-handedness and lack of editorial bias.
> Wrecked rain gauges. Whistleblowers. Million-dollar payouts and manhunts. Then a Colorado crop fraud got really crazy.
> The sordid story of two ranchers who conspired to falsify drought numbers by tampering with rain gauges on the plains of Colorado and Kansas, resulting in millions in false insurance claims
They never do. I always look up users like this after the fact and it’s always clear to me they got lost in sauce online, ended up on HN, and think they can just get away being edgy in a room full of professional nerd snipers.
You're going to be long dead before it matters one bit.
I've lived through enough stupid didn't-come-true hysteric predictions of climate alarmism to know.
Funny how the downvoting and flagging shows your indoctrination. Fortunately the government has already done the deed in stopping this insanity, so keep scaring yourselves while everyone else is finally free to live.
Barring any evidence to the contrary, it could simply be a misconfiguration. This kind of stuff does happen, particularly when a government agency is running DNS.
Edit: For those who insist on downvoting facts, other, better articles have both found the report on a NOAA server [1], and had official response from government spokespeople about what is actually going on [2]. There's no need to speculate.
“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which coordinated the information in the assessments, did not respond to repeated inquiries”
Nobody is jumping to conclusions, lots of climate related information is being scrubbed. This website has been down for at least 12 hours. The fact that the domain is still registered proves precisely nothing.
Could it be a misconfiguration? Sure, but available evidence points to an ongoing attempt to erase everything related to climate change.
> “The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which coordinated the information in the assessments, did not respond to repeated inquiries”
Except they did, as I found an NPR article with official comment, and there's a link downthread to this much better article about the same thing, again with authoritative reply:
> NASA will now take over, Victoria LaCivita, communications director at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told ABC News. "All preexisting reports will be hosted on the NASA website, ensuring compliance with statutorily required reporting," LaCivita said, referring ABC News to NASA for more information.
So, they're explicitly answering the second half of that question. Again, not suggesting the fact pattern is good, just that this article is terrible. I assume the AP could have also managed to get the same quote before running to press with speculation?
> It's from your source. It's the very last sentence in the article as of right now.
Sorry, what? I don't have any affiliation with ABC. Someone else posted the link.
NPR has the same basic comments [2]:
> All five editions of the National Climate Assessment that have been published over the years will also be available on NASA's website, according to NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens. NASA doesn't yet know when that website will be available to the public.
How you get from that to "we don't know if they'll ever publish it again!" is beyond me.
>How you get from that to "we don't know if they'll ever publish it again!" is beyond me.
In case you've missed it, the current administration lies constantly and loves suppressing views it doesn't like. Hosting a document is not rocket science. There is zero reason to take something down before having the new host up and running. That this has been done anyway suggests malign intent. And the current administration is long past getting the benefit of the doubt.
I didn't say that. You've been posting it everywhere and called it a "better source" that we should all read. Calling it "your source" is a reasonable shorthand.
> How you get from that to "we don't know if they'll ever publish it again!" is beyond me.
I didn't say that either. I only pasted a direct quote from an article you urged everyone to read. How you get from that to what you're saying is beyond me.
> I only pasted a direct quote from an article you urged everyone to read.
Mea culpa, I missed the line because it was at stranded at the bottom of a bunch of blocked ads. About the only thing I can say is that "NASA" and "any details" is doing all of the heavy lifting in that sentence.
The reporter just quoted someone from the administration saying that they'll follow the law. So the reporter runs over to NASA, doesn't get an immediate or exact answer, and says "OK, I'll just make it sound like maybe they're being dodgy about following the law, then."
Its a fairly standard reporter trick, but it's sleazy nonetheless: "At press time, we've received no answer from the man about when he stopped beating his wife."
> > How you get from that to "we don't know if they'll ever publish it again!" is beyond me.
> I didn't say that either.
I now realize that this language could be misconstrued. I wasn't literally talking about "you". I meant it as "how one gets from that statement to..", and I was talking about the reporters.
No you said it’s probably a dns configuration, posted some pointless name server addresses and implied government sysadmins are incompetent.
What actually happened is exactly what this article said and I wouldn’t be surprised if they get no response from NOAA because of the administration’s well documented feud with the AP.
And if you believe NASA will publish anything beyond the most perfunctory version of this report under this administration I have a bridge to sell you.
I said that barring better information, you can't rule it out. Still true.
> posted some pointless name server addresses
They're government servers, is the point. And don't you find it a little bit curious that someone bothered to change the NS records? It's not the usual way that a website goes down. In fact, it's the sort of thing that happens when you're in the process of (potentially incompetently) moving a domain from one server to another.
> What actually happened is exactly what this article said and I wouldn’t be surprised if they get no response from NOAA
Yet other reporters, from multiple different left-leaning news outlets, managed to get these elusive comments from super hard-to-reach people like...the White House press secretary for science policy. It's almost like there was a press conference or something.
Sometimes you actually have to do work to be a reporter, and when you skip that part and jump directly to conspiracy, it's not defensible. It's just trash journalism.
Is it really that unreasonable to believe that a government run by people who’ve regularly called climate change a hoax and has a history of pulling previously public data is pulling the public data about climate change? I don’t disagree that jumping to conclusions is bad but intentionally discounting prior behavior seems just as reckless to me.
i’ve noticed a large uptick over the past couple years of some people insisting it’s unreasonable to consider context and known past behaviors when we try to discuss things.
again, no, it’s not unreasonable. actually it would be incredibly silly, more unreasonable to ignore their past behaviors when discussing this.
That's a better article than the link, since they actually bothered to get answers to the question from definitive sources. NPR also linked directly to the NOAA copy of the report, lending credence to the "sloppy relocation" theory of the case:
If they already fired the staff of the agency, it's actually pretty believable that the dedicated website would get shut down. Talk about burying the lede.
That's hopelessly naive. A "misconfiguration" is the excuse they use after the fact when there's enough outrage that they have to put things back the way they were.
I'm not being hopelessly naive. It's certainly possible that they took it down with the explicit intention of hiding information on the internet, but that would also be pretty stupid, since various articles have found the reports on other government servers. So I assume incompetence before malice.
What's already known is that they fired the staff who prepared the report, and are presumably shutting down the agency. Is it really surprising that someone might have turned off the webserver before transferring the domain?
Yes you are. If you’re arguing in good faith then you should try to answer this question:
How far does it have to go before you assume malice? Do they have to tell you “I am malicious”? And if someone malicious is using the “dont admit it” strategy are you fucked?
Sure, it is always DNS. But are other sites on that DNS also down? How long has this site been down? Has anyone acknowledged this outage?
If the DNS is up and the domain is registered it starts to look like a takedown instead of a mistake.
I do know that the EPA took down their EJScreen [1] dataset so it’s not like politically motivated takedowns are unprecedented under the current regime.
I just feel extremely sad about the mass quantity of events like this happening right now because they are all aggregate to huge negative effects but the average person knows nothing of it. It feels so unfixable.
They certainly want us to feel like its unfixable, but it's not. Were govt to put the effort into the energy transition that we saw in the early days of covid we could zero our emissions, and relatively quickly. The technology is largely available, it needs to be implemented.
The ties between the fossil fuel industry and the far right are clear. Apathy, indifference, inertia, they are all products of propaganda and updated Cambridge Analytica methods.
Fossil fuel interests will stop at nothing to further their greed.
I was hoping this would be the one silver lining of having Elon in government, that they would keep the renewable subsidies or at least keep the fossil fuel lobby in check, but no, Republicans gonna Republican.
> The ties between the fossil fuel industry and the far right are clear.
The fossil fuel industry has ties to anyone who will promote their business.
> Fossil fuel interests will stop at nothing to further their greed.
Exactly. Nothing. If tomorrow the left advances their interest be sure that the fossil fuel industry will just as quickly attach to them.
The US is just going to become irrelevant for the next few decades. Anything important will move to the EU and China. No one can trust the US to function properly anymore.
Doubt with the whole tech stack. Germany is using a lot more Palantir in the police. I'd love to see change.
> EU
Wishful thinking. Ukraine losing the war will be the end of Europe, and Europe will increasingly be ran by right-wing autocrats shredding the social state and blaming immigrants.
You being down-voted is more testament to the orientation of thinking clouding judgment here in HN. Ukraine losing the war will be a massive blow for Europe. Sibling commentator mentioned doubling of the military budget but this disregard readiness of engagement and unity[1]. Nato was the creation of the US and the US pulling out requires, probably, another entity with committed members.
1: https://www.politico.eu/article/italy-grand-plan-meet-nato-t...
That a Ukraine loss is seen as the end of a free Europe (because Russia wouldn't stop at least until at least DDR Germany borders), is why the other European nations are collectively increasing military spending.
For a sense of scale (only scale, money is definitely not the most important criteria), the EU currently spends twice as much on their military as Russia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_highest...
So if (when) American support disappears, I expect Russia to continue to not go anywhere fast while wasting a lot of lives in the process. I also expect this to surprise Putin, as he thinks Russia is a Great Power and therefore can only be stalling if Ukraine is supported by another Great Power and doesn't recognise that (1) Russia isn't, and (2) the EU kinda is, sort of, when it feels like acting with unity rather than as 27 different nations.
It makes no sense whatsoever for Russia to attack more states than Ukraine.
The sole reason Russia invaded Ukraine was that it was flirting too much with NATO.
Putin might be a lunatic, but he is not stupid.
Promise?
So it will be the end of Europe or we will have right wing autocrats? You need to make up your mind. US has trump and I see no end of US anytime soon, sure some self-harm is happening right now but thats about it, that nation is stronger than that.
Compared to hard focus on socialism that was (and still is) prevalent in EU, some better balance is required in these times. Pendulum has swung too far to the left, while the best long term place is as usually somewhere in the middle (which would still be extreme left by US standards but who cares about that).
And russia... well they are bleeding their future right now, in a place they thought they could conquer in 3 days and failing to do so in 3 years, a place they will never really own without a proper genocide (which I think is part of the plan now). I am more than happy about that despite human toll, russia is a mafia state which wants to see the free world burn (or at least subjugate us subhumans, I've lived my childhood in one such state and let me tell you its utterly destructive to whole society on all levels even decades after it ended). Nah I am not worried about them, they are consistently unable to wage modern war to benefit of us all.
In the meantime we arm and train ourselves, stronger Europe is always better for any future scenario, internally and externally. Strength is something even such simple people like puttin' understand. Plus economy will get some boost
can you please talk more about the socialism that is prevalent in the EU? what do you exactly mean by "hard focus on socialism"?
> US has trump and I see no end of US anytime soon, sure some self-harm is happening right now but thats about it, that nation is stronger than that.
That remains to be seen. Trump and his goons are breaking apart the foundations of society as we speak, not to mention the decades of Republican gerrymandering. The complete and utter loss of trust in the US on the geopolitical stage is another huge issue, it will be a long time before Europe or Southern America trust the US again - the hope that Trump would be a short-term one-off event went out the window last year.
> Compared to hard focus on socialism that was (and still is) prevalent in EU, some better balance is required in these times.
Where outside of Spain does Europe actually have socialists even as part of the government?
Most countries here are run by the far-right (e.g. Italy, Hungary, Slovakia, the Netherlands), centrists/conservatives (Germany, Poland, Croatia), Social Democrats, neoliberals (France) or coalitions of these.
> Nah I am not worried about [Russia], they are consistently unable to wage modern war to benefit of us all.
Never underestimate the willingness of Russian leaders to sacrifice their population for meat-grinder wars.
> In the meantime we arm and train ourselves, stronger Europe is always better for any future scenario, internally and externally.
Agreed, the problem is we can't be arsed to actually evolve to a truly federal society anywhere close to the US. Economically there has been a lot of integration happening, but politically... oh that's one hell of a clusterfuck.
Australia’s social security system costs each working Australian about $11,600 per year.
That’s $5.80 per hour for a 38 hour work week over a year. That means every working Australian is working something like one day a week for social security, and another two days a week for the tax system more generally.
It’s not until Thursday I’m working for my own benefit.
The social security state needs to be shredded.
Ok, let's just take your facetious argument on face value.
So that's $5.80 / hr in our land that has a minimum wage of $24.95 / hr. Still, a bit over 20%, crappy for sure (if it was true).
Now, of course, most people are not on the minimum wage, and definitely not here on HN. The tax system benefits those at the low end more though, so let us look at median wages.
Median hourly wages (in main job) are $40 / hr (Source: ABS - August 2024).
Median incomes are actually a touch higher (because not just main job), at $102,742 / annum, which attracts a tax rate of 21%, before the MANY MANY middle class welfare rebates we get (Source ATO tax calculator for 2024-2025).
So, for most of us, maybe we pay approximately our Monday to the State, but that gives us free school education, one of the world's best health systems per $ value (seriously, there are studies!), not to mention a relatively well functioning society (roads, police, firefighters, etc), on top of that we get the horrendous welfare state that you are bemoaning.
That welfare state includes things like the NDIS, which is out of control and needs to find an equilibrium between all the rent-seekers, but the ambition is amazing! We SHOULD support all our disabled people to be the best they can in society! Meanwhile, even with such a fuckup, we're doing ok. Pull your head out, mate.
Do we have issues? Hell yeah. But our terrible "social security state" is not the start of them at all.
That's until you get disabled in an accident - or your son or daughter is.
Then you'll suddenly convert to how benefits are essential.
(In before: "I don't need a car insurance, I'll never get into any accident, I am too good a driver for that")
So you’re a fan of how we’ve dismantled the family in to units of 1?
The number of elderly Australians who live alone with no family, or no family nearby, is truely disappointing. Disabled people too.
We wouldn’t need such a big welfare state if we had bigger, stronger, families that believed in the future.
Australians have divorced the family and married the Government.
> The number of elderly Australians who live alone with no family, or no family nearby, is truely disappointing.
That's a thing across all Western societies, and we got unchecked rabid capitalism and a complete lack of industry structural politics to thank for that one. Young people not living in an urban area have little choice but to leave there to find employment and higher level education.
> The US is just going to become irrelevant for the next few decades. Anything important will move to the EU and China. No one can trust the US to function properly anymore.
Haha, care to elaborate? I'm legitimately curious how in the heck you came to that conclusion.
Remember, the U.S. is currently still #1.
How do you propose it becomes utterly irrelevant?
> Remember, the U.S. is currently still #1.
You‘re right! #1 among high income countries in Cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, drug overdose deaths, Deaths from violence and accidents, Infant mortality, Obesity-related mortality.
It also has its lowest-ever World Happiness Rankings. The U.S. is currently leading in global declines in reputation, trust, happiness, and perceived positive influence.
> #1 among high income countries in Cardiovascular disease (CVD) mortality, drug overdose deaths, Deaths from violence and accidents, Infant mortality, Obesity-related mortality.
It's all originates from each person's decisions. If a person wants to pay attention to their lifestyle and health, then in the US he will get one of the best results in the parameters you listed. That is just a fact.
And if we want to maximize these parameters among everyone, we need a ultratotalitarian government that will put all the people into concentration camps where they will work under threat of execution in the open air and eat a specially designed low-calorie diet.
> It also has its lowest-ever World Happiness Rankings.
Yeas, and North Korea has the highest.
> The U.S. is currently leading in global declines in reputation, trust, happiness, and perceived positive influence.
And that's good thing. For decades US has been doing atrocities all over the world, to the approving cries of other Western countries. So the only problem with US declines in reputation, trust, happiness, and perceived positive influence I see is that this should have happened decades earlier
Is that per capita or total?
In the early nineties Andrew L. Shapiro wrote an entire book on this theme:
https://www.amazon.com/Were-Number-One-Stands-Falls/dp/06797...
To piggyback on what PaulDavisThe1st said.
Record numbers of US citizens seeking to relocate to Canada & the UK. In the last couple months I remember seeing several news stories variously about Doctors, Professors and students applying and/or relocating.
Layoffs in the tech sector haven't slowed at all, and couple that with the DOGE Govt layoffs and the recent jobs numbers stories.
I feel quite certain that if the U.S. is actually measured "at #1" for anything good, it won't retain it much longer.
Bias Disclaimer: I'm a former software engineer working an hourly labor job.
US citizens relocating to Canada and the UK seems misguided at best.
At least the US has at least a handful of themes to choose from among its many states.
UK has a lot of themes, they're just all moist.
>Remember, the U.S. is currently still #1.
In what? Prisons per Hamburger?
Probably not prisons per hamburger, because both the numerator and denominator are unusually high. Prisons per days-of-maternity-leave, maybe? Hamburgers per preventative-healthcare-checkup, possibly?
https://fosstodon.org/@georgetakei@universeodon.com/11478482...
(proposed/desired reductions in federally funded (NSF) science positions for FY 2026. 250,000 (75%) reduction in numbers)
EDIT: see also: https://bigthink.com/starts-with-a-bang/american-science-bra...
Pulling back on federally-funded research grants for the sciences does not address how the economy, hard power, and culture of the States will completely fall off the map leaving an "irrelevant nation" though.
The US has no real exports. All of its economic might was because it has its top tier market, and all that wealth is essentially from its soft power and position. The more you peel off that soft power, the weaker that position especially as wealthy and educated people leave.
I don't agree that the US won't be relevant, it's more like the US will resemble the position of Russia in the next decade than the position it is in right now.
The US is exporting over $3 trillion worth of stuff per year:
https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/exports
China exports more, but China also must import more, including more of the things needed for the survival of its people, like food, fertilizer, fuel.
The US exports aircraft, vehicles, and medicine, and the rest of the exports are just raw stuffs, like oil or corn. How's Boeing looking these days? Is the US auto industry where exciting new technologies are coming from? Unless the US is going to be great because we export more coal, then I too expect some decline.
US exports: https://www.ondeck.com/resources/every-states-top-import-exp...
The last big round of global innovation was internet services, of which I'm pretty sure (not having looked it up) that US exports represent the majority of world exports.
Apple keeps half the sales price of every iPhone whereas the last I saw Foxconn gets only a few dollars per phone for the final assembly. It used to be that most of the expensive components (display, memory) in the iPhone were supplied by Japan, S Korea and Taiwan, but I admit that that might have changed over the years.
It looks like cell phone exports are about 30 billion dollars, which is 1% of the 3 trillion dollars mentioned earlier. I'm surprised it's so low. (I'm open to corrections on these numbers.)
It's about the "next big thing" not what happened 20 years ago.
The US is number #1 on income and tech (IT/Software in particular). It lags in many other areas.
A, yes. Freedom, and freedom.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTjMqda19wk
> Remember, the U.S. is currently still #1.
Currently, but even then by nominal GDP not PPP (China's way ahead of the USA already by PPP). Nominal being different from PPP is not just about cost of living though: the US dollar is artificially high by about 10% due to being a dominant reserve currency, and China has a policy of keeping their currency weak. Flip both of those and China would be about equal nominal GDP as the USA.
Also consider that the comment you're responding to said "next few decades", and consider that China's GDP grew at four times the rate of the USA economy in the two decades between 2003 and 2023: https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=Nominal+GDP+China+2023+...
And that by GDP/capita, China has room to do the same again before reaching the top of the charts for existing countries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...
--
But the real critical thing, is that economies can fall very fast when an a poor leader is empowered. Trump is purging anyone who says "no", which is already a dangerous place even if he was competent, rather than someone who tells such obvious lies on multiple health reports (recently his height(!), previously saying an exam had "only positive results" without knowing what positive means in a medical context), or facing a court case because he misrepresented the size of his penthouse apartment.
You remember right at the start of his term, there were fires in LA? And he ordered dams in NoCal opened? That aren't hydrologically connected to LA? When that kind of decision is criticised, it gets stopped. When people around are afraid to say "no", it doesn't stop, and the dams empty. In this case, it would have led to Californian agriculture approximately ending for several years due to the drought, and consequently to food shortages.
Same deal with the currently in progress attempt to deporting all the (Biden's team's estimate) 10-11 million undocumented migrant workers, many of whom are in low-paid agricultural roles, so kicking them out directly leads to less food and higher prices.
Worse than that. Consider that he got RFK Jr as the health secretary: by itself this is likely to have a measurable negative impact on US life expectancy.
Or the trillion dollar healthcare cuts (have they fully passed into law yet? Reporting from abroad is unclear how your system works): also likely to have a measurable negative impact on US life expectancy.
Then there's the incompetent attempt at tariffs, not just Penguin Island, but also that they were without any commensurate attempt to support local industry.
Or choosing a (defence) team so lax that they accidentally invited a journalist to a Signal discussion about active military engagement.
Or that he's banned trans people from serving in the US armed forces despite the US armed forces having recruiting difficulties: https://www.19fortyfive.com/2025/01/the-u-s-militarys-recrui...
Or consider the reports that Iran's nuclear project wasn't as utterly destroyed as he likes to publicly claim: what happens if Iran does rebuild it all over the next few months, as others say? Does his ego prevent him from responding, letting them get their nuke?
And of all this, only two examples ("positive results" and penthouse size) are more than 6 months old. When does congress get a chance to change, with the possibility of him being impeached (for a third time)?
The big problem is people tend to look at history as a singular event, or the final consequence of a series of events.
When such events are clearly ongoing, people roll their eyes and say you're overreacting. Then when it all ends and consequences happen, people say now is the time for healing, nobody could've foreseen this, and it's too bad nothing could've been done.
It's the same as being sober and trapped in a car with a drunk driver and their drunk friends. To them, it's fine. They're comfortable with what they're doing. You're the one being annoying for complaining. But their every action is not only endangering you and themselves, but it's endangering people on the perimeters who don't even know about the crisis that's happening within that 2 ton box. Some can see the swerving from far away, but there's nothing they can do. The only hope is the passenger trying to reason with an angry drunk to pull over, but it'll never happen. They'll just get more pissed off and drive more erratically to mess with you and to get some laughs from their friends. So it's a struggle between closing your eyes and hoping it's over soon, or trying to fight back and hope you can stop them. But neither option is easy and both shift the responsibility to someone other than the ones causing the chaos.
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NOAA released their budget estimate for FY 2026. Someone in our org ran it by copilot to summarize the impacts:
* NOAA eliminates most climate, weather, and ocean labs and grants, causing major layoffs and loss of research capacity.
* National climate research infrastructure is lost, with staff reductions.
* Regional climate services, adaptation, and heat health programs end.
* All climate research grants are cut.
* Foundational ocean observation and Great Lakes research are terminated.
* Sea Grant support for coastal resilience and aquaculture ends.
* Aquaculture research and ocean science partnerships are stopped.
* Funding for uncrewed systems R&D is eliminated.
* Research computing for climate/ocean modeling is reduced or lost.
* Many programs shift to operational focus (NOS/NWS), with layoffs in OAR.
* Regional ocean observing systems and applied coastal research are ended, with grant losses and layoffs.
* State coastal management, resilience, and estuarine reserve grants are terminated.
* Support for coral reef grants and marine sanctuaries is reduced; no new sanctuaries.
* Species/habitat research, salmon recovery, and habitat restoration programs are cut, with major layoffs.
* Satellite/data services are reduced, with staff cuts.
* NOAA Office of Education is closed; mission support staff reduced.
* Overall, there is a major workforce reduction and elimination of many programs.
But look on the bright side: a relative handful of ultra-wealthy will pay slightly less in taxes. That’s got to count as positive news for them!
For those who prefer their news without pop-overs galore, autoplaying unrelated animation/video, requests to enable notifications with only yes/later options, claims to care about your privacy despite wanting to share your details with hundreds of other companies, etc.: https://archive.is/Tu51y
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Don%27t_Look_Up
I liked the idea behind the movie, but the movie itself wasn't very good. It was a bit like the movie Mickey 17, it didn't quite know what it wanted to be and tried to be a lot of things, but none of it really stuck and it ended up being a bit incoherent. The ending I thought was powerful though.
> I liked the idea behind the movie, but the movie itself wasn't very good.
Agreed. My problem with it was that it was self-congratulatory and snobby, which is always what you want out of Hollywood actors.
Being preached at about science by a population of people who probably mostly failed high school science is not a good time.
> about science by a population of people who probably mostly failed high school science
Your assumption that actors (and writers, those where the ones “preaching” more than the people on screen) have failed highschool at a higher rate than the general population is, I think, rather flawed¹. There are some very bright people in the entertainment industries for one reason or another (doing what they enjoy, and presumably are good at, instead of something else they are good at, being a common situation, there being more money in stardom being another).
Hence a number successful stand-ups who have degrees (in the sciences, not necessarily “media studies” before someone pipe up with that), PhDs, law certifications, and such.
Hedy Lamarr is the best known poster child for this, but too many think she is a singleton exception rather than an indicator that we shouldn't make too many assumptions about what acting talent might imply about other mental abilities.
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[1] And, in fact, more snobby than the film you are critiquing as being snobby!
> Being preached at about science by a population of people who probably mostly failed high school science is not a good time.
I agree with the part about preaching, but fair is fair: they were preaching scientific consensus. They preach what is said by the overwhelming majority of active scientific researchers in this field.
You didn’t say they were wrong I agree, but still .. they were (/ are) right. And why should they be perfect, anyway? They are who they are, flawed and all, but they are right about this and they were right to make that movie and they were right about people being selfish.
Ironically you could say that we are now basically reenacting the movie, proving its point. There’s an asteroid heading for us and here we are, judging the high school grades of the people telling us about its trajectory.
I thought it was very depressing and surprisingly self reflective and poignant in that sense.
I don't think the movie was snobby: it was full of over-the-top gags, and it was clear to me that the movie was never taking itself too seriously.
The main character (played by DiCaprio) is also depicted as a quite flawed and vain human being as well.
Also honestly, who doesn't feel frustration at the whole real-world situation the movie is actually about?
People who complain about being "preached" at while the world burns behind them are exactly the kind of people the movie is poking fun at
Precisely. But just as scientific literacy, media literacy always was, and still is, a huge problem.
Actors act, writers write. You seem to be confused about who was "preaching".
I've confirmed that both writers of the movie graduated high school, and one of them even graduated college.
Good for them?
I guess we can infer that graduating from high school is no insurance against making a bad movie.
Why would you assume people that went on to have successful film careers failed high school science? Just because someone doesn't pursue science as a career doesn't mean they received bad grades in it, especially at a high school level.
I’m not assuming anything - this is why I used words like “probably” and “mostly” - but let’s just say that I’ve known my share of actors, and I’m willing to take the odds.
It's so funny to me you'd whine about "preaching" and then take such a needlessly judgemental and demonstrably false stance, and then double down and lie when it's pointed out. Truly, a person of science.
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C'mon bud, you've got a PhD. You don't really need some uneducated filth to point out how you were disengenous.
But just in case: you made a prejudiced assumption and then boldly claimed you didn't. And you didn't state an opinion, you presented it as (probable) fact. You can couch it with all the adverbs you want, your own snobby disdain shines right through.
Without regard to the broader point* in the particular case of Leo, I’d be surprised if he had great k-12 science education. He was a child star already at that point, right? Only so many hours in the day.
Of course, it isn’t a universal rule, see Dolph Lundgren, etc etc.
* I don’t care if the actor delivering an environmentalist message in a movie is actually good at science for the same reason I don’t care if Keanu Reaves knows king fu.
Agree, great idea, strong ending, kinda saggy middle.
I loved the concept for that movie. I found the execution rather lacking, though. In the end, I wouldn't recommend watching it. Just watch the trailer instead, yo'll get the point without needing to finish the entire thing.
And two decades before that, Inconvenient Truth.
And way before that, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It_Can%27t_Happen_Here
The section of the population that needs to think about the Inconvenient Truth didn’t watch the movie, because they don’t watch documentaries unless it’s about a Poop Cruise, or a celebrity.
Too many high price celebrities. I’m sure they’re all great people, but I was more focused on them than the actual movies message which is an issue.
I think we rely too much on government mandated websites than we do practical common sense that could save lives.
For instance, over 175,000 people die from heat exposure each year across the WHO European Region. Compare that to 1-2k in the US.
In this case, the Don't Look Up scenario is that people don't want to get A/C and governments sometimes make it very hard for them, killing hundreds of thousands because... I don't know why. But at least EU has nice proclamations and accords on the risk of climate change.
https://www.who.int/europe/news/item/01-08-2024-statement--h...
https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2822854
The first number is based on statistical observation of mortality rate the second is based on classification by doctor at death. It's not comparable at all. For example, if there is an increase in heart related death when it's hot it's not accounted in second stats.
WHO European region also covered Russia, Turkey, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan and other countries from central Asia so I don't see how you can conclude anything about EU with this piece of statistic. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_WHO_regions)
Cold still kills at least 2x the number of people in the same region. 363,800 deaths are attributed to cold exposure.
https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/aug/21/heat...
Couldn't they push heat pump units that cool and heat (with a bonus of not being reliant on wood or natural gas)?
Or do the regions that matter the most get too cold for heat pumps?
How do governments make it "very hard" to get A/C?
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> Several EU countries have mandatory temperature limits for air conditioning in public buildings. Spain, Italy, and Greece have all announced that A/C in public buildings cannot be set lower than 27C (80F) in summer
How does that make it "hard" to get A/C in private homes? And are there a lot of heat-related deaths at 27C?
> The EU's F-Gas Regulation creates significant restrictions on refrigerants used in air conditioning
You should maybe look into why those exist. Air conditioning refrigerants are themselves major greenhouse gases and many deplete the ozone layer. Try also comparing those regulations to American ones. They're likely not very different.
> 90% of US homes have AC while only 20% of European homes have it
The US is richer and hotter. There's nothing like Florida or south Texas or Las Vegas or Phoenix in Europe.
> There's significant red tape when installing AC due to building regulations
Do tell...
> some EU countries even have laws telling you how much you can open your windows! In the UK...
Did you write this with an LLM or something? The third link you provided says nothing of the sort. It's about tint regulations on automobile windows FFS.
Not the GP, but there are some regulations about windows, not sure if local or EU-wide. Windows at floor level above ground level must not be fully openable or must have an outside barrier. But thats a pretty sane restriction, given those windows are basically just glass doors to nowhere.
I would be amazed if much of the US didn't have a similar building code that there must be a railing if there's a possibility of easily falling out the window/door.
That 27C limit seems to have been due to the energy crisis in 2022 and restrictions were lifted in 2023.
The last source you cited is AI slop and is not even related to your message.
What does this have to do with government mandated websites? Seems that the US had a government website about climate and few heat deaths. If the number of heat deaths goes up this year without the websites would you think that is because the website went away (obviously not).
Seems like a website with information about climate change without a mandate about max AC is a pretty conservative strategy all things considered.
As a non-American, the most painful thing about all of this is seeing how much the world has relied on America's charity for so long.
Had other supposed economic powerhouses invested in their geographic and atmospheric science the same way the USA has, this would've been a rather annoying blip on the radar. We'd need to quickly get our backups out of storage and host them elsewhere, and go without American data points for a couple of years, but most things would be fine.
Instead, it's now becoming clear how much just about any country but China, Russia, and Iran has relied on American scientific investments, and even those seem to freely incorporate American data when it's provided for free.
I have no doubt that all of the atmospheric, oceanographic, and environmental science the American government has all been for strategic purposes, either directly providing information useful for the military of providing a believable excuse to install sensors all around the globe, some of which have been "enhanced". Still, as long as your country is friendly to the American regime, you were getting huge amounts of useful scientific data out of that deal, enough not to set up local alternatives.
Here in the EU, scientists have been scrambling to safeguard data like this since the day of Trump's reelection, but it seems like governments here don't seem to be all that interested in funding any of the work the Americans have been doing.
i think what contributes the most to my sense of dread is the feeling that if you were to tell these decision makers in govt right now "but this'll kill people!" they'd respond "good"
They don't care about people. Senator Joni Ernst when told that people would die due from the spending bill responded with, "Well, we are all going to die."
> Senator Joni Ernst when told that people would die due from the spending bill responded with, "Well, we are all going to die." reply
Well, how many times has she seen a doctor in her life so far? Of course, more than one. Then, why did she do that if she is eventually going to die one day?
Because she doesn’t see herself as “one of them”.
She is the living embodiment of the Lord Farquaad meme: “Some of you are going to die, but that’s a risk I’m willing to take”
And then doubled down with a later Instagram post making fun of everyone. How are these people our elected officials? It’s unbelievable.
>How are these people our elected officials? It’s unbelievable.
Voters are stupid?
They’re not stupid. These voters see government as a means to enact cruelty on outgroups they don’t like. That’s why they vote for cruel people who don’t care about hurting others. They are not stupid. They know exactly what they are voting for and are overwhelmingly supportive if it.
That sounds so incredibly short sighted I think it could still be reasonably described as stupid.
We shouldn’t excuse these voters as merely stupid, like they’re just innocently ignorant or uninformed. They are deliberately malevolent, and vote specifically for cruel, terrible politicians because they, themselves are cruel and terrible people and desire such representation.
And they are not just supporting cruelty. They are cheering and screaming for it. They want more.
It's not even hypothetical:
https://www.latintimes.com/trump-ally-slammed-saying-alligat...
At least we know what to do with the guy when he finally gets convicted.
>I really don't care, do you?
If this administration doesn't want to do anything to solve climate change, that's their choice. It's a terrible choice, but it's in their power to do so.
However, there's a huge difference between dismissing the severity of the evidence vs. going out of your way to hide evidence. The first is born of arrogance. The later is naked cowardice - they know exactly how wrong they are. If they wanted to project strength, they could simply leave the reports up and say "we don't care". Instead they scurry around behind the curtains trying to cover their tracks. Fucking pathetic.
They're still angry at Fauci for not going along with the world's dumbest coverup attempt in Feb 2020.
That would only be true if you believed the reports were unbiased.
The non-cowardly thing to do would be to engage scientifically rather than memory hole the consensus.
Or create the impossible requirement that a study have no bias.
As the US slowly becomes N. Korea...
How in the world did Juche become our national philosophy? I'm not sure, but I think about it all the time now.
I'm on HN, so I tend to want to blame the ad industry. It's pretty nebulous to think that "made in America" directly snowballed into this; so many things did. The freakier nativism in advertising really could use a break right about now though.
There's no national philosophy. That's giving these people way too much credit.
"Amusing Ourselves to Death" by Neil Postman is 100% predictive and descriptive of how we got where we are.
I do think USA-flavored Juche does some explanatory power for the group as a whole, even if the individuals lack any specific philosophy beyond hill climbing.
I do also need to read Postman, though.
Likewise, “Dark Money” by Jane Mayer describes some of the political processes that got us here. That along with “The Family” by Jeff Sharlet to provide a little color to the religious side.
I think the "advertising" was the billions spent on what were effectively anti-brown ads to help sell the Iraq/Afghan wars. Meanwhile in the 2000s the GSEs did not disclose their financials bc if they had perhaps the people would have felt the wars had a cost.
Since then it's been gradual attacks on press freedom (WL exposed fraud/propaganda in the Iraq/Afghan wars) and massive profits by the defense industry, resulting in dramatically more lobbying money. Not to mention the US automotive industry and major banks getting bailed out and preventing many small economic corrections that should have occurred.
Then 20 years after 9/11 when the US has spent 10s of TRILLIONS on wars and virtually nothing on infrastructure, industrial policy, etc., everyone wonders why China appears to be close to leapfrogging. The anti-brown propaganda and "USA USA" jingoism back in the early 2000s is still fresh, benefitting candidates with xenophobic and jingoistic messages. Many feel real economic pain but don't understand that you don't spend $20T without consequences -- plus scapegoating the weakest members of society is apparently more emotionally satisfying.
By the time we got the pandemic both parties realized that they had more to gain from fiscal irresponsibility, and the tribalism of the government's anti-brown propaganda combined with the "multicultural solidarity" focus over class warfare by Dems, led to increasing tribalism and tribe-focused media. Now a large percentage of the population lives in a complete information bubble and is close to worshiping its political favorites as though they are religious icons.
Thus now regardless of which party is in power, there will be a shift to censor and suppress information that is viewed as harmful to society. I honestly blame both parties for their share of this, but the ultimate culprit is feed algorithms that are optimized for emotionally potent content that creates engagement (and ad dollars) and nothing more.
What is actually fascinating about the orignal TikTok is that the algorithm was so much more useful at showing interesting/appealing content that it pretty much overtook Insta, YouTube, and Netflix and required government intervention to stop its growth. This shows us clearly how the major social media platforms were not just wrong about how to maximize profits but wrong on how to entertain and engage people, mistakes that are only possible when there is really not much competition, which is how we now do capitalism in the US -- and by the way if you win you get nationalized.
US spent just under $2T in Iraq and just over $2T in Afghanistan, for a total of just over $4T.
Hungary is a more accurate analogy.
It's actually where the Heritage Foundation has been trying things out before using in America. The connection between Heritage, Orban, and Trump's circle is concerning. At this point, Trump is more their useful idiot who can be the populous frontman. He's a symptom of the larger frustration with govt and growth in inequality
Remember folks: if it keeps happening, just dig your head further into the sand.
Right, nice savings and opportunities for fossil energy industry. Good job.
So what is the plan for handling the US nuclear warhead stockpile as the empire crumbles? I'm worried about billionaires with nukes. Maybe not the person directly but people behind all that envision super wealthy city-states and I totally expect those to have nukes.
The nuclear codes won't stop anyone with time and engineers. These are intended for physically arming the strong link in the warhead that is supposed to send the signal to the exclusion zone but someone with unrestricted access should be able to override it and send the signal directly. Although over the years the mechanical systems were replaced with electronics that eventually become encrypted microelectronics, IIUC the actual device that does the kaboom remained with its original design and applying voltage will be able to trigger it. Safe against rough handlers(i.e. crazy solders) but won't stop people with unrestricted access.
> IIUC the actual device that does the kaboom remained with its original design and applying voltage will be able to trigger it
That is not my understanding. My understanding is that the proper implosion requires very precise timing of signals for each shaped charge element otherwise the implosion ends up being lopsided and the nuke fizzles instead of exploding. These timings depend not just on the shape of the charges, but also on the relative wire lengths from the detonator to the explosives. (In theory these wire lengths can be unique for each warhead, thus making the timings for each warhead unique). The detonation circuit is not just comparing the code with an expected one, but using it to create the right signal timings. In other words the right code plus the information in the electronics together gives the timings for the signals with which they propagate through the different length of wires such that they form the right implosion.
To reverse engineer this you need to figure out when each explosive element needs to be triggered to form the explosion. Then you need to figure out when the signals need to leave the electronics such that it travels through the wiring looms just right to create the desired explosive pattern. And then you need to figure out what code you need to supply the electronics so it produces this desired electronic timing to achieve the above.
That is three wickedly hard challenge. And you will only know if your people pulled each of them off corectly, when you try to detonate the warhead.
> won't stop people with unrestricted access
That is true. But it is not like all they would need to do is to apply voltage on a single line, like some crazy hot-wiring car tief. Their best and easiest bet is to dissasemble the warhead and use the fissile material from it inside of an implosion device of their own design.
You may be right, the reason I assumed that the controller that controls the detonation itself was contained in the exclusion zone since earlier safety mechanisms were mechanical. So if they modernized the safety mechanism maybe they didn’t change the exploding part and all they need is power to prepare the device and then a simple signal to trigger it ?
There is no plan, and I am not sure why you’d think otherwise?
I think there must be a plan after the USSR collapse. Somehow they did not let rough agents obtaining the warheads but there were enough rumors, literature and media around it to prompt a consideration IMHO.
By the time you could act it's too late, if you don't want to dismantle the nukes independently. It's a consequence of the existence.
Just imagine Biden having commanded to trigger a process which destroys the nuclear material (by triggering some degeneratio process or something) would that have been accepted or would everybody have said that limits U.S.'s strategic options permantly in too high degree?
tl;dr: the Soviet state didn't collapse in the manner of a zombie apocalypse or environmental catastrophe, it collapsed politically; there was continuity in command / control until the weapons were all moved back physically into Russia.
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/16mab9x/when...
China and India both know how to handle nuclear weapons and would be interested in ensuring safe handling.
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It's a real shame but at least there other nations still doing this work like China and various Euro countries. Sad to see the USA transition to a banana republic. This belief that MAGA party has that the US can't do big things any longer and only corporations and broligarchs know how to lead us forward is just sad.
> Sad to see the USA transition to a banana republic.
I'm not sure banana republic is the best description of what is happening, the definition of the term only cover part of where things are heading.
A comparison with NK seems more complete, especially given the current twits at the top, so I've taken to referring to the US as DPR-US.
> This belief that MAGA party has that the US can't do big things any longer and only corporations and broligarchs know how to lead us forward is just sad.
Especially given the Musk/DOGE recent experience.
Musk takes over Twitter, fires 40% of the workforce, and nothing much happens.
Musk takes over the US Govt, fires <10% of the workforce, and things stop working.
From this we should conclude, obviously, that the government is run much, much more efficiently and with less slack than any of the Big Tech organisations (who are also all busy laying off 10s of % of their workforces, apparently with no ill effect).
Gotta provide a smokescreen for “Drill baby drill”
It wasn't supposed to be literal :(
Don't look up!
when politics ban science you know things are messed up big time
The current administration is not merely racists, autocratic, and hell bent on insuring all wealth is held by the oligarch class,
it is also engaged in the most venal, short-sighted, and destructive assault on the basic functions of governance and civil society I can imagine.
I don't care what one's view is on the appropriate scale and role of federal governance, some operations are best and only accomplished at that level,
and this short of bullshit is not just a disservice to, it is an attack on the citizenry.
Destroying federal governance seems on point for people who read Yarvin and want to rule feudal micro-states as techno-kings.
I guess they see themselves as high officers in those states. I fail to understand how someone could read about living in a dictatorship and go "yeah, I would like to live like that"
Evidence suggests ~30% of people are content to be worse off in order to inflict a larger loss upon others. This paper makes for rather grim reading but imho provides a very useful heuristic for understanding the political enfironment in an era of mass communication.
Humans display a reduced set of consistent behavioral phenotypes in dyadic games
https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.1600451
> Evidence suggests ~30% of people are content to be worse off in order to inflict a larger loss upon others. This paper makes for rather grim reading but imho provides a very useful heuristic for understanding the political enfironment in an era of mass communication.
Pinning this on human psychology is ignoring how the game is set up. If you structure something in such a way that the person who gets the most points wins and gets a prize, a move that causes you to lose one point but causes your only opponent to lose two points will put you ahead. That's arithmetic, not psychology.
The issue, then, is when we allow things to be structured that way -- as zero sum games. Instead what we should be doing is stamping out anything that fosters artificial scarcity.
Moreover, as the paper points out, that's what happens in dyadic systems. Which is to say, two party systems. If you have the option to cost yourself a point but cost one of your opponents two points, that's an advantageous move in a two-party system, but not in a five-party system even with a zero-sum game, because then you've cost yourself a point against three of the four other parties. So if you want to get rid of that, have your state adopt score voting (specifically score voting, not IRV or any of that mess) instead of the existing voting system which mathematically constrains us to a two-party system.
Isn't 30% roughly the percent of people who voted for this situation?
This really feels like the best explanation for what's happening right now :c
You don't have to see yourself as a high officer. You just have to imagine that you will be restored to your deserved state. In that state you are slightly better than average, and only those who are morally defective suffer. (Those are the ones who are now unjustly keeping you from succeeding on your merits.)
The high officials are the truly great ones who have restored the natural order. You don't need that. You just require being recognized as somewhat better than most.
This is how the entire history of racism worked in the United States. You may be a poor white person, living in a crappy neighborhood, with a crappy job, but atleast you're not black with things like Jim Crow, police, and redlining making sure legally your life is even worse. Plus your boss looks just like you and said you're a cultural fit so you may even be rich like him one day!
You reminded me of the Lyndon B Johnson quote which seems more relevant that ever. "If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you."
The trouble with this quote is that it's too easy to misinterpret it exactly in favor of the people it's criticizing.
Racism is a system for pitting poor white people and poor black people against each other. But the perpetrators are not the people in the other tribe, they're the people telling you that there should be separate tribes.
Bacon's Rebellion [1] in colonial Virginia, 1676-7, was a a multi-race and cross-class uprising against the colonial government and the aritocratic planter class. The rebellion's failure was followed by measures that served to alienate the poor white population from the enslaved black population.
1. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bacon%27s_Rebellion
Racists were just temporarily embarrassed by the civil war.
Were they? If so, embarrassed about what? Losing it?
Democracy is complicated. The world is complex, but you get only a limited set of choices (in some implementation a few more, in others a few less) which means the burden in the end is on you. Now you take the wannabe dictator, which takes that all of you "I'm like your dad and will care about all those problems, so you only have to care about your direct environment, doing your job, taking care of your family, all else will be handled"
There are also religious people who look forward to the coming of the “end times”. They also vote.
yep, they definitely do
More importantly, US oligarchs are religious. Mostly evangelical, mormon or some postmodern derivative, like Thiel, Yarvin, Musk and their ilk.
In the US, even people who aren't very religious in practice still harbour religious beliefs like the state of Israel being a divine entity. I.e. like Ted Cruz, who knows some english biblical phrases but isn't religious enough to stop himself from playing golf with the pharaoh, and yet strongly holds on to the antisemitic zionist belief that jews must move to the state of Israel and eradicate their neighbours.
Partly being submissive, partly betting on being among the rulers, partly distaste for most of the world, and partly just idiocy and insanity
Wow, that's possibly the bleakest set of opinions I've ever seen detailed.
I can't help but think that this is typical self-loathing and ensuing self-destruction turned towards society itself. I need to read his actual writing, though. I'm sure there's also some element of actively pandering towards people in power desperate to justify their hold through some ideology.
I can outbleak that! In 2 paragraphs!
Although it seems more robust in the long term*, anti-intellectualism probably has a cliff of adaptivity, just like academia, ideology, or indeed any collection of values
*The foundations of China's rise can ultimately be traced to the cultural revolution? Now we wait.
So you don't know that the vice-president's mentor completely agrees with him
Of course I know Thiel is probably one of the most evil people alive. But I suspect he's a lot more evil than he's let us know. But this guy seems to have built his career off of actively propagating resentment and hate. If you read about Thiel's upbringing it's entirely unsurprising the two get along so well.
CF https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swakopmund#Until_Namibian_Inde...
> Swakomund was known for its continued glorification of Nazism after World War II, including the celebration of Hitler's birthday and "Heil Hitler" Nazi salutes given by residents. In 1976, The New York Times quoted a German working in a Swakopmund hotel who described the city as "more German than Germany". As of the 1980s, Nazi paraphernalia was available to buy in shops.
Yeah, I knew where he grew up
Just read his Gray Mirror posts or watch a podcast with him. If you really want to get the full experience you need to go back to his unqualified reservations stuff but it can be VERY tedious.
He is simply not that smart nor that interesting. Just a mega cringe-lord loser who got the ear of other cringe-lord losers who happen to be unfathomably wealthy.
The administration is so devoid of any value it staggers the mind. The only thing that I can agree with is that our dependence on China is not a good thing (Oh yes, and minimizing governmental fraud and waste) -- the concepts, not any of the actions done to address these concerns.
What makes this mess even more disheartening is that about of third of the population loves it.
If the US was a rebellious teenager then they are past their doing coke and doing corn phase and onto their face tattoo and smoking meth phase.
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Agreed.
It´s not so severe, it was just that those servers and the people maintaining them, melt in the latest heatwave. Nothing to worry about.
Tell me more: At my PC, the weather URL
https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=35.90615740000...
still works.
But Trump doesn't seem to have air conditioning on his golf carts yet.[1] So global warming can't be a big problem.
[1] https://www.the-independent.com/news/world/americas/us-polit...
There are other countries.
There is a very large amount of redundency in enviromental data gathering and reporting, plus given.the most basic facts that it is impossible to close source the information source, and that there are now countless sensors on.earth and in orbit that can be re calibrated to provide conitiniousl'y consistent new data to older ongoing studies, there is essentialy nothing that can be effected by a political directive to actualy stop reporting, short of martial law, and then people would start printing pamphlets with potatoes and coffee dregs
Earlier, without discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44439836
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>NOAA was caught using data from weather stations with faulty equipment and positioned next to new heat sources and only moved to correct the issue when confronted so I'd say this is entirely justified. The first step in any scientific process is clean data.
Assuming this uncited assertion is true, why would it be "entirely justified" to simply remove it without any particular reason as to why, nor discussion around the concern over data accuracy? Seems to me that the scientific community would be better served with an open dialogue rather than mute removal.
Yes, normally in a case where data were later shown to have been taken incorrectly, you would remove just the incorrect data but leave an unmodified copy of the old data available somewhere. Or, just leave a very prominent note about the change with a detailed explanation somewhere else. You would not take down everything because 1. That would deprive taxpayers of the correct data they had already paid for, and 2. That would mess up the data ingestion pipelines of the researchers who depended on the data.
Yeah we should definitely make policy based on claims from 15 year old Fox News articles, which are famous for their even-handedness and lack of editorial bias.
https://www.foxnews.com/science/u-s-climate-data-compromised...
Here’s something from 2024. It’s not heat sources, but tampering with rain gauges in this case.
https://coloradosun.com/2024/09/08/patrich-esch-ed-dean-jage... ( https://archive.is/jBh8H )
> Wrecked rain gauges. Whistleblowers. Million-dollar payouts and manhunts. Then a Colorado crop fraud got really crazy.
> The sordid story of two ranchers who conspired to falsify drought numbers by tampering with rain gauges on the plains of Colorado and Kansas, resulting in millions in false insurance claims
Got any sources for that bro?
They never do. I always look up users like this after the fact and it’s always clear to me they got lost in sauce online, ended up on HN, and think they can just get away being edgy in a room full of professional nerd snipers.
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Like who, exactly?
How many people have died by climate paranoia versus actual climate change?
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I guess some of us would prefer not to see our progeny living the Mad Max timeline.
You're going to be long dead before it matters one bit.
I've lived through enough stupid didn't-come-true hysteric predictions of climate alarmism to know.
Funny how the downvoting and flagging shows your indoctrination. Fortunately the government has already done the deed in stopping this insanity, so keep scaring yourselves while everyone else is finally free to live.
Do I need to explain the word 'progeny'?
Your assumptions about my voting are as well-evidenced as your skepticism of science.
It’s possible to do both. Attitudes like yours are manufactured by the ones to blame. Don’t shoot the messengers.
That’s some 1984 shit right there yo!
Really? I was thinking 4 or 5 decades before then
Well, let's not do 30 seconds of trivial fact-gathering on the issue or anything, and instead jump to wild conclusions.
The problem is that globalchange.gov is failing DNS lookup. The domain is still registered, and the nameservers are supposed to be these:
Barring any evidence to the contrary, it could simply be a misconfiguration. This kind of stuff does happen, particularly when a government agency is running DNS.Edit: For those who insist on downvoting facts, other, better articles have both found the report on a NOAA server [1], and had official response from government spokespeople about what is actually going on [2]. There's no need to speculate.
[1] https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/61592
[2] https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-administration-shutters-majo...
“The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which coordinated the information in the assessments, did not respond to repeated inquiries”
Nobody is jumping to conclusions, lots of climate related information is being scrubbed. This website has been down for at least 12 hours. The fact that the domain is still registered proves precisely nothing.
Could it be a misconfiguration? Sure, but available evidence points to an ongoing attempt to erase everything related to climate change.
> “The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, which coordinated the information in the assessments, did not respond to repeated inquiries”
Except they did, as I found an NPR article with official comment, and there's a link downthread to this much better article about the same thing, again with authoritative reply:
https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-administration-shutters-majo...
And they responded to say “yes we took it down” so what’s your point again?
No, they literally said "we're moving it to NASA".
I'm not arguing that the overall fact pattern is good here. I'm saying this article is stupid and lazy.
"As of this writing, NASA has not provided any details on when and where the reports will be available again or if the new assessment will proceed."
Yeah, try reading a better source [1]:
> NASA will now take over, Victoria LaCivita, communications director at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, told ABC News. "All preexisting reports will be hosted on the NASA website, ensuring compliance with statutorily required reporting," LaCivita said, referring ABC News to NASA for more information.
So, they're explicitly answering the second half of that question. Again, not suggesting the fact pattern is good, just that this article is terrible. I assume the AP could have also managed to get the same quote before running to press with speculation?
[1] https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-administration-shutters-majo...
> Yeah, try reading a better source [1]:
It's from your source. It's the very last sentence in the article as of right now.
> It's from your source. It's the very last sentence in the article as of right now.
Sorry, what? I don't have any affiliation with ABC. Someone else posted the link.
NPR has the same basic comments [2]:
> All five editions of the National Climate Assessment that have been published over the years will also be available on NASA's website, according to NASA spokesperson Bethany Stevens. NASA doesn't yet know when that website will be available to the public.
How you get from that to "we don't know if they'll ever publish it again!" is beyond me.
[2] https://www.npr.org/2025/07/01/nx-s1-5453501/national-climat...
>How you get from that to "we don't know if they'll ever publish it again!" is beyond me.
In case you've missed it, the current administration lies constantly and loves suppressing views it doesn't like. Hosting a document is not rocket science. There is zero reason to take something down before having the new host up and running. That this has been done anyway suggests malign intent. And the current administration is long past getting the benefit of the doubt.
> I don't have any affiliation with ABC
I didn't say that. You've been posting it everywhere and called it a "better source" that we should all read. Calling it "your source" is a reasonable shorthand.
> How you get from that to "we don't know if they'll ever publish it again!" is beyond me.
I didn't say that either. I only pasted a direct quote from an article you urged everyone to read. How you get from that to what you're saying is beyond me.
> I only pasted a direct quote from an article you urged everyone to read.
Mea culpa, I missed the line because it was at stranded at the bottom of a bunch of blocked ads. About the only thing I can say is that "NASA" and "any details" is doing all of the heavy lifting in that sentence.
The reporter just quoted someone from the administration saying that they'll follow the law. So the reporter runs over to NASA, doesn't get an immediate or exact answer, and says "OK, I'll just make it sound like maybe they're being dodgy about following the law, then."
Its a fairly standard reporter trick, but it's sleazy nonetheless: "At press time, we've received no answer from the man about when he stopped beating his wife."
> > How you get from that to "we don't know if they'll ever publish it again!" is beyond me.
> I didn't say that either.
I now realize that this language could be misconstrued. I wasn't literally talking about "you". I meant it as "how one gets from that statement to..", and I was talking about the reporters.
No you said it’s probably a dns configuration, posted some pointless name server addresses and implied government sysadmins are incompetent.
What actually happened is exactly what this article said and I wouldn’t be surprised if they get no response from NOAA because of the administration’s well documented feud with the AP.
And if you believe NASA will publish anything beyond the most perfunctory version of this report under this administration I have a bridge to sell you.
> No you said it’s probably a dns configuration,
I said that barring better information, you can't rule it out. Still true.
> posted some pointless name server addresses
They're government servers, is the point. And don't you find it a little bit curious that someone bothered to change the NS records? It's not the usual way that a website goes down. In fact, it's the sort of thing that happens when you're in the process of (potentially incompetently) moving a domain from one server to another.
> What actually happened is exactly what this article said and I wouldn’t be surprised if they get no response from NOAA
Yet other reporters, from multiple different left-leaning news outlets, managed to get these elusive comments from super hard-to-reach people like...the White House press secretary for science policy. It's almost like there was a press conference or something.
Sometimes you actually have to do work to be a reporter, and when you skip that part and jump directly to conspiracy, it's not defensible. It's just trash journalism.
This administration has lost the benefit of the doubt because they lie so much and rarely follow through.
Until they actually do it, it's more likely they will not and are just saying whatever comes to mind as a way to manipulate the narrative
Is it really that unreasonable to believe that a government run by people who’ve regularly called climate change a hoax and has a history of pulling previously public data is pulling the public data about climate change? I don’t disagree that jumping to conclusions is bad but intentionally discounting prior behavior seems just as reckless to me.
no, it isn’t unreasonable at all.
i’ve noticed a large uptick over the past couple years of some people insisting it’s unreasonable to consider context and known past behaviors when we try to discuss things.
again, no, it’s not unreasonable. actually it would be incredibly silly, more unreasonable to ignore their past behaviors when discussing this.
According to someone from NASA, it was in fact shut down. NASA will eventually re-publish the reports.
https://abcnews.go.com/US/trump-administration-shutters-majo...
That's a better article than the link, since they actually bothered to get answers to the question from definitive sources. NPR also linked directly to the NOAA copy of the report, lending credence to the "sloppy relocation" theory of the case:
https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/61592
Yes cancelling funding and firing all the people involved is indicative of an honest mistake when moving some stuff around.
If they already fired the staff of the agency, it's actually pretty believable that the dedicated website would get shut down. Talk about burying the lede.
"As of this writing, NASA has not provided any details on when and where the reports will be available again or if the new assessment will proceed."
That's hopelessly naive. A "misconfiguration" is the excuse they use after the fact when there's enough outrage that they have to put things back the way they were.
I'm not being hopelessly naive. It's certainly possible that they took it down with the explicit intention of hiding information on the internet, but that would also be pretty stupid, since various articles have found the reports on other government servers. So I assume incompetence before malice.
What's already known is that they fired the staff who prepared the report, and are presumably shutting down the agency. Is it really surprising that someone might have turned off the webserver before transferring the domain?
Yes you are. If you’re arguing in good faith then you should try to answer this question:
How far does it have to go before you assume malice? Do they have to tell you “I am malicious”? And if someone malicious is using the “dont admit it” strategy are you fucked?
What wild conclusions specifically are you objecting to? This seems an awful lot like burying your head in the sand.
If you see your hosts file what the DNS used to show, does the server respond?
That’s usually the real test.
I don't know, it's a good question. I don't have the IP addresses cached.
NPR notes that the report is here [1], so if someone is trying to hide it, they're not doing a particularly good job.
[1] https://repository.library.noaa.gov/view/noaa/61592
Sure, it is always DNS. But are other sites on that DNS also down? How long has this site been down? Has anyone acknowledged this outage?
If the DNS is up and the domain is registered it starts to look like a takedown instead of a mistake.
I do know that the EPA took down their EJScreen [1] dataset so it’s not like politically motivated takedowns are unprecedented under the current regime.
[1]: https://screening-tools.com/epa-ejscreen