DirectorKrennic

> If I was in a room with someone who said "I think the world would be better off if everyone in this room except me were dead", I think you'd understand my nervousness around and dislike of the person.

That's not what I said. Bye.

What?

This is necessary, among other things, to conduct surveillance of spies and foreign intelligence services' domestic sources. It is also necessary to keep a lid on dormant terror cells, which exist in America. Iran is known to have dormant cells in the United States, with loyal individuals able and willing to conduct terror attacks, on US soil, against Americans, should they deem it necessary, for example in the event of a conflict. The FBI is said to keep track of these cells, but no one can say if they've identified all of them. These people would be full US citizens on paper. Russian agents were also caught surveying key land fiber optic cables and other communications infrastructure in the United States. And let's not forget about China. The mysterious drones that harassed US Navy ships off the California coast a few years ago were almost certainly Chinese drones launched and controlled by Chinese agents from the shore. Drug cartels are also known to operate growth operations within the boundaries of national parks.

So there are a lot of potential domestic threats that the government needs to keep an eye on. Let me say that what the US government is doing wouldn't even be controversial in 99% of the world, including probably 90% of democracies. People in other countries are much more clear eyed and pragmatic about these things.

> It requires 200m litres of water to allow the passage of a single vessel along the canal, water that is largely generated from Lake Gatun in the centre of the waterway, which is drying up fast.

For context. The geography of the canal: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/91/Panama_C...

And a horizontal cross section of the canal: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/258387615/figure/fi...

Gatun Lake sits upstream of the sea, so they can't just open the locks to "fill" the lake.

This stands in contrast with the Suez Canal, which has no locks or elevation. It's nothing more than a long horizontal trench dug through the desert.

> The historical weight of what happens next cannot be overstated; it is time to put a stop to this relentless targeting of Assange and act instead to protect journalism and press freedom.

Assange is not a journalist, nor Wikileaks a legitimate news organization.

Ah, the Royal "We".

> 77. Not everyone in industrial-technological society suffers from psychological problems. Some people even profess to be quite satisfied with society as it is. We now discuss some of the reasons why people differ so greatly in their response to modern society.

> 97. Constitutional rights are useful up to a point, but they do not serve to guarantee much more than what might be called the bourgeois conception of freedom. According to the bourgeois conception, a “free” man is essentially an element of a social machine and has only a certain set of prescribed and delimited freedoms; freedoms that are designed to serve the needs of the social machine more than those of the individual. Thus the bourgeois’s “free” man has economic freedom because that promotes growth and progress; he has freedom of the press because public criticism restrains misbehavior by political leaders; he has a right to a fair trial because imprisonment at the whim of the powerful would be bad for the system. This was clearly the attitude of Simon Bolivar. To him, people deserved liberty only if they used it to promote progress (progress as conceived by the bourgeois). Other bourgeois thinkers have taken a similar view of freedom as a mere means to collective ends. Chester C. Tan, “Chinese Political Thought in the Twentieth Century,” page 202, explains the philosophy of the Kuomintang leader Hu Han-min: “An individual is granted rights because he is a member of society and his community life requires such rights. By community Hu meant the whole society of the nation.” And on page 259 Tan states that according to Carsum Chang (Chang Chun-mai, head of the State Socialist Party in China) freedom had to be used in the interest of the state and of the people as a whole. But what kind of freedom does one have if one can use it only as someone else prescribes? FC’s conception of freedom is not that of Bolivar, Hu, Chang or other bourgeois theorists. The trouble with such theorists is that they have made the development and application of social theories their surrogate activity. Consequently the theories are designed to serve the needs of the theorists more than the needs of any people who may be unlucky enough to live in a society on which the theories are imposed.

> 116. Because of the constant pressure that the system exerts to modify human behavior, there is a gradual increase in the number of people who cannot or will not adjust to society’s requirements: welfare leeches, youth-gang members, cultists, anti-government rebels, radical environmentalist saboteurs, dropouts and resisters of various kinds.

As I said, a whole bunch of nonsense.

Not really. It's a lot of disorganized nonsense with a high noise-to-signal ratio. Random excerpts:

> 14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong and as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

> 15. Leftists tend to hate anything that has an image of being strong, good and successful. They hate America, they hate Western civilization, they hate white males, they hate rationality. The reasons that leftists give for hating the West, etc. clearly do not correspond with their real motives. They SAY they hate the West because it is warlike, imperialistic, sexist, ethnocentric and so forth, but where these same faults appear in socialist countries or in primitive cultures, the leftist finds excuses for them, or at best he GRUDGINGLY admits that they exist; whereas he ENTHUSIASTICALLY points out (and often greatly exaggerates) these faults where they appear in Western civilization. Thus it is clear that these faults are not the leftist’s real motive for hating America and the West. He hates America and the West because they are strong and successful.

> 22. If our society had no social problems at all, the leftists would have to INVENT problems in order to provide themselves with an excuse for making a fuss.

> 35. Everyone has goals; if nothing else, to obtain the physical necessities of life: food, water and whatever clothing and shelter are made necessary by the climate. But the leisured aristocrat obtains these things without effort. Hence his boredom and demoralization.

I agree with everything you said. It is a great model! All the right to FrEe TrAveL has given us is traffic, environmental destruction, air pollution, parking, 40,000+ people a year dying in car accidents in the US alone, sedentary lifestyles and obesity.

Good. The first step to rid ourselves of our, dare I say, enslavement to our car-centric way of life is to make car ownership as expensive and inconvenient as possible. I hope more cities follow. Start closing off entire areas to cars. Start with downtown cores and slowly expand from there. Eliminate streetside parking spots and underground parking in these areas, remove all road signs and signage, and fill the streets with cement to level them with the sidewalks. Only emergency vehicles and police should still be allowed when necessary, as well as commercial delivery trucks. But personal vehicles should be 100% banned. At the same time, cities should develop bike stations and tramways for people to move around quickly in car-free areas, paid for by gas taxes, which should be raised, and road tolls, which should also be raised.

Fun fact: Kissinger has lived for so long that Commodore BASIC, SQL, Apple DOS, and the TCP/IP protocol were all created after he retired from government service. Not after he was born, but after he retired.

On Dunkirk:

> Chairman Mao: They shouldn’t have attacked Moscow or Kiev. They should have taken Leningrad as a first step. Another error in policy was they didn’t cross the sea after Dunkirk.

> Dr. Kissinger: After Dunkirk.

> Chairman Mao: They were entirely unprepared.

> Dr. Kissinger: And Hitler was a romantic. He had a strange liking for England.

> Chairman Mao: Oh? Then why didn’t they go there? Because the British at that time were completely without troops.

> Dr. Kissinger: If they were able to cross the channel into Britain… I think they had only one division in all of England.

> Prime Minister Chou: Is that so?

> Dr. Kissinger: Yes.

> Prime Minister Chou: Also Sir Anthony Eden told us in Germany at that time that a Minister in the Army of Churchill’s Government said at that time if Hilter had crossed the channel they would have had no forces. They had withdrawn all their forces back. When they were preparing for the German crossing, Churchill had no arms. He could only organize police to defend the coast. If they crossed they would not be able to defend.

Mao making fun of the idea of the USSR invading China and getting the Chinese treatment:

> Chairman Mao: If there are Russians going to attack China, I can tell you today that our way of conducting a war will be guerrilla war and protracted war. We will let them go wherever they want. (Prime Minister Chou laughs.) They want to come to the Yellow River tributaries. That would be good, very good. (Laughter.) And if they go further to the Yangtse River tributaries, that would not be bad either.

I wouldn't be surprised if Elon Musk bought Reddit at this point. He would be capable of it.

What concentration of fine particulates would be necessary to produce a sky the exact color of HN's header?

Reddit status page: https://www.redditstatus.com/

Examples:

https://old.reddit.com/r/politics/comments/144pdan/megathrea...

https://old.reddit.com/r/news/comments/144oxva/donald_trump_...

https://old.reddit.com/r/wallstreetbets/comments/144pg5s/cra...

Edit: It appears fixed now, but it looks like only new comments are showing. The comments made during the blackout period still aren't showing.

How come you were at the North Pole?

Unplug my brain and travel to a faraway place like New Zealand or the Azores.

How often do you plan to do backups? Continuously or periodically?

Delinquency is probably translated from délinquance, which is generally understood to mean thuggery/small crimes.

Redditors: The more you tighten your grip on third party apps, the more users will slip through your fingers.

Reddit: Not after we demonstrate the power of this ban hammer. In a way, you have determined the choice of the alternative platform that'll be censored first.

> Say something the majority dont like and you're downvoted into oblivion

So? That's how every society works everywhere. Don't disturb the peace. You are an adult. You're entitled to your opinion, but you should have the courage of your convictions. Reddit is no different from other social media platforms in this regard, even HN.

> ruled by all-powerful mods to whom every user is a racist transphobe nazi homophobe enemy.

I don't disagree with you about the problem of the power-hungry mods, but I don't recall seeing someone complain about being called a racist, a transphobe, a nazi, or a homophobe who didn't at the very least sympathize with reprehensible views of LGBT people, non-whites, or other marginalized groups.

The following can both be true:

- Defense contractors, who have a vested interest in selling more weapons, are subtly influencing the public debate about Ukraine to convince the government to award more weapon contracts.

- On its merits, from a purely strategic point of view, it would be a good idea to buy more weapons for Ukraine to help them push Russian forces out of occupied territories.

So this is a situation where the greed of defense contractors may coincide with the common good, at least for a while. But we should remain vigilant and have safeguards in place to ensure that these firms don't price gouge the taxpayer.

The problem is that the NIH's funding is controlled by Congress. Even if the NIH's leadership unanimously agreed to raise wages and benefits by an aggregate $3B/y (made up), because the NIH isn't a for-profit enterprise that can eat into profits or raise its prices (bc it doesn't sell anything), it would require a bill that can pass the House of Representatives, the Senate, and pray the president doesn't veto it. We all know how Republicans feel about federal workers. Looking at you, 2024.

India experienced a shortage of air conditioning units last year due to a surge in demand: https://www.theweek.in/news/biz-tech/2022/04/05/air-conditio...

But the rise of AC's popularity in developing countries creates a troubling dilemma: How do we cool people without heating up the planet?

https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/23067049/heat-wave-ai...

> Regardless of whether humanity gets its act together and drastically cuts emissions of the greenhouse gases that are warming up the planet, billions of people today and into the future desperately need to cool off. Their lives and livelihoods are at stake, making this one of the most urgent technology and policy challenges. But staying cool amid the heat poses a paradox: The tactics for cooling can end up worsening the very problem they’re trying to solve if they draw on fossil fuels, or leak refrigerants that are potent heat-trapping gases. And the people who stand to experience the most extreme heat are often those least able to cool off. Solving this conundrum requires untangling issues of equity and justice, as well as developing better tools for cooling beyond just ACs. It also requires rethinking the role of cooling in society. It is not a luxury, but a necessity for living in the world that we’ve created for ourselves. Ambient temperatures are so foundational to our well-being that it’s easy to overlook their importance and the threat they pose. Extreme heat has been the deadliest weather phenomenon in the United States over the past 30 years, according to the National Weather Service. That’s because heat has so many ways of hurting people. High temperatures make it harder for humans to shed excess heat. When air reaches temperatures higher than body temperatures, more heat flows into the human body than flows out. That can cause hyperthermia, heat stroke, and death. Some medications can become less effective with heat, while others can make people more susceptible to high temperatures.

...

> Cooling technologies, particularly air conditioning, have been reshaping societies around the world since Willis Carrier invented a device to prevent humidity from messing with ink at a Brooklyn printing plant in 1902. These changes have had far-reaching and unexpected effects. In his 2014 book How We Got to Now: Six Innovations That Made the Modern World, author Steven Johnson connected the dots between the spread of air conditioning and the election of Ronald Reagan: ACs made the southwestern US more hospitable, and the growing population of the region became an important base of support for Reagan. Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first prime minister, said air conditioning was the sine qua non of his country’s formation.

> There are now roughly 2 billion air conditioners in use around the world today, with half of those units in the US and China alone. Cooling systems like ACs, fans, and ventilation account for about 20 percent of energy use in buildings globally, according to the International Energy Agency. That adds up to two-and-a-half times as much electricity consumed globally for cooling as the entire continent of Africa uses. Cooling is not just for people. Refrigeration and freezing are essential for producing, storing, and transporting food, medicine, electronics, and, as Carrier found, books. By 2050, AC energy use is poised to triple on its current course, according to the IEA — which is roughly equivalent to the amount of electricity China uses today. Within the current crop of air conditioners, there is wide variation in efficiency and the power sources they use. The spaces they cool aren’t all insulated the same ways, either.

...

> It’s also a law of nature that you can’t cool a space without heating up another. In cities, the heat from running ACs at night can raise ambient temperatures by 1°C, or 1.8°F.

> Air conditioners pose another direct problem for the climate. Many of them use refrigerants that are also powerful heat-trapping gases. Chemicals like hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs) can be upward of 12,000 times more potent at trapping heat in the atmosphere than carbon dioxide. Small coolant leaks multiplied by billions of AC units could be devastating for the climate.

...

> At the same time, there is going to be a massive market for sustainable cooling technologies. “There are billions of people that aspire to be wealthy, and as your income starts going up, you’re going to want to have access to cooling,” Kyte said. The electricity that powers air conditioners needs to come from sources that don’t emit greenhouse gases, so dialing down coal, oil, and natural gas power on the grid and ramping up wind, solar, and nuclear energy is crucial.

...

> So while billions of people are facing more devastating and extreme heat, protecting them and avoiding as much warming as possible benefits everyone on Earth. Air conditioning is now an unfortunate necessity, but it’s also an opportunity to address some of the underlying injustices of climate change.