hospes

Charlie's comments are referencing merit, skill, laws and policies, and are not about one race being superior or inferior. And he was right, affirmative action, DEI and any other race based preferential policies and laws are unconstitutional in US and should be removed.

You can check for yourself, Charlie didn't even believe in race: https://x.com/thatsKAIZEN/status/1967652741905518882

By all reasonable metrics Charlie Kirk was a moderate republican, just like half of the US. Calling everyone that is at your right on the political spectrum "fascist" is intellectually dishonest.

>> An uneducated guy bringing on other uneducated guys that talk about something as if they're experts.

He often has leading scientists and subject matter experts on his podcasts.

>> Joe is an "average dude"…

Average dude who:

  - Created one of the largest English language podcasts.

- Is a successful comedian who writes his own material.

- Is a leading martial arts commentator and holds black belt himself.

- Made $30M last year plus made $100M from the Spotify deal.

I am not sure what is your metric that makes him average.

> US passport is great because it allows easy employment access to US tech companies, who pay absurd amounts of money;

US companies don't pay absurd amounts of money, companies in other countries are the once that don't pay enough. Look at how much wealth tech industry has generated (and still is) for the US companies and the US economy, I think they should pay even more.

Azerbaijani dictatorial government turned off their social media so Azeri people do not know what is happening in their country.

This politically correct/cautious language is just insane, these are not "clashes with Armenia", Azerbaijan blatantly attacked Armenia and Artsakh with the support of Turkish special forces, Turkish military instructors, Turkish air support with F-16s fighter jets and with constant supply of terrorists from Syria by Turkey. And as we speak Azerbaijani military is shelling with cluster munition cities and villages of Artsakh (prohibited by International conventions) and the same time Turkey is moving terrorist jihadist groups from Syria to Azerbaijan to fight against Armenians and we barely hear about it on the news.

I am horrified with the lack of proper coverage from the western media outlets of this fact. This blatant act of aggression by Turkey and Azerbaijan against Armenia and Artsakh is just a continuation of the Armenian Genocide of 1915, which is recognized by the entire civilized world, including by the United States, Germany, France, Italy, Canada, Russia and Brazil. Turkey and Azerbaijan are just trying to wipe out entire Armenian population of the region, history repeats itself and west and the rest of the civilized world just stands by.

Please help to spread the information and raise the awareness.

>> Tatars are really the oldest owner of Crimea and they do not support Russia...

Tatars are not the oldest owner of Crimea. 2500 years ago Crimea was a Greek colony, then it was part of a Persian Empire, then Roman Empire, then Byzantine Empire [1] Mongols conquered Crimea only in 13th century.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimea#Ancient_history

Very sad news. "Last Giant" of French song.

Aznavour, who was born Shahnour Varinag Aznavourian in Paris to Armenian parents, sold more than 100m records in 80 countries and had about 1,400 songs to his name, including 1,300 he wrote himself. [1]

In 1998, Aznavour was named Entertainer of the Century by CNN and users of Time Online from around the globe.

On 19 September 2018, his last concert took place in NHK Hall, Osaka, Japan. It was 11 days ago, he was touring at 94! [2] Aznavour spent 85 years on stage.

[1] https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/01/charles-aznavo...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Aznavour

>> Gave up the serious pain meds the next day since the side effects (zero attention span) were more annoying than the bit of pain.

Next time you can try Ibuprofen + Tylenol, to avoid mentioned side effects.

Ibuprofen Plus Acetaminophen Equals Opioid Plus Acetaminophen for Acute Severe Extremity Pain: https://www.aafp.org/afp/2018/0301/p348.html

>> Self-checkout is all about cutting labor hours, period.

That is exactly the case. If you pay 10$ an hour for 3 shifts 8 hours each, this makes 3x8x10 = $240 a day. That is $7200 in 30 days per one checkout spot. To setup equipment for self-checkout and maintain it order of magnitude cheaper compared to self checkout. Another factor is eliminating managerial overhead while dealing with human beings, as one store manager told me referring to self-checkouts: "They are never sick, they do not have an attitude, they do not quit and they can't be rude to customers".

>>Absolutely incorrect. The US has deployed laser-based weapons since the early 2000s. Used for missile defense mostly. As you can imagine, they perform well in the vacuum of space.

Can you provide an example of a laser weapon(s) that can actually shoot down ballistic missile or cruise missile in real life scenario? The best that current laser weapons can do is to shoot down drones from relatively close distance. [1]

Another issue with laser weapons in the space is powering them and maintaining them.

[1] https://spectrum.ieee.org/tech-talk/aerospace/military/no-qu...

>>What stopped Soviet tanks from rolling into West Berlin? It wasn’t a brigade of huggable teddy bears.

The same thing that stops them now, nuclear weapons, huge military and NATO. No one is suggesting to not have defense or to stop spending money on defense. US already spends more on defense than next 10 countries in the list combined, most of which are US allies [1]. There is no need to spend more.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_military_...

They are already developed. Money is already spent.

There are reasons why they gave up the idea of having weapons in space. Weapons in space are very expensive and dangerous. And they can be easily destroyed. Currently there are no serious weapons that can be useful in space.

>>The first time someone knocks out one of our GPS satellites, you'll be asking, "why don't we have a Space Force to protect against this sort of thing?"

It is extremely unlikely that someone will start knocking down US satellites, that would be an equivalent of attacking US, that never happened after invention of nuclear weapons. To spend billions to prepare for extremely unlikely event does not seem to be very rational thing to do. Meanwhile there are serious problems facing country and humanity in general global worming, automation takes away millions of jobs, opioid crisis, millions of people without health insurance, school system that has major issues.

>> Everyone's favorite rational pop scientist, Neil deGrasse Tyson, thinks it's "not a weird idea."

Yes, Neil gets exited when space gets any attention.

What kind of weapons do they have in space?

If government wants to boost space research then it should increase NASA's budget instead of creating "space force".

>> There are hundreds of examples of military research boosting tech

Increasing military spending to boost tech or space research is like killing mosquito with the bazooka. DoD is extremely ineffective organization, there are estimates that it wastes $125 Billion annually from its budget. [1]

If government wants to increase spending on research and tech they need to invest in education first. School system in US has very low rankings compared to other developed countries.

[1] https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-defense-waste/pentago...

What is a "space force"? And why we need any kind of weapons in space? There are already enough weapons to destroy every living thing on Earth multiple times, what makes you excited about new military spending?

We still can spend money and save 50000 kids, it is not an A OR B problem.

There is plenty of money and resources out there to save all kids dying from easily preventable diarrheal diseases. There is no political will to do that.

Meanwhile in 8 months in India they have built 648 MW solar plant that costs $679 million [1].

[1] https://youtu.be/gM-0lrIxCnE

>> That's a pretty amusing claim given China is a wildly regressive Communist dictatorship.

That is true that China is a dictatorship and I am not suggesting that China's system is better than US's. Their dictatorship does not need to function as effective as US's political system, it can be pretty ineffective, yet they can surpass US and have higher GDP both PPP and nominal, and in a long run they can have higher influence in the world.

>> The system that Deng Xiaoping created that made the Chinese expansion possible, will not function under a Mao-like zero rights gulag system.

I agree, if they push too hard, they can reverse positive changes.

>>The US university system is vastly superior. The US has 45 of the top 50 universities on earth, and 19 of the top 20. China has nothing like: MIT, Harvard, Stanford, Yale... It'll take them generations to catch up in a best case scenario.

I highly doubt that it is going to take them generations to catch up. In past ~30 years China moved out of poverty close to 1 bln people. Number of Chinese students studying abroad is growing, for example look at number of Chinese students studying in US [1], it is 350K students annually and number goes up each year. They do not need to have MIT in China, instead they can send their students to study in MIT and meanwhile invest in their own higher education system to catch up. Also, with modern technological advancements soon every major university is going to have all the classes available online for a fraction of full tuition or for free. China's school system is significantly better than US's and when online world class education becomes more affordable, China is going to have vastly more students studying in top universities than US has. We always underestimate the speed with which world changes, since it is hard for us take in account what technological advancements will take place in the future. If China's economy keeps growing, I do not think it is going to take generations for their higher education to catch up, I think it will take 5-10 years. They have one of the best school systems in the world and it is a good framework to build on.

[1] https://www.statista.com/statistics/372900/number-of-chinese...

In 2017 SF had about 7500 Homeless people, if your numbers are correct (cannot find the source), then it means city spends per homeless person annually somewhere between $40K to $53K, which seems to be insane amount of money.

>> It's still unclear whether China will be able to achieve technological parity, but it's quite probable it will overtake the US as the foremost economy this century.

China is already #1 by GDP (PPP) with ~$23 trillions [1]. US is #2 with ~$19 trillions (numbers are from 2017). So here China already overtook US.

If you look at nominal GDP, then US is #1 with ~20 trillions and China is #2 with ~14 trillions [2]. With the government and political system that US currently has it will take very short amount of time for China to close this gap as well.

Another metric that shows that China will continue having growth in near future is human capital. China's school education system is better, they have number of pretty good universities, state supports STEM. Yes, they have a lot of problems, but they have good human capital to solve them.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(PPP) [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nomi...

There certainly will be some increased demand, but it can be easily controlled by just simply taking top X% of performers, where X% makes as many students as particular university is capable of handling.

Even now, when public colleges are not tuition free, any decent university still has limited capacity. You need to have certain level of performance to be accepted, not just money.

Just to put things into perspective, if pentagon optimizes it's spending and saves $125 Billion, all public colleges can be tuition free and government will still have ~$62 Billion left. [1]

Side note: Public colleges can also be made tuition free if government scraps financial aid programs that it has (~$69 Billion) and directly pays for all students that go to public colleges. [1]

[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/01/heres-e...

For the reference https://www.washingtonpost.com/investigations/pentagon-burie...