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Really more of a PR spectacle than a worthwhile experiment.

Including humans seems to have caused most of the problems there. If you actually wanted to experiment with closed biological systems in a useful way then I'd recommend doing a bunch of trials with a less cantankerous species of large omnivorous mammal, like the goat.

How about the Spratly Sea?

Taiwan was originally not a country, but it became one when it held elections. Having been elected by the people of the island of Formosa, and with no other legitimate government laying claim to that territory, they became a legitimate government.

The fact that the CCP has a group of men with guns occupying China does not make them in any sense a government, it just makes them the world's largest and most murderous criminal gang. We should stop pretending that China has a government and start working on how to bring them to the Hague for trial.

Legal, orderly immigration of highly intelligent individuals is a fantastic thing.

The rest of the world... but since "South China Sea" is an English name I think a consensus among the English-speaking countries would suffice.

There's only a few dozen remaining completely unelected "governments" in the world, and yes, we should definitely get rid of all of them.

Certainly Taiwan never had a legitimate government either until recently but now they do, demonstrating that it can be done. I hope that the CCP can peacefully give up power too, but we should not take any military options off the table.

I spent way too long thinking about this and getting annoyed before remembering that Predictors aren't real.

Yes, but legitimate governments such as the be Philippines and Malaysia are also the subject of the CCP's imperial claims.

A better point would be that the current CCP regime in Beijing has no legitimate claim to be any kind of government with any legal claim over any territory whatsoever.

An unelected government is not a government, it's just a group of thugs who happen to have control over a capital city.

If China has any sort of legitimate government at all it's the one in Taiwan which was at least elected by somebody. But really, mainland China has no government, and the CCP should not be talked to or negotiated with as if they are a government.

I fully agree that website owners shouldn't lose the right to determine what goes up on their own website, but with the caveat that this right also comes with legal liability for anything that's on there.

A new frontier for cancel culture.

I trust "officials familiar with the meeting" about as much as I trust "some guy" at this point.

I see some circumstantial evidence but no proof.

It seems to me that social media companies should only be allowed the legal protection of being "platforms" if they are truly neutral. No censorship, no algorithms.

Facebook should only be allowed to show you a feed of all your friends' posts, in chronological order. Twitter should only show you the tweets of people that you've followed, in chronological order.

Aside from solving any potential censorship or manipulation problems, it would also make a much more pleasant user experience than the unnavigable garbage that is Facebook's current product.

I think this is one of those cases where everyone actually is arguing in good faith. Nobody is actually in favour of people dying, and nobody is actually in favour of imposing lockdowns just for shits and giggles.

You can't go round dismissing the central core of the opposing side's strongest arguments like that.

Milk isn't sweet, though?

I'm curious, are you from a country where milk is conventionally UHT treated? UHT milk has a sweet (and plasticky) taste to me.

It's the second largest economy. And I agree that it's practically impossible to avoid it completely, I only suggest avoiding it where possible.

My personal rule is to not buy anything made in China for more than $100. I can't avoid buying Chinese for cheap plastic crap, but for significant purchases it's worth the time to be ethical in your purchasing decisions.

The steelman version of antivaxxism isn't "vaccines shouldn't exist", it's "on an individual basis, the risk-reward ratio of certain vaccines is not worth it. I should personally not vaccinate myself or anyone I care about, and be a free rider on societal herd immunity"

That particular version of antivaxxism is the one I would have the most trouble refuting. It's especially troubling since if it were true then the powers that be would have every incentive to try to keep it quiet and attack anyone who suggests it.

I mean, I make the same judgement call every year for flu shots. Is it at least plausible that I would be better off overall making the same call for some other disease?

I might like if but I have major ethical issues with doing business with any Chinese (or Saudi or North Korean or Vietnamese etc) company if it can be avoided.

Why prop up a dictatorship?

Better still, get mentally ill homeless people off the street and into institutions where they belong.

Building a camp out in the desert somewhere where people like this can get three square meals and a bed would both be an improvement on their present situation and a total money saver once you take into account all the problems and waste of police/ambulance time that they cause. Even better if you extend it to drug addicts.

The "new ownership model" seems to be "timeshare".

Interesting, those are all somewhere in the range between elite and thoroughly respectable. There's no random crap schools you've never heard of pumping out oodles of PhDs every year, which is good news at least.

Mesoblast. I won't bother to share the full story of all this company's ups and downs over the last decade but let's just say that the amount of time I spent tracking the news on it was far out of whack with its importance to my portfolio.

Most people disagreeing on most subjects have probably barely applied any sort of reasoning to get there.

Most pro-vaxxers have simply picked up the dominant opinion from the surrounding society -- not a bad heuristic in practice. Most anti-vaxxers have picked up an opinion from a persuasive single source and then read some other sources that back it up.

I admit I'm in the first category, I certainly vaccinate my own children, but I can't really claim that I've come to this decision after a thorough understanding of immunology, I have simply followed the path of least resistance.

It would seem such communities would be the ones with most to gain from a better funded police force and justice system, one that could permanently remove the criminals from their midst.

If you want your coffee to taste like oatmeal, yes.

As an Australian I've had a terrible time finding a decent cup of coffee in Europe (Italy excepted, but even then the standards aren't great).

I admit I haven't been to Budapest or Bratislava but I've been to some of the supposedly-best places in Berlin and been pretty disappointed. A shocking fraction of them use UHT milk.

Why is it that the same people who think that the solution to bad public schools is more funding also think that the solution to bad police departments is less funding?

If the police are substandard it means we need to pay them more to get better quality applicants into the system.

We also need a better funded prison/drug rehab system so that police don't have to waste their time dealing with the sort of habitual offenders who should have been permanently removed from society a long time ago.

Why is everyone busy inventing complicated penalties?

If wearing a body camera is a requirement of the job then the penalty for not doing so should be the same as the penalty for not doing any other aspect of your job, you get fired.