omegaworks
The article fails to mention the fourth lever: cessation of hostilities, recognition of Iranian sovereignty, reparations for the displaced peoples of the region and curtailment of Israeli expansionist ambitions.
If achieved, none of the collosal amounts of capital expenditure and effort required to immediately secure redundant alternatives to the Bromine supply chain would need to be exerted.
Ah, a dystopian surveillance technology deployed against regular people. Unsurprising where it was developed.
They were using it to support a legitimate nuclear energy and radiotheraputics industry. They are in the part of the planet that will be most impacted by climate warming, so nuclear is critical for them to support baseline power needs.
The United States striking these sites throws the entire international system of non-proliferation into question. If there is no commitment any country can make to any system of governance that allows for peaceful development of nuclear energy, there is no controlling nuclear weapons development and proliferation.
Nowhere in this CNN brief are we informed about whether the sites were or were not used for weapons development. If we take the lessons of mainstream media's coverage of the Iraq war, it is likely CNN is stating this because their owners have been told that it would be better for their bottom line to manufacture consent for a second round of strikes than to preserve the President's assertion that the strikes were successful.
A lot of American choice is an illusion. The national expressway network was created to serve national security purposes. Beloved trolley systems in medium density cities were unceremoniously ripped out. Car and tire companies pushed the bus-ification of public transport in order to kill any notion that it should offer comfort and reliability.
The American government refuses to invest in density because its sees sprawl as a deterrant against nuclear threat. (A threat that it takes an active role in escalating, mind you.)
>It’s because Americans, even poor Americans, overwhelmingly choose personal transportation.
If you take notice, much of the most expensive and valuable property in this country is in dense regions where it is possible to live without a car. If Americans truly had a choice, they'd pick the kinds of walkable communities they can only experience now on university campuses and in theme parks.
She documents in detail critical moments where Facebook executives made decisions that exemplified their incompetence and damaged their potential impact.
That the "cultural purge" in big tech is flushing out people with these instincts is precisely why the industry is flailing and groveling at the feet of power, for they have no internal compass save for growth for growth's sake.
Everyone can see that now laid bare on these pages, and these companies that rely on their user's willingness to exchange details about their personal lives for cheap dopamine hits may find that generosity well run dry.
I think this is an absurd claim that is not supported by the facts. DOGE staff are young Elon sycophants[1] that have openly and explicitly supported eugenic policies[2]. There is no reason to believe that they are trying to do the right thing.
1. https://www.wired.com/story/elon-musk-government-young-engin...
2. https://www.npr.org/2025/02/06/nx-s1-5289337/elon-musk-doge-...
This isn't preparing in the slightest. This is impulse-response. Taking a sledgehammer to our institutions and seeing what happens. A cruel child picking apart the legs of a spider just to see how many it can before it dies.
Adding performance guidelines has been done before. It was done in a systematic way that tried very carefully to avoid disruption to functions[1]. DOGE is forcing its way into offices and physically compromising internal data systems in order to feed data into an experiment.
1. https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/npr/library/papers/bkgrd/bri...
This is not the nature of union employment, it is a structural weakness in the way employment has been negotiated. Musk is exploiting that weakness.
We have also made incredible strides at capturing the productivity and free time that would have fed innovation and effectively transferred it to the financial services industry.
Since schools in the US were desegregated for people of color and women, America embraced a radically neoliberal approach to education. Rather than funding higher education for every citizen who wanted to pursue it now that everyone could, those in power chose to systematically and cynically de-fund higher education and replace it with a degree-for-debt model.
State universities that used to provide low/free tuition to white men, now offer their services to all, for an ever-increasing price.
This has created a society where smart people get on the edu-debt treadmill in search of a better life, only to then be beholden to existing, stagnant profit-maximizing entities to try to pay that debt off for the rest of their lives. This is how innovation has stalled: a top-down systematic defunding that has ensured both gifted and special-needs kids have to fight over scraps.
False. The rich disproportionately pollute. Climate change isn't a population problem, it is a resource allocation problem. If the poorest 50% of all people disappeared tomorrow, emissions would only decline by 10%[1].
1. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2015/dec/02/worlds-r...
https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/mayor/press_room/press...
Fully 13% of the population lives in an area with restricted access to grocery stores[1]. Couple that with car-centric anti-pedestrian development[2] and you have a definitively societal problem. Addressing that with taxes on the individual will not address these causes, only shift the burden further onto the poor.
1. https://www.aecf.org/blog/communities-with-limited-food-acce...
2. https://www.economist.com/finance-and-economics/2023/11/09/i...
The US consistently does this to all its island territories. In WWII it dropped invasive species and tested defoliant agents, decimating local food sovereignty. Today the Jones act keeps them structurally poor[1].
Disrespect to Americans absolutely intended.
1. https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/9/27/16373484/j...
The chances anyone will come across the artist when their marketplace is flooded with increasingly plausible simulacra become more and more slim as time goes on.
AI is choking off any hope for artists supported by patronage, simply by virtue of discoverability being lost and trust being eroded.
>But now we're on a larger scale.
It's simply a bad problem, made worse!
> The only way to do this is to give the person a place to live. Ensure the person has healthy and decent food.
> This will require time and treatment so build up a new sense of safety.
In many ways, just meeting people's basic needs would go farther to address mental health than any miracle drug.
Curious where this researcher found examples of white flight in the 60s completely divorced from the reality of explicitly incentivized depopulation and segregation[1]. Very weird that it is used as an example of "spontaneous" sociological critical mass here, because it very much was catalyzed by real economic policy.
Please try your best to resist apathy. Contact your representative and let them know your priorities, especially in light of a looming government shutdown that threatens funding to exactly these kinds of initiatives.
What happens when these strict restrictions cut someone off from their support systems?
1. https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/22/business/media/jeff-bezos...
A 1 terabit /sec network connection would allow you to basically allow your machine to train and tune arbitrarily sized models completely remotely.
The people in SF like their million dollar shoeboxes to appreciate in value, with zero regard for the externalities that scheme creates[1].
1. https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/articles/...
[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10574586/#:~:te....
So now not only is AI filling the web with garbage that poisons future model development[1], it provides incentive to further close and wall off access to (user-provided!) data.
Largely to set the stage for service to the Richmond.
>It's mostly a retirement village.
A testament to the resilience of the community in the face of an ongoing housing supply shortage. There is no doubt immense pressure from our typical economic processes to displace retirees from the place that they've lived their entire lives. You'd rather see old folks trapped in car-dependent suburbia, eventually unable to drive themselves to their basic needs?
> Musk admitted to his biographer Ashlee Vance that Hyperloop was all about trying to get legislators to cancel plans for high-speed rail in California—even though he had no plans to build it.[1]
He knew it would delay CA-HSR and political will for it nearly died.
1. https://time.com/6203815/elon-musk-flaws-billionaire-visions...
1. https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/16/pelosi-biden-2024-e...