uxcolumbo
And which sci-fi shows would you recommend instead?
And Sir Patrick did provide one as captain Picard.
And on top of he was a good human being.
But I personally wouldn't trust people like Bolsonaro, we've seen how this turned out in other countries, like the US, Hungary as some examples. Luckily Hungary managed to get rid of Orban after many years. People like that don't feel any civic duty to their country and happily sell out their own people in order to gain more power and enrich themselves.
I don't know whether Lula is a net positive for Brazil or not, but putting my global citizen hat on, I appreciate that Lula is trying to protect the Amazon from greedy corporations.
And since you're a doctor, maybe you can appreciate how important the Amazon is for Brazil and our biosphere as a whole. Not just for the current generation but also future generations.
Since the Amazon is important for the whole world, Brazil should setup a fund for protecting the Amazon and allow people to donate to it and make it transparent how that money is spent. I'd happily donate to that fund, so it's not all on Brazilian tax payers.
Destroying something that took millions of years to grow and evolve for the sake of semiconductor plants and related industry is short sighted. Once those species of plants, fungi or animals have been lost, we won't be able to get them back.
But again, you don't need to destroy the Amazon to build a rich and vibrant semiconductor industry. I think Brazilians are smarter than that ; )
But the scenario you outlined sounds complicated.
In the end I guess people voted for the person who they think would cause the least damage to the country. That's why the last minute turn out of voters, since they saw Bolsonaro was about to win?
Voting for Bolsonaro would get rid of those supreme court judges, but you'd also get all the downsides with it, i.e. probably have a new leader using the Trump playbook and his father's playbook. And look how 2 years of Trump turned out. Him and his family and friends got immensely rich, increased corruption, while democratic institutions have been dismantled and cost of living has risen immensely.
Or continue with Lula and get marginal improvements but the supreme court stays as is. According to reports I read under Lula poverty and hunger rates have fallen, unemployment rates fell, Economy has grown (but has slowed now), Amazon protection has improved.
I think where he hasn't hit the mark yet is cost of living, but that's a problem all over the world. And that's why it's key to understand it's not left vs right, it's normal folks vs the owner class / monopolistic corporations.
But thanks for clarifying your comment and position.
I get that Lula isn't great, politics is hard. But from the outside it looks like a small majority of Brazilians have voted to say 'not another Bolsonaro'. He would have probably continued like his father and fostered closer ties to Trump and borrowing a few tactics from his playbook, i.e. definitely not good for the average Joe like us.
Good for corporations? Yes - hence why Meta and co tried to push Bolsonaro.
What's your thought process behind your comment:
"If I had a button that would burn that entire jungle down and replace it with a top tier national semiconductor industry, I'd press it twice."
Given the following facts:
- Climate change is real
- The Amazon stores around 15–20 years of global CO2 emissions. Burning it down would release all that.
- It maintains the rainfall system needed by farms and general Brazilian economy
- There is so much biodiversity in the Amazon and so much unexplored. By protecting it, it preserves biological resources and research relevant to food and medicine.
- Many indigenous people live there (2 million?). So it's OK to just destroy their home?
Any why do you need to burn down the Amazon to build a Brazilian semi-conductor industry?
I think it's clear, if Bolsonaro Jr would have won, he'd continue his father's approach to it, i.e. continue with deforestation and loosen environmental rules.
Because he admitted that he was behind throttling Starlink.
> And why would Ukraine deserve any kind of warning?
Because Ukrainian lives are at stake? If you owned Starlink, would you just cripple it without warning them first? This is not some SaaS service. People died because Ukraine wasn't able to defend itself from Russian jet powered drones.
>However, from Starlink's PoV, Ukraine is using its network for military attacks on Russian civilian infrastructure
Again, Ukraine doesn't use Starlink to attack Russia. It uses it to defend itself on their own territory.
>That's a possible motivation, although speculative at this point.
Trump and Musk both said Zelenskyy needs to be replaced. Trump said it on TV and Musk on Twitter. And they also parrot Russian propaganda and claiming he won't allow elections, even though it's in Ukrainian's constitution that election can't be held when there is a war.
Ukraine uses it for defensive purposes, not offensive. Starlink is disabled on Russian territory.
Musk alongside Trump want Zelenskyy gone (receipts are there) and he thought pressuring him by crippling access to Starlink would do it or at least get him to stop attacking Putin's oil refineries.
Musk broke the SLA and Ukrainians died because of it. No warning that SpaceX would cripple it during a time when Russia heavily attacked Ukraine.
Ukraine uses it to defend itself on its own soil. It”s not using it for deep strikes in Russia.
Musk thinks he’s above the law and can play with Ukrainian lives.
Musk, Trump and co know that they can't openly turn things off as it would be a PR nightmare, so the next best thing is to cripple it and deny deny deny that you've done it.
To this day full speed hasn't been restored, continuing to endanger lives.
'Zelensky stated that Ukrainian military commanders, the Ministry of Defense, and foreign diplomats are conducting active negotiations to resolve the constraints. However, he noted that management at SpaceX has declined direct dialogue with Ukrainian military representatives.'
My comment was more in regards to saying 'Musk has opinions' (who doesn't) is downplaying his involvement.
I'm basing this on what the 4 sources have stated mentioned in Telegraph article and also based on his previous behavior and comments about Zelenskyy / Ukraine and overall affinity and support for authoritarian political leaders.
It's all a game for him and winning at all costs.
It will take years for those Musk lovers to grasp how much damage their sieg heiling idol has caused.
Do you care about food safety, disease prevention, consumer protection or the ability for the government to investigate blatant corruption?
Do you think this has gotten better or worse?
Him possibly suggesting that Trump pressure Zelenskyy to comply with his demands by temporarily crippling Starshield’s performance in an active war zone, which means making it harder for Ukraine to defend itself against Putin’s jet-powered Shahed drones, is not merely an opinion. It’s an attempt to influence policy by proposing a way to harm Ukraine, without regard for the lives at stake.
We’ve seen this behaviour from him before. He doesn’t care whether any of his actions or ‘advice’ will harm others.
Imagine if a human did that. FBI would be knocking on their door.
Why are there zero consequences for these labs?
They come to your website with a goal in mind. As long as you make it easy for them to achieve that, it doesn't really matter whether you have elements on your site that are frequently generated by AI.
What's more important is use AI to make your website more accessible.
As long as it doesn't degrade the site's usability, does the general public care about fingernail cards or gradients?
Looks good enough.
And I would argue LLMs aren't either. A lot of economically valuable tasks involve manual labor. Can LLMs fix your plumbing?
It would help if OpenAI would define what 'most' means and give some examples.
Remember they said their LLMs are like a phd level brains? It's just hype and bullsh!ttery. Don't get me wrong, genAI is great and really useful, but it's not AGI imo. And there is no consensus what AGI means, so the industry should come up with an agreed definition first.
[0] To me autonomous means self directed, e.g. we humans look at things and then decide which problem or thing to work on. LLMs don't do that. We have to tell them. Yes they might work on a sub task autonomously, but still require human input later on (review), because we can't fully trust its output is correct.
What if it's 85% taste match, wouldn't that be enough to make the jump to plant based alternatives?
Male chicks for example get thrown in a wood chipper.
> But all the data I could find concludes that more people have moved up than down.
I based my comment on research done by Pew, OECD, and economists like Saez/Zucman. The middle class is shrinking both upward and downward, but a significant share is moving down or stagnating, not up!
Even billionaires themselves comment on this: https://fortune.com/2026/07/17/palantir-ceo-alex-karp-artifi...
So you're right, we made great progress since WW2 and no the sky isn't falling down.
But my point is we're now going down a dangerous path that leads to authoritarianism. If the convicted felon and his gang aren't being kicked out then corruption will increase, more surveillance (i.e. Flock and Palantir), more austerity and more loss of our freedoms.
> 3. Democracy, imo, is quite healthy.
It's not though. Listen to historians like Snyder or Heather Cox Richardson. Or listen to financiers like Anthony Scaramucci and his guests. Our democracy is being dismantled and if we don't stop them, then we'll end up with a sham democracy like in Russia.
For example the Withings Scanwatch Horizon is quite expensive but it seems it doesn't have a user replaceable battery. So what do you do when the battery can't hold a charge anymore?
But I don't think it's about screaming the sky is falling down... anyway, more thoughts on this later.
That's why. Historically, when wealth concentrates at the top, it tends to stay there unless there’s strong counterpressure.
Wealth brings political influence and that influence is often used to preserve the status quo and not change the system so the poor would get 5x or 10x richer.
If everyone were genuinely getting better off, i.e. the necessities of life not getting more expensive or wages rising in accordance to things getting more expensive, then the rich and poor divide wouldn't matter as much.
The problem is that’s not what we’re seeing. What we get is:
Wages for many people haven’t kept up with key costs. Housing, healthcare and education have surged. Meanwhile, gains at the top have massively accelerated.
So it’s not “rich up 10x, poor up 5x.” It’s closer to gains being concentrated while a lot of people struggle to keep up.
Your previous statement that the middle class is shrinking because people are moving up is not 100% correct. Some move up, but most decline.
That’s why inequality matters. It’s not about envy. It's about preserving democracy, rule of law and not falling into a pit of corruption.
See what's happening with Mr Doge, he's happily using his platforms to meddle in foreign elections. Recently supporting Le Pen (another criminal, found guilty of embezzling European Union funds) and also supporting AFD and other extreme right wing parties. You have to ask yourself why.
Based on your original post you seem to only see overall progress from a zoomed out view. Yes we've made immense progress, but my point is that in the last 10 years things have gotten way worse.
You don't seem to acknowledge that the divide between rich and poor is rising immensely (e.g. your 'disgusting BILLIONAIRE' snarky comment) and is the root of many of our problems and that voting for Billionaire backed politicians like the current President and the likes - will lead us down a path where we will lose our democracy and end up like Hungary did or god forbid Russia.
And since you're not OK with those things I mentioned this administration is doing, I hope you'll make your vote count and vote out the threat to our democracy and world order.