LibertyBell

This isn't 1800 or 1900, and US intervention has led to horrible outcomes in MANY parts of the world-- so no I don't buy that cliched propaganda. Eisenhower knew better and warned of the military industrial complex-- and being the leader of it-- he knew better than anyone else. https://www.npr.org/2011/01/17/132942244/ikes-warning-of-military-expansion-50-years-later https://www.npr.org/2011/01/16/132935716/eisenhowers-warning-still-challenges-the-nation In an effort to control the expansion of the military-industrial complex, Eisenhower consistently sought to cut the Pentagon's budget. The former general wanted a budget the country could afford, Bowman says. He upset all the military services with his budget cuts, especially the Air Force. Citing another quote from Eisenhower -- this one from another speech on military spending -- Bowman says, "The jet plane that roars overhead costs three quarters of a million dollars. That’s more than a man will make in his lifetime. What world can afford this kind of thing for long?" In today's government, Eisenhower has a fan in his fellow Kansan Secretary of Defense Robert Gates -- who keeps a portrait of the former general in his office at the Pentagon, Bowman says. Speaking at the Eisenhower Library last year, Gates talked about America's insatiable appetite for more and more weapons: But, Bowman says, it has only become more difficult to control the size of the nation's military industry. First, "there are only a handful of defense giants," he says, "which means you can't shop around for a better price." And companies such as Lockheed Martin and Northrop Grumman are also adept at both lobbying and marketing to promote their interests. Bowman says, "they also spread the jobs around the country, to lock in political support." Sponsor Message Gates has also discussed the difficulty of cutting military spending: Bowman says that some industry observers believe that "the one thing that could create that political will is the nation's huge deficit." Only that might force cuts in the overall defense budget.

did you see the one about Cigna using an automated program to reject lots of people for insurance benefits in a short amount of time? They didn't even open the applications, the program automatically rejects 50 people every minute lol private insurance sucks

and they are food deserts...many of our health conditions, like the diabetes epidemic are worse because of that...we have both urban and rural food deserts where fresh unprocessed food isn't commonly available.

As in the above post, the US spends/wastes WAYYYYY too much on the military industrial complex and could do much better if we spent that money on our own people right here.

This country spends/wastes WAYYYY too much money on the military industrial complex....if it didn't do that we could have the same social programs that other nations have. Notice how quickly they dole out billions for other nations and never do it for people who live right here.

I think thats how all nations to be, this nation is too big for its own good....most large nations eventually break up into smaller parts, because they are more manageable and easier to run.

Those Scandanavian nations are amazing and ranked at the top of all nations on most metrics. The US should be treated as 50 different nations rather than just 1 nation and we have many Nordic style programs in NY and other NE states.

AI = Shangri La? Only if it's AGI though and it's currently unknown if that's even possible. Look it up though, if AGI were possible, it opens up a whole new universe of possibilities.

Yes see the other post I made after that one, I have problems with it because no human is truly free of corruption, even if it's only corruption of thought, if given the power of control....that corrupt thought can easily turn into corrupt action. That's why I also added that government itself needs to be controlled....and the only way I see that being properly done is by AI, but altruistic science based AI, I'm not sure if the level of complexity we need and making altruism part of the self evolution process is entirely possible. As something gets more complex and more advanced, I intuitively believe that it becomes less altruistic and more ego driven (even AI). You end up with the Russian Doll (Matroshka) Effect....you always need to find a way to control the controller....talk about recursive function hell lol. I would always choose government over corporations because of the horrible things corporations have done ever since the first multinational corporations started up (the British and Dutch East India Companies), but I would choose academics over both. Unfortunately academics don't like being policy makers.

Yes the key to maintaining it is not realizing it. We get bombarded with so many ads every day and targeted advertizing and then there's the issue of mass surveillance (both by government and by companies.)

We're kind of joking around (at least I am lol).....but the real problem is eventually the "controller" even if they start out with good intentions also has the ability to do horrible things (remember J Edgar Hoover, FBI, etc.) That's why the only acceptable entity doing the controlling would be AI that would self evolve based on altruism, and I'm not even sure that's possible. Punishing corporations for their misdeeds (which current government doesn't properly do because they've been infiltrated by them and their lobbyists) and establishing benefit corporations that seek to preserve the environment and better society, is a real and realizable goal though....it should be done.

I wonder why it is that certain areas, like the northern Rockies have either remained steady or even cooling. Maybe the very high elevations of that region make them immune....for now.

100% concur 99% of people are stupid and need to be controlled....and that includes corporations. "average" people are stupid too, but are more dangerous because they can do much more harm than a below average person. But the government is corrupt too and needs to be controlled also-- I'd say by AI, since AI is best equipped to make rational scientific decisions than any human on this planet ever could. Freedom should not include the right to be ignorant, stupid or corrupt.

He's not completely wrong though--- the only way to prevent companies from destroying the environment is to bring the mighty fist of government regulations down upon them. Here's what most don't understand.... humanity is part of the environment, so when we damage it we damage ourselves. The horrible things that companies like Monsanto, Dow, DuPont, Bayer, etc did aren't just crimes against the planet, they are crimes against humanity and should be punished mightily for it-- it all comes down to lawsuits and crippling them financially, but I'd also love to see severe criminal prosecution of these companies and if corporations are to be treated like people, let's put the death penalty for corporations on the table, because they fully deserve it. On another topic, lithium and cobalt mining is not just about the environment, but about the horrific conditions of labor (really slave labor, much like the palm oil cartels in Indonesia and Malaysia) and on top of that lithium and cobalt are most EXTREMELY flammable. We're now seeing the start of severe restrictions on lithium batteries in NYC, and there need to be, because a large percentage of dangerous fires in NYC are started by lithium batteries. I avoid them like the plague, much preferring NiMH technology instead. Lithium is going to be replaced by solid state and green hydrogen, which are both MUCH better and much more environmentally friendly and less dangerous too. Green hydrogen has already been used in the first airplane flight a few weeks ago and it will find its way into vehicles in the next few years. One of the science groups I converse in is very excited about it.

it was really cold though lol

Hopefully it's like 2002

1990 - Temperatures dipped into the teens and single numbers in the northeastern U.S. Scranton PA tied their record for the date with a morning low of 18 degrees. Temperatures warmed into the 60s and lower 70s in the Pacific Northwest. The afternoon high of 65 degrees at Astoria OR equalled their record for the date. (The National Weather Summary) Looks like a big pattern flip, January and February must've been extremely cold in the NW that year.

whats fascinating that inside a supermassive black hole you wouldn't even get crushed, it really is more like entering a new universe....sure you can't go back but you wouldn't even realize that.

all you have to do is look at the 80s to see how 10 years isn't enough for snowfall.....30 years may not even be enough. I would go with 60 year averages honestly.

I was shocked it went that high, Will. I always figured that Boston's snowfall climo mean should be around 42" 50" is Minneapolis territory and Boston definitely isn't as snowy as Minneapolis is.

The trends are great for playing baseball!

based on what we've found / not found, probably less than one in a million, maybe even less than one in a billion.

Yes three days above 100 even at JFK in July and still upper 90s in September! We did the 32/10/3 split here, 32 days at 90+, 11 days at 95+ and 3 days at 100+

I hunted down an article by the same author you quoted, and this one really sums up my thinking and has for the past 30 years https://www.npr.org/sections/13.7/2018/03/09/591906007/getting-climate-change-right-in-light-of-the-stars Of course we triggered climate change. We've been using planetary-scale amounts of energy to build and maintain this amazing planetary-scale project of civilization. Of course the Earth noticed. What else did you expect to happen? Imagine that aliens, with our knowledge of climate, landed on Earth in ancient Rome. They could have looked around and predicted: "Yeah, you guys are gonna trigger climate change in a few thousand years." In fact, aliens make an important part of this story. Given what we now know about climate, we can see that any large-scale technological civilization developing on any planet would likely trigger its own version of climate change. What is an industrial civilization but a means for converting vast amounts of energy into useful work? The laws of climate literally demand that so much energy use has to transform into planetary feedbacks. So, yeah, we're a wildly successful species that's built a wildly successful planetary civilization. That changed the climate. Duh. What else did we expect to happen? But are we smart enough, and successful enough, to see this truth and deal with it effectively? Given the 10 billion trillion potentially habitable planets in the universe, we are likely not the first time a civilization has appeared and faced the climate change it created. In some cases, that climate change may have become an existential threat to the civilization's existence (as it may become for humanity). So, in the end, the most important question of all may be one we have yet to even fully imagine. Are we to join the universe's winners who met their climate challenge and moved forward — or will we fade away with the cosmic losers too stubborn to see the truth before their eyes?

This seems to be the case with every large corporation in every industry, they always cover up anything that will curtail their profits. It's the definition of corporate psychopathy