Hey nothing’s more German than genocide amirite?

And before SpaceX the cost to do anything in space was extremely prohibitive.

As opposed to now…

With SpaceX they created re-usable rocket components

Nobody had done that before? Wasn’t the promise that they would do few quick checks, refuel, and send it back up same day?

Before SpaceX the U.S. was reliant on Russia’s soyuz to get us to and from the space station.

Nasa had do use Soyuz because crew dragon was late. SpaceX won the contract then underdelivered a late product. Basically exactly what ULA or Boeing would have done.

Wanna talk about Artemis?

Maybe we could start with countries credibly accused of being currently in the act of committing genocides and work our way down?

As a sibling said the Olympics has recently been invading season for Russia.

The stated purpose of the cruise lines is to capture as much of the tourist dollars as possible by compelling the passengers to spend nearly all their money onboard. When port calls are made the sailing times are engineered to prevent the passengers from going off and doing their own thing.

One thing I think they should do is follow Svalbard and limit the number of passengers allowed on a ship. Svalbard put it at 200 because it is a very remote archipelago with limited rescue facilities, but even in more populated areas it should be many fewer than the largest cruise ships currently carry. Had Costa Condordia sunk in deeper waters the death toll would have been massive because there was no way thousands of people could have gotten off before it rolled over and sank.

Specifically I think one thing Amsterdam and other port cities could do is require minimum lengths of a calling in port. For instance the ship has to be in port for at least 24 hours and the passengers must be able to disembark and reembark at any time. This would ensure that the passangers don’t feel pressure to stay near the ship or all bum-rush the city by hoarding off and back on again all at once.

Of course the cruise lines would start howling if these kinds of regulations started coming down as they would ruin their business model of cramming thousands passengers into floating hotels, keeping them there, and draining all their money.

I’m involved in various leftist causes and see this shit so often. Like you feel like you need to be a “thought leader” instead of just staying in your lane. Or organizations just get taken over by people who have completely antithetical agendas.

For instance I was somewhat involved in our local DSA chapter for a few years after Bernie and I’m still on the email list. They just sent out a email about organizing a “queer and transgender prom” but that in order to attend you would have to have proof of up-to-date covid vaccination.

1. Now don’t get me wrong, queer and transgender proms are great if you’re into proms, but what does it have to do with democratic socialism?

2. Why on earth is the DSA the organization that is still flying the Moderna flag in 2024? Everybody else has given up on their mostly ineffective vaccines years ago. Also last I checked Big Pharma are the bad guys!

One of the things that excited me about Bernie and groups like DSA originally is that they seemed to serve as a new and revitalized economic left focused on salient issues and rejecting identity politics. I remember one of the rally cries was “racial politics are class politics.” But now they’re basically just yet another moveon.org or something.

Altman makes my skin crawl because whenever I see him in an interview he looks like Patrick Bateman practicing empathetic facial expressions in a mirror.

But if that doesn’t do it for you, you need to look into worldcoin. It’s like as if they watched Minority Report and said “Yeah, let’s do that, but with crypto.”

I think I’m going to need John Travolta to explain this one to me.

The fact that I’m getting down-voted means I guess people feel that I’m criticizing the legalization of assisted suicide.

It’s possible to believe that assisted suicide should be legal and also believe that it’s incredibly bleak that people are so hopeless. Remember when this started we were talking about how it’s not humane to force someone to say drown own their own liquefying lungs or something. Now our society is apparently going to a place where people would rather quit living than go on after their spouse has passed. How did we get here?

Wow this thing is getting real bleak real fast.

Isn’t it amazing how we’re supposedly so much richer than we were as a society in the 1950s, when they didn’t have computers, they didn’t have cellphones, they didn’t have jet airplanes or genetic engineering and yet:

1. we could afford healthcare for everyone
2. we could afford housing for everyone
3. we could afford defined benefits pension plans for everyone?

How did 70 years of supposed progress leave us unable to afford the basic necessities of life?

Very similar to the “Problem Bear” who had to be put down due to a “Failure to integrate into German society”

https://www.dw.com/en/germanys-problem-bear-bruno-is-dead/a-2068219

My experience is that the UK is about as prudish as the USA.

I hope Musk manages to fuck up enough that he’s ousted from day to day control of the company.

The thing is, he was supposed to step down as a condition of his settlement with the SEC over fraudulently pretending he was going to take Tesla private.

This is illegal in the US. It’s called “secondary strikes” and was banned by the Taft-Hartley act.

The Taft-Hartley act was passed during the red scare. Truman tried to veto it but was overruled by congress.

If your coffee is so great why do you drink it out of such tiny cups? – Jon Stewart

Yeah they keep the good stuff for themselves and export the crap. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/most-of-us-are-blissfully-ignorant-about-how-much-rancid-olive-oil-we-use/

Switzerland’s most innovative industries being mechanical watch escapements, asset hiding, and evading sanctions.

I laughed at this one. Too true.