Elon’s companies are the epitome of the hype-cycle-based stock market manipulation. Take something somewhat useful (EVs, self-driving cars, reusable rockets, …), spend a bunch of VC cash on building an MVP and advertising, make that advertising overpromise every feature by 300% and just send it. People will buy the stock because of the hype, then buy the product (if applicable) because they own the stock, then be forced to “still like the truck tho”/“COLONIZE MARS” for years, regardless of the actual quality (or lack thereof) of the product, because otherwise their stocks might go down.

Not in the field, but I think it depends. It’s for sure more dangerous on average if we consider the entire world, but I feel like that’s mostly because of certain areas (US w/ toothless FAA and ATC shortage, Russia with the war&part shortages etc, …) and new Boeing aircraft.

Flying is still the safest mode of travel per km, and if you’re flying Airbus/Embraer/COMAC/pre-2010 Boeing it’s likely as safe as it was a decade ago. However it kinda sucks due to all the greenhouse gas emissions.

Least surprising outcome

claiming the Houthis, officially known as Ansar Allah, said they would “not be blowing up ships anymore.”

Is there any confirmation from them, or is he making shit up again?

Not even a review. It’s a call for a review.

Can someone explain with less legalese? In my reading, the court decided that it did not have the jurisdiction over it because… UAE decided that it didn’t want the court to have jurisdiction over it? That shit would be funny if it wasn’t so sad.

If you oppose the genocide GO HOME

So that anyone with even a shred of decency is gone and only the most rabid genociders remain? I think organizing a protest - even as meek as this - is better than just running away.

Good for the environment? I recycle everything I can. I don’t use plastic bags or single-use cups. I avoid using heating in the winter to save on CO2 emissions (used it for 2 days this winter when my gf was sick). I stave off aircon in the summer for as long as I can to save electricity. I’m vegan (mostly because of ethical concerns but also because meat is awful for the planet in general). I avoid using my car when there’s an alternative (cycling/public transit).

Good for me? I do at least some exercise (stretching, workout, jogging, cycling) every workday and hike on the weekend. I brush my teeth twice a day, floss weekly, and get a full dental cleaning annually, and because of this (and genetic luck I suppose) I never had any issues with my teeth (don’t have even a single filling). I don’t drink alcohol or smoke at all. I avoid caffeine and sugars when possible.

I feel privileged to be able to form those habits, and also often blame myself that I don’t do better. I’m addicted to fat and carbohydrate-heavy foods, can’t bring myself to clean the apartment with any regularity beyond the most necessary, and can’t form a habit of regularly reading books. Sometimes I wonder how other adults manage when they have a 9-5 office job with commute times, kids, etc.

There’s no credibility to lose at this point. He has been lying for his entire life, no way he’s stopping now.

It can always get worse. “Only” ~200000 deaths from Israel’s actions for now, or ~10% of the population, which Israeli pieces of shit see as “90% still to go”. One can imagine how a total famine can speed up the genocide significantly.

We can agree that China is a more stable partner than the US. My point is that party leadership can also change there, leading to policy changes - it just doesn’t happen as often and there’s usually no dramatic swings when it does. It’s a scale, not a binary thing.

Nah, if the US starts a world war it will suck for literally everyone, not just those voters. You’re likely to be drafted too, regardless of where you live.

In a sense that’s true for any country, though. The only differences are (1) how often the policy changes and (2) by how much. US used to have a 4-year cycle and much less variance in the policies and so it made some sense to get into long-term agreements. Even in the last 8 years, agreements reached by Trump were continued by Biden (e.g. NAFTA). Now though the cycle is like 4 days and the policy swings are 180°, so it only makes sense to enter into extremely short-term, transactional agreements, or if you have no other choice (like Ukraine).

self defense acts are not homicides

They absolutely are. There’s even a term for it - justifiable homicide.

Now I said let’s murder them?

You’re advocating for death penalty.

In countries that abolished it, if someone was executed it would be considered murder. So yes, you are advocating for murder.

Interestingly you still only talk about the perpetrators and not the victims.

What do victims have to do with this? I’m not proposing we kill them.

Surviving victims should of course be offered treatment, both physical and mental, as well as fair compensation. It is irrelevant to the question of the death penalty.

Hm, I don’t think the “gravitational force” (as in the thing that pulls you towards the Earth) is a result of a gravitational wave; rather it is a result of you being in a static vector field. Gravitational waves are waves that travel through that field, e.g. the stuff that LIGO is measuring.

I’ve tried thinking about how it would work with portals. The problem is that the definition for gravitational field is g = -∇Φ where gravitational potential Φ(x) = ∑_i(-G·m_i)/||x - x_i||, which depends on there being a single unambiguous “distance between two points” (x and x_i in this case). But think about two points on the opposite sides of one “portal entrance” (e.g. imagine a portal entrance on a wall in front of you, with your friend on the other side of that wall). What is the distance between you and your friend now? If we’re to say it’s the same as it was without a portal, then (1) we get straight back to our problems with energy conservation, (2) there is no physical path between you and your friend that matches this distance as there’s a rift in space on that path. It would also be weird to conclude that it’s infinity - you can just go around the wall in our example and be right next to your friend. So we almost have to conclude that the shortest path would have to go around the portal somehow. Let’s just say that it would be the length of the shortest path around the portal. By the formulae for the gravitational field, this means that the gravity will pull you towards the shortest path to Earth’s center. If you placed one portal on the surface of Earth (let’s assume that the center of Earth is sufficiently far away that the gravitational field can be approximated as uniform in direction and magnitude) and another one somewhere far-far away in deep space (where let’s say that gravitational field is 0 for simplicity) it would look something like this:

Note how while the gravitational potential (Φ) is defined along the red line, the gravitational field would be undefined as there would be no gradient in the gravitational potential.

Now let’s try thinking what would happen on the other side. I’ll assume that our portals are just flattened wormholes with short throats. Thus we’ll just assume that portal entrances are actually “two-sided” (e.g. if they are just floating in your room, you can walk around them and see whatever is around the other portal at all times), and that the distance between them is 0 (let’s not think about how that works for now). Now the distance between an object on “one side” of first portal entrance and “the other side” of another portal entrance is even more messed up - I think the shortest path would technically be one that travels from first object to one of the “edges” of the first portal entrance and then from the corresponding edge of the second portal entrance to the second object. Thus the gravitational field around the other portal would look like this (I’ve added eyes to clarify how I’ve linked up portal sides):

The red line once again means that the gravitational field there is undefined.

Whew, it’s complicated, right?

Now, let’s put the second portal close to the first one. Note that I’m assuming here that only the shortest distance to the center of the earth matters.

The two red lines from before now overlap, and there’s another one - there’s no gradient when the distance to the blue portal and to the earth is the same. It’d actually be longer than what I’ve drawn, and some sort of parabola in those areas, but I’m too lazy to do that. Hanging in the middle of that red cross would be a weird feeling - your top half would feel as though you’re hanging upside down, while your bottom half would feel normal, and your arms and legs would be pulled in slightly different directions.

Although, I think that Newtonian definitions of gravity are playing tricks on us here. We should probably try using general relativity instead, but I am too tired to even attempt that right now, and I’d probably fail given that the fields involved there are a lot more complicated.

It already is in all modern societies except like the USA.

Given the original commenter was talking about “the left”, I’m critiquing AES countries (e.g. China) here. USA is a lost cause when it comes to human rights anyways.

You seems to root awfully much for these bad people

That’s just basic human empathy combined with practicality. They are still human and deserve humane treatment, and also most of them (like 80% if we look at Scandinavia) can be reintegrated into the society in some way.

I’d say let’s help them when we have helped all their victims

You won’t be able to help them if you murder them

I think they’ve majorly underestimated how much the world is going to condemn this. It was one thing to “protect it’s citizens”, it’s another thing entirely to outright invade another nation.

I think you’re majorly overestimating how much the world cares.

Israel has been invading other nations literally continuously throughout its existence. You can debate that it is to “protect it’s citizens”, and there may even be some truth to that sometimes, but it’s clearly generally been the aggressor since its founding. And (almost) nobody cared.

I’d be shocked if Europe doesn’t sanction Israel

Some strong-worded letters will surely be sent, and politicians will call on “all sides to stop the hostilities”, which in practice means Israel gets to keep whatever it could occupy. Maybe a couple of somewhat left-leaning countries (Spain, Sweden, Norway, etc) will sanction Israel individually, but then they don’t have much trade by this point anyway so they have no negotiating power. As for the rest, trading (including trading weapons) with Israel is profitable monetarily and beneficial politically, so not much will really change.

Yeah, of course, death penalty is never acceptable and must be abolished entirely. Even setting aside that no proof of a physical event can be 100% solid, or all the other practicality arguments; even the worst rapists, murderers, terrorists and billionaires are still humans and do not deserve death when they present no danger anymore due to being apprehended.

A lifetime imprisonment is more inhumane than a death sentence.

Change my mind.jpg

Most death row inmates fight for their life all the way until execution. That’s proof enough.

(If there is enough solid proof ofc. You can’t roll back a death penalty)

How is the verity of the conviction related to how humane the punishment is?