I think the loophole is going to stay in place. The hemp lobby has exploded since 2018, and has done a lot to keep the loopholes from closing in even very Red states. In the real world money is what talks, and I think there’s too much money at this point to put the genie back in the bottle.
But that’s my two cents. I could be wrong. Hope I’m not.
Awesome comment, thanks for the detail.
To play a bit of Devil’s Advocate (from a bench-top scientific standpoint I come from immunology/microbiology background—so I know enough theory to be dangerous but don’t have your depth of evolutionary understanding) doesn’t a lot of this rely on cosmic timescales? I’m sure I could easily do a web search on this, but I think there are a lot of galaxy clusters that are much older than the Milky Way. That would give the potential for many multitudes of planets that have been around much longer than Earth, which gives a lot of time for intelligence to evolve and sustain. Now, if an intelligent civilization can ever survive for that long is a different question in and of itself.
I personally have wondered if the natural, sustainable, next step in any intelligent evolution is artificial forms of intelligence. Maybe biological intelligence is just the bootloader for less squishy forms of life? Immortal silicon life sort of renders the biological limits of space travel a lot less problematic. I know that comment exceeds the scientific into the philosophical, but it’s a thought I’ve had a lot lately.
Yeah, everyone in this thread saying the phone bad is a Boomer cop out is oversimplifying the issue.
Yeah, there’s probably a component of taking the blame away from decreased quality of life by blaming it on phones—but you can’t neglect the effect that lack of social interaction has. I’m from the same era, and it’s overwhelming to think how much more complex everything has gotten.
I don’t think the problem is that the government “wasn’t the best ever,” I think it’s that it hasn’t changed. And the US hasn’t done a lot to enforce some of the groundwork beliefs of the framers.
I still think the idea and balance of power of the US government is one of the best—but it was created to change with the times and address practical flaws (amendments) and hasn’t.
Ha ha so true. I thought you were joking but you never know with the internet.
I mean you basically don’t smoke then. Most of the effects of smoking are based on pack-years, which is the number of years you’ve smoked a pack per day. So two packs a day for 10 years? 20 pack years.
You have barely any pack years, and you stopped so young that the adverse effects are definitely reversed (10 years of cessation to reverse risk of lung CA/COPD).
There are already a lot of good answers but I want to highlight this. Chronic tobacco smoke causes increased aging due to multiple mechanisms. Moreover, environmental tobacco exposure from second hand and third hand smoke prior to the 1990s was MASSIVE. So even if you didn’t smoke you got insane daily exposures to the same chemicals.
That makes more sense then. Still would need a house, but could manage that with planning/tiny home over time.
I mean, reading the Wikipedia article is seems like there’s a lot known about the killer and a pretty clear motive of him wanting to kill a bunch of people…
Something about the Vegas one (other than total number of fatalities) was so much more sinister. We barely even ever heard about the perpetrator. It’s always seemed bizarre to me.
Not saying we should be giving any media attention to mass killers, but it definitely breaks with the normal media portrayal.
My comment was mostly intended as a joke (like me being bullish is going to make the market move in the other direction), but I do think that what happened in 2020 was artificially can-kicked down the road by unprecedented government intervention in the market. So it’s less of a “severe as I’d like” scenario and more of a “curtailed by massive global intervention in the economy.” Maybe that staved it off forever and we will have a soft landing? Possible, but I don’t think so.
How are you going to buy a bunch of land with a small amount of UBI?
I’ve been saying this for a while, and that’s why I think a complex problem like this needs a more complex solution than UBI.
Essentially I think successful UBI would need to be something like UBS instead (Universal Basic Support). Instead of only being money it needs to consist of free services. That way it’s harder for third parties to leech it away.
So instead of “Here’s $1000 a month, do whatever you want” it would need to be more like “You can get free healthcare here, free electricity through this company, free food rations from this grocery store.” Then if you want things above UBS you need to have some source of income.
We’ve been due for a recession since 2020–the drastic pullback for several months at the onset of COVID was hardly a “recession,” more like a blip. I’ve finally stopped saying it’s imminently going to happen, which maybe means it’s going to happen now.
Having mega corporations design space networks for you sounds like a great idea until they decide to lock you out and hold your government hostage. Or sell intel… Or sell access to other actors….
Just admit it—the corporations run the world at this point.
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Healthcare gang represent!
I hate to think about the human race becoming obsolete, but it makes sense if you think about it.