Alex_Krycek

Seems like the the DNC has played the "best of two evils" card ad nauseum at this point. People are tired of it. A recent poll showed that a majority of Americans don't even believe Trump is the bigger threat to democracy compared to Biden. The DNC's machiavellian talking points are all used up.

Well said.

No agenda other than to keep Trump out of the White House. Frankly, it seems like you're using the agenda trope as a convenient deflection from a very uncomfortable reality, one that requires a very difficult reconciliation and choice. That, or you have a personal bias that favors Joe Biden and is obscuring objective analysis. The idea that Trump will withdraw, or that Democrats can influence him to withdraw, is wishful thinking and will never happen. We should only seek to control what we can.

This idea that Biden just "had a bad debate" is a delusional understatement. Did anyone making that statement actually watch the debate on Thursday, or clips of it? Biden couldn't finish half of his sentences. When he wasn't struggling to conclude a basic thought he looked confused and bewildered. Should we be really surprised that an 81 year old has these issues? It's not too late for the DNC to replace him. The deadline for doing so would be in August. The NYT Editorial board and other media outlets have officially called for him to step down. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/28/opinion/biden-election-debate-trump.html From that Article: As it stands, the president is engaged in a reckless gamble. There are Democratic leaders better equipped to present clear, compelling and energetic alternatives to a second Trump presidency. There is no reason for the party to risk the stability and security of the country by forcing voters to choose between Mr. Trump’s deficiencies and those of Mr. Biden. It’s too big a bet to simply hope Americans will overlook or discount Mr. Biden’s age and infirmity that they see with their own eyes. Supporters of the president are already explaining away Thursday’s debate as one data point compared with three years of accomplishments. But the president’s performance cannot be written off as a bad night or blamed on a supposed cold, because it affirmed concerns that have been mounting for months or even years. At this point it is woefully unlikely that Biden will be back in office come November. Frankly, I don't think he deserves to be given his cognitive state. The Dems can pick literally anybody else and have a much better chance at victory. Yes, I think its fairly obvious which is why the media, other world leaders, and medical professionals are calling it out. Whether or not the empirical evidence is conclusive is somewhat irrelevant here; this is a presidential election: perception is reality. On Thursday night the American public saw a man who looks like he deserves to be in a retirement home under 24 hour care, not the leader of the free world.

Ok, so with last night's debate over, and Joe Biden's cognitive impairment on full display for the world, finally a consensus amongst establishment Democrats is forming that he's got to step down to avoid a catastrophic defeat in November. So the question becomes, who should replace him? I think Gavin Newsom or Gretchen Whitmer would be likely candidates, although I'd personally prefer Bernie Sanders, but we all know the corrupt DNC won't let that happen. What do you think? Will the Dems mobilise to replace Biden or will they let him take us all down with him? If they do plan to replace him, who should be put forward?

@ImplicitDemands Do you live in a city or small town? How densely populated is the area where you live?

Mitch McConnell. He's been involuntarily celibate for decades.

Very interesting discovery here, regarding the discover of a cosmic megastructure. Such new discoveries are putting the spotlight on the so called "cosmological principle", the notion that the spatial distribution of matter in the universe is equally distributed and isotropic when viewed on a large enough scale. Summary: A 1.3bn light year-sized ring discovered by PhD student in Lancashire appears to defy the cosmological principle assumption. Astronomers have discovered a ring-shaped cosmic megastructure, the proportions of which challenge existing theories of the universe. The so-called Big Ring has a diameter of about 1.3bn light years, making it among the largest structures ever observed. At more than 9bn light years from Earth, it is too faint to see directly, but its diameter on the night sky would be equivalent to 15 full moons. The observations, presented on Thursday at the 243rd meeting of the American Astronomical Society in New Orleans, are significant because the size of the Big Ring appears to defy a fundamental assumption in cosmology called the cosmological principle. This states that above a certain spatial scale, the universe is homogeneous and looks identical in every direction. Full Article: https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/jan/11/newly-discovered-cosmic-megastructure-challenges-theories-of-the-universe

I've seen Channel 4 (UK news) cover the Gaza situation extensively from the Palestinian point of view. They seem to offer a relatively fair lens through which to view these events. This book, Killing in the Name of Identity, is quite good at looking into the collective psychology perpetuating such conflicts.

There were many notable Jewish physicists involved in the Manhattan project: Robert Oppenheimer Ed Teller George Placzek Joseph Rotblat John von Neumann Leo Szilard Otto Frisch Felix Bloch Hans Bethe I found the non-linear temporal format interesting: the black and white representing the present day of the film, the color representing Oppenheimer's subjective memory, the somewhat faded colorization of the security clearance interrogation (which served as the mechanism to connect the story together). The game theory aspect of the saga was most fascinating. They're in a race against the Nazis at first, then that becomes moot when the Germans surrender, but the bomb is done anyway, so Truman proceeds to use it against Japan anyway, to end the war quickly. Supposedly the invasion of Japan was projected to cost 5 million lives (both US and Japanese soldiers, plus Japanese civilians who were prepared for a total mobilization and guerrilla warfare to protect their homeland). I didn't know this, but the fire bombing of Tokyo prior to dropping the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the most destructive bombing raid in world history, and was on par with the damage caused by the atomic bombs. So it's not like Truman wasn't going to use the bomb if he got it. Nor were the Americans unique in their barbarism during the war. The Axis Power (Germany, Japan, Italy) inflicted some of the worst atrocities of course. Oppenheimer believed though, that the bomb would facilitate a pause in mass global conflict due to its sheer destructive power. On some level he may have been right. Interesting segment here with Oppenheimer:

Saw this recently and thought it was excellent movie. Very interesting to understand more about Oppenheimer's life, worldview, political affiliations, the Manhattan project and all the physicists involved. Anyone else catch it?

Apparently Wagner troops family's were threatened, unsurprisingly.

No to mention Elon Musk is on record saying quite nonchalantly "a whole bunch of people will die", in the process of going to Mars. Downright reckless and contrary to NASA's principles of safety.

I think it was real, not staged. Prigozhin and Wagner were genuinely enraged at being treated so disrespectfully by the Russian Elites on the battlefield. Logical explanation here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y2hVaLhUtdM

Avoidable only if Prigozhin keeps an omnipresent Praetorian Guard, but even then...

I'm incredulous that Putin will just move on from this, despite the so called deal that has been struck with Prigozhin. Does anyone believe that Putin will actually honor this agreement? The Kremlin has a long memory; I suspect Prigozhin is on "the list" now.

What about "hull integrity"? Excellent analysis of the Titan's design defects here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VaOVYkWgpcM

This article at PM offers further analysis on the engineering of the craft, and how the composition differed from other battle tested submersibles. https://www.popularmechanics.com/science/a44305386/titan-submersible-vs-deepsea-challenger/ Excerpt: "The Deepsea Challenger—made famous by film director and underwater explorer James Cameron—was mostly built with a special syntactic foam, with the crew compartment composed of a steel orb attached to foam beams. “Roughly 70 percent of the vehicle's volume is made up of this foam, which is composed of glass spheres embedded in an epoxy resin and which provides both flotation and structural support for the vehicle,” according to the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, which now operates the vessel." "The Titan differed in other ways. Unlike the spherical shape of the Deepsea Challenger that distributed pressure equally, the Titan’s cylindrical shape meant that some parts of the craft were subject to more pressure than others. At a depth of more than two miles beneath the surface, even a small hull breach would cause an instantaneous implosion."

Not hiring 50 year old white guys with decades of submarine experience because they're not "inspirational" Piloting the sub with a Logtech controller that can be used by a 16 year old buying "off the shelf parts" and using an experimental carbon fiber hull For me this a good example of the Overconfidence Bias as outlined by Amos Tversky and Daniel Kahneman. Unfortunately it seems all those years of never being contradicted by yes men went to Stockton's head. Great interview here with James Cameron and Bob Ballard on why the hull failure should have never happened. Since 1960 there has never been an accident of this kind at these depths. It was only when Stockton "got creative" and deviated from decades of proven engineering that this tragedy occurred.

Yes, from both sides of the debate. That's a convenient way to patronize those with a different viewpoint. Frankly, until recently I had reserved judgement on this topic as I didn't have a vested interest one way or the other as to veracity of the UFO/Alien claims. Like many I thought the most logical possibility was that life definitely exists out there somewhere, but had not visited Earth yet. However, unlike you, who refuses to take this topic seriously or objectively review the evidence that is available, I kept an open mind, and based on the weight of the evidence that has been documented, have adjusted my viewpoint. By contrast, it seems to me that you're acting from a position of subjective bias, where you: A.) won't take the topic seriously to begin with B.) won't review the evidence that exists and C.) therefore must trivialize the topic and patronize others who actually have done A and B. So, you can believe you're being objective, but someone who can't seriously investigate a topic or suspend judgement for even a minute can't logically claim to be that.

Important distinction, thanks. Semantics aside - it's a compelling article and yet another reason why NASA should have a significantly bigger budget for missions like this. Missions to land on the surface of Enceladus and somehow drill into the sub-oceans with the goal of launching a deep sea sea submersible similar to DSV ALVIN.

Again, I was just referencing NASA's framing of the discovery. They used the phrase "building block for life" in the headline.

They seem to be suggesting it's a building block for life, which runs contrary to this statement.

I don't disagree. They're presenting Phosphorus as a building block of life, which is all I was pointing out.