TheVat

Interview with director of the AI Now Institute - a helpful background read. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2023/04/artificial-intelligence-government-amba-kak/673586/ Paywall-free version: https://archive.is/6ibxW

And giant feedstock boats that suck up floating plastic in the oceanic gyres, like the North Pacific Garbage Patch, would also be a welcome innovation. Or just ban all the plastic crap. Which would mean the petrochemical industry unleashing the Hounds of Hell upon all who dared challenge them, so....never mind.

FIFY

Clicked on the Open AI link, but it demanded my phone number which is a deal killer for me on sites that require login. (bank and SSA excepted) At very least, they need to offer a guest mode that let's you try it a couple times before they go asking for personal information. As for age-blocking, that's not going to be possible. If parents have concerns, they need to work out how to put filters on at their end. Haha! Or V I Lenin and J Lennon?

I saw that research about ten years ago. One of the papers: https://www.hks.harvard.edu/publications/soap-operas-and-fertility-evidence-brazil Everything I've seen that relates to human population biology points towards culture (and women moving into the workforce* and gaining social equality, as part of cultural change) as a huge force in determining family size. I had friends who lived in a very Mormon community in Utah, and one reason they left was the unrelenting social pressure to have big families (they were a professional couple, who had decided not to have children and focus on their respective careers). The woman was constantly hounded about when she was going to start cranking out babies. Utterly nuts. *non-domestic labor

Haven't read replies below your post yet, but want to quickly toss in a vote that whenever someone makes an honest and serious attempt to consider overpopulation and how population could be reduced, that we allow reasonable discussion of sane and humane scenarios before using the Nazi bogeyman as a rhetorical device.

Seems like space habitats follow the rule of all real estate: location, location, and location. Particle radiation (which is the major form of ionizing radiation that space habitats must fend off somehow) will be varying considerably between an EO colony, a Lagrange point like L4 and somewhere in the Kuiper belt. It's my understanding that GCR (galactic cosmic rays) is the dominant source for daily exposure, while SEP (solar energetic particles) are episodic, like bad weather, coming from CMEs that would happen to come the colony's way. And their threat would be far less in the Kuiper Belt. Ergo, an EO colony would have magnetosphere protection (a MEO, Medium Earth Orbit, e.g. would lie in a safe zone between the inner and outer Van Allen belts), a Lagrange colony (beyond the magnetosphere) would need SEP storm shelters, and also general GCR shielding, and a Kuiper condo would need just the GCR shielding. A plus for the Kuiper colony, is that they have an easier waste heat dump, which I'd think make shielding problems easier. But really it seems like the orbital colony, inside a magnetosphere, has the simplest situation, although other complexities arise I'm sure.

I'm also a little concerned that this case will steal some thunder and spotlight from the two far more significant cases upcoming, where Trump actually tried to subvert democracy and institute fascism. The current indictment is a bit of petty sleaze, pretty low on the Trumpian Peccadillo scale, when you look at some of his other crimes. OTOH, if as @Janus mentioned, unsealing the charging document reveals larger felonious acrivity, then let's make some popcorn...

And this doesn't help: https://apnews.com/article/tornadoes-disasters-extreme-weather-why-af8acdcb330cff39d689efc187cd17b7

Here is an in-depth look at how things like federal flood insurance, zoning laws, abandoned mortgages, out-dated flood zone maps, opportunistic developers, etc are contributing to a massive problem. (and who pays, when FEMA flood insurance is in the red, and they have to keep paying out for destroyed homes? We, the taxpayers.) https://www.sierraclub.org/sierra/1-spring/feature/how-climate-change-could-sink-us-real-estate-market

I remember feeling a sad twinge when I learned that the Niven Ring wasn't practical - I think it was from an interview with Larry himself where he mentioned all the engineers who had contacted him over the years, alerting him to Ringworld's inherent instability. Given that the Dyson Shell is also a no-go, that leaves the Dyson Swarm as the most viable of the large-scale builds. I think there's been speculation as to their visibility to large telescopes, and how difficult it might be to spot telltales of such. An unusually bright IR spectral profile might be one indicator. The question of can habitats, for widespread use, might also focus on biosphere engineering problems. Artificial ecosystems might prove really hard to maintain (natural ones are certainly proving to be pretty fragile) and some species might have beliefs that reject them. Or longterm buffers against hard radiation might be impossible in some stellar systems without a planetary magnetic field and thick atmosphere. So many unknowns at present.

https://www.npr.org/2022/03/29/1089174630/housing-shortage-new-home-construction-supply-chain In addition to the labor and supply chain problems, and unfortunate trend to builders only motivated to build luxury units, mentioned in this article, there is also another factor in the US less mentioned, which is the number of people losing their homes in accelerating natural disasters. 3 million Americans were driven from their homes in 2022, some only for a week or few, but half a million couldn't return: their homes were destroyed. That adds yet another burden to municipalities trying to put up affordable housing and apartments in a timely manner. And this climate-driven aspect is worsening, as more people build in warmer, scenic areas where housing is most vulnerable to floods, hurricanes, wildfires, etc. The most threatened bits of land also happen to be the most affordable land, and buyers often encounter sellers who conceal that. Out in the West (here), we have lots of people coming in who want their "own private Idaho," as the B-52s song puts it, and they keep building into spaces that are just insanely prone to wildfire, flashfloods, mudslides, large animal attack, etc.

Sorry, I wasn't trying to derail things. It was Alex's use of the phrase "the right people," in support of a group that advances the Lizard People theory, that triggered my satirical reflex. My serious comment is that I don't think the theory of alien reptiles disguised as humans running our nations is a very good one. And I stand behind my comment on capitalists. Generally I am not wild about any position that is claimed as one pushed by "the right people." Perhaps Krycek was also being somewhat tongue-in-cheek, I can't always tell.

In the anonymous fellow's case, it's OAB, not prostate issues. OAB is helped by avoiding acidic drinks (OJ, e.g.), coffee (obv), spices, and yes minimize h2o in evening. Sorry for digression, OP!

Oh that's interesting - I hadn't heard about the elemental rarity aspect in that broader sense. Will look that up. But, as I asked back there, isn't it possible alien genetic code could be strung along something other than a phosphate backbone? Or maybe you just need phosphorus and nothing else will do? Not that they couldn't have other element bottlenecks.

Oh yes, the Invisible College is quite correct, a race of sinister reptilian humanoids that appear like normal people are indeed controlling mankind. They're sometimes called "capitalists," or more specific terms like "hedge fund managers," "CEOs," "PAC managers," "oligarchs," etc. I let my IC membership lapse last year, and now they keep sending me these renewal notices that offer me a free Invisible College tote bag or coffee mug if I go with the Premium membership.

Happily, the cold sweat of scoundrels remains analog. Probably no cuffs, since it's not a violent crime, TFG agreed to come in on Tuesday, and has a Secret Service detail at his side. The SS tends to frown on handcuffing. Weinstein got cuffed, since the charges included rape (and movie moguls don't get SS protection) Trump can stir up his base, but likely that moderate Repubs and Repub-leaning Independents won't vote for a candidate under indictment. So it may help that the trial could be years away, with defense lawyers filing endless motions to delay.

The body has various modes of resting. The principal exception, for certain 67 year old men who shall remain anonymous, is the bladder and the part of the brain monitoring it. You would think the brain monitor could just shut up about it, just reason that the bladder isn't going to explode between 3 and 6 am, that a certain degree of fullness is tolerable, and not run around shaking other brain areas out of sound sleep with outrageous claims of an imminent exploding bladder. But no.

A pessimistic one, for sure. The problem of recovery (stop agri runoff, recycle livestock waste, human "peecycling," corpse recycling, change detergent formulas, etc) seems solvable. And it's possible alien genetic code could be strung along something other than a phosphate backbone, so they would have other element bottlenecks perhaps. It's unfortunate that our main phosphorus source in the States is a state currently being governed by a would-be fascist idiot with a terrible environmental track record. Pretty cool. Stop eutrophication and recover phosphorus. Nice work if you can get it.

I have wondered, re the AFB sightings, what sane ET would approach a planet full of aggressive and xenophobic beings that's bristling with nuclear weapons and say, hey, I know, let's go buzz an Air Force Base!

Excellent. I also was thinking of the Alec Guinness classic, Kind Hearts and Coronets.

I'm confident the mouse will frighten off the elephant. DeSantis is playing by rules that aren't (Jiminy) cricket.

Population reduction seems like a complex issue that is as much about quality of life as about species viability. (And what humans value, as to the quality, would be another thread. If you like lots of wilderness to hike in, then the world probably got too crowded for your taste around 1800. If you like big cities and all they offer, then you might be content with a larger number.) The question here would be what population is sustainable, i.e. doesn't eventually collapse the ecosystems that support us. I would take a WAG at 3 billion.

It's a very peculiar sort of day when I agree with Rand Paul, but this seems to be one. The US congress won't have the guts to legislate much across-the-board limit on data gathering - we are, functionally, a plutocracy. And our personal information has become a huge commodity. I have no social media or google account (and block any record of searches), and use duckduckgo and protonmail for some activity, and keep no cookies, cache, passwords, etc, so surveillance isn't a personal worry. TikTok I've only ever guest-browsed. @John Cuthber posted article seems to give us fair warning. But it's not us who needs that warning, and the demographic that does is likely inclined to ignore such warnings. As it happens, I've heard the "I'm not that interesting" argument from one young TikTok user. Her position is "I don't care if China knows I bought six bottles of cranberry juice from a web store." Many her age don't realize there's the potential to know quite a bit more than just buying habits.

Was going to point this out to Mack, as well as the importance of looking at longer trending from 1980 to now, but I'm getting the message that his knowledge is as complete as he wants it to be on this topic.