CharonY

Attention is part of it I think, and consumerism another. Opiate for the masses, so to speak.

I do wonder though how much of the "savant" part is facilitated by generational wealth.

Mexico was not considered, their skin color has the wrong shade. Canada would likely just become feral and with plans to burn down the White House again.

In contrast to Musk, I am actually a professional scientist and colleagues have commented that I have an interesting approach to the concept of sanity. Not once did I feel the urge to throw out a Hitler salute. Being in a position of power does not equate being a genius. I would like to see you make a good argument that Trump is one. Also, what you say is basically they are good at being con men. Which mostly requires you to have a gullible target group that you can con. While these are all mechanisms helping money to go to the top, it is not even entirely necessary as a proximate mechanism. Rather, it can be an outcome of a change in the relationship between labour and capital and how the resulting outputs are distributed. For example, if investment goods (e.g., machinery, automation, computers) are getting cheaper there might be an incentive to invest more into them then into labor cost, which reduces the share of labor shares. And this can be accelerated if those investments, or e.g. something like software, increases productivity of capital investments. Couple that with capital mobility and resulting loss of labor bargaining power. Even if a company was led ethically, the way the market works simply incentivizes activities that reduce labor income and increase capital income. Cripple that by adding regressive tax models, and the process only accelerates. It is so funny, or sad, when academics are doing that. I mean, if your suit is from Men's wearhouse you are not part of the elite.

Considering he is also still blaming Obama (e.g., recently for the plane crash), one would need a very deep breath indeed.

As part of that, he is constantly lying on twitter as well as amplifying lies by others. And he is also dismantling important government agencies. Due to his inclinations to lie, it is not clear whether the way he does it is based on ineptness (thus causing more cost and damages than are saved) or whether it is is just nefarious callousness (e.g. to benefit his operations, or even something simple as exerting power without accountability). Also, he is a effing Nazi.

It was mentioned that Canada is interesting due to availability of resources. For example, more than half of US imports of crude oil comes from Canada. In addition Canada has some of the largest freshwater reserves.

There is a possibility that the protein is harmful to the cells. Are the proteins membrane proteins and/or is aggregation likely? Is the vector present in cells when not induced? And does it remain if you induce?

You are in the minority then. Things told by Trump are not depreciated, they are just fact-checked. If you cannot comprehend the difference, discussing your opinions is probably not very useful. It does look like you agree with the man who thinks that Ukraine should belong to Russia. Yet he decided not to leave the country when everyone thought that Russia is going to take over Ukraine within days. This is neither her nor there, but Churchill is a bit of a problematic character (as virtually everyone, which is a bit of an issue in itself) but he got lionized because of his resistance to the Nazis.

It all makes sense if you just assume that they are all projecting.

Well, it looks like that the US seeks to "normalize" relationships with Russia and hang Ukraine out to dry. Russia meanwhile is enticing businesses: https://www.nytimes.com/2025/02/19/world/europe/trump-russia-ukraine-putin-trump.html Blood money.

This is not my field, but there are a various studies looking at OC at extremes and how they might (or might not) contribute to creating potential precursor. A study discussing specifically at heating (as in atmospheric entry) is found below. The relevant part is that organic matter is not lost entirely (as in fully combusted) but sees some re-ordering of the organic components. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.epsl.2020.116266

It is not a key step in evolution as such, as it predates evolution as we understand a fair bit (there is the concept of molecular vs organismal evolution, but they refer to different aspects. Also, time is not the real issue. The critical biochemical processes do not happen on geologial time scales. Rather, the issue is pinpoint the exact boundary conditions that have co-occured to make the formation of the first biomolecules possible. One fairly simple one is the question if abiogenesis actually happened on Earth. The findings of certain organic molecules on asteroids could indicate that completely different conditions than those on Earth might have given rise to them. On the other hand, it is possible that those are not related to life on Earth or that they had to come in via asteroids or other mechanisms and meet other conditions that were present on Earth.

Careful with the disrespectful posts. If the president could read, he could get upset. About that: https://www.pbs.org/newshour/health/two-cats-in-california-died-after-drinking-raw-milk-recalled-for-bird-flu-their-owner-says

Well then let's say historic lessons plus synthesis and advancement of that knowledge plus tech?

Sure, and the trick is to figure out how to optimize a system and also what the priorities are. I am sure there are different views on it. For example, what delay would be acceptable to, say, ensure that 0 lives are lost vs 1 vs 10? Folks calling for total deregulation usually are not the ones paying the price. Conversely, it makes sense to build in accountability mechanisms (and quite a few of those do exist) which check for unnecessary bloat. A bit of an issue however is when folks calling for deregulation have all the money and power, whereas folks who might be affected are the poor and powerless.

In addition, today we have improved information structures and are able (at least theoretically) to handle much higher data inputs. Assuming we have a good idea what to optimize for and by deploying appropriate algorithms it might be possible simulate free market price information. There will be huge challenges of course, and there is good reason to believe that it won't be as effective as a competitive system. But I also don't think that we can take the lessons learned from history without acknowledging the difference in knowledge and technology.

I stand corrected. It isn't tomorrow yet and it got worse. I shouldn't have read the news.

The only way the world can become more stupid is by whatever is likely going to happen tomorrow.

Oh yeah, I just wanted to point out that it is already happening. But scale is likely to increase as some asshat will figure out that there is money to be made (or already have, hard to tell sometimes). And well, cruelty is the point. Panem et circenses for the mob. As long someone is doing worse, folks won't noticed by whom they are being robbed blind. Somewhat more related to the science part, but probably a universal tactic, is the use of small truths to cover up big lies. For example, pointing a side effect of a drug or vaccine and then question the use of vaccines. This is going to be a more common with RFK JR at the helm of HHS. For the rest of the world, the tight relationships with CDC (and to some degree FDA) for public health safety might now be in trouble.

I don't think that that is what you mean, but prison labor is already a thing under exception of the 13th amendment.

Also regarding what geniuses Musk and his Doge team are: https://www.404media.co/anyone-can-push-updates-to-the-doge-gov-website-2/ This is exactly the level of expertise folks expect from people with unchecked access to sensitive data. Also: https://www.thetimes.com/world/europe/article/russia-elon-musk-list-names-dissidents-usaid-s798gktd7 I think this world is not well-suited for folks with long-term memory, it gets just too bizarre. I slowly realize the benefit of having TikTok-level of memory. You can just live in the moment and there is no context for anything. There is not pain of realization, just opium for the masses.

The on thing that is not believable is that there was embarrassment. You would need the ability to experience shame to feel that.

The cutting itself not so much. It is more a way to influence policy without getting elected. He and his folks do not really care if it makes sense, whether it wastes money or if people suffer or die. All these three things are already happening. However, while he wrecks essential services (which he doesn't need) he can also gut oversight systems that could hinder his businesses. There could also be ideological reasons, as rich libertarians don't want regulations, as they ultimately limit their power. Without those, they are free to do close to whatever they want and use the public as they playground. That being said, there are plenty of reports regarding conflicts of interest where Musk is shuttering agencies that provide oversights to parts of his business. One example is the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is a consumer watchdog to protect customers. The CFBP would be in the way of turning Twitter/X into a money service (https://www.npr.org/2025/02/12/nx-s1-5293382/x-elon-musk-doge-cfpb) USAID was auditing Starlink contracts and uses in Ukraine and FDA as well as transportation services (among others) would allow him to run his business as he wants, regardless of harm to consumers. You mustn't forget, folks with giant egos often believe that whatever they is right. And the one thing that they cannot stand is oversight and accountability. Dismantling all these agencies satisfies that demand to the harm of many, many folks. Ultimately he is too stupid and/or uncaring to take the harm he is doing into account. And that includes starving kids across the globe.

Well, you forget, much of the money for his companies comes from the government (over 13 billions in the last 5 years). And now being part of it allows him to funnel more money into it. Also his companies have been under investigation for a range of issues. This is a great way to get rid of them. Just yesterday the state department released plans to buy 400 million worth of cybertrucks. So I would say that money is at least part of it. The other is likely just power. Also, I would not trust anything he says without external validation. He is known to lie a lot on various platforms.