> the military budget is maybe 40% of the budget, at most.

Phew. The OP almost got me worried. I feel very much relieved now. Thanks a bunch for that!

"[...]Trump adopted a highly unusual defence, known as 'force majeure'. He claimed that the 2008 economic crisis was a 'once-in-a-century credit tsunami', an act of God that was equivalent to an earthquake.

Since it couldn't have been anticipated, and it wasn't his fault, he wasn't obliged to pay Deutsche anything. It wouldn't get the $40m or the outstanding $330m, his writ said.

He went further. Trump claimed Deutsche Bank had actually helped cause the crunch. Therefore it owed him. Trump demanded $3bn from Deutsche in compensation."

Some skills.

And they should have included the creative commons search page link from The Met press release.

> Those of us that grew up under the constant pressure of instant annihilation from nuclear attack just don't get worked up over climate change that much.

Speak for yourself. Once you've pondered the aftermath of a nuclear war, you're more likely to realize what climate change is likely bringing in its wake.

> losing their shit that Trump is openly talking to Russia.

Oh come on. Let him talk; fact is that what he says means shit, it's what he does. People said we're doomed if Hillary won because you know, no fly zones!!!111!. Yea, I know, Reuters, yadda yadda. We have that "we're doomed!!!" clock and might well debate if it's any good and whose purpose it serves, but putting all thing aside, you need to admit that the world has not exactly become a safer place with Trump, albeit ubiquitous cries of "Hillary means WW3!!!!111".

beside the point? It would have been wrong for him to do it, and so it'd be equally wrong for her to do it. There's nothing wrong with saying "we need to check this" afterwards -- this is far from claiming "it's all rigged anyway!" before. That said, Trump claimed it's all rigged, so to do it i.e. check if there way any rigging would not only not be wrong, it would be the one and only way to show that nothing was rigged. It's like a challenge flag vs. a coach shouting "the game's rigged" before it even started.

Building NPPs in the west nowadays might be considered economically insane. If you consider nukes a viable alternative, calculate the (actual) cost and see what else might be done for that amount of money.

Don't get me wrong, I get the "let's go all nuke" argument. I just don't buy it. Right now, renewables are taken off the grid / switched off, because we can't store the power produced efficiently -- where I live, we chose to not produce / switch off renewable energy (and subsidy not producing it), instead of converting and storing it inefficiently. If we used the "all nuke" money for things like renewables and storage, it might still be "economically insane" FWIW (though I doubt that), but a lot less risky and, you might say, geeky.

That's why we sent Shrapnelli!

Also, look at the bright side: it will go down in history as Shrapnelli :)

and yeah, I know I omitted the most relevant result:

[ ] Cowboy Neal

Also the most likely one. I need more sleep.

no matter how big and complicated you make that circumstance

You don't know that, you assume it. Look at it in a different way: we do not know what "makes" intelligence, sentience, self-awareness or what might comprise or "create" a soul -- or even if there is such a thing (do you have one? Not sure if I do).

Point is, let Google / Alphabet and the likes throw huge amounts of money, manpower, science and more and more and exceedingly sophisticated technology at this kinda thing and chances are that some day they'll end up with something

[ ] awesome
[ ] scary
[ ] devastating
[ ] meaningless

if only by mere coincidence. Take your pick :)

IOW, fast forward neural networks and quantum computing 15 years and ask yourself: will it be usable?

It "slammed" into the comet at 1 m/s or about 2 mph (not from the linked article, I read that somewhere else). Quite unlikely that it left much of a dent, and some ESA guy even said it might have bounced back and now floats alongside the comet.

>Messaging encryption, widely used by Islamist extremists to plan attacks

Air, food and water, widely used by Islamist extremists to power their brains! When, oh when will politicians stop being so lackadaisical?!

AVG used to work fine, even when it became somewhat bloated. I recommended it quite a few times over other products and was generally thanked for my suggestion. I stopped using or recommending it last year when they changed their privacy policy and stated they'd sell whatever data they can gather from AVG anti virus installs. Back then, I thought that this wasn't just a bad move, but that they also might get swallowed up by a competitor pretty soon. Go figure.

I guess you are raising quite a few valid questions, but IMHO "requires rethinking everything from taxation to legal liability" seems like a reasonable approach, while the actual outcome is by no means fixed. What's wrong with rethinking, reconsidering and trying to find a way to deal with the repercussions of Industry 4.0, which is, I guess, what they're trying to do? I wish this was discussed more widely throughout the world, as it's one of the major challenges of mankind, but we mostly get the "let's build the wall and compel others to pay for it" kinda politics.