>> Are all the subsidies going to employees? That doesn't seem realistic, at a glance. -- Jack9
>> Sure it does. -- sumdumass

Since you can't reconcile your own assertions, there's nothing more to intelligently discuss. Have a nice day.

> The cost of the employees is not limited to their salaries.

The company is not just the sum of employee costs. Have some integrity. Expanding on the definition of "spending on employees" is redundant and only serves to weaken the premise (subsidy/employees = huge effective salaries).

> They would not be employed if the business didn't make some sort of economic sense and have work to do and that seems to be reliant on the subsidies.

This is not logical. There are plenty of positions (like the janitors and lawyers) that are not dependent on the specific business model to have jobs. Some of the employees may be able to get different jobs. I'm not sure someone who is an expert on Tesla batteries couldn't manage to get a contractor's license.

After scrutinizing your comments, I'm going to say you failed to reasonably explain why the subsidies would result in $360,000+ per employee. Employees are not the only cost (as you've implied), so maybe you need to look into their facility costs and taxes and debts (like equipment leases)...you know the costs that go into running a company. This was my only point, to which you had a truly strange response.

Maybe you'll realize it, maybe you'll just keep trying to argue the articulation of a knee-jerk thought you had.

Are all the subsidies going to employees? That doesn't seem realistic, at a glance.

> I've been using perl professionally for 22 years now, and I'm not seeing much of a drop off,

I see that it's nearly disappeared from Southern California, while it seems to be a skill that people sometimes pick up in Northern California and it's more common in the London area (when I've worked with UK teams). That's just based on experience and the 200 odd resumes I've picked from, in the last few years. Perl is sometimes used as a glue language, but that's a far cry from the goto scripting language of the 90s.

> Having a diamond the size of Texas would certainly create a new space race

Diamonds are not a compelling reason to go to other planets. The difference in economic scale is staggering. Diamonds are an artificially constrained resource. De beers and friends have conspired to keep cheap artificial diamonds (not fake zirconium) out of the luxury market, somewhat successfully. This doesn't mean it's work spending billions of dollars to get more. We can manufacture them here, cheaper than going out into orbit, much less another planet.

> What do you think court rulings - all court rulings - are based on?

Some are based on law, some are decided on (related) precedent, as almost all cases are unique, in some regard. This is the nature of stare decisis, for better or worse.

> A variety of independent measurements of solar activity including satellite data, sunspot numbers, UV levels and solar magnetograms all paint a consistent picture.

This is a much more informed discussion than I can muster:
https://www.skepticalscience.c...

To say it's "man made" is a bit of a misnomer. Releasing the energy that the planet has stored for millenia alongside the emissions our industry has produced, have likely started to bring about an irregular cyclical condition. The Earth approached this state after a Yellowstone-super-eruption or ELE asteroid arrived, but it's not all that unusual over the span of Earth's existence. Is it the Sun? Indirectly. There's no good science to support solar output (recent, since the dawn of man) is the direct cause.

The real bad news would be if an escalating event occurs concurrently with the peak of the warming.

> Campaign donations are one way to get a vote, but they're far from the only one

There's also insider information, making allowances for political families or associated PAC members, the layers and opportunities are all bribes, in essence. These are the most effective ways to influence those who are not philosophically aligned. Those friendly groups don't require such a gross exchange.

> the guy you whose on your side because you paid him off will almost certainly decide not to vote for your spending package because it includes cuts to some other program from somebody else who bribed him.

I think that's a little short-sighted. The discussions for political support span multiple years and terms. If you can benefit one side per term, each as a lump sum, for the equivalent of supporting both for 2 terms you can maintain support. This is simple math and a great deal of time is spent trying to resolve these complex relationships in a way that generates the best campaign purse. Uncompromising organizations tend to get excluded because they don't play well with others.

> a) convince the chair of the relevent House Subcommittee it was important enough to bring up for a vote

That's a convoluted way to avoid saying, "bribe"

The takeaway is that sooner or later, there is going to be widespread genetic modification. Many of us have known this for a very long time, some suspected, some hoped it will not happen. It will, just like we will have autonomous robots doing all manner of things, one day (all vehicles, maybe in my lifetime).

> This stuff is all good as long as its well documented which genes were changed and why

The impetus is not to hope a pharma company will disclose information, but to start baking in the expectation in all strata of society as a normal process. Politics, capitalist endeavors, technology, and copyright is BAD for our future society. To put it simply, a struggle against the secret vs the open is BAD for society. Tuskeegee, concentration camps, and other horrifics were only possible because it's still accepted that 'state secrets' or even "personal liberty" is tied to exposed information, as if there is an invisible-acceptable moral line. You have to get people willing to listen and accept the opposite of what the US (and to an extent) European citizens' expectation of privacy allow. Would I like my home address available for anyone? Of course not. Mostly because there aren't enough protections/retributions and society EXPECTS you to be punished for having that information exposed. What we want has to change. That level of openness is something humanity needs to build toward, if we want to secure against potential abuses. Props to eu for making strides. The method of sticking our head in the sand, only to look up when there's a rumbling, will never be effective and will continue to be abused by those who understand it (we'll just spin the story).

I don't know how to get there, but we will or we will die from someone making a big enough mistake with genetics. I'll probably be long dead, but it bothers me to have such certainty about these issues and so frustrated when there's a suggestion that more forced oversight will satisfy.

Your massive stream of consciousness posts are full of mischaracterization (exactly when was the right to challenge evidence in a court of law abolished?) because you aren't actually going to do basic due dilligence or are wholly imagining scenarios. You definitely have mental problems and those can't be fixed by this continued behavior, nor does it help our current legal situation. Good luck.

> where anyone accused of a crime can challenge the evidence and the providence of that evidence against them

In the US, this has not been true for some time. You are asserting the very problems we're talking about. Secret Courts. Secret Evidence. Secret Process.

> In a similar case the Patriot Act has been used twice in court

The PA is a series of provisions (controversially, Section 215 - see John Oliver + Edward Snowden). Your statement makes no sense, without additional detail or citation.

> People continue to bitch and moan about the NSA "secret" data collection programs without ever realizing if they were "actually secret" how the fuck would we be arguing it?

Leaks and of course, limited exposure by the NSA (where they disclose that it exists, but no additional details under the cover of National Security). Primarily a number of service providers (from contractors to employees to ex-employees) that started with sources at Google and Yahoo almost a decade ago, then later, smaller providers. Snowden was another leaker. There have been many such projects (wikipedia: Carnivore via the FBI, Echelon - Multinational Effort, PRISM - NSA).

> The attempts to capture internet data was not a secret when the defining mass indiscriminate collection of data programs were shit canned because of the costs involved and the lack of usefulness.

I'm not sure where you get that information. It's unsubstantiated. Different bureaus seem to create them, routinely and with varying degrees of coverage.

> Even Snowden and his pet journalists have not released one piece if information that was not already easily discovered by anyone with an IQ over 50.

I don't think you are aware of the content of what has been released. Many of the documents are operational notes, which do not contain information you can deduce. Take a look @ https://snowdenarchive.cjfe.or... - link under the magnifying glass, click the search button. Go learn something.

You have a shockingly naiive narrative from my viewpoint. Some of it is not necessarily misguided. Perhaps you distrust a larger number of sources than the average skeptic. As I am someone who has had access to the FBI and Secret Service in the 90's, when dealing with software hackers and hardware monitoring, I find this all rather pedestrian knowledge.

> It's hard to claim someone is hiding something when it is front page news.

You're really not understanding the breadth of the problem. It's institutionally enforced, despite the fact that these abuses are known (ostensibly because they are not viewed as important or even abuses). The US Govt doesn't have to say much to sell it. You know, terrorists. https://www.eff.org/issues/nat... - At the very least, try to do some research regarding the stories you are referencing.

> QUIC solves nothing that hasn't already been solved.

Creating an IETF standard, based on a working implementation, isn't relevant to what problems it can service. While Google makes strategic and implementation mistakes, their technical research and solutions are usually quite good. The IETF is for this kind of documentation. ie Producing high quality, relevant technical documents that influence the way people design. The fact that someone might reject it as a "NotInventedHere", is not a compelling reason to avoid documenting a standard that may never be used by anyone else. More is better, in this context.

> Then maybe we should change the GMO laws so that someone other than a multinational can afford to get a GMO plant certified as safe to eat

That is one approach, but not the only one to reduce dependence on GMO foods. I would argue that hoping that a corporate-supported legislature to legislate against their donors is the least effective approach.

Why would anyone vote for the democrat or republican candidates? You can't possibly believe that either candidate has any concept of what your life or concerns are like. These candidates are funded by private industry and will act on values they are directed to act on, after they are elected. Their campaign platforms mean nothing. Just like Obama, just like Bush, just like Clinton, on and on. The data is no longer hidden. Step 1. Pander to the public for votes. Step 2. Ignore the public after that with periodic press releases telling the vocal majority, what they want to hear. Step 3. The media supports these half-truths. Step 4. Repeat. This corruption is ingrained all the way to the state level in most of the US of A (Maryland is not too bad, iirc). The federal government, alone, is attacking freedoms DAILY in a myriad of ways. You think Net Neutrality was won? Hah. You think either party is interested in progressive taxation? Hah. What about that section 702 of the Patriot Act? How many cycles before these issues are quietly readdressed? At some point, you need to decide if you have a responsibility to protect your own self-interests. Even if this means something as appalling as choosing a different box.