Maybe I don't understand your point? What's being "rationalized" here? Or are you unwilling to participate in honest discussion here? I rather suspect you're just trolling.

You seem to be saying that it's unfair that /.er's don't hold SpaceX to the same standards of NASA? Of course not, that was never the goal, never the point, and no reasonable person ever expected that. SpaceX is cheap - a goal of 10% of NASA's launch costs. There will of course be trade-offs. That's as expected, and it's still a good thing.

I've got to say, I hate the idea that if you join the US you, it's eternal on pain of death. I'm pretty much universally for the devolution of powers and rights to smaller political entity. Just look at countries ranked on the wellness and happiness scales. People have far greater trust in government institutions in smaller countries.

I believe states should be able to secede, regardless of reason. I'm not saying the southern secession followed a good protocol in deciding when to secede, but I think you would be very surprised if you actually read some of the history of how the transition took place. Think about everything that has to switch over. The federal government was far less monstrous 150 years ago, but courthouses, judges, tax officials, military installations, etc, all had a transition to go through. Many were very straightforward. Courthouse employees came to work one day as US employees, the next as Confederates. IMO, once the secession took place, the view of the north was the treason already occurred.

No, completely wrong. Treason can be justified IF YOU WIN, in which case, it's no longer treason.

That's why I was confused! Perhaps you have never actually talked to someone who has a southern accent?

You know how you hate southerners and think southern culture is reprehensible? That's why. I don't support statehouses flying confederate flags, but I sure as crap support retailers, ebay sellers, etc, selling them. I remember being disgusted when I read about how Nazi memorabilia or historical items were banned from resale in Germany--history-avoiding pansies. Well, now here we are. In fact we're worse--you can still buy Nazi gear, but mention of a confederate flag is verboten!

History is written by the victors. We know who the victors in the civil war were. By the time of the civil war war, every one of my ancestors had been in the US for at least one generation. I'm fortunate enough to have the diary one of ancestor who participated in Sherman's march to the sea (he was from Ohio). Completely harrowing stuff. On another side, another ancestor fought for the south at Gettysburg (he was from the high mountains of VA/NC area). He lost six brothers in just two days at Gettysburg and was severely wounded. Interestingly enough, not a single ancestor I have tracked down who fought for the confederacy ever owned slaves (at least that I can tell). Most of them are from the mountains, where slavery was never as big. Slavery was the raison d'etre of the civil war for elite on both sides. That's not why the commoners fight. Commoners never fight for the real reason a war is being fought (or rarely, at least), they fight because they are whipped up into some kind of group-fervor. It's clear that even today the northern/southern culture divide exists and is pretty damn pungent.

The higher failure rate of SpaceX is expected. Setting aside Musk's marketing machine, it's understood that the medium-term goal here is to offer a higher-risk alternative (LEO prices below):

1. Western launch, traditional way: $4000-8000/pound (larger launches cheaper/pound). Low failure rate.

2. Non-western launch: $2000-3000/pound. Slightly higher failure rate.

3. SpaceX goal: $500-1000/pound. Slightly higher failure rate.

Long-term, SpaceX could achieve the same low failure rates through process refinement, but it's silly to expect that in the next decade.

Look, if your choices are $5000/pound with a 1% failure chance, or $1000/pound with a 5% failure rate, which do you pick? The rational answer depends entirely on the price to replace the payload, as two launches with a 5% failure rate have a very low chance both will fail. If your payload is "fuel" or "supplies" or something else cheaper than $5000/pound to replace, the added risk is completely the way to go.

Can't help but notice the headline "AI finding nudity" aligned with the one below it, about AI's getting Testy...

Hmm.

I went to a shitty underfunded public school in a major city, located in a poor neighborhood and only black people live there (magnet schools: because rich people object to "bussing"). I lived in a variety of poor neighborhoods during and after my college years (admittedly Houston doesn't have the problems with escape-proof ghettos that the Democrat-only cities do). The main problem keeping people there, where I lived, really was either "attitude and culture" or "spending money on someone else".

Don't get me wrong: attitude and culture are no small thing! The strongest prison bars are the ones in our minds. But if you want to actually fix the problem, instead of keeping the problem around on purpose to serve your political goal, then you must understand the fix has to be cultural. I was stuck there myself for a few years due to my own attitude.

Everyone I talked to (and you do spend time talking to your neighbors when there fuck-all else you can afford to do) fell into one of these 3 groups:

1. Hardworking recent immigrants, legal or otherwise, who were already making enough to live somewhere better, but were sending most of their money back home (these are the best neighbors, BTW). They were here because the opportunities were good, and were anything but trapped. I'm sure their kids are doing great here.

2. A hardworking woman who wouldn't still be in this shitty neighborhood except for some layabout relative, always male, she was unwilling to force to work or throw out on the street. (I always suspected I only saw the ones who hadn't done that yet, but either way the problem wasn't lack of opportunity).

3. The majority: people who were convinced that working a regular, full-time job was some sort of scam. They were just too smart to fall for that scam, you see, to be tricked into working long hour for shit pay. They knew that wasn't the right answer, and any day know their next scam would work and they'd be rich. I was definitely trapped there by this, for years.

There's nothing in entertainment that glorifies, or even explains, that working long hours for shit pay is what the start of the path upwards looks like. That living with roomates in a ghetto apartment longer than you have to, spending less than you can even when that sucks bad, is how you make the space to change to a better job. That working a job that sucks so bad that you sit in the parking lot in a daze sometimes unable to walk inside and start the workday is just a temporary step on the path. None of that is explained, but it's normal when you start from the bottom. My immigrant neighbors understood it - I wish they'd have been able to explain it to me at the time.

Software development is more open to non-traditional backgrounds than most fields. I've participated in a couple hundred interviews and phone screens while working with a variety of the big names in my career, and no one ever cared about anything but "can you code, are you self-motivated, and are you an asshole". The opportunity is there, if you have the talent and the training, but its ultimately on you to make the changes to get the training and go after the opportunity.

Sure. Perhaps you've heard of bigamy? Alice can't marry Carol because Bob already has a vested marital interest with Alice. For example, if Alice marries Carol and dies, Carol is entitled to 100% of her assets as spouse. But so is Bob.

That's not the policy rationale for the prohibition on bigamy, and while it is perhaps a little better of a reason than administrative convenience, it boils down to the same thing, since the question of marital property is one of the issues that legislatures will have to address when the ban is overturned as it inevitably will be.

On the contrary, tradition is absolutely relevant as to whether something is a fundamental right. Marriage is a fundamental right because it's enshrined in our traditions and collective conscience. ...
Polygamy does not have such a place in our traditions or collective conscience, and therefore is not a fundamental right.

Yep, that's the bullshit argument that people were rolling out against same sex marriage all right. That because it wasn't traditional, it wasn't fundamental.

The core mistake with that argument, whether in the context of same sex marriage or marriage among persons already married, or in larger numbers than two, is that what's fundamental is not opposite sex marriage, or same sex marriage, or polygamous marriage, but simply marriage, without qualification of any kind.

Issues like gender, race, consanguinity, marital status, and number of spouses are all restrictions on that singular fundamental right. Whether they stand hinges on whether they can be justified. Two of them, it transpires, cannot be. Ultimately I think the only restriction that will hold up will be consent, and perhaps consanguinity will have to be reframed in terms of consent if it's to be salvaged.

The iPhone 6+ is in fact less bendable than the Samsung phones, and the Samsung phones have screens that will shatter instead of bending slightly...

But in fact the iPhone 6+ is easily good for more than a day of charge. So if you want an iPhone that you don't have to think about the battery, they already sell one.

AirBnB will reimburse up to $50k in loss or damage from a guest. Read that in a recent article about AirBnB...

But you mitigate that as a host by not taking every single offer that comes along.

What? People have been flying remote control hobby aircraft for well over half a century. And between companies like Blade and DJI alone, people are buying over 200,000 of the devices per month.

Yup, and indeed there have been a handful of minor injuries along those lines. Statistically what amounts to zero, of course, compared to the number of people who are actually killed attending motor sports events as spectators, or while skiing, or while commuting to work... or while flying as actual licensed pilots in vehicles excrutiatingly regulated in their form, maintenance, and use by the federal government.

Or, people could simply follow existing laws, and stay under 400', away from airports, and use a simple app on their phone to be made aware of FAA NOTAMs so they no when specific areas are off limits. And people who don't care about laws and rules? You're not going to be able to do anything about them (unless you can catch them after the fact of having done something stupid) than you are about people who illegally parachute off of tall buildings, or illegally drive their ATV off-road in parks, or operate their boats too fast in a no-wake zone.

Really? There are literally millions of them. Are all of them idiots? People driving cars have a wildly worse track record when it comes to deaths. For that matter, licensed media helicopter pilots have caused more deaths. and there are merely thousands of them, not millions. What's your point?

Yeah! And what's it going to take before these idiots who start the fires in the first place come to their senses! We should definitely regulate matches, hot catalytic converters, hibachis, and magnifying glasses. Oh, right, it's already against the law to start wildfires. Just like it's already against the law to interfere with firefighting operations. We don't need new regulations (since that won't stop idiots from being idiots anyway) - we need substantial penalties for being a jackass. Like we already have. Enforce the laws we've got, problem will be reduced as much as it can be.

Do it in the name of tolerance.

That's a bad argument. The US says they annexed Hawaii and built military bases there. Nobody stopped them. Ergo, Hawaii is part of the US.

Russia says they annexed Crimea (with a popular vote even [allegedly]) and built military bases there (technically already had military bases there). Nobody stopped them. Ergo, the Crimea is part of Russia.

Actually, the Russian claim to the Crimea goes back far longer and probably has more substance.