Lack of planning? All private companies, departments, and individual teams plan for the projects that they implement. All public city, county, and state organizations plan for the projects in their area. Decentralized planning may look like no planning to someone from China. But, that's certainly far from true. There's lots of planning going on. It's not controlled from some central location. One of the benefits of this model is that it tends not to overbuild and overspend when the need isn't necessary, such as what happens with central planning. Local municipalities and businesses tend to build what they need and are economically punished when they overbuild.

Suck/not-suck aside, would you at least agree that it's as good as The Mandalorian?

Eyeball monster == Baby Yoda. So. Fucking. Cute.

The second movie, Aliens, also didn't have the mood of the first movie, yet was still one of the best movies ever made (IMHO! of course). I don't think the feel of the original is necessary in sequels, and might even be so hard to recreate that it's borderline hubris to try.

I'll probably watch it .. when I feel like doing nothing and thinking the presence of the xenomorph is a coincidence.

I think that is the best attitude one can take. The "domestication" of the xeno is the weakest part of this TV series, but OTOH, the inclusion of all the new monsters is part of what makes A:E so fun. The classic xeno is just one monster among many, now.

There are so many horrible ways to die. Show us more of them, Noah! ;-)

China has abject poverty in most of the country next to places that are wildly rich that are used for propaganda videos. In comparison, the US has done a much better job spreading the wealth from coast to coast.

Saudi doesn’t have its own supply of good tech labor. China does. China doesn’t have the same incentive to create these enclaves as Saudi.

These Chinese EVs are hitting the market at $8,000-10,000 new. The cheapest EVs in the US currently are about 3 times as much with the average EVs 5-6 times higher. At those prices, the Chinese EVs would be wildly popular. They'd arguably hurt the US automakers, which is why we're not allowing them into the market today.

Universities have a limited number of students they can admit during any given year. If 30% of admissions go to foreign students, those are seats not available to local students whose family taxes fund the school. The University of Washington was giving preference to foreign students in enrollment while also taking state and local funds from taxpayers. Quality local students were finding themselves unable to get admitted to the university. Taxpayers were outraged and forced the legislature to take action. The legislature then required the school to increase the percentage of local students admitted.

A few years ago, the University of Washington was admitting so many foreign students that it was noticeably hurting local admissions. The state legislature ending up passing a law limiting the number of foreign students that could be admitted considering the school is publicly funded by the local citizens for the purpose of educating the local population.

The US is also a society that actually cares and talks about it's racial issues. China is deeply racist. On top of that, China doesn't talk about or even acknowledge it's racism. China may attract people from other countries. But, it struggles to keep these people for any length of time.

The usage of English is a huge advantage for US. It's the default business language across the world due to the legacy of the British empire. India works in English in their own country. They actively learn it for their own use. It's easy for workers from India to move to the US since they already know the language. China has five different languages. They're all difficult to learn. The use of English doesn't go far in China. Workers from India are not going to flock to China the same way they flocked to the US.

The US is a prosperous first-world country that's had money for a long time. It's prosperity is more uniformly distributed across the country. You don't see the wild economic differences in the US that you see in a place like China.

Those are all advantages the US possesses before looking at the differences in government, which are huge.

Nobody wants your shitty iOS. People tolerate it on phones, because you taught them that it's ok for PCs to suck if they fit in one hand. But once the one hand constraint is lifted, people come back to their senses for some weird reason. You did too good a job of persuading people to treat phones as weird exceptions to common sense, when you should have undermined common sense itself (but that would have harmed Mac sales).

The Weinersmiths (of SMBC fame) wrote a good book analyzing the problems of space exploration and especially colonization. It's worth a read, and is a lot more realistic than the sci-fi fantasies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Maybe they'll take $TRUMP.

Science? Really? There's a lot of soft-brained, unscientific and technophilic pseudo-religion in the article.

Let's work with the argument's load-bearing phrase, "exploration is an intrinsic part of the human spirit."

There are so many things to criticise in that single statement of bias. Suffice it to say there's a good case to be made that "provincial domesticity and tribalism are prevalent inherited traits in humans", without emotional appeals to a "spirit" not in evidence.

Or if it's even still readable. Intel when retrieving the 486 tape-in for the Edison project had to bake the tapes in an oven to remove moisture, and then had ONE CHANCE at imaging the tape as it crumbled to dust going through the reader.

I was trying to point out how ridiculous the GP's idea is. I was not making a serious suggestion.