That is autocratic BS. We live in western nations, and ideologically we value freedom. Fundamentally we want everyone to have as much freedom as possible, including what career to have, or whether or not to start a family. There are physical limitations that affect this freedom... there will always be more tall basketball players than short ones. But it's important that we not be any more proscriptive than absolutely necessary. Thankfully, if women actually had as many children as they report wanting, then we'd be right around the replacement rate, on average. So all we need to do is figure out why women aren't having the kids they want, and that's not actually money, it's that they're pressured to wait, and the window of opportunity closes a lot faster than they think.

That's the most ridiculous argument I've seen in a while. My wife has repeatedly said that the 18 or more years of raising a kid is far more effort than pregnancy and childbirth. Not that it's nothing, but she also pointed out that she willingly chose to have two more kids after having the first, even after I questioned her sanity, because she really found motherhood rewarding. My wife and I are both professionals with successful "important" careers, and yet we both admit that parenting is a far more rewarding activity than either of our jobs.

I don't want people to have children if they don't want them either. But there's lots of evidence showing that women report that they want more children than they are actually having. In fact, in the UK at least, if women had as many children as they reportedly say they wanted, then the UK would be at the 2.1 replacement rate. Part of the problem is that they're encouraged to wait to have kids, but infertility increases with age, so many are getting to age 30 and either can't find a suitable mate, or simply can't have kids.

I'm gen x, so I was part of the first generation that was told to wait to have kids. But now that I've been though it (we waited until we were in our 30's) I can say that it's a dumb idea. If you're going to take, say, 5 years out of your career due to having young kids at home, then financially it really doesn't matter if you do that from 25 to 30 or from 30 to 35 years old. But health-wise it matters a lot. Statistically you're much better off health-wise to have kids in your late 20's than in your early 30's, and that goes for both men and women. I'm not saying you *can't* make it work, but both my wife and I agree that we waited longer than we should have. And no, neither of us regret having kids. It's one of the best choices we made.

The idea that you're sacrificing your career if you have kids early... doesn't hold any water. Heck, my wife's mom started a family when she was a teenager (not recommended) and after her kids were grown she went to university, and then got a master's degree, had a rewarding career with a great pension, and retired to a million dollar home near us. She'll also know her grandkids for a lot longer than we'll know ours, if we ever get to meet them.

You're exactly right. If you ask anyone why people aren't having kids, they will say money, because they want the system to give them money. But there are several facts that clearly disprove this: 1) poor people have more babies than wealthy people (Elon excluded), 2) people in the past managed to raise kids on far less income than the average income now, and 3) there are many countries, like Finland, who instituted generous parental supports, and it barely moved the needle.

If I could compare and contrast our society today with the society I grew up with in the 80's and 90's, I would say a huge difference is that society has de-valued parenthood, and motherhood in particular. Stay-at-home moms in the 80's weren't looked down on. If you *dared* to suggest that a SAHM was "sitting around all day" you'd get an earful from both women and men. Being a mother was recognized as a pretty high status role in society.

These days women themselves look down on mothers and motherhood. It's a weird change.

We also had more examples of positive parental role models on TV. I get that Bill Cosby in real life was shown to be a piece of shit, but the Cosby Show itself portrayed some pretty great role models of good parenting. Parents in the 80's aspired to be that good. Nothing on TV these days comes close.

You get what you celebrate, and it's been a long, long time since we really celebrated the importance of motherhood in our society.

I don't remember that rule about not discussing politics. Sure, at dinner, or specifically at Thanksgiving dinner, but we used to discuss politics in the office face-to-face all the time, and just kind of agree to disagree. But we both came away with a better understanding of how the other person was thinking, and in most cases there were also areas on which we agreed. Nobody every tried to get someone fired for their viewpoint. That's what changed.

This is a good step, if it's really a thing. But what I wonder about is if we can somehow get people from the political non-extremes talking to each other again (face to face). I was in Kentucky on a business trip a few years ago, and we were going out to lunch with the client there. We asked if this other guy wanted to come with us, and they said, "No, he won't come... he's a democrat." So? I used to work in Michigan from 2000 to 2006 and we'd go out to lunch all the time, and there was a mix of people who were democrats and republicans. Sure, there were lightly heated discussions, but everybody went back to the office and worked on stuff together. People understood each other's point of view a lot better back then. And they were polite. I wonder how to encourage more of that these days.

Yes, because all the communist countries over the past 100 years were utopias devoid of greed and suffering. *Editor's note: they were not.* Communist regimes are just as eager to exploit natural resources and conquer territory as any other nation. Do you think communism stopped China from emitting so much CO2?

My experience with these kinds of decisions is that cloud connectivity is useful for two reasons: 1) it allows data collection, which can be another revenue stream, and 2) it's easier for the end user to setup than any kind of local direct connection. As long as both devices can get to the web, it'll work, but some routers, e.g., won't necessarily let devices on the same network talk to each other by default, and their IP address can randomly change due to DHCP, etc.

I'm not American, but I get tired of the "everything American is bad" mantra. We should be using evidence-based decision making, not our feelings.

Sorry, but the USA is nowhere near the top when it comes to over-prescribing antibiotics. Iran tops the list, where "more than half of outpatient antibiotic prescriptions... lacked medical justification." Heck, I was on a vacation in Mexico a few years ago and my kid got an eye infection (we first noticed it when getting on the plane to go there). The doctor at the resort prescribed antibiotic eye drops, an oral antibiotic, *and* an immediate antibiotic injection. I admit that it cleared up pretty fast, but holy crap I've never seen a doctor do that before.

Literally a "hot seat"

As a control systems engineer, putting the control loop through the cloud is absolutely ridiculous. Sure, make it so you can change the setting from your phone, assuming you know how to setup secure communication, but the control loop needs to be local. This is just dumb engineering.

Okay, Ivan.

SLS is super-successful, just not at putting people on the moon. The real goal of the program was to give federal money handouts to all the former space industry suppliers spread all over the country from the space shuttle years. That's why it was built right into the funding legislation that the SLS had to be created from space shuttle technology, like the main engines and the (upgraded) solid rocket boosters. It's an absurd example of pork barrel politics, especially now that SpaceX is proving you can do it all with far lower cost per kg to orbit, and true re-usability (at least for the first stage).

My neighbor works at the facility that's being shut down. After investing ~$2 billion to re-tool the plant for "state of the art" EV production, it's pretty sad to see all these jobs just go up in smoke, with no alternative production slated. It's so wasteful of resources.