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Comment Re:Life is extremely improbable (Score 1) 5

LUCA's descendants were able to go to every possible life niche on Earth and displace all other types of life? That makes very little sense.

It makes perfect sense, you explained clearly how it could happen.

The reasonable way of looking at it is, "What is the probability of that happening?" That's a scientific question.

Comment So Trump is planning to run for a third term (Score 3, Interesting) 27

And the Republicans know this and many of them have their own presidential ambitions. If Trump is successful in a third term then we are probably in for a permanent Trump dynasty with Baron taking over when Trump dies and then Baron's son taking over and so forth.

While it's true that the heritage foundation is fine with that since it would still just be a puppet regime for them plenty of Republicans are hoping to be that puppet. Trump has made billions being president.

So what you're seeing here is the Republican party trying to undermine and split from Trump in order weaken his position in the party so that they can prevent him from running for a third term.

What's going to make that hard is the Republicans do not have a viable candidate for 2028 besides trump. The candidates they have with a national profile who haven't already retired are all deeply weird and deeply unpopular.

That means it's likely the heritage foundation will push for Trump to run for a third term.

It is possible voters will reject that but they can probably make up the difference with basic voter suppression tactics.

I suspect after the midterms when the Republicans lose the house they will go harder after Trump but it's tough for them to do that because he is still in a position that he can endorse primary challengers against them. That's why you're seeing so many people drop out of politics and then go after trump.

Comment Re:Meanwhile (Score 2) 39

The kids should cross the street at normal crossings like everyone else, not just anywhere a huge yellow beast stops and flips out a sign.

I'd say the safest place to cross would be in front of a huge, impossible to miss bus, with a flipped-out sign reading "STOP" and with flashing lights.

Comment Re: Has Climate Doom Modeling Turned Into Clickbai (Score 1) 113

Of course they overplayed their hand, it was the only way to get funding. One side of this debate got funded and the other didn't.

For years the oil companies were heavily funding people to create doubt about climate science. They eventually got publicly outed for paying for bad science, and stopped because it looked bad.

As for atmospheric science, the main funding for atmospheric science is in improving weather models, including hurricane path predictions and aviation weather. Climate predictions are pretty much just another application of the models made for other purposes.

As for the oil companies, they shifted their strategy to funding "think tanks" pushing libertarian ideas, funding advocacy that the government needs to avoid taking any action on climate change.

Comment Does anyone accept billionaires want this? (Score 1) 74

I know there are a handful of people who are kind of freaked out at the suggestion that we should put a halt to any new technology. But besides that knee jerk reaction is there anyone who genuinely wants to see these data centers built out?

We could just tell the billionaires no. We would have to take their money away because money is power but we could do that. There's about 8,000 of them. There's 8 billion of us.

We could just tell them no.

Comment Re: Has Climate Doom Modeling Turned Into Clickbai (Score 1) 113

You're full of shit; I remember sitting in school watching a video about how the world was going to freeze over ( in 2nd grade no less. Wild times ) by 2000.

I remember when my second grade teacher told us that the earth was hotter in summer because it was closer to the sun!

The lesson is, maybe you should learn more science after 2nd grade.

Comment Re:We screwed up, but we're still right (Score 1) 113

I don't know what the definition of "accountability" is in climate research, but a threefold error is terrible science, it should have been caught in peer review, and everyone involved owes the scientific world an apology.

To be more accurate, this was an error in an economic study. Economists might think their field is a science, but scientists don't.

Comment Re:Major privacy concerns (Score 1) 56

The escape of medical information is truly well under way already, independent of AI.

In the UK, most medical information will be classified as sensitive personal data, which means it has significant extra protections under our regular data protection law, in addition to the medical ethics implications of breaching patient confidentiality. Letting it escape is a big deal and potentially a serious threat to the business/career of any medical professional who does it. Fortunately the days of people sending that kind of data around over insecure email are finally giving way to more appropriate methods of communication as the technology improves. It's usually governments seeing pound signs and/or businesses who aren't providing direct care to the patients that are pushing for wider distribution (and also those organisations who act as if impossible claims about sanitising the data effectively before releasing it are true).

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