"Refugee papers" OMG I'm dying here...

Biosphere 2 was an attempt at fully closed loop self-regulation. That doesn't work, and is not what is under discussion. The discussion is of using systems to maintain environments.

Production of oxygen is not remotely difficult. Not by plants, but again, industrial systems. Systems to make O2 from CO2 and/or water are TRL10. They exist, you can just buy them off the shelf. Same with reusable CO2 scrubbers (it's a very simple chemical process: cool = absorb CO2, hot = release CO2; they just cycle between cold and hot and whether they're connected to the input or output)..

You seem to have the idea that the proposal is just to have plants and humans life in harmony with no technology. If that were the actual proposal, I would agree with you. But that's not the actual proposal.

Yeah. Because if Mars' gravity is insufficient, and you'd have to live in rotating habitats anyways, then what are you even doing there, instead of being located e.g. on an asteroid where it's much easier to make a rotating habitat, where your surface is much more resource-rich, and where delivery and return of goods is much easier?

Venus, by contrast, I think few people doubt that its gravity would be sufficient for human life. Mars, it's *probably* enough, but it's not well studied. Moon seems like a coin toss at this point.

It's not entirely clear, but it's quite possible, arguably probable, that at least part of Venus's highlands involve fragments of ancient crust (the highlands also have milder conditions for exploration). Venus was Earthlike before Earth was, with vast warm oceans. There's also some arguments for life in the atmosphere based on gases that have been found, although I don't buy them (in the same way that I don't buy the same arguments for current surface life on Mars).

Whilst I agree with the first, second and third sentences wholeheartedly, fascism is as American as selling glass beads to natives and stealing their land.

Up until the Pearl Harbour there was a sizable fascist movement in the US, organisations like the German-American Bund had tens of thousands of members right up until December of 1941 when the US declared war on Nazi Germany and pretty much banned them. Not that we were entirely innocent over this side of the pond with the BUF (British Union of Fascists) but we did see the writing on the wall sooner rather than later with membership falling off a cliff in the late 30s (notably with the BUF becoming openly racist, which is poisonous to the British character, so there was no need for an outright ban until after the war). I'm hoping that Europe can follow that example again before one of our nations falls into Fascism.

Make no mistake, there will be a significant number of Americans openly supporting Fascism, in particularly they will be vocal in saying things like "don't call it fascism" and calling people they don't like "left".

Sadly it's infecting the rest of the world.

A lot of things that you get quoted will change price depending on location, time, browser/OS (user agent), IP, et al. I'm thinking specifically of flights, accommodation, insurance, and other things without a strictly advertised price which would mean they become subject to advertising laws and consumer rights.

Because SCOTUS had sealed the files and blocked the release until just a few weeks ago.

So yes, they really were prevented from releasing the Epstein files.

For me, mentions of TheAppFormerlyKnownAsTwitter have pretty much disappeared. News sites no longer quote tweets, friends no longer mention them. The only time I hear about them is when they get another fine for breaking the law or Musk does something else incredibly stupid.

Social Media itself is dying, but TheAppFormerlyKnownAsTwitter is exemplifying why. Social media has now become beholden to rich people who are using it to try and drown out voices they don't like. Hence people are switching off. It's for that reason that new social media networks don't really have a chance. The things we used to use Social Media for, aren't really being served by social media (mainly it was used to communicate with friends, families or like-minded people, now it's being used to push someone elses agenda)

Don't be mad because you didn't see it.

Also, don't call them "editors"

You literally have a police force operating with impunity and immunity grabbing people off the street.

You have a president that is openly ignoring the law... I mean trying to ignore or handwave that away must have become very difficult last night as he literally became guilty of piracy.

The only one being misleading here is you... and the only one you're misleading is yourself. You can lie to yourself, just don't expect it to fool anyone else.

And their hair is amazing.

My point is, why does the HDMI licencing mob care if the implementation is open or closed given that they will.get there royalty (or penalties from a court for companies that don't pay) for every port anyway?

I'm not saying that they can't do it, it's that they can't legally do it.

My understanding is that if you want to make a HDMI device you need to pay a license fee (covering patents and etc) and that the HDMI people can and will use you if you use HDMI without paying.

And if they control IP rights that allow them to force everyone to pay up, why would this stuff (which isn't even the full spec, just the bits bring done in the driver rather than the firmware or hardware) bring open cause a problem?

Ugh. Acrobat actually craps itself on forms now. The check boxes keep disappearing during scrolling, and I have the latest reader.