The US can't let China have a moment.

What's important is what you do when you get there. The US raced to the moon the first time then just quit. China, at least as far as they've announced, seems to be planning to go and actually do some stuff like set up a long term research base. The US was also planning to do some interesting long term stuff but has cancelled most of that in the interest of beating China.

I assume because they're charging by the minute they have to start up a VM or something to monitor it. They probably use the same process as any other "runner" except this one sshs to your machine and executes commands instead of doing it locally.

I don't see why someone who objects to this couldn't just replace it with their own system where their local machine does whatever it needs. Make a runner that pings your machine and then exits if you absolutely need to.

English would benefit from adding Eth (Ðð), Thorn (þ), and Wynn (ƿ).
Perhaps adding OEthel(Œ) and e-acute (Éé) to that list, especially the latter to help identify when to pronounce /e/ versus it remaining silent.

In practice I don't anticipate anyone changing the alphabet we use for English because people HATE learning something new, especially if they already put the time in learning the old way. No amount of improvement to efficiency or accessibility is likely to convince the majority of people to change their ways.

These trends in writing and society do wax and wane. A plain style emerging in the Age of Enlightenment, a period with social movements that valued rationality. A more prosaic style can reemerge in a response to perception that such rationality can be too cold and austere, such as during the Romantic movement.

In our era we see commercial oriented speech dominating all communication. A style that communicates concisely while also misleading the reader. Modern writing styles attempt to engage the most basic needs and feeling in order to elicit an emotional reaction in the reader. Commercial speech does not want rationality. Disrupting the conscious decision-making process is the goal when it comes to getting a consumer to buy.

And because commercial speech dominates television, radio, and the Internet. We have generations of people in the West who from a very early age primarily experienced English as a language used to manipulate and sell them something.

Reading is for NERDS

That reminds me when I interviewed for a start-up that wanted to make any app that could do real-time translation of any language. And suggested that with noise cancelling headphones you wouldn't even notice the person spoke a different language.

And I'm sitting in their interview pitch thinking: that's now how German to English translation works. You often need to get pretty close to the end of the German sentence before you can even begin the English translation.

that you bothered to use uppercase characters in your post indicates you are far more civilized than your typical slashdotter

Possibly a solution, possibly not. UBI in general tends to be more effective the broader it is applied. Attempting to test it in an isolate sub-group of the population has inconsistent results.

Philosophically, I tend to lean more towards offering standardized services instead of giving money out and letting people compete in a poorly regulated free market for those necessities.

In the future I suspect we'll see a mix of solutions, rather than a one size fits all. With basic income for expenses that individual decision making is practical. Like food or housing. But perhaps not in situations where individual choice is not practical like in healthcare. Or where individual choice is extremely inefficient like public education. (children should go to a standardized school that is physically close to where they live. shipping everyone off in random directions is inefficient)

You do not appear to understand what a republic or a democracy is, so I'll ignore the last sentence.

"Independent" does not mean unaccountable to the people. The President is independent of Congress, and vice versa, but both are accountable to the people. Well, the current president doesn't seem to think so, but legally he is.

The civil service is not a part of the executive but is a co-equal branch.

You are correct. In principle, presidents have no authority whatsoever to dictate how an agency runs. The executive branch should have zero authority over the civil service, which is intended to constitute a fourth co-equal branch of government.

In the US, in principle, the status of the civil service as co-equal to, and independent of, the executive should be added to the Constitution and enshrined in law for good measure. Not that that would help much with the current SCOTUS, but a Constitutional change might possibly persuade the current government that absolute authoritatian control is not as popular as Trump thinks.

That is the idea that, in Britain, entities like the NHS and the BBC have operated under. Charters specify the responsibilties and duties, and guarantee the funding needed to provide these, but the organisation is (supposed) to carry these out wholly independently of the government of the day.

It actually worked quite well for some time, but has been under increasing pressure and subject to increasing government sabotage over the past 20-25 years.

It's also the idea behind science/engineering research funding bodies the world over. These should direct funding for grant proposals not on political whim or popularity but on the basis of what is actually needed. Again, though, it does get sabotaged a fair bit.

Exactly how you'd mitigate this is unclear, many governments have - after all - the leading talent in manipulation, corruption, and kickbacks. But presumably, strategies can be devised to weaken political influence.

This article has motivated me to change up my punctuation preferences; you see: we hardly ever use the noble semi-colon; a punctuation that adds a wonderful dramatic pause; while connecting each sentences into a thought-stream; and only once the complete train of thought has been completed; shall we finally terminate with the ignoble full stop.

I would prefer several types of people sit back and let the adults run things for a bit.

Got any data? I suspect you're influenced by social media covering an imaginary trend that is exists because it's great click bait.

Perhaps it was never great, but people certainly romanticize various periods of greatness.

It's related to the problematic romanticization of war in our culture. War always sucks. Even when you're winning the war, it can be pretty terrible at an individual level. Turns out that having blood in your hands doesn't feel all that great to the vast majority of non-psychopaths in this world.