Regardless of whatever budget Congress sets, the majority party has already been clear that they have no intent to enforce it. If the president uses the NASA money for something else, or even just puts it into his own personal pocket, we can be confident that he won't be impeached, and if impeached, he won't be convicted.

The only thing that matters is the total budget. The president is free to spend that total however he wishes. This isn't the law as written, but it's the law defacto. If voters have a problem with that (do they?) they can choose a different party to be the majority.

Because photosynthesis produces oxygen, and increased CO2 would lead to a higher oxygen production rate. It's pretty basic science that one learns in middle school.

I picked 25% arbitrarily, it could be higher or only marginally lower, and presumably it'd take a great deal of time for the entire planet's oxygen levels to stabilize to newer CO2 levels.

In a word: yes. (And no, I don't understand the mechanism here.)

The studies on both have been pretty conclusive. Masks have had zero measurable impact over baseline on viral infection rates in anecdotal studies, have been shown to significantly increase bacterial infections in the wearer, and they contribute to increased blood CO2 levels for the wearer. Rhetoric - yours or mine - aren't really factors here, it's merely what we've been able to prove scientifically.

"What makes you think there will be increased plant growth?"

Because it's literally what's happening throughout the world as we speak. Higher CO2 is leading to a regrowth of greenery, making deserts more habitable throughout North Africa.

That was literally the point I was making.

People breathe, and output CO2. There are more people in China, and thus, more CO2 production in aggregate (when you combine breathing + production).

What're you talking about?

I didn't get anything backwards, you misread and made an incorrect inference.

China has a lot more people. They also have a lower per-capita CO2 emittance but higher overall, because more people.

Because they have more people, they're also outputting (breathing out) more CO2. Thus how you get 4-5x total more. Because people breathe.

You also have to consider that the US has a long way to go before its even remotely competitive with China, if we're talking about total tons of CO2. They produce 2x what we do, and that's not including how much they breathe - which puts it more like 4-5x the total of what the US produces, for both India and China.

That's largely dependent on relative oxygen concentration in the air, which is the biggest reason indoor air quality is poor/low in oxygen - not CO2 directly. CO2 is the second order issue.

These are generally people with poor cardiovascular health in the first place.

With higher oxygen levels (as naturally happens with increased CO2) due to increased plant growth, people will/are able to withstand much more CO2 before its problematic.

Don't be silly. If you wore a mask during covid as all the doctors said you must to flatten the curve, you were breathing 2000-5000ppm CO2 all day long.

Meanwhile, that's about half of the low end of what plants prefer - 800-1200ppm.

Their alarmism about (the 180ppm) of the last Ice Age, meanwhile, was almost low enough to kill all plantlife on the planet (and with it, most animal species that depend on said plants). We were dangerously close to global annihilation.

For context, 1000ppm is going to be a stuffy office space, and 800ppm a well ventilated indoor space.

A well-fitted surgical mask like so many medical professionals insisted was necessary some short years ago? Those have been measured to result in a CO2 of 2,000-5,000 (with peaks up to 8,000ppm when its actually fit properly) for the air being inhaled. (But don't worry, that's still under the 8,000ppm 8-hour OSHA maximum.)

If plants like CO2, they're going to grow more rapidly and prolifically. That means, in turn, they'll be producing a lot more oxygen. Let's assume a moderate increase in O2 to 25% ambient... which is more than safe, and even preferable. The result would be that humans could withstand significantly higher CO2 ppm.

I'm not sure why we've ever started talking about CO2 as a "greenhouse gas" when it's 0.0425% of our atmosphere, and the facts above (about it causing significant greening of the planet). That much is well established, and it's well accepted that greening an area will decrease, not increase, the temperature of the area. We've seen this play out significantly in the last decade or so in eg. North Africa. This more than offsets the "global warming".

More CO2 is not only not bad - its beneficial and preferable.

The big problem with the CO2 hysteria (such as in the OP) is that it's myopic and agenda driven. "You've got to consume less" - which is true, regardless, but bellies the point that such propaganda is directed at Western countries which produce both less CO2 per capita and in total vs countries like India and China, which have effectively zero efforts in place to reduce its production. It's clearly aimed at the Western countries to hamper them economically. Outside factors, like solar output, are never considered in these breathless press releases about global warming. Notice how "global warming" is conveniently replaced with "climate change" in the media during periods of low solar output? We're now nearing the peak of the ~11 year solar cycle with the solar maximum likely to occur this year. Expect seeing more "global climate change" in the news in the coming years...

The rumor I've heard from those who work at Apple or have worked at Apple is that Apple bit way, way too hard into the rotten apple which was/is DEI. They promoted and hired people completely unfit for the jobs simply because or their DEI checkmark credentials. This has had disastrous impact on "softer" disciplines specifically, like project/program management, release management, and so on - nevermind more creative/artistic disciplines.

You can see this in how milquetoast a lot of their later software releases have been, and how they fall short of being meaningful improvements or something a person would even be able to conceptualize a use for - like Apple Intelligence. The message/notification summaries are nice, yes - but beyond that, it's a nothingburger. iPhone Mirroring? Slow and inconsistent (while the more useful clipboard sharing feature is... intermittently broken, it seems.) Desktop widgets? Who even looks at their desktop?

So, I'd not be surprised if the result is this. The internal projects have been stagnant or making negative progress to useless people of one stripe or color, and they can't simply get rid of them outright. But they still need to deliver something for shareholders, so absent a new hardware release they need something to show for the money spent on fancy offices.

Depends on whether you buy video games for video game gameplay or high polygon ray traced titties.

Yep. I can't see why you'd want this over, say, a 2020 M1 with 16GB of RAM.... at 2/3 or less the price. NPU capabilities? In most cases, I can't see it mattering at all.

So when Lindsey starts reading from her AmEx-approved script, callers are infuriated by what they perceive to be another machine.

If she's accurately executing the programmers' script, I'd say she is a machine. Somebody port Doom to her!

This is a fuckin' awesome idea, but there's an easy improvement over the red rectangle and block symbol. Seriously, dude, you gotta use the sign images from They Live (1988). You know you want to.