Italy and Japan have shrinking populations. We would too, if it weren't for immigration. However our population growth rate is still low, and if it were any lower we'd be facing serious economic and social challenges. Sure, a shrinking population would drop housing prices, but we are far from having so many people there isn't space to fit them. Our real problem is seventy years of public policy aimed at the elimination of "slums" and the prevention of their reemergence.

If you think about it, "slum" is just a derogatory word for a neighborhood with a high concentration of very affordable housing. Basically policy has by design eliminated the most affordable tier of housing, which eliminates downward price pressure on higher tiers of housing. Today in my city a median studio apartment cost $2800; by the old 1/5 of income rule that means you'd need an income of $168k. Of course the rule now is 30% of income, so to afford a studio apartment you need "only" 112k of income. So essentially there is no affordable housing at all in the city, even for young middle class workers. There is, however a glut of *luxury* housing.

In a way, this is what we set out to accomplish: a city where the only concentrations of people allowed are wealthy people. We didn't really think it through; we acted as if poor to middle income people would just disappear. In reality two things happened. First they got pushed further and further into the suburbs, sparking backlash by residents concerned with property values. And a lot of people, even middle-class young people, end up in illegal off-the-book apartments in spaces like old warehouses and industrial spaces.

Warfare more likely, yes.

Warfare that escapes well defined theaters of operation, no.

I suspect eventually, every country will give up a small amount of border land for total anti-invasion defense, and the only countries that will start wars are the ones too stupid to understand that they can't invade their neighbors anymore.

The programming for "Kill everything that moves in a box 30,000 feet high, by 2000 miles long, by one mile wide" isn't that complex.

The problem is the idiots who don't understand the basic strategy of closed borders.

Germany doesn't have a strong military either, though.

Would the toilet seats be worse if there were less visibility?

There's a lot of mythology around who Trump voters are. Part of it is that statistics can be confusing, especially if you're prone to jump to conclusions. Yes Trump wins the voters without a college degree, and people without college degrees tend to make less money, but we can't leap to the conculsion that Trump voters are poor. In fact, data shows Trump lost the $50k and under income group solidly in both 2016 and 2020. In 2016 he won every income group greater than $50k, although only *strongly* in the $50k -$99k group. In 2020 he solidly lost every income group betlow $100k, but but won the over $100k group by an enormous 12 point margin.

Putting it all together, Trump's core voter group are people with limited educational attainment who are economically comfortable of (good for them) well off without having a college degree. However he doesn't own any particular socioeconomic group; really elections are determined by changes in turnout in key swing states. There was strong turnout among Trump's *share* of $50-$99 ke voters in 2016; I don't think many of those voters changed their mind, but their compatriots who sat 2016 out came out to vote in 2020.

Just because the cigarette industry pictured doctors recommending smoking in its advertising didn't mean that *all* doctors, or even most thought smoking was healthy for you. This was largely in the 30s and 40s when they took advantage of a positive attitude toward science and particular medical science. They began to pull back from this after 1950 when evidence was mounting for the link between smoking and cancer, for fear of pushback from the medical community.

What does this have to do with lab grown meat?

I think your third sentence is an attempt to address the first sentence.

There is no reason we need to hold fast to gender stereotypes. If a man wants to wear a dress, or a woman wants to wear pants, that is fine.

I have a friend who had that happen several times. Although she is quite straight and cis, she has a shaved head, and security guards have gotten mad at her for going to the "wrong" bathroom.

Sometimes you can see through the cracks in the stalls, and that really worries some people.

Those women need to get testosterone blockers.

It's entropy, plain and simple. Sooner or later, no matter how secure an organization may be at any given point, skip ahead a few cycles, and attention to detail wanes. Managers stop asking questions, project leaders reprioritize thinking the problem is solved, staff do a "monkey see, monkey do", and then new gaps open up, get taken advantage of, management go into a state of denial, project leaders can't get their teams to give a damn, and then the inevitable breach or audit reveals the extent of the vulnerabilities, and management sends out the big press release that's always "We're reprioritizing security because we take security SERIOUSLY!"

Rinse, repeat, endlessly until the heat death of the universe shows entropy is always king.

You are describing "weak AI" and it's not what AI was always about.

When people say "AI" by itself, they typically mean "strong AI," but not always.

There are a bunch of startups in the last 5 years or so who are trying to collect data in hospitals to prevent deaths. It's not an advertising model (yet) because hospitals are willing to pay.

One of the easiest methods of preventing death is by catching sepsis early, when it's still treatable, and a number of startups have been able to achieve death reductions in pilot tests. Of course, this means that nurses need to spend more time entering data, which is annoying.

This is not AI, it's just data science, but they call it AI because "hype." Funding is easier, getting clients is easier, etc.