I give him credit for at least *trying* to do things that are ultra-long shots at best.

People come up with long-shot ideas *all* *the* *time* yet they are never willing to put in effort, or risk their reputation or finances to do them. Can't say that about Musk - he knows that if he fails there will be people gleefully tearing at his corpse cackling "TOLDYASO TOLDYASO." Those same people will, of course, consistently move the goal posts when he succeeds at something, sniffing disdainfully, "It wasn't that hard!"

Anyway, with Musk, tbh, I think his cult following is kinda hilarious, but he seems to be trying to use it to try and get big shit done and doesn't seem to be hurting people in the process, so I don't really have a problem with it. The world needs brash people who set stupidly ambitious goals and only achieves 10% of them every bit as much as they need play-it-safe types who set eminently reasonable goals and achieves 90% of them.

Is Tyson someone I should be taking business advice from?

I'm not aware of him being anything but a public science personality and generally kinda cool guy, so maybe I missed that he is considered an authority on business, finance and economics?

The parent of the post you are responding to was just some ideological warrior trying to stir the pot. I'm as liberal as they come, and the only time I panic about private entities doing something is when they harm other people or behave unethically. Maybe not vilifying the private sector makes me a bad liberal, but I can easily name a number of private entities that spend big on basic research when a payday might never come, and so, too, should literally anyone who is familiar with tech.

It's because most Slashdotters are jealous morons who begrudge anyone else's success.

Seriously, look at any story about someone being successful at something and many of the responses are "well, it was obvious - ANYONE could have done it!"

They never ask the obvious follow-up: if it were obvious, if it were something anyone could have done, why didn't THEY do it and reap the rewards?

These are the same people who come up with an idea and then engage in mental masturbation about how awesome it is and how it's the most amazing thing and then never do a goddamn thing about it, but they act like that's exactly the same thing as coming up with (or borrowing) an idea and executing on it.

Ideas are easy. Everyone knows an "idea guy." But actually making shit happen is harder - extremely hard, in some cases, and takes dedication and time.

Iraq war cost us over $2T directly (and who can say how much indirectly) to give us nothing but an even worse international reputation and create a number of enemies, so I'd say this is a bargain.

Really, If raising the tax on cigarettes gets people to vote, then honestly, I'm all for it. That would mean there would be more turn out in local elections etc., and that would absolutely be a good thing.

As to what the job of government is, I'd say "addressing public health problems" is certainly a reasonable thing for the government to be involved in. Smoking is a pretty huge public health issue and smoking related issues winds up costing taxpayers vast sums of money. I don't think it's the government's job to "keep people from smoking" but I absolutely think that the government can do some things to address public health issues, things that wouldn't get done otherwise.

Things like warning labels (do you think tobacco businesses would have done that themselves?), restricting how and where tobacco can be advertised (again, lots of luck thinking they'd have voluntarily restricted themselves), and funding research into the damage tobacco does (hahaha, yeah, these are the same companies that had doctors recommending various brands) have done FAR more to curb smoking than age restrictions on purchase. Tax increases have also had an impact, though not nearly as much. And there are a number of other little things - laws prohibiting smoking in various public venues etc. and so on, have all combined to reduce smoking.

Nah, I got your point, I just think it's wrong. I think you're angry (holy shit are you angry) because your brain doesn't do one of the things that primate brains are good at doing, which is handle social cues and contexts.

Engage your rational brain for a second and ask yourself this: if the rules are "constantly changing" and "oblique" and "impenetrable" then how does most everyone else seem to know what they are? Do you think we all get a memo?

The answer is, we do not. Just the part of our brain that handles social cues and contexts seems to work better in ours than it does in yours. Instead of recognizing that fact and either developing or compensating for it, you instead choose to get angry. Which is totally your right, but please don't expect to be taken seriously when you start screeching and demanding that everyone else change just because you can't keep up.

I agree that social pressure is the way to reduce this particular problem. However, the article is about government trying to address the issue by using the tools of government, and my comment was aimed at the stupidity of that governmental approach when they have other approaches they could take that would be more effective, and how because they weren't taking the more effective governmental approach over the less effective governmental approach, they were obviously pandering and playing to the monied interests.

As to a tax on the poor - I don't see a pack of cigarettes costing $10 or $15 or $20 due to taxes as all that much more of a burden on the poor than if cigarettes cost $5 a pack. If one is in such dire straits that a $5 or $10 increase on a non-essential item is going to break them, then maybe they should stop purchasing said non-essential item.

I get that it's an addiction - it's one that I had, as I said. It's also one that was DAMN hard for me to break, and took a dozen tries over the course of my addiction. However, what it didn't do was cause me to go homeless, cause me to commit crimes in order to get a fix (even when I was flat broke), cause me to make stupid choices like "cigarettes vs. food" or "cigarettes vs. paying a utility bill", and frankly, given that we don't see a massive increase in crimes related to people stealing, turning tricks, or whatever else in order to get their nicotine fix in areas where smokes cost $15 a pack or more, I don't think most other people do any of those things, too.

To wring your hands over it being a "tax on the poor" is absurd. It's not heroin, it's not crack, it's not even alcohol - it isn't mind altering in the same way those drugs are and it doesn't cause the same insane lapses in judgement that those drugs do. It also doesn't run the risk of killing you during detox the way other drugs do. Worst case scenario is you turn into a raging asshole with a short temper while having a nicotine fit, which goes away in a matter of minutes (although the desire to smoke can last longer).

I agree that a power imbalance is a huge problem, 100% of the time - that is wholly and completely unacceptable, period.

The issue with even peers is, like I said, unless you know the other person reasonably well, you don't know what their experience has been when stuff like that has come up for work and without that knowledge, you're potentially putting them in a very uncomfortable situation.

I've been asked out on the first day at a job, which says to me that the person doing the asking had zero idea of what appropriate workplace behavior is, and probably didn't really grok that whole "human interaction" thing very well. At a bar, sure, ask someone out after barely getting to know them, since that's kind of the point of a bar for many people, but a job? That's a hard no.

I started smoking at the age of 12 (and quit at 32), and I never, ever, not even once, had a problem getting cigarettes when I was underage, and I hardly think it's any more difficult for underage people to do the same nowadays.

I'd say put all age restrictions on things - literally everything that is currently legal but with an age restriction - at the same age as the normal age of military service.

If you really want to discourage smoking, ban it from anywhere but a private residence and tax the hell out of it. Make the fine for smoking anywhere but in a private residence double per offense, starting at $50, and if the person smoking is underage, make the parent or legal guardian responsible for the fine. Make the tax for tobacco something like $25 for a pack of cigarettes. Make the fines for selling age restricted products to an underaged person draconian - first offense $5000, second offense you lose your license to sell ANYTHING age restricted, period. Tobacco isn't a necessity, it isn't an essential - tax it as the (stupid, harmful) luxury it is.

Mind you, I don't agree with the notion of doing the above, and I'm not on an anti-smoking crusade, but if the powers that be were actually serious about the public health elements of smoking they'd do more than this weak-tea pandering bullshit. They don't actually want to do anything to really break the back of big tobacco because of $$$, so they just do idiotic things like raise the age for legal purchase which plays well to some people, but is basically ignored.

If people are telling you "fuck off, creep!" when you compliment their shoes, and doing so regularly, then maybe the problem IS you.

Really, though, the situation you described had nothing to do with what I wrote, so I have no idea why you bring it up. I intentionally said commenting inappropriately. If someone turns into a raging asshole because someone commented innocently and non-creepily on their shoes, that's on them.

That some people may respond badly to completely non-creepy compliments does not make it AOK to suggest that women are at fault for "dressing sexy" and being told how they should dress because men are, according to the person I responded to, really not responsible for their behavior when they see an attractive woman and it's kind of the woman's fault.

I never said I expect you (or anyone) to comply with "oblique sexist societal rules" - I said, and I think I said it pretty fucking clearly, that I expect people to restrain themselves and behave appropriately in a given situation. Note that I said PEOPLE. As in, no particular gender.

My issue with asking out/being asked out by coworkers is that it puts the person being asked out into an awkward situation, and that isn't fair to inflict on a person in a workplace.

The person being asked out now has to spend time thinking about something they may not have been thinking about before, they may be stressed out about how a rejection might be handled by the other party, they may be worried about how accepting will make them look to other co-workers, and a whole host of other concerns.

Over the course of my career, I've been asked out by co-workers a number of times. My standard response is a polite but firm no, along the lines of "thanks, but I don't mix work and dating." 90% of the time, they accept the no and everything is cool, maybe some bruised feelings but nothing major. 10% of the time it has made things toxic due to them behaving poorly (spreading rumors, insulting or attacking me/my ideas far more aggressively than is merited, in one case the person literally turned around and went to our manager and demanded that I be moved to another team because they found me unbearable to work with (no joke, like, literally 2 minutes after asking me out they contacted our manager and, despite how absurd it was, it wound up becoming a whole "thing").

As a result of that 10%, if I get asked out by a co-worker, I now worry about whether or not the rejected party will be an adult about it, which causes stress, and was not stress I had to worry about until they decided to share with me their interest. I do not want to inflict that kind of stress on another person, so I don't ask my co-workers out while I'm still their co-worker.

Evolution says that when I see you have more things than I have, I should smash your skull and take what you have. Yet we expect people to resist it.

If you aren't capable of reining in your urges, then you are the problem. If you can rein it in, and behave appropriately for the workplace, then no problem.

If nobody knows that you're thinking of fucking your coworker, it isn't a problem. If somebody knows, then the problem is that you aren't keeping your shit under control.

It's not that difficult a concept, but so many people here don't seem to get it.

Dude, there's literally nothing right or correct in what you posted.

People who harass other people are the ones at fault, full-stop, period. I don't care how the people they were harassing were dressed, the instant one party decided to impose themselves on the other party, they were in the wrong.

You are trying to tell people how to dress and groom themselves. You think, somehow, that your opinion on what they should wear should be important to them.

There is no compromise. If you can't restrain yourself from behaving inappropriately in a given situation when it comes to respecting another person's bodily autonomy or commenting inappropriately on their appearance, the problem is YOU, not them, period.

Realized I left out one part on the reusability:

Once the reusable parts that will stay in orbit get into orbit and are reused, they don't have to be launched again with each and every mission. That, along with not having to build new ones for each mission is where the dramatic savings comes into play.

Most everything would be reusable - that's a decent chunk of change, and I disagree that it wouldn't make things dramatically cheaper.

I also think you're underestimating the cost of crew rating everything for an all-in-one launch vs having a dedicated crew-only launch + multiple supply launches (some of those supply launches, because they are redundant, would get to be reused by later missions)

And yes, the initial costs would be higher - this would be establishing a supply chain so that we could do regular trips with substantially greater capabilities, not just a bunch of one-off missions with limited capability. There would be costs associated with doing that, but eventually, the cost per trip would wind up being less expensive and more productive in terms of exploration than a number of novelty trips.