Something I wrote on this in 2001 and posted to gnu.misc.discuss: https://groups.google.com/g/gn...
        "... I definitely do not want to see a future world of only proprietary intellectual property where basically everything I want to do requires agreeing to endless licenses and royalty payments, such as described in [Richard Stallman's essay] "right-to-read". ...
        However, on a practical basis, living in our society as it is right now, any software developer is going to handle lots of packets of information from emails to applications to program modules under a variety of explicit or implied licenses. If a developer is going to do this in a way that makes his or her work most useful to the community (under the terms he or she so chooses), proper attention must be given to the licensing status of all works received and distributed, especially those that form the basis for new derived works to be distributed. Note that even in the case of purely GPL'd works, one still needs to know that a user contributing an extension to a GPL'd work was the original author and/or he or she has permission to distribute the patch (if say an employer owns all the contributor's work).
        My question is: should software tools, protocols, and standards play a role in easing this required "due diligence" license management work (at least as far as copyright alone is concerned)? ...
        For example, consider this situation. I go to the Choral Public domain site and download a MIDI tune picked at random, say "Ecce nunc benedicite" by "Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina" edited by "Claudio
Macchi". Let's say I like it and want to pass it on. ...
        As soon as I have this file on my computer, much of the "meta data" about licensing is lost, since the meta-data is not all kept in the same file but is implicit from having the file on the site. If I pass the file to you, how do you know it is freely redistributeable? Do you tak my word for it? Do you check the site? Am I myself even sure enough what license it is under when I downloaded it that I can give you assurances you can use it? Why should you trust me if I do? Did you get the identical version I downloaded, or did I slip in a change which I might later use to make a claim against you if you use the file in a work of your own? If I (not the author) bundle the midi file with a CPDL license in a zip file, how do you know I had any right to do that? How much time do you need to take to verify the situation? ...
        Note that ultimately, having such meta-data in every file might require operating system support, or at least very smart tools, like a MIDI player that ignores the meta-data when actually playing the file. That in turn might require a more sophisticated repository approach to storing all file data (at a minimum, perhaps "license forks" like the Macintosh has "data forks", although this doesn't address the notion of one license covering multiple files taken as a whole). ..."

The rich and powerful are treating it like a tiger running after them. They know that they don't have to be faster than the tiger, just faster than other running from the tiger.

Well, you know the difference between a BMW and a porcupine.

(A porcupine has pricks on the outside.)

I prepared a five minute "lightning talk" for LibrePlanet 2021 on "Empowering users through Dialogue Mapping using IBIS".

https://libreplanet.org/wiki/L...

The text of the talk in IBIS outline format with some minor changes is available here.
https://pdfernhout.net/librepl...

That talk is a much-shortened version of a longer talk I gave in July 2019 for the Cognitive Systems Institute Group Speaker Series where I suggested using AI to help with the Dialogue Mapping process:
https://twitter.com/sumalaika/...

More on Dialogue Mapping with IBIS:
https://cognexus.org/id41.htm
"Dialogue Mapping is a radically inclusive facilitation process that creates a diagram or 'map' that captures and connects participants' comments as a meeting conversation unfolds. It is especially effective with highly complex or "Wicked" problems that are wrought with both social and technical complexity, as well as a sometimes maddening inability to move forward in a meaningful and cost effective way. Dialogue Mapping creates forward progress in situations that have been stuck; it clears the way for robust decisions that last. It is effective because it works with the non-linear way humans really think, communicate, and make decisions. ... As the people in the meeting speak, the facilitator paraphrases and captures what they are saying in a hypertext diagram on the screen. ... The icons represent the basic elements of the Dialogue Mapping grammar (called IBIS): Questions, Ideas, Pros and Cons. ... In Dialogue Mapping, as the conversation unfolds and the map grows, each person can see a summary of the meeting discussion so far. The map serves as a "group memory," virtually eliminating the need for participants to repeat themselves to get their points made."

Dialogue Mapping could potentially help people who take different sides on so-called "settled issues" to help understand the different points of view, assumptions, and priorities involved.

As an example, while not exactly Dialogue Mapping with IBIS, Kialo uses a pro/con format to structure online discussions related to controversial topics. Here are some Kialo maps on abortion:
https://www.kialo.com/search?q...

A specific example there: https://www.kialo.com/should-a...

People may not all agree after participating in such systems, but at least they will get a better understanding of where specifically they agree or disagree with others as they all collaborate to build a visualization of the topic.

Most of the restaurants I go to don't even serve alcohol. Of course, I live in Utah, which is at the very bottom of the alcohol consumption per capita chart. Here restaurants all have normal fountain drinks, water, and then a wide array of specialty drinks, many of which are just normal sodas with some stuff added in.

Being a restaurant owner is hard. The margins on most food is slim. The margins on drinks (alcoholic or not), on the other hand, are ridiculous. There's a reason why sit down restaurants start you with something to drink, and why fast food places bundle sodas. To a very real extent these businesses make their money upselling you from drinking plain water.

One of my neighbors whoâ(TM)s in his eighties wound up switching to a recumbent tricycle because he had balance issues. Which sucked. But the tricycle is awesome and probably would be comfortable for you to sit on.

Nevertheless, you should ride what works and is enjoyable for you. The point is not to punish 80-year-olds by forcing them to ride bikes they arenâ(TM)t safe on. I have an Azore city bike that I really like. Wouldnâ(TM)t mind still being able to ride it at 80.

See the HF Acid Leach Process on page 290-291 (and in general the rest of Appendix 5E LMF Chemical Processing Sector, all outlined with an eye towards self-replicating lunar factories, from NASA under the Carter presidency): https://archive.org/details/Ad...
        "[From the Intro] Mission complexity has increased enormously as instrumentation and scientific objectives have become more sophisticated. In the next two decades there is little doubt that NASA will shift its major focus from exploration to an increased emphasis on utilization of the space environment, including public service and industrial activities. The present study was sponsored by NASA because of an increasing realization that advanced automatic and robotic devices, using machine intelligence, will play a major role in all future space missions. Such systems will complement human activity in space, accomplishing tasks that people cannot do or that are too dangerous, too laborious, or too expensive. The opportunity to develop the powerful new merger of human intellect and machine intelligence is a result of the growing capacity of machines to accomplish significant tasks. Indeed, the growth in capability of onboard machine intelligence will make many missions technically or economically feasible. This study has investigated some of the ways this capacity may be used as well as a number of research and development efforts necessary in the years ahead if the promise of AI is to be fully realized. ...
        [From Appendix 5E] Mining robots deliver raw lunar soil strip-mined from the pit to large input hoppers along the edge of the entry corridors into the chemical processing sector. The primary responsibility of the materials-processing subsystems is to accept lunar regolith, extract from it the necessary elemental and chemical substances required for system growth, replication, and production, and then return any wastes, unused materials, or slag to an output hopper to be transported back to the surrounding annular pit by mining robots for use as landfill.
        It is possible to achieve qualitative materials closure (see sec. 5.3.6) - complete material self-sufficiency within the Lunar Manufacturing Facility (LMF) - by making certain that chemical processing machines are able to produce all of the 84 elements commonly used in industry in the United States and the global economy (Freitas, 1980). However, such a complete processing capability implies unacceptably long replication times T (on the order of 100-1000 years), because many of the elements are so rare in the lunar or asteroidal substrate that a vast quantity of raw soil must be processed to obtain even small amounts of them. By eliminating the need for many of these exotic elements in the SRS design, replication times can be cut by as much as three orders of magnitude with current or foreseeable materials processing technologies."

Whether that is "reasonable technology" in today's economic system is obviously debatable. I also did not see any of the critical minerals in the article (like Cobalt or Neodymium) on the list of the "Total of 18 elements" the study listed as key to build these systems in the box on page 282 on "TABLE 5.11. MINIMUM SEED ELEMENT AND PROCESS CHEMICAL REQUIREMENTS" . So maybe, as you suggest, they are harder to extract but the study participants knew of workarounds -- for example using Iron in a battery or to make electromagnets?

Anyway, I had a copy of the page with that HF Acid Leach process up on the wall in my office for many years as a symbol of hope and abundance -- even if in reality HF acid is nasty stuff best avoided (or left to automation in far-off places).

It would be ideal to find a better way on Earth like perhaps bacteria or plants or other organisms that concentrate specific materials... The short-story "The Skills of Xanadu" from 1956 by Theodore Sturgeon, for example, suggests breeding a shellfish that concentrates strontium in its shell...
https://ia601205.us.archive.or...
        "At first, it seemed to Bril totally disorganized. These attractive people in their indecent garments came and went, mingling play and work and loafing, without apparent plan. But their play would take them through a flower garden just where the weeds were, and they would take the weeds along. There seemed to be a group of girls playing jacks right outside the place where they would suddenly be needed to sort some seeds.
        Tanyne tried to explain it: "Say we have a shortage of something -- oh, strontium, for example. The shortage itself creates a sort of vacuum. People without anything special to do feel it; they think about strontium. They come, they gather it."
        "But I have seen no mines," Bril said puzzledly. "And what about shipping? Suppose the shortage is here and the mines in another district?"
        "That never happens any more. Where there are deposits, of course, there are no shortages. Where there are none, we find other ways, either to use something else, or to produce it without mines."
        "Transmute it?"
        "Too much trouble. No, we breed a freshwater shellfish with a strontium carbonate shell instead of calcium carbonate. The children gather them for us when we need it." ..."

For example, on Cobalt, maybe we could breed cows and their gut bacteria to concentrate it? See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
"Cobalt is essential to the metabolism of all animals. It is a key constituent of cobalamin, also known as vitamin B12, the primary biological reservoir of cobalt as an ultratrace element. Bacteria in the stomachs of ruminant animals convert cobalt salts into vitamin B12, a compound which can only be produced by bacteria or archaea. A minimal presence of cobalt in soils therefore markedly improves the health of grazing animals, and an uptake of 0.20 mg/kg a day is recommended because they have no other source of vitamin B12."

I live in Europe. It's definitely not a utopia (nor is it a single country!). However, I don't think that being more like the U.S. would make Europe better. That's my only point here. Yes, Europe could definitely be better (even the European country where I live!), but being more like the U.S. would make it worse. Certainly going in the direction of "growth first" would not make it better, although again I'm sure some percentage of those who emigrated to the U.S. would say this would be better.

The country I live in now is becoming more like the U.S. at the moment in the sense of starting to move toward home ownership as a growth asset. In the U.S., this has caused an insane housing shortage, and we're seeing that here too. We should be moving away from such policies, not toward them.

That's because if you get to 75 years old in the U.S. you are more likley to be reasonably well-off—if you aren't you are more likely die before that of preventable causes. And if you are well-off, that helps once you're past 75 as well. Of course plenty of poor people reach 75 in the U.S., but percentage-wise fewer do.

Also, the EU is a big place with lots of different countries. I live in the Netherlands, where you routinely see 80-year-olds riding bicycles. This is less common in other european countries, but that's changing. Your comparison would be more useful it if were by individual country rather than including the whole continent. I don't actually know if it's any different in the Netherlands—we have income inequality issues here too—but it would make sense if it were because people are so much more physically active here throughout life.

At this point a lot of economic growth is just generating garbage, but because we are so addicted to growth, we have to keep generating garbage.

A better question to ask would be, would you prefer to live in Europe or the U.S.? Not work, live. The idea that our lives should be work from graduation to grave doesn't really seem like something we ought to be valorizing—it sucks for the planet, and it sucks for us.

Reality check here: hybrid solar farming actually increases yields, because a lot of crops don't like direct sunlight all day.

Precisely. This is going to be used against the owners of the hardware, not for them. I suspect that these containers are very secure. It's just too bad that my phone is the one device that I own where I do not have root access. This security is not going to be used to protect my data from Google, but to protect Google's data from me.

Hooray!

"If Linus yells at you to stop doing something, you damn well listen, or move aside for someone else who will listen."

What if he's wrong on something?

I mean the dude is 55, mentally he's not going to be able to keep up with the really abstract stuff.

I've flown on Spirit many times and every bad thing you've heard about it is true.