The biggest problem with education in the US is the educators. There is no getting past that. Record spending per pupil, lots and lots of restorative this restorative that bias opportunities toward demographics that the left claims were historically disadvantage. The one consistent outcome is poorer outcomes no matter what color or economic stratum a kid belongs too.

Modern classroom theory and pedagogical theory are obviously broken. This is the only possible valid conclusion anyone rationally looking at what is happening could reach. However we have these unions which ensure that nobody does anything but fail upward in the public education sector. Basically the only real skill required to succeed (career) as educator is the ability to repeat the party line, and not molest the children (the latter being increasingly seen as optional in the eyes of union leaders as well).

there is no deep state and elections have consequences..

Yeah sure.

but you're not dealing with where those orders come from or setting the stage when you pose that question.

There is underlying assumption that if the order is received there is a point to it, that it could win war. If that person knew the enemy missiles were already in flight, would not be intercepted, and nobody they know personally or care about will see the sun come up tomorrow would they still turn the key and kill millions more people - just to get even..?

It really is a very different question. Now imagine you are not the guy in the bunker, you are POTUS. You know it is over. They entire lower 48 is going to be glass starting in about 8 secs over within the hour. Do you really give the order to return fire, or do think maybe just maybe you want to look toward the kingdom of heaven even if you have never held strong belief and hedge your bets and reject 'useless' killing? Because it really isnt about MAD at that point, it is back to Pascal's Wager.

Even if not specifically inventory shrink, it is still the same class for problem. It roll it up one level higher and either the delivery is successful or it isn't.

Be it first party Amazon vans or 3rd party shippers UPS/FEx/USPS, lost, damaged, and late packages occur in those lanes as well. It just an optimization problem. Either the the (presumed) increase of loss related to drone delivery is less then the offsetting cost savings, including reputation costs that translate to market share and recurring revenue, or they don't.

Either the drone delivers can be made reliable enough or they can't. Pontificating about it might be fun, getting upset about anything isnt worth it, because I don't really see much in the way of externalities here. Sure maybe something gets manufactured and never used because it is destroyed in transit. However if you deliver 10K somethings with electric drones rather than rolling petroleum powered vans, even the waste from an environmental standpoint might easily be offset for a net gain in efficiency.

Amazon's entire business is essentially logistics. They have not gotten to be the huge player they are by being wasteful. Rather they are where they are by ruthlessly optimizing everything they do for cost.

We all have cell phone cameras, tied to phones that mostly have the amazon app installed (if you are prime customer). You photo the package if the carton looks damaged, you photo the item the moment you open the carton lid if you see damage. You report the damaged item, 90% if the time time they agree to send you a new one right away and don't require you to return the damaged item.

So really other than as a customer, you item maybe being delayed a day while you wait for replacement, this is entirely a inventory shrink problem for Amazon to solve. Either increased loss of product (if there even is) costs more than traditional delivery methods or not, either they have incentive to invest is gentler product handling or they don't. Maybe it is just ML problem of learning which SKUs, and which type of SKUs should not go by drone and should instead go out on a truck, because of lower success rate..Maybe (probably) that training is happening already.

I don't believe this is accurate. It assumes that because I am dying I am going to kill you out of spite. If I am resigned to the fact that me and mine are doomed, I very well might decide that I would in fact rather humanity go on even if it is those where my enemies than to simple kill everyone.

I think actually there is quite a bit of evidence some degree of altruism is hardwired into humans, once our own genetic future isn't a consideration we are not actually given to wanton destruction of all possible competitors.

This fact actually makes 'the bomb' more usable in a tactical way. I think people who were fighting the cold war were actually keenly aware of that as well. It is preciously why they were able to find some agreement on things like anti proliferation. They understood that while these weapons remain *almost* to terrible to contemplate mostly they do not represent the 'end of the world' event sold to the public and perhaps most of the legislative bodies. Cooler heads realized nuke war would be horrible, morally unjustifiably most like but probably isnt MAD at all, probably ends up just being whoever shoots first wins...

The mistake was the Marshall plan.

We should have turned the EU in to dependent agrarian shit-hole.

I wonder if it could be made into an effective non-lethal crowd control / deterrence weapon.

I bet you could get people to vacate an area pretty fast if suddenly the only thing they could smell was the strong sent of decaying flesh or similar. One of those sents that everyone is programed instinctively to move away from.

Don't forget it also super chargers the general asymmetry between attackers and defenders. That is attackers are there for as long as they want to be, defenders have to be their all the time.

Everytime a newer bigger, better trained, whatever model or a new set of tooling, feedback, etc workflow drops defenders have to buy into it and stand it up, and evaluate a whole new wave of potential vulnerabilities that are now identified, and they have to do it before a threat actor does.

Until we reach a point of stability where we not seeing a new frontier offering with significantly enhanced capabilities multiple times a year, team red is going to be better served than team blue.

That is the real problem. There are to many movies. There is just so much low quality stuff cranked out. The movies have outside of a few big legacy francises lost their social aspect.

30 years ago EVERYONE saw the same movies, talked about them got excited about them. There were always tons of marketing tie-ins, every kid went to MCDs and got a batman toy. Now it is all to scattered and silo-ed. Even if you do go the movies none of the guys at work saw it too. There is no social incentive anymore.

Add to that how far even entry level home video has come. Even the folks are not into that stuff at all have a full HD screen that is probably 42" or larger, and are just as likely to have 4K screen in the 55+ size class. Anyone who actually cares even a little can budget for a 60+" 4k display with some basic HRD capability and decidedly ok sound bar. Recreating damn near commercial theater class fidelity is within reach of anyone who does care to spend their money that way.

So it leaves going to the movies with little to offer other than a very expensive night out.

I don't know how you get back there because it would be one of those someone has to unilaterally disarm situations again, but the studios want a theater channel they actually need to get back to each doing a like one jaw dropping summer block buster a year, they market the crap out of and supplementing with the art-house, horror, childrens releases. They need to tell us what movies to see and why we want to pay $20 just to get thru the door rather than simply waiting a few months and watching at home if we even bother.

yes and the other element of this that people who don't work for/with/at/in/against organizations that play this game is the repeat business aspect.

A politician more or less agrees to stake out a position as a service and perhaps introduce some legislative language the company helped draft. In addition to the direct donation the lobby group will pass money through a network of related entities to first propogandize the recipients district that whatever is actually an issue worth considering at the voting booth, and shortly after what they should think about. Now our politician has something to run on, how they are for or against X while their opponent gets painted as the opposite and their campaign is forced to stop and determine what their messaging even should be on the subject for several days while they get hammer, and painted as evasive if they won't answer questions.

If you pay attention at state level races you see this dynamic a lot, and you'll see it in federal House and Senate races as well in any media the campaigns are aiming at voters who are not already solidly team blue, team red, or committed based on of our marquee issues abortion, guns, income taxes, health care. Which is a increasingly tiny slice of the public, so if you are just watching national media you don't see a lot of this in the past elections but it is still very much there if you pick up your towns local rag.

Getting back the repeat business thing, the lobby groups and corporate contributors remember who played ball and got it done. They want to work with that person again if they can, so the incentive as politician then if you don't personally care a great deal about a given issue is to get things done. You want to be seen as a reliable partner, so the money keeps flowing your way. The best part is you can lie to everyone including yourself about it and say it is all just representing your constituents.

Of course it is really the tail wagging the dog. Its about telling people want what the big players want first then delivering that. This why the whole idea everyone should vote is really messed up. Companies trod out celebrities to propagandize people to do that too, for a reason they want the most easily propagandized people voting so they can use their propaganda power to create opportunities for their political puppets. They have a large part of the public conditioned to think voting is some kind of civic duty, but knowing anything about the topics you are actually voting on beyond if they are 'red' or 'blue' isnt ever mentioned... ^^This is why that is.

Heh, I think if the money was ending up in the pockets of the providers people would have lot less issue with the direction US healthcare is going. The money is ending up in the pockets of the administrators, HMOs, insurers (both health, and malpractice), litigators, and recipients of political donations.

A former president has every reason to lie. He is not free to share classified information, nor in a position to declassify it.

I think the idea that aliens have (other than perhaps those composed of smallish numbers of cells that perhaps hitched a ride on some meteor) having come to earth is pure fantasy.

However I would consider any former office holder or ranking military officer about the least reliable source on something like that. Even if they had been in a position to know, they'd be the most closely watched and among those the government is most able to discreetly coerce/blackmail if they step out of line.

Now maybe a death bed revelation one way or the other where they have nothing left to lose could be believed.

Because otherwise you could easily tell it is just a photo of a pie plate.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [Kids in the Hall]

It is still funny all these years later.