Knowing that H. sapiens is now all that's left of the various hominin lineages and that P. boisei and H. erectus (which look quite different) were contemporaries for some 850k years, could this be evidence of the one hunting the other? If racism is still alive and kicking today, it was probably extra fierce back then.

How can this have happened? Surly, this must be some kind of mistake? Surely the awful self-serving, autocratic Republicans deserved to lose and the well-meaning pro-democracy Democrats deserved to win? How did we get here?

1.) In its relentless quest for ever higher profits at any cost, capitalism does what it wants and people die as a result.
2.) 1965. Raph Nader's book, Unsafe at Any Speed: The Designed-In Dangers of the American Automobile, is published, which leads to the creation of the United States Department of Transportation in 1966. Among other things, this forces the automotive industry to adopt many safety standards, including seat belts.
3.) 1970. Environmental disasters, scientific evidence and public outrage force the Nixon administration to create the Environmental Protection Agency.
4.) 1971. American industry feels humiliated. Something must be done to prevent this from happening again, thinks a lawyer for Philip Morris, named Lewis F. Powell Jr. He pens a memo in 1971 that outlines a plan: money should be equal to free speech, corporations should be equal to people and there should always be think-tanks on-hand to produce alternative facts on demand. The memo finds its way to Richard Nixon's desk who nominates Powell for the Supreme Court where he in installed in early 1972.
5.) 1976. The Supreme Court decision in Buckley v. Valeo determines that money is equal to free speech.
6.) 1978. The Supreme Court decision in First National Bank of Boston v. Bellotti determines that corporations are people. Soon after, the Republican party starts taking political donations from corporations. (I personally suspect this had an influence on the 1980 election).
7.) 1981. Tony Coelho (D, California) told his fellow Democrats, "Hey guys, did you know we can take corporate money now?" That year Coelho became chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and set up new ways for business interests to make their wishes known to House Democrats. Democrats listened, took the money and retained big majorities. All it cost them was their soul.
8.) 1981. Reagan, the new US President, implements his neoliberal economic plans, which include privatization, deregulation and tax cuts paid for by austerity measures. Not long after, many other western democracies follow suit, even those with center-left governments. This trickle-down economic system leads to a booming economy, but with an increasing national debt and growing income inequality.
9.) 1993. Clinton, the first Democratic president in 12 years, breaks with the past and instead continues to implement the neoliberal economic strategies of his Republican predecessors. The economy does well, but income inequality continues to grow.
10.) 1999. Part of the Glass–Steagall Act is repealed, paving the way for the stock market crash of 2008.
11.) 2000. Bush gets elected and income inequality continues to grow.
12.) 2008. Obama is elected, the neoliberalism continues once again and inequality continues to grow. Obama may have tried to resist this somewhat, but the Republicans did their best to prevent him from doing anything meaningful for 6 of his 8 years in the White House.
13.) 2010. The Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. FEC decides that it's okay "For corporations to make political donations and pay for political adds shortly before elections is free speech". More money in politics.
14.) 2014. The Supreme Court decision in McCutcheon v. FEC decides for "The removal of aggregate contribution limits to campaign finance". Even more money in politics.
15.) 2014. A study by Martin Gilens and Benjamin I. Page is published, titled Testing Theories of American Politics: Elites, Interest Groups, and Average Citizens. It states that "When the preferences of economic elites and the stands of organized interest groups are controlled for, the preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy" and "[If] policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America's claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened."
16.) 2016. Trump gets elected, not even himself believing it possible, but as a demagogue he was there at the right time to pick the ripe fruit of the public's deep discontent.
17.) 2020. Biden is elected, but the public, now drenched in a sea of disinformation, largely do not perceive his efforts to have alleviated their misery. Biden's efforts are also undermined as much as possible by the Republicans, who now control the House.
18.) 2024. Trump gets elected again anyway despite his two impeachments, many convictions, warts and all. It seems that many Republican voters are not that proud of Trump the man: they mostly just see him as a wrecking ball with which to destroy a system that abuses them.
19.) 2025. Trump in office and it seems the horrors of Project 2025 will now be implemented.

If there are ever again free and fair elections in the United States, whoever wins must not make the mistake of continuing down the path of neoliberalism and instead must do what is necessary to avoid excessive income inequality so as to make the average American feel as though they too are also part of the American dream. Either that, or sooner or later we will be doomed to once again repeat the entire exercise. The same goes for many other western countries who have walked similar paths for the last 40 odd years.

... because our bodies don't contain enough plastics already.

If all the carbon removal equipment in the world is only capable of removing around 0.01 million metric tons of carbon a year, but a capacity of 70 million tons a year is required by 2030 and 1 billion tons by 2050, that's 70.000 to 100.000 times as much as we have now. This is not a realistic from an engineering perspective or when considering the way the global economy works.

It's so much harder to remove CO2 from the atmosphere -- where the concentration is a mere 0.04% -- than it is to remove it from engine/furnace exhaust where the CO2 concentration is nearly 100%. The Dutch have a great metaphor for this kind of fools errand: "dweilen met de kraan open" (mopping with the faucet open). If we're ever going to make a a serious attempt to remove CO2 from the atmosphere, we're first going to have to turn off that faucet.

If the simulation hypothesis can't be proven or disproven, if it doesn't explain or predict anything about our reality, then what good is it beyond being an interesting thought experiment?

This kind of situation would be typical for the government agency that I work for. First, experienced IT managers are replaced with "managers" because they are more willing to "cut costs" (and any actual knowledge of the subject is no longer deemed necessary). Second, important applications are written and installed by third party companies, but without any documentation in order to cut costs. Third, too many programmers and sysadmins with critical knowledge are let go so as to cut more costs. As a result, after some years it becomes apparent that nobody knows how the system works anymore; not even the company that installed it. Modifications are no longer possible and the security people recognize that it's not even possible anymore to update the operating systems involved. So the system just sits there, static, and barring any mishaps will run for as long as the requirements don't change or it does not create too much of a drag on the organization. If they do, or it does, a completely new system will be developed, but with a necessary delay and at a cost that dwarfs those previously saved. An example of penny wise pound foolish, but by time it is realized what happened the perpetrators are long gone: après nous le déluge.

When NASA decided to plan and its ambitious Artemis program around a hugely expensive, single-use rocket with an out-dated design, I could just never work up any enthusiasm for it. It reminded me too much of the Constellation program that ended up going nowhere for the same reason. Congress doesn't know what it wants anyway, so why did anyone think this attempt would end up differently? NASA would do far better by concentrating on the lower-budget unmanned missions that they've already had so much success with. Let Musk or the Chinese set up a base on the Moon or Mars if they want, because they'll soon end up abandoning it anyway due to the enormous costs involved.

For years already, account has been a prime target for automation and now, as the power of AI increases, I'm sure the demand for professional accountants will continue to decrease even further.

This hypothesis appears to ignore the international interests of any country thinking of mounting such an attack. For example, if China were to attack the US in this manner, it would soon affect the rest of the world economy and this would also severely affect the Chinese economy, which is very dependent on international trade. What's more, it would soon become obvious that China was relatively unaffected, leading other countries to suspect what was going on. Therefore, this would not only hurt China in the short term, but also in the long term.

What's more, China would have to make this flu vaccination mandatory, or else too many of their own population would become sick, significantly reducing their advantage during the ensuing pandemic. "But, it's just a flu shot. What do they know that we don't know?" This would also lead to too many questions, or not enough of an advantage if their vaccination drive isn't good enough.

My conclusion is therefore that, seeing as we're biologically and economically one big family whether anyone likes it or not, rationally speaking, any such attack will not offer enough of an advantage to anyone.

And you were thinking I didn't know that? Humorless tool.

Soon, all IT jobs would have been lost and and it was going to be back to the stone age for all of us. There was nothing anyone could do to stop it. Just look at the stock market; the investors knew this was coming. The stench of death was in the air! But, luckily that's now all been averted. Phew! And it's all thanks to the rise of ChatGPT and other AI projects that have come just in time to save us. So, let us rejoice and sing the praises of our new AI overlords, for now the future is looking infinitely less bleak than this article was predicting it was surely going to become!

Despite being a long-time space fan, I've never been able to work up any enthusiasm for this project. With such an out-dated and overly expensive design for such a long-term project, it is bound to scrapped by Congress at some point. And that's despite costing a lot less than various tax cuts given to corporations and the rich, or being absolutely dwarfed by the military budget. Space is really hard and expensive, but I fear that in this neoliberal era of endless austerity measures, Congress just won't have the will to fund such a high-profile science project for long enough.

As electric cars become more popular, the sale of gasoline and diesel will continue to decline to the point where oil companies get into financial trouble. Each time the result will likely be a merger, but output and profits will continue to decline. Availability at the pump will eventually be affected and that will almost certainly be what forces ICE vehicles off the road, perhaps involving more than 50% of those currently still operating.

The main factor that currently limits the lifetime of BEVs is battery design. Actively cooled Li-ion batteries perform better and last a lot longer than passively cooled ones, but are significantly more expensive to produce. Thus, all of the more affordable BEVs have a far more limited lifespan despite their relative cost. This is not helping demand.

Another factor that I personally see as problematic regarding BEVs is the computer, especially when regular software updates are regarded as an important. Practically speaking, a computers almost always has a limited lifespan even if it never breaks down, and these are no exception; at some point it won't be possible to install any more updates unless the computer can be upgraded first. Currently, the only BEVs of which I know that the computer can be upgraded are the Tesla Model S and Model X, but those are hardly cars that most people can afford to drive. On the other hand, perhaps not everyone will see this as such an important issue and it will not cause the prices of used models to decline as steeply as I think.

For over 20 years I've been running my own mail server. My solution for this issue is to make a new alias for every company that wants my email address. For example, if my domain is example.com and the company that wants my email address today is xyz.com, I will make a new alias, just for them, called "xyz.com@example.com", that points to my usual email account. My alias file now contains hundreds of these. And if they want an email reply from me, with just a little extra effort I can do that too.

The advantages are that companies can't track me using my email address, that I can comment out any individual alias that starts receiving spam, and that it's obvious when one of these addresses falls into the wrong hands. I've seen the latter happen only once: a company that started sending me email using an alias address that I had made for another. I called them about it and it turned that the address had been transferred to them via a common parent company; understandable, but still illegal in Europe. I gave them a new alias address to prevent further confusion.

... because our civilization is so energy-hungry and our politics so screwy.