To be fair, the losses in economy and tech primarily are only because of the loss of the PR war.

nuclear is so expensive, because A everyone and their mother gets to cry NIMBY, eco groups are not held responsible for coming up with bullshit reasons why nuclear cannot be beuilt THERE and so forth. And because we haven't built nukes in quite some time, you'll have to expect overhead for companies regaining the know-how and fixing blunders.

The additional time all this takes adds to the interest on the building loans and that's one way to argue "but it's prohibitively expensive!!"

As for tech, well big wonder nobody invests in researchinto a technology nobody wants to buy, eh?

Just had a quick peek. Are those capacitive "buttons" below the screen?

Ironic how you accuse "the man" of taking yor meds away when you obviously are high right now :D

Is it though? By what metric in terms of the species?

Yes, it seems we have more extreme natural incidents. Has humanity perished in any wide swath of land?

Again, I am not arguing against the next decades and centuries sucking. I'm just saying life has always sucked. I na way we have gotten used to life not sucking as hard and therefore we became complacent and weak on other areas. More societal illnesses. Back issues, chronic diseases and mental illnesses are everywhere making life miserable to the point where people are normalizing noping the fuck out (meaning suicide).

I mean how's that healthy? How is that a life worth living?

There is worth in fighting for your life. Humanity does not fare well living in comfy security.

So yeah, it will suck. Butnthink of this: Perhaps that will force us to start working together more again. Looking out for one another. The main argument against insurance I keep hearing is always "Well, I'm healthy! why should I pay for the sickos!"
As a sicko, the answer is easy: I was healthy too until I suddenly wasn't. Can and probably will happen to almost everyone in some form.

It's GOOD for us not to live in this false security of Ãt won't happen to me". We SHOULD live in a constant state of Ãt probably will happen to me, so how can I prepare myself and who will help me when it happens"Probably the people I helped when they needed it".

I just thoroughly disagree with all this doom and gloom.

While I am quite sure that the prediction that we will not make this target is correct... Seriously, how often in history have scientists and/or "scientists" missed the mark on what precisely would happen if X was changed by Y in any given sufficiently complex system?

And I can't imagine many systems more complex than weather.

What I expect will happen is indeed a rising of the sea levels and climate regions will shift. That means change for many people but it will be somewhat gradual. It will be nigh instantaneous in context of an ice age but to us silly humans who don't even usually live 100 years, it will be a lot of time. Less and less people will move to the coast and more and more away from it. It's not like one morning the news will tell us of 100 million drowned due to the rising of the sea.

Russia and Ukraine might no longer be Europe's bread basket. Meanwhile, other regions that used to be really crap to live in might suddenly get a boost.

To me, any scientist who calls doom is 99% trying to get grant money. The current state of the scientific comunity is unprofessional and unethical to a degree that I blame nobody for not taking "scientists" seriously anymore and that is not even accounting for bad journalism in reporting.

Lastly, there is this thing about humans: We are lazy by design. It is a survival instinct but like many others, it certainly isn't foolproof. Sometimes a survival instinct causes death. It is only beneficial to the species overall, not individually. From that comes this situation that for a human to start moving, a certain threshold... a shock moment must be reached when he can no longer ignore looming consequences. For that he must already feel them.

Humanity will move pretty quickly once it has actual, tangible incentives. You can bemoan this all you want but the fact of the matter is that climate change doesn't hurt yet. Not on a scale large enough to matter. And people get used to this status quo so the next step will also not matter.

I don't realistically see and end to the species. I don't even see a culling as being realistic.That doesn't mean I don't foresee millions suffering over the next decades.

But honestly? Suffering is part and parcel of life. It's not like humanity didn't suffer at any given point in history so nothing new there either.

We will rise, we will adapt and we will go on.

No, success isn't overrated. it's judged by the wrong metrics. What you describe there at the end IS success.

Off the top of your head, how many non-dysfunctional marriages and families can you list? If it's more than one you're probably already lucky in this day and age.

Well, she IS neurodivergent.

...and asked what the media is smoking.

OBVIOUSLY his machine costs one fifth of the SELLING price of a commercial unit... Because the commercial unit doesn't cost the selling price to make either.

Why would anyone care? The MIT especially could easily do the same, better probably, and the DoD could as well but the point is the DoD is not in the manufacturing business, is it? And it doesn't want to be and if they had this dude manufacture his drone for them, well, guess what, he'd have to raise the price to five times as well because then he'd have to warranty the damn thing.

Usability is completely no longer a concern to anyone. That's the issue. It must look "good" and by that I mean corporate modern.

The more options you only see when you mouse over, the better.

The thing is many a beloved Hollywood personality has caught a whiff of the Hollywood illness in the past.

I've been disappointed often enough.

My approach is wait and see if the Critical Drinker feels like vomitting after the movie or not.

I'm not sure he'll find a company to finance and distribute a parody of the current Zeitgeist.

A parody of bad writing itself won't be all that riveting, I fear.

...who is looking forward to this: Chapeau! I'd love to have your optimism!

Do I sense some pent-up anger there? :D

Thanks for spelling out the already implied joke.

Doesn't ambiguity usually mean a contract is interpreted by default in favor of the party that did not write it?