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Comment Re:A city at 7000 ft elevation but sinking (Score 1) 25

The problem isn't the population. Bedrock can handle more than that. London isn't sinking because of all the people (and London is huge!), it's sinking because the ice sheet that pressed the Highlands deep into the crust has been gone for the last 10,000 years, resulting in the entire island tilting back to where it naturally should be. You could move London's population into the Great Glen and it would not make the slightest difference - London would still be sinking. The ice sheets were a whole lot heavier than a few tens of millions of people.

(Ok, it would make a difference. If the rich people actually lived in Scotland, the transit system and public services would see a thousand percent improvement inside a week. If they were also forced to speak Gaelic, English would vanish in a month.)

Comment Re: Incredible Foolishness (Score 1) 25

Every place? Fascinating.

There are towns in England and Wales that have been occupied for the past 10,000 years. Manchester isn't the greatest place on Earth, but I'm really not convinced it's going to start sinking into the ground any time in the next thousand years. If "short term" is longer than the remaining lifespan of the human race, I am not convinced "short" is really the right word.

"Short term" is only meaningful if it's shorter than the time needed to take meaningful remedial action, and the time it would take to remediate the problem in Mexico City vastly exceeds the time it will take for the city to crumble into oblivion.

The sun will not explode in 4 billion years. It's far too small. It might well run out of hydrogen by then, but that will simply cause it to swell. If, in four billion years, we can't find a way to drift the Earth outwards to remain within the goldilocks zone, then we're a failure as a species. Of course, we might well have built a Dyson Ring by then. Although, to be honest, if we were going to do that, we'd want to find a gas cloud that was about to form a stellar nursary and head there. If we arrive as the proto star fires up, we've maximum resources in the easiest possible form (a dust cloud, so no mining needed and minimal processing required), can build the Dyson Ring or Dyson Sphere by the time the star really gets going, and have another ten to fifteen billion years.

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Journal Journal: Spitfire is up for sale

https://vintageaviationnews.com/warbirds-news/griffon-powered-supermarine-spitfire-mk-xix-listed-for-sale-by-boschung-global.html

This would be a great way to avoid the rush-hour traffic, although I can see that there might be complaints it takes too many parking spaces.

Comment Re: scares me too much ill never do that (Score 1, Insightful) 75

Please remember the APA voted to torture and destroy the minds of people who wore Casio watches, and assisted in that torture program. (All anyone needed to be arrested under the bounty program was to be in a suspicious area or to have a highly accurate clock or watch. No actual evidence of wrongdoing was required.)

Many practitioners had absolutely no problems with abusing their knowledge and ability, not against actual terrorists or even people from the same nation as the terrorists, but against easy targets. The banality of evil, demonstrated to a high degree.

If an organisation can commit acts of utter depravity and evil on whim, then a whim is all that is needed.

This doesn't mean it will happen, but the APA has shown no obvious signs of maturity or rationality, only excuses. And that's not a good position to be in, when the head of state has licensed ICE to gun down people without cause and has promoted the wellbeing of diseases like measles over that of the citizens.

I don't believe forcible injections are likely, but I'm also not going to say that psychiatrists have been earning trust these past 26 years. Personally, I think forcible injections won't happen, but not because psychiatrists have discovered ethics. Rather, because it just isn't practical.

Comment Re: scares me too much ill never do that (Score -1) 75

Psychotherapy is unusual in that regard and they have a long history of doing exactly that. Particularly in the US. A very large chunk of what is known about psychoactive drugs come from American government programs where patients were injected without consent with a range of substances. A lot of their biological warfare research in the 60s and 70s, possibly into the 80s, was also done that way, allowing patients to die slowly from a range of diseases.

Nor has this completely stopped. The Gitmo "enhanced interrogation" program of the early 2000s involved not just torture but also involuntary substance abuse.

The use of fake vaccination programs by the US military (and the unauthorised use of Red Cross markings on vehicles by the same) is a significant factor in current world paranoia.

To be honest, it is not surprising that so many are paranoid about medicine - they voted for, and actively encouraged, such abuse when it was people they resented who suffered. And with so many in the APA voting to abuse their medical training under Bush II, it's hardly surprising that there's a feeling that such things can now be used on everyone else, too.

Comment Re:Not sure what to think about this (Score 1) 170

That's what Japan is doing. It isn't working well. The main reason is that the people with decision making power in this scenario are all elders, meaning they share a pro-stagnation sociological profile. Fear of changes, basically. But changes keep happening regardless, which fragilizes the whole thing.

Comment A shame. (Score 5, Interesting) 30

Ask Jeeves had real potential in the AI era -- a character you could actually recognise, which could be moulded to fit the character from the books (the training material is more than adequate for a persona). Current AI chatbots used for searches have either no real personality or a very simplistic sycophant one. A detailed persona that could keep people engaged and interested without talking them into paranoia or suicide would likely have gone down well.

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