At one time > 90% of humanity was employed in agricultural (in most cases unfree agricultural labor -- serfs or outright slaves), and the work was all done by hand (maybe with an ox or horse to plow, if you were lucky).

Now less than 0.2% (.002) of Americans are employed as agricultural labor, and a similar proportion in most other First World countries.

Somehow we don't have 90% unemployment, though.

Your thesis has been proven wrong time and time again, from the invention of agriculture, through the industrial and computer revolutions, right up until the present day.

> The one unit is claimed to have a 5 year life.

Five years is the interval between refuelings, not the total lifespan of the reactor.

I don't know if it can be refueled in situ, or whether you ship the whole thing back to the factory. Not a big deal either way, if their claims of fitting on a standard semi trailer and being up and running on a new site within 24 hours are true.

Really? I could have sworn that Saddam Hussein was removed from power and executed.

No one died, dude. Even after the earthquake, tsunami, and control systems fire, NO. ONE. DIED.

Just how safe do you think things need to be?

Yes.

1) Magnitude 9 earthquake
2) Followed by massive tsunami
3) Followed by devastating fire resulting in loss of ALL control systems
4) No one died. Repeat: no one died.

It's hard to see how anything could be safer than that. Imagine a similar scenario occurring at (say) the Three Gorges Dam in China...shudder.

Nuclear power has been operating in the United States for 70 years without one fatality to a member of the general public. Zero. A few plant workers have been killed (generally by non-nuclear causes, such as falls, electrocution, or steam burns) but even if you take them into account, nuclear has a better safety record than ANY other power source, including solar and wind (people fall off roofs and towers, yo).

The people who wrote the headline (and the article) are clueless. That's quite common when general-readership newspapers "report" on scientific stuff.

If you read the actual direct quotes in the article (rather than the reporter's clueless interpretation thereof), it's clear that the research is targeted toward removing disease-carrying mosquitoes, not all mosquitoes.

First of all, there are over 3,000 species of mosquito, only a few of which carry human diseases. No one is talking about eliminating every mosquito species.

Secondly, the Aedes egypti and Anopheles gambiae mosquitos (the most common carriers of yellow fever and malaria respectively) are both native to Africa. They're invasive species in most other places (introduced by humans).

There shouldn't be any negative consequences from removing them from non-native locations -- in fact, it should reduce competition for the native mosquito species.

> We really need to STOP comparing this revolution to any other in history. Because it is like no other.

Nonsense. At one point, 90+% of us were stoop-labor agricultural peasants, typically unfree (serfs or outright slaves). Now fewer than 5% work on farm, and the ones who do are typical riding in air-conditioned combines with GPS steering and an Internet connection rather than hoeing a bean field by hand. Yet somehow we don't have 85% unemployment. Weird, huh?

The only way in which this revolution is "like no other" is that it's targeting the chattering class rather than the proles, so of course the chattering class is chattering.

The median teacher salary in the United States is $63,000 (for nine months of work, equivalent to $84,000 for twelve months).

Annual welfare payments range from $36,400 (Hawaii) to $11,500 (Mississippi).

Compared to poor students, teachers are indeed rich.

I'm not sure that I would take it just for weight loss, but the anti-diabetic effects have been a godsend for me.

In my case, Ozempic has taken me from needing to inject insulin constantly to not needing insulin at all. Those who've never had to do this have no idea what a pain in the ass* it is. It's not just the injections, it's carrying the paraphernalia -- insulin (making sure it never gets overheated), needles, blood glucose meter and lancets, alcohol pads, emergency meds in case your blood sugar goes TOO low -- with you ALL THE TIME, going through extra TSA crap, and a host of other annoyances.

Avoiding that is more than enough for me to take the risk of getting earlobe cancer (or whatever) 30 years down the line.

* technically, a pain in the stomach :-)

> You add the rebar after you print and epoxy it to walls.

I've been following 3D-printed buildings for probably a decade now, and I've never seen one that has rebar added after you print and "epoxied to walls". I've seen some work where the rebar has been given an epoxy coating to increase adhesion to mortar, but that's not the same as using the epoxy as a direct binding agent. The epoxy-coated rebar is placed in the wall cavity and embedded in mortar in exactly the same way as it is in normal concrete block construction.

Do you have a reference for this being a standard method?

> you don't really save any money compared to just putting some traditional forms up

Putting up traditional forms and tearing them down is not free. A 3D printed wall doesn't need any forms.

> I suppose it's a matter of taste...but UGH!

Compared to the strip-mall blandness of a typical Starbucks?

I wasn't aware that Starbucks stores were known for their Pritzker-level architecture. :-)

You do know that many of us were actually here for this?

There was absolutely ridicule of people suggesting ANY lab leak theory, regardless of its mechanism.

Stop trying to gaslight people.

> Lab leaks, on the other hand, has never previously been seen as the source of epidemics.

I'm sorry, but that is patent nonsense.

Lab leaks leading to fatalities have occurred MANY times in the past.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

I suppose you might quibble about how many cases it takes to qualify as an "epidemic", but that's just what it is: quibbling.

There was the same hysteria about writing, when it comes to that.

"O most ingenious Theuth, the parent or inventor of an art is not always the best judge of the utility or inutility of his own inventions to the users of them. And in this instance, you who are the father of letters, from a paternal love of your own children have been led to attribute to them a quality which they cannot have; for this discovery of yours will create forgetfulness in the learners' souls, because they will not use their memories; they will trust to the external written characters and not remember of themselves."

-- The Phaedrus, by Plato, circa 370 BC