Thank you for that. It's a notable omission that the summary says, "Artemis II has broken the Apollo 13 record for the farthest distance humans have ever traveled from Earth. ... surpassing the Apollo 13 record of 248,655 miles set in 1970." But it never says just how far away they got, or by how much they exceeded the previous record. Seems like a weird omission, like saying someone broke the record for pole-vaulting and mentioning the previous record but not the new one.

Please cite your sources for these claims. I haven't been able to find any such treaties.

An impressive leap to a bizarre conclusion, but ultimately weak.

I believe what you're describing is called the Responsibility to Protect. There are at least three problems with asserting the Responsibility to Protect in this instance: first, "These existing international obligations require States to refrain from and take a number of actions to prevent and punish genocide, war crimes, ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity." None of these are present in Iran. (Arguably, the attacks by the US and Israel on Iran could be considered both war crimes and crimes against humanity.)

Second, while the Responsibility to Protect has been adopted "by all Heads of State and Government", it has never been operationalized: there are no rules defining when it applies or what exactly should be done when it applies. "... the Secretary-General’s 2005 report In Larger Freedom: towards development, security and human rights for all (A/59/2005) endorsed the principle that State sovereignty carried with it the obligation of the State to protect its own people, and that if the State was unwilling or unable to do so, the responsibility shifted to the international community to use diplomatic, humanitarian and other means to protect them. Neither report asserted a basis to use force for this purpose other than Security Council authorisation under Chapter VII of the Charter as a last resort, in the event of genocide and other serious international crimes. [emphasis added]

So were "diplomatic" and "humanitarian means" used in this case? Apparently not. Clearly there was no Security Council authorization for the US to attack Iran. There wasn't even authorization by the US Congress, never mind a declaration of war as required by the US Constitution.

Third, again: what about Israel, Gaza, and the West Bank? This is genocide, according to the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory, so the Responsibility to Protect would seem to apply. And what's being done there? Does the US have an obligation to bomb Israel to protect Gaza?

I question your evidence for some of those atrocities, but nonetheless, some points:

1. You're making an assumption that the US has not only the right and obligation to invade another country in order to stop atrocities, but that intervention would be effective. You're assuming that intervention by the US ensures success. Recent experience in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Libya strongly indicates the opposite. Those interventions made things much worse: hundreds of thousands of people killed and millions displaced from their homes, producing millions of refugees.

2. Moral principles must be universal to be respected. That is, if I assert that you have a moral obligation to do or not do something, that implies that I also have the same obligation. So if the US has a right or a duty to intervene in Iran to stop their government from doing evil (as decided by the US), then Iran has the same right and duty to intervene in the US, based on their judgment. Do you agree that Iran has a right to attack the US, invade, or try to overthrow the US government to stop some action which, in the estimation of the Iranian government, is immoral? To impose Islam, for exampe? Estimates of the number of people who die in the US every year because they lack health insurance vary between 26,000 (2006) and 68,000 (2020). Does Iran have a duty to correct that?

3. If the US has a responsibility to protect people in Iran from their own government, surely it has at least an equal resposibility to protect people in Gaza from the government of Israel. Instead, the US has facilitated violence in Gaza by providing funding and war materiel to Israel. So what's up with that? Is there really a responsibility to protect, or does that only apply to countries the US considers unfriendly?

Al Qaeda never promised not to attack the US. In fact, Osama bin-Laden explicitly stated his demands prior to the attacks. And yet people got very upset about it. Go figure.

It seems many people believe some kind of tribal moral philosophy, which says, "WE know WE are good, therefore anything WE do is good. And because WE are good, anyone who doesn't do what we tell them to do is EVIL, and anything THEY do is evil, and we must destroy them." That's my best guess, anyway. A few people, like Pete Hegseth, actually make this explicit.

Actually, it has already worked twice: once last July and again in February.

If I recall correctly, Japan made a sneak attack on the US Navy base at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii (a valid military target), on December 7, 1941, without a declaration of war. The US governmant and population seemed to consider this reprehensible and totally evil.

Yet when Trump does the same thing, suddenly it's okay.

One would think other countries would have learned that ere now. There are plenty of examples.

Let's stipulate that the current government of Iran is horrible and evil. Reportedly 30,000 people killed just for protesting against the government. Does that give the US -- or any other country -- a legal or moral right to attack Iran, or to try to overthrow their government, or to start a war? No, it doesn't. Not at all.

How many countries has the US invaded since, say, the year 2000? How many deaths have resulted? And how many countries has Iran invaded?

What's your evidence for this? Have you had many hours of long and deep interviews with Iranian leaders? Can you read minds? Can you list some innocent civilians outside Iran who have been killed by Iran?

Do they even lift?

The Man Who Folded Himself . Embarrassing to be rejected by yourself.

This was mentioned in one of Frederick Pohl's Heechee books. People with "Full Medical" can have all their failing organs replaced -- except the brain. The result is "a young, healthy, muscular body that trembles and drops things." There are a lot of conditions causing brain deterioration.

"... do you find this idea to be significantly more gruesome than harvesting organs from a dead body and using them in a different living person? .... I don't trust that they know what sentience is or how to gauge it"

Gauging sentience is a necessary prerequisite for harvesting organs for transplantation.

Basic epidemiology: when a vampire feeds on a person, that person also becomes a vampire, and vampires are immortal. So it won't be long before everyone's a vampire. Can vampires feed on each other? (According to Blade, there are second-level vampires who feed on other vampires.)

Oh, thank you doctor.

A key point almost never mentioned. Vernor Vinge touched on some of the negative aspects. The idea was also used in an episode of Stargate SG-1 where Colonel O'Neil was repeatedly tortured to death and then revived.

Is it a brainless clone?