Maybe all these whacked-out trans-humanist brogligarchs have known this for a while, figure it's going to kill humanity as we know it, and decided that the future of the human race lies in silicon and steel with maybe a few token 'meat' parts.

Wow - I have so much to say about such a short post:

How did the unions prevent the firms from innovating? What constitutes "paid too much"? Should they have paid the workers the same amount as was paid to workers in poorer countries who worked much longer weeks for less pay? Shouldn't the executives, owners, and investors then have taken a similar haircut? Why is it that when cheaper goods from shit-hole countries enter the picture, it's only the workers who are expected to lose their jobs? You talk about resisting "the market". But there are two sets of "markets" - one for people who range from poor to upper middle class, and another for those who are rich. The latter is largely a parasite on the former.

So you're fine with buying cheap products from poorer countries, but not fine with allowing some of those hard working people from poorer countries in to shore up your economy? Immigrants sometimes do work that US-born Americans have shown a literal inability to do. Not to mention demographic collapse. When you're in a nursing home, would you rather your ass be wiped by a robot, or by a human who just happens to have been born in a different country? Would you rather the physical jobs such as construction and picking crops get done, or not done? You can probably forget about non-immigrants doing those jobs, because there will be too few young ones to fill those roles.

As for AI, it primarily benefits the brogligarchs who, if they have their way, will return us to feudalism. So the threat posed by that is that it's literally the cornerstone of a return to medieval serfdom, with - or not with, as our overlords choose - a few modern conveniences to blunt the impact a bit.

Again regarding AI, virtually everybody contributed - and continues to contribute - in some vital way to its development. Food, housing, infrastructure, material to train AI on - all of these came from regular citizens, not the point-one-percenters. So why should it be that the job losses AI causes are among the poor and the middle class, but not in the parasite class?

Give your head a shake - the people at the top of the food chain are not your friends. Buying into their BS that the unions are the problem and the immigrants are the problem and there's no more work ethic among the people, just feeds and justifies their "might makes right" approach to subjugating us all.

Please tell me that you're at least not in favour of for-profit medicine as it's currently set up in the USA. I despair over the lack of brainpower of someone who thinks an unnecessary, useless stack of rich parasites standing in the middle between patients and medical professionals can be anything but a wasteful, deadly disaster.

/rant

I wasn't advocating "abandoning nuclear power", and although I have my reservations about it, I also believe that it might be necessary in order for us to save our sorry asses. You're famous for advocating nukes so I felt a need to advert to that, but I also didn't want to get into litigating that subject in this thread.

Now that you mention it though, I find it very interesting that the word "nuclear" didn't appear once in the post to which I first responded. It strikes me that you were being a little disingenuous - or at least non-forthcoming - by not mentioning it in that earlier post.

How about AIPAC? PAC payments don't have to be under the table in order to be 'dark'.

Israel is paying many American politicians and influencers lots of money to soft-peddle Israel's actions and to deny that what's happening in Gaza is a genocide. Israel lets these people know in no uncertain terms that they have to say certain things and vote in certain ways if they want the gravy train to keep rolling.

It's not clear to me that the process under discussion supports your claim. Any planet-saving activity that starts out with hydrocarbons which we burn, can ONLY work if we find a way to cheaply extract CO2 in huge volumes from the atmosphere. And by definition, the energy to power that process would have to come from low-carbon renewable sources such as solar and wind.

So the "battery-electric power" you sneered at is a sine qua non for the "carbon neutral fuel" you thirst for. Unless, that is, we go nuclear on the problem. That's a whole 'nother discussion, and one which you've already had countless times. Assuming for the moment that nuclear energy is off the table, can you describe a credible scenario in which we might - within two decades or so - achieve large-scale carbon sequestration? Because absent that possibility, 'synthesizing hydrocarbons for the good of the planet' sounds a lot like 'fucking for virginity'.

Thanks. I do wish the article had made it clear that polyolefins include polyethylene and polypropylene, which as I understand it make up the bulk of plastic waste. Ya know, for those of us who aren't organic chemists.

It sounds as though reliably removing PVC from the waste stream makes recycling the rest of the plastics a lot easier and cheaper.

It's more secure for THEM, because they automatically have your data and can make use of it as they wish. They don't care about YOUR security - they only care about appearing to care about it. And even that seems to be the case less and less as time goes by.

Now picture an average non-technical user - who simply needs to not have all his or her shit pwned by Microsoft - doing everything you described. Can't imagine that? Thought so.

You really believe that? Of Microsoft? Might I interest you in purchasing a gently-used bridge in a major metropolitan area? It's a great opportunity, I swear!

By the same token, just being Russian doesn't mean anything really.

I read just the title of the summary and, honest-to-god, the first word that popped into my head was "China".

I'm half-expecting to be modded 'Flamebait' for this, but that was truly not my intention.

Hear hear! I find that jargon is often used to hide ignorance and/or insecurity. I'd rather see the ignorance / insecurity; I both show and acknowledge my own ignorance and insecurity all the time. That way they can be corrected or have allowances made for them, instead of having them undermine or sabotage something that may be important.

Am I the only one who immediately thinks of "waterboarding" when hearing the word "onboarding"?