I mean we can start by gesturing at the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, heck England and France had a 100 years war, that was just one of their wars.
And I don't remember the US starting either WW1 or WW2 in fact if I remember that was the Germans and the French and the Russians and the English again.
I mean then you've got the Muslim conquests which do the match the description you're giving the US.
In fact theres only been a brief period of time from near the end of the Cold War till recently where every state wasn't preparing to engage in or having recently prosecuted a war, and there's considerable evidence that Europe didn't have to do that because the US was carrying all of NATO on its back.
So what is unique about the US right now apart from the fact that Pax Americana facilitated the most peaceful period in human history even considering the few wars that were fought?
Because of the large quantities my family with 4 children is able to go to Costco once a month and purchase almost everything our family will need for the entire month this means we only need to go to the store one or two additional times during the month for things like milk and bread.
Saying that everyone eating there is indulging in overconsumption is a ridiculous overgeneralization. Not to mention people that are planning parties, bbqs, get togethers etc. Just because you can't think of any reason for people to need large portion sizes besides overconsumption does not mean others are so limited in their imagination.
> Out govt system literally doesnt have the political will to do these brutal but effective policy changes
I agree our country needs to really have some sort of revolution for the good of all humanity to force this change and overcome the entrenched interests of these greedy corporations.
Maybe we come up with a plan to drastically solve our energy and industry problems, overcome all obstacles and bring about a wonderful utopia, I bet we could do it inside of 5 years if we just gave enough power to the right people.
We could call it a 5 year plan, and listen we need broad sweeping powers to do it, otherwise malicious actors would try and subvert it. Some people wouldn't like it but that's because they aren't brave enough to do what needs to be done for the good of the workers and the proletariat. Rise up comrade let us implement the glorious 5 year plan that will free us forever from the capitalist shackles.
I hate this analogy because it isn't true. This isn't like a clerk checking your age before you buy booze this is like a clerk taking a photocopy of your ID and a list of everything you bought and then storing those records forever every time you buy alcohol.
You would be correct there are no "banned books" in America.
When people say "banned book" they mean that a certain level of government such as a school board or municipality has "banned" them from being in a public (often school) library.
But the headline "In [state I disagree with] they are banning books that have [ideas I agree with]" makes a lot more headlines and clicks.
Then people run with the phrase "banned books" to make things sound worse than they are.
Counterpoint the principles of building a nuclear device aren't that complicated, we figured it out based on work doing in the early 1900's without computers.
It turns out the hard part of building a nuclear bomb is actually getting the resources and real world stuff to build it, even a nation state actor with tons of oil i.e. Iran, has struggled to build a nuclear weapon. It turns out the problem isn't the know how it's getting highly enriched uranium and running massive centrifuges.
I mean sure knowledge is important, but there is a real world out there that also gets in the way of a lot of the more harebrained schemes.
What I'm much more worried about is massive corporations along with the government deciding what you can and can't do and what knowledge should and should not be shared and only allowing access to highly capable models by large vetted organizations while the common people are stuck with safety scissor versions of these things because "what if someone does something dangerous?"
By which they mean dangerous to the powers that be. Remember having the Bible in the common tongue was dangerous and led to multiple wars and much death, but I don't think anyone would say that it was morally correct for the Catholic Church to gatekeep who could read it.
I recently moved from the inter-mountain West to the east and that is one thing that is fascinating to me is how differently the term park is used between the 2.
Out west a couple of swing sets and a slide with a small patch of grass is considered a park whereas out east a park is multi acre wilderness with trees streams and miles of trails.
It's just funny to me how even though it's the same country it's 2 totally different things meant by the word "park"
Anyone else notice that the first/near top comment on every HackerNews post lately is someone saying something along the lines of
"I had X problem so I went and started working on Y solution if you want to give it a look?"
I don't want to delve into it any further - but something about it seems incongruous. It's not spam it's submarine marketing.
In my early days of technology tinkering when I was young I was always interested in security, and one day I stumbled upon freenet, and my world changed.
It was amazing and led me to get far more acquainted with the cyberpunk scene. It was this alternative separate internet from what the rest of the world saw with all of the good and bad that brought.
I've been meaning to set it up again and get back into it. I will say for everyone pining for the Internet of yesteryear freenet is it. Go and explore it it is everything the 90's Internet was like, super slow, crazy unhinged nerds all over the place random collections of links, crazy.
Thanks for all you've done Ian
Edit:
Btw what is the best way to support the project and get involved?
Not that I disagree but it also incentives attackers to steal and resell data to other nefarious actors.
After all a lot of the data companies have isn't their own, it's their customers. They are the ones who suffer because businesses don't bother securing their crap.
It doesn't matter the anti-children systmes have been put in place to be bypassed. The they can point to how it is being bypassed and say "see we need stricter laws and controls" the end game is complete surveillance and control.
Some people are legitimately concerned about the children. Just like there were students genuinely concerned about wealthy inequality in czarist Russia.
I don't understand your point. The banks and credit card companies are already responsible. If I have a fraudulent charge I call and tell them it's fraudulent and they say okay and take it off and either getit back from the issuer or eat the difference.
Increased work and fuel means increased costs, increased costs means increased prices, increased prices means less food available for purchase by those on the margins, less food means starvation.
I've always felt this is an absurd statement. Yes customers are paying the wages of the people working at the store, that's literally how basic exchange of goods and services has worked forever.
Like what is the alternative? Businesses sell things they sell those things for more than they make and then they use that money to pay people to work for them. People agree to work for them expecting they will be paid primarily from the money made by the business saling things to customers.
Like what is the alternative businesses pay their employees from some magic pool of money that you get the key too when you file articles of incorporation?
At the end of the day the customer is always paying the wages of the employees, that's literally how it worked since ever. Which is honestly an improvement where the local lord would take 30% of whatever you grew and in exchange would give you diddly and squat.
I mean we can start by gesturing at the Roman Empire, the Holy Roman Empire, heck England and France had a 100 years war, that was just one of their wars.
And I don't remember the US starting either WW1 or WW2 in fact if I remember that was the Germans and the French and the Russians and the English again.
I mean then you've got the Muslim conquests which do the match the description you're giving the US.
In fact theres only been a brief period of time from near the end of the Cold War till recently where every state wasn't preparing to engage in or having recently prosecuted a war, and there's considerable evidence that Europe didn't have to do that because the US was carrying all of NATO on its back.
So what is unique about the US right now apart from the fact that Pax Americana facilitated the most peaceful period in human history even considering the few wars that were fought?