Telescopes in space are extremely expensive even if the launch itself were completely costless.
A decision of whether or not to destroy the dark night sky globally should be made at a societal level beforehand. Instead the path of maximum expected profit for a few people was taken instead of carefully considering the implications, alternatives, and mitigations.
It does not need to be a choice between having internet or seeing stars at night.
Also, telescopes on the ground can be made much bigger and more powerful than in space, so even if some satellite profits were somehow (magically?) directed toward space telescopes, losing the night sky would be bad for science.
At least it is a break from the endless stream of anti-LLM posts written by LLM with half the comments being serious replies and the other half fake-politely debating whether it was written by LLM.
Plus there is a bonus start-up opportunity to LLM-code an app that enables travelers to earn money while they wait in line at the airport.
Implicit in "this post looks like AI"—at least the vast majority of the time—is that it is a wordy ramble with no real value because it says nothing novel or substantive—so I would not call it an hominem attack, but rather an honest criticism of the actual (lack of) content.
I agree. Stability of a system is not so much about whether there is some mechanism or force that wants to push it away from equilibrium (because there probably is some such perturber outside of a perfectly controlled environment), but stability is more about whether there exists a stabilizing mechanism to bring the system back toward equilibrium after it starts to deviate.
It is difficult to know whether going faster is overall safer.
In my experience, some fraction of cars will pass a bicycle under any conditions, no matter what speed that bicycle is going (even if keeping up with traffic above the speed limit), no matter how dangerous it might be, no matter if the bicycle has "taken the lane" leaving no room to pass safely -- for some car drivers, it is about getting ahead of the bicycle.
For me, when someone promises to "drain the swamp", they reveal their ignorance and selfishness with their shallow anti-swamp ideology.
Swamps are rich ecosystems with incredible natural beauty and diversity. Draining a swamp is extraordinarily bad in general, even if good for wealthy property developers.
Ironically, it seems that "drain the swamp" turns out to be an apt metaphor for what Trump and that gang have been doing, as promised.
My guess is that the very rich can instead figure out a way to avoid it mostly, but I like the idea of taxing ridiculously high wealth, even if it is difficult.
However, a tax an unrealized gains would seem to greatly reduce or maybe kill the chance for the poor or middle class to use investments to save enough to retire early. That seems very unfair. I do not understand why such a tax should apply to anyone not well into the upper middle class range of wealth.
And trying to make clever calculated bets on individual stocks now has risk of having to sell everything and still not having enough to pay the taxes, if they were assessed during a temporary spike in price. Even holding an index fund during a market crash could mean ending up with nothing because of the tax on fictional gains.
That seems like sarcasm because it is an overused excuse that republicans give for the bad usa economies under republican presidents.
I never once heard a reasonable explanation why policies only start to have an effect at the end of a year that is divisible by 4 or 8. It makes no sense if you think it through.
That is an extremely cynical view, and it does not fit with reality.
There is no mechanism where little Timmy gets a free ticket to be a university professor in science.
People who manage to make a career in science usually follow a specific educational path that includes a phd and postdoctoral research. No one would claim it is completely fair because there are many things that can block or hide that path (family situation; life events; lack of encouragement from teachers; being born in the wrong country; etc.). However, the system does not otherwise care about your background in any meaningful way.
You should consider the dark implications that you may be pushing misinformation that could discourage people who are gifted or intellectually curious and motivated from trying to improve the world by doing science.
"worthy position" could only mean a relatively senior position, so the scientist would have already demonstrated success via publications, and having friends would of course be expected and required in a collaborative line of work. But hiring at that level would be done by a committee, not simply by a personal friend. If that is "nepo", then the term is meaningless.
But that really has nothing to do with the original gripe about "day zero", which would generally mean getting into a masters or phd program, or perhaps an undergrad research project, where grades and standardized test scores get someone in the door -- social skills sufficient to hold a brief conversation about a science topic would be a nice bonus, but not really necessary.
I am no expert, and I am not sure what is meant by "nepo", but that seems like a
wild mischaracterization or exaggeration.
Is there evidence?
It seems obvious that parents can increase or decrease the odds of someone starting a career in an "elite" field requiring advanced education like "Science", but I interpret your comment as suggesting that most scientists got their job by means of daddy donating to a university or some other silly fantasy.
Some investments seem to be specifically crafted to attract people who do not understand X, where X is physics, or economics, biology, math, etc. And then giving in to greed and gambling is more fun than consulting an expert.
I wonder how many of these apparent start-up scams turned out to have genuine value.
I am not able to travel to work or anywhere else without seeing ads, which manipulate my thoughts in unpleasant and often offensive ways. If samsung and similar companies achieve their goal, screens with ads will become more numerous and impossible to avoid, even at home.
These and other types of "unskippable ads" violate my personal freedoms and should rejected by society.
netflix and youtube are cute examples of paying to get fewer ads, but you do not get very far without finding product placements or other types of ads in their videos.
Freedom from ads seems like a fundamental human right, and necessary for freedom of thought. "Unskippable" ads seem incompatible with freedom of thought.
> "Users should have choice & control."
Given that people currently are not able to choose to be free from advertisements in any practical way, even if abstaining from luxuries, some sort of severe regulation seems necessary.
A decision of whether or not to destroy the dark night sky globally should be made at a societal level beforehand. Instead the path of maximum expected profit for a few people was taken instead of carefully considering the implications, alternatives, and mitigations.