"Speaking as a Black man from America, which is a racist society, no matter how much you hear it talk about democracy, it's as racist as South Africa or as racist as Portugal, or as racist as any other racialist society on this earth. The only difference between it and South-Africa: South-Africa preaches separation and practices separation; America preaches integration and practices segregation. This is the only difference. They don't practice what they preach, whereas South-Africa preaches and practices the same thing. I have more respect for a man who lets me know where he stands, even if he's wrong, than the one who comes up like an angel and is nothing but a devil"

- Malcolm X

With Churchill I suppose people knew how he felt about them.

I think if anything is clear from all this is that freedom of speech and a free press is of vital importance for accurate and useful information that concerns the welfare of our entire species.

First, the Telegraph doesn't have an speech, but incoherent ramblings. The Telegraph it's a tabloid.

In this case they are straight-forwardly reporting on an investigation by the Times, so trashing the source doesn't seem relevant or necessary.

It has no sense to use virii as weapons. Everyone could be infected, your own army too. Even with a vaccine, the outcome can change with unexpected ways.

I happen to agree, but that doesn't stop billions being spent on biodefense / biowarfare.

The lines can get a bit blurry because a lot of that type of research is "dual use".

Marriage isn't a good contract to enter into unless you're both going to stick it out (or there's a good life insurance policy).

Also from a purely fitness perspective, if you're male and want an opposite sex partner, be liberal. Vice versa.

> Also from a purely fitness perspective, if you're male and want an opposite sex partner, be liberal. Vice versa.

Uhhhh.......anecdotally my mostly male friend group is rapidly approaching our 30s and exactly 1 of us is married, and it isn't one of the liberal ones.

The more liberal ones are having more sex, probably even more than the guy with 2 kids, but I also know for several of them the long term goal is to actually raise a family, and it isn't clear their politics has done them any favors on that end.

At the end of the day though, I don't see any of them becoming good church going boys just to find a good church going girl to have kids with. That's a thing my dad did in the 70s that lead to me, but I'm not convinced it made anyone involved in the process particularly happy. I'm also an aesexual though so maybe I just don't have the genetic desperation everyone else has to draw context from.

"Margaret Wertheim, reviewing that book in The Los Angeles Times, called it “lucid and poetic.

In this time of sectarian wars, when theists and atheists are engaged in increasingly hostile incivilities,” she wrote'

Does that mean there's groups of atheist and theists actively trying to slaughter one another?

Only using words, I expect. For example Dennis Rawlins often addressed Owen Gingerich in his publications... eg http://www.dioi.org/sca.htm

Yeah this is something I think about & was going to ask about.

Visited LA during the pandemic so bus rides were free.

Getting around LA via busses and rail was incredibly smooth and affordable.

The stench of shit in the subway car though was off putting and I have to presume as long as people can afford to avoid that they will.

That said, paying people to keep these things cleaned would supply people with a potentially life long employment by a city (so receiving public retirement plans) which ought to be a net benefit for the city as a whole.

You realize the Sunshade is science fiction, right?

Picking two examples from the Wikipedia article you linked, the Fresnel lens is a proposed object that would float in space between the Earth and Sun, approximately 1000 km wide and only a few mm thick. The article notes "at a science fiction convention in 2004, Benford estimated that it would cost about US$10 billion up front, and another $10 billion in supportive cost during its lifespan." Lol. This idea is pretty hilarious, just in general. A lens so wide as to span the entire US state of South Dakota. Please explain how you'll launch and/or assemble that at the L1 point. (This was a subplot of a Simpsons Episode by the way: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Shot_Mr._Burns%3F#Part_One)

Or there's the "Lightweight solution", "a distributed sunshade with a mass on the order of 100000 tons, composed of ultra-thin polymeric films and SiO2 nanotubes", which "estimates that launching such mass would require 399 yearly launches of a vehicle such as SpaceX Starship for 10 years." Also lol!

Plenty of people are happy to say we should do this or do that.

When it comes time to vote though people tend to go with the person telling them they'll have more.

Not necessarily, it can also be the person telling them that others will have less.

" At the same time, cities should develop bike stations and tramways for people to move around quickly in car-free areas, paid for by gas taxes, which should be raised, and road tolls, which should also be raised."

Huh? If no one is driving who is paying gas taxes? Road tolls everywhere?

If no one is driving, we can take the unbelievable amount of public spending currently going into subsidizing automobile traffic and redirect it to fund public transit.

I don't have a problem with doing that. Of course how you get public transportation into rural communities is a bigger challenge but we don't have to have society be based around the car.

My issue is that the previous post said they would pay for public transportation and walkable carless cities through increase gas taxes and road tolls.

An increase in gas taxes and road tolls would make people drive less, requiring less road maintenance, traffic policing, etc, and allow buses to move more efficiently, freeing up funding that can then go into improving transit.

If your over all take home is lowering though eventually you don't have money to repair the sidewalks and the bike racks and so forth because no one is driving anymore to pay for it.

Or you raise the cost to ride public transportation or pay for those things from somewhere else (like property taxes).

You seem to think the government makes money when someone drives a mile, but in fact it loses money — significantly more than if that person had taken transit instead.

The fewer miles people drive, the more money the government has available for other things.

> The fewer miles people drive, the more money the government has available for other things.

Yes if everything else is kept the same. People's income. Business profits. Etc.

However you're overlooking the point spending on transportation infrastructure which is to get resources from one location to another.

People drive to work where their income is taxed. Businesses have things delivered to them to sell and have ways to get customers to them. So now the business is paying taxes. And people use that income they earned to pay for rent or own a home so there's property taxes.

Now let's just remove the way people get about to doing all those things because that would save the government money from spending money on transportation.

Oh great no one is going in to work. No one is going to business or shop. No one is paying taxes. But hey we saved a bunch of money by not building roads.

Please read that I am not opposed to changing our society to be less car dependent (obviously for the environment it is better)

I am objecting to the notion that you can pay for a carless society by just not paying for roads or by imposing taxes on cars more without raising taxes or fees elsewhere.

> Now let's just remove the way people get about to doing all those things

No, congestion pricing removes the obstacles slowing people down from doing all those things. Take for instance a plumber who still has to drive around. Yes, they have to pay the congestion charge, but they also spend way less time stuck in traffic and can probably bill an extra job or two that day. Same for UPS drivers, etc.

> No one is going to business or shop.

Actually, studies from all over the world consistently show that when you make driving less attractive, it's a net positive for merchants: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-03-13/every-stu...

It’s paying for infrastructure through cost reduction.

> Now let's just remove the way people get about to doing all those things because that would save the government money from spending money on transportation.

People will still drive, just not in downtown areas.

If you raise the price of driving higher the the number of drivers lower. Will the increase revenue from the pricehike overshoot the loss in revenue from less drivers on the road?

You've also effectively eliminated owning a car in the city. So now you're asking rural residents to pay for more expensive gas and more expensive toll roads while giving all that money to people living in the city.

I have a feeling politically that would be rather unpopular.

There's not a single state in the country where tolls and taxes pay for all road upkeep expenses. There's not a single state in the country that raises taxes and tolls automatically when revenue drops.

Very few people drive in the NYC area anyway. I think 30% of people? It's not a big deal.

But we want to pay for tramways and bike stations and our nice carless city through raising taxes on automobile transportation (which just plummeted because of above policies).

I have noticed an increasing trend for articles with an enticing title fail to set-up the premise of the title within the first few paragraphs, then continue to ramble on seemingly forever without ever attempting to form a cohesive concise narrative leaving me scrolling for where it connects with the title and lost to what they're actually trying to say.

Here's a video on some related stone structures and mathematical properties found with some of them:

https://youtu.be/TznzPjLRtYg