People are pretty divided and strongly set in their beliefs. Most of the things that come out of Trumps mouth mean I’ll vote for a shrubbery if it is the only other choice

… but I do also think Biden has done a pretty good job and would like to see more of the same, with a hop to the left

Bernie? The only potential candidate even older than the two in contention?

That’s the perfect! That’s why we nominate someone of Bidens age. Not only can he get away with it now as an “official act” but by the time the next court rules on it, he’ll be long gone

He doesn’t even have to shoot anyone. Whoever interferes with an official act is clearly committing treason and can be sent to Gulag

I can see Saturday Night Live doing an election special - I want to see a Clinton look alike get raucously drunk in celebration, yelling “ Hey Donald, grab this, ya pussy!”

Ah yes, I’m center right as well. Join me brother to move Biden left to where we are

From Apple Maps, it looks like it’s on a mostly undeveloped island, with the nearest town, Cape Canaveral, over ten miles away. I can’t tell how far away Orlando is, but much further.

Compared to this Chinese test site, it looks like population centers are 5x - 10x farther, plus you have an entire ocean to blow stuff up

Yet those don’t have cities right next to the blast zone

Yeah, it was crazy how close a city was - one of the things Scot Manley went over

Definitely agree with your points but maybe “dilutes”. Isn’t the right term. I don’t think they’re worried about their culture being “watered down” or “thinner”, but replaced.

I had a recent conversation with my brother that fits here. We grew up the same, but he became more conservative and moved to a conservative area, or maybe I became more liberal and moved to a liberal area. I’ve been exploring cooking, and actually this has been several conversations where I’m excited over learning about preparing a different cuisine, being able to appreciate what that brings, and he responds with “why can’t you make regular American food?” “Diluting” the cuisine we grew up with would be to use salsa instead of ketchup or mayo. But I have entire meals replaced with new and different. I have a much bigger spice cupboard full of new and different. I make meals that he doesn’t understand, doesn’t know how to prepare, so he gets defensive about what he is comfortable with being replaced

The problem is that birthdate is dropping even faster in those countries. An even bigger “problem” is that in general life is getting better, even in developing countries. There is no infinite supply of immigrants waiting to save the developed world.

Encouraging immigration is far from a panacea. It will work for a few countries, for another generation or so, but you can see the end of that coming

I’m pretty thick skinned

The generally acceptable response is “I’m just big boned”

Good write up! My version was much snarkier.

But other factors include

• not every country can encourage significant immigration
• even developing countries have a rapidly dropping birth rate

Some countries, maybe like Japan and South Korea, have low birth rates and a history of discouraging immigration. I’d argue it’s too late for them: you can’t suddenly develop and support a large wave of immigration, especially when most developing populations are doing better, most are seeing lower birth rates. They have a lot of work to do and little chance of succeeding

Other countries, notably China, have a rapidly declining birth and already see the impact, so are just going to discourage emigration. The supply of immigrants will quickly dry up (except refugees)

So for example, the US has a history of significant immigration. We’re already in the scenario of insufficient birth rate to sustain our population but sufficient immigration to keep growing. Maybe I don’t know enough about other countries or I’m falling to some sort of exceptionalism, but to me this boils down to why doesn’t US encourage immigration. We have the easy case: if we can’t figure it out, how can we expect anyone else to.

And every room has electromagnetic emitters blazing on the ceiling

Instead of being trained by Ras Al gul, he’d have been trained under both 4chan and qanon. Instead of working out his emotional demons by maiming henchmen, he’d be an incel shitposting. Instead of Alfred admonishing him to be careful, he admonish Bruce to go outside and socialize once in a while

Maybe, but it’s close to the price of their other electronics, while still be pingble to claim it’s a premium product compared to other consumer goggles

From Boston Harbor: “representation without taxation! Everyone drink tea!”

Robots are cool and all, but considering our (in a larger sense) children is literally the future of our civilization. The next generation is why it’s important to fix our mistakes, to leave things better than we found them, to open new opportunities and greater potential. Automation can enable that but is not a goal in itself, or is a short term goal for personal gain.

So yes, I’ll agree that we seem to have passed the healthy carrying capacity of the planet and should fix that. However I’ll strongly disagree that it would be a good thing to drop below the sustainability of current society, innovation, science, and I’ll strongly disagree it’s desirable to drop population fast enough to destabilize societies, economies, or to cause human suffering. That’s what we my be headed for. A few tweaks now, might help population level off and gradually decline without causing suffering, and hopefully level off at a healthy total.

Let’s fix our mistakes while still setting the next generation up for success, not give in to misery and root for disaster

Edit: if you read the Wikipedia article on degrowth, there’s surprisingly little focus on reducing population and it really isn’t a goal, although an important tool. Pretty much all of the precepts contradict sudden population declines or the aftereffects of that

Degrowth is coming. Birth rate is below replacement in essentially all developed countries and is steeply dropping in less developed ones as well. We’re on track for population to level off and start dropping in only a few decades, as current larger generations die off.

We just need to hope that “natural” depopulation isn’t too late for addressing climate change.

But I’d argue it’s likely to drop too steeply, further destabilizing societies. Think of it like climate change in the 1970’s: we can fix it now with minimal impact, or we could wait until it’s a crisis. We need to take steps now to make having more children a more attractive choice

• don’t cut back on planes, increase intercity train use
• don’t cut back on cars, create more walkability and transit
• dont cut back on meat, try this fantastic new meal that happens to not include meat, or fine: just one less day of red meat every week
• don’t try to avoid facism, stand on your constitutional rights (for us). There’s more to that doc than the second amendment