leicsmac

The fundie nut job parts of it, certainly. It's been said before that it's odd that the Wahabists and the Scripture-thumping Southern fundies have such a dislike of each other seeing as they agree on quite a few things, especially their treatment of women. Guess it comes down to thinking only their brand of oppression should be the prevalent one?

That schism between parts of the "left" has existed pretty much as long as the "left" itself has. Even before the 1917 revolution there was violent discussion (shall we say) about how things should go revolution-wise.

There's decent reserves elsewhere than the Arctic, but yes. Avarice and utterly criminal short term thinking.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cpqyn58v0dxo It's crunch time. The US Vice President, JD Vance, is hosting the Danish and Greenlandic foreign ministers, as well as their US counterpart, Marco Rubio, in the White House on Wednesday. The focus of the talks: the future of the world's biggest island, Greenland. The whole idea of this being anything about "security" is laughable in the first instance, and the Danes and Greenland representatives should make that clear. Neither Russia nor China have the ability, and in China's case likely not the inclination, to control Greenland now or at any point in the near future. This is about ego, greed and avarice - for resources and for the legacy of a single man at the cost of a great many human lives, nothing more.

In other good news: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c62r56zzzq4o The first leukaemia patient to receive a breakthrough treatment since it was made available on the NHS has said it was "fantastic" and "very sci-fi". Oscar Murphy, 28, who has an aggressive form of the blood cancer, was given the "living drug", called CAR-T therapy, at Manchester Royal Infirmary. BBC News was present on 2 January when Oscar received the first of two infusions of his own immune cells, which had been genetically modified to recognise and target his cancer. NHS England has agreed to fund the immunotherapy at several centres across the country. About 50 NHS patients a year are likely to benefit from it. We're getting better and better at matching treatments to specific cancers. One day soon, we might even be able to say that we're defeating it more times than it defeats us.

Hopefully sooner rather than later!

More on this: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5y5p9rzd4ko . Not sure it's a trend they "want to broadcast" rather than one that well... just exists, in the same way as any other output of the laws of physics. Denial of such things isn't really helpful.

I said at the time that the only motive that made sense was that he knew the axe was coming down anyway in terms of corruption allegations (particularly against his wife) and it was a rather desperate last gamble that thankfully didn't pay off. I don't think they'll actually go for the DP for reasons suggested above, but I guess we'll find out soon enough.

The wonders of social media, that allow for incredible whoppers to be told with next to no accountability.

A bit of news from elsewhere: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cq6vyqq5r0do Prosecutors have asked for South Korea's former president Yoon Suk Yeol to be handed a death sentence if he is found guilty over his botched attempt to impose martial law. A court in Seoul heard closing arguments in Yoon's trial, in which he was accused of being the "ringleader of an insurrection". The charge stems from Yoon's attempt in December 2024 to impose military rule in South Korea - an act that lasted just hours but plunged the country into political turmoil. He was later impeached by parliament and detained to face trial. Yoon has denied the charges against him, arguing that martial law was a symbolic gesture to draw public attention to the wrongdoings of the opposition party. The prosecution team not messing around here then, but if I know the game I'm pretty sure this is mostly for intimidation rather than actual follow-through. There will be a deal met and he'll get life, and probably get released in some kind of horsetrade a way down the line.

The big question is what kind of international intervention would actually be effective without causing even more dreadful problems for the Iranian people? Answers on a postcard there.

With respect to the population discussion earlier, I'm sure that those with a sociopathic view towards the future have at least had the idea of ridding it of a great many people to further enhance their own power. The tech advances in AI and the like are no doubt viewed by some as a way to replace people. Won't work, of course, given that human civilisation runs on people (do you know how many are involved in the production of a simple ballpoint pen from start to delivery?) and tech and whatever loyal servants they have left won't be able to come close to plugging the gaps, so if population crashes, their own quality of life will crash along with everyone else's. Think Ted Faro in Thebes.

Purely for the record, this line of argument pretty much amounts to tacit acceptance that drastic ecological change is inevitable, because if China are not doing enough to mitigate the harm they're doing ecologically, then neither are any of the world major powers. As such, I'm not sure what the reasoning behind this argument is, apart from perhaps a method of looking to absolve those same other world powers of responsibility for the horrible times that may come and that they are responsible for, given that if it comes to that they had the power to do enough and simply didn't. Do agree with the idea of exporting clean energy methods to as many developing places as possible as fast as possible, though.

There seems to have been some of that and, yes, as per above, seems like other things were on people's minds today. But to give a latest update, it appears Felon#47 has likely selected Cuba as his next target.

Possibly so. Of course, that still misses a pretty major issue whereby humans may be able to live indoors, but various species, including crop and animal species vital to human continuity, won't. No point in having indoor complexes when you have no food or potable water accessible to them.

You're very right, it's a long game. But again, I must ask; if (and that's a big if) China aren't playing it well, then is that an excuse for other big players to do similarly, rather than leading by example? As per above, it could be either. My own take (very much opinion rather than fact) is that they're no worse than the powers that have come before them, or the ones that exist now, in that regard. It's interesting that some folks think China is better at the PR game than some Anglosphere players - at least in that same Anglosphere. Which Trump and the Repubs want to massively regress and are already making strides in so doing, as is admitted here. I'm pretty sure that isn't the right way to go from the ones supposed to be the premier world power. They are making decent leaps, now is not the time to go backwards. The general individualist attitude in the US (which Trump and his party embody), coupled with the size of the nation, does make public transport projects difficult. But, like you, I would definitely like to see more of a shift towards that kind of model over there, if at all possible. No disagreement here, apart from the point regarding global population growth which is (thankfully) slowing as a natural byproduct of nation development. The demand for energy is only going to grow. To meet increased energy demand, a suite of solutions is called for, including both renewable and fission power depending on location and circumstance. That has to be applied everywhere - which means that such solutions are going to have to be exported to developing countries as needed. Good thing is that this is happening already - there's quite a few sub-Saharan and South American nations running at or close to 100% renewable energy grids now. But it is the big players - China, India, the US and Russia - who all need to pick up their game. Fusion would be a massive game changer, but then folks have been saying that for half a century and it's proving a difficult bastard to pin down. Perhaps one day, though.

Rather missing my point. it's still better than other global players. All of these matters are relative and should be measured as such, not absolute. Possibly because they're actually doing business the right way rather than stomping colonial boots and offering ridiculously lop-sided deals because of the power disparity between the parties involved? ... or they might just have a really good PR team and there's a massive conspiracy to make them look good and those nice people across the pond look bad, who knows. In any case: This still stands.

"Soaring renewables growth has brought progress on carbon emissions despite the continued use of coal, with China's CO2 emissions falling 1% in the first half of the year, according to a CREA analysis last week'" Like I said, right direction. As per above, I find the way the Chinese carry out their business (at least sometimes) disagreeable, so I don't think there's disagreement there. This particular area is not one of those areas, apart from perhaps they could be moving a bit faster - but then so could everyone. And to answer the last statement, the "why" is obvious: the US is both not heading in the right direction on this matter and (more importantly) broadcasting on all frequencies worldwide that wrong direction is in fact the right one to take. Passing themselves off as paragons of virtue through Anglosphere social media manipulation and attempting to influence others into following their path, when the current government is anything but. Which, exactly, is worse news for the future? Anyway, the situation is what it is, the consequences will be global, and the solution will take everyone on board or it will fail. And those who come afterwards in their vastly worse world will, rightly, blame every single human who didn't do enough to help - no matter their nationality or demographic.

Non-sequitur. Relying less and less on non renewable resources while other major global players are going in the other (wrong) direction. And a system that is disagreeable, but if others don't get their arses in gear the choice will be between that and collapse to Mad Max. Which one of those people prefer evidently depends on the individual. In any case, the Chinese not getting everything right (but more than most) doesn't give the other big movers and shakers an excuse to be shitty anyway, unless a race to the bottom with all the consequences that entails is somehow appealing.

Not to us, no. But to them, they and no one associated with them can be shown to show fallibility. They're never wrong, the "other side" always is, because if they're on a side then it must always be the right side, by definition.

That's just the way they always do things. Never apologise, never explain, never back down. All of those show human weakness and humility, and that cannot be tolerated. Be hostile, be dehumanising, be everything that a human shouldn't be instead. The troublesome thing is that attitude gets a pass or even encouragement from far too many people. See the final paragraph above.

Additionally, how on earth can Vance say that the recent video released means the death of Renee Good was justified and the shooter was under capital threat with a straight face? There are lies, and then there's... well, that.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c205g8z36zeo Interesting analysis regarding what the UK government is doing, and might do, with respect to the current shitshow across the pond.

Thanks for the further clarification. Speaking personally, enough has gone here on the watch of and with the tacit approval of X to at least warrant an investigation and the possibility of sanctions until they sort out the distribution issue, as pointed out above. What this man says about the person that he shot dead immediately afterwards says a lot about his character.

Righto, appreciate the clarification. So, with that point of factual order sorted (as it's entirely true that it is technically correct), I guess my next thought is similar to the one stated above where though they are two entities, they are linked in terms of utility as one is being used to create some rather nasty stuff that's then being disseminated on the other. You made the point upstream about other pieces of AI software, but the last time I checked, using them to nonconsensually strip women and for nonce material wasn't nearly so much of a problem anywhere else on widespread social media (thankfully)?