leicsmac

Is anyone really surprised? To add to the general scorched Earth feeling going on here, millions of Americans are about to lose critical food benefits because of the government shutdown.

People diametrically opposed to everything Tolkien stood for and wrote about using his work to promote their own. At least Orcs and other creatures in Middle Earth had the excuse of being created evil by Morgoth/Melkor. These humans simply choose to be.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cy7eyg0808xo Hopefully Korea can forge its own path. They've got the economic base to do so.

WRT immigration/asylum claims, the situation remains as clear as it ever has been. There are only three options IMO: - work a lot harder, along with everyone else, on foreign policy matters that prevent people having to migrate and leave their nations in the first place - accept the disruption and terrible happenings in other nations as simply "some people are lucky and some aren't", refuse entry for as many of them as possible, and abandon them to their fate - muddle on with the status quo which seems to suit next to nobody If there's another option, I'd like to hear it.

This whole argument needs to consider future as well as past developments in energy as well anyway.

https://grid.iamkate.com/ A useful resource for live and historic values on this matter. (For anyone who wants to know, the actual numbers over this year are 38.3% for renewables, 30.4% for fossil fuels. Though if you count biomass as a fossil fuel it pushes things to near parity, until you have fission add around 13% to the "cleaner" side too.) In any case, people can quibble over the small numbers if they wish, the argument remains - on this matter, the UK and everywhere else buys now or pays later. In full, and in blood as well as money.

I hear that, sadly.

Nah, much better to generalise, draw petty differences and continue in a cycle of vengeance and division that doesn't end until the obvious and predictable outcome. .... right?

There's that too, but I have to say again I've no idea why some people don't think actually looking to save lives in the future is a reasonable thing to do. (Or I do, but I really don't want to think that of those people.)

Possibly more disingenuous is not including the future cost of infrastructure damage, food and water replacement schemes, and a great many other measures, should the route towards greener energy not be taken. It dwarfs any of those figures. And it's not just cost in money, either.

Jamaica experiences the most severe hurricane in recorded history. So far.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c5ypkd57n97o More on this, in case anyone wants some context. I'm not sure featuring reasonably high on the main BBC News website and being on both lunchtime and evening national news reports yesterday really counts as "hardly newsworthy", though.

If the misinformation-backed digital era status quo continues, that is a distinct possibility. Of course, Boris looked to have a bulletproof majority, and so did Starmer, looking at pure numbers, and it would only take something that takes the minds of some people away from "legitimate concerns" (or the sophisticated con job they're being fed regarding such, those speech marks are doing a lot of work) to change the situation somewhat. Or perhaps that thing doesn't arrive, and things play out the way depicted here. Good news... for everyone in one particular demographic, which I suspect precious few of the contributors here are in. Look at Trump's USA right now for comparison.

All the eggs in one basket doesn't often end well, that's all I'm saying. It's bloody annoying to have to play the Cassandra (or Tiresias, if one prefers) so often.

Bit of international news: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cm27ke33gvmo A statue of a Confederate general that was torn down and set on fire in 2020 during social justice protests in Washington has been reinstalled under orders from President Donald Trump. General Albert Pike's statue has long been a source of controversy, as have many Confederate monuments across the US which were erected decades after the Civil War. The National Park Service announced in August its plan to return the refurbished statue, after Trump signed an executive order called "Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History". Democratic Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton, who represents the District of Columbia, called the restoration “offensive to members of the military who serve honorably”. On Monday afternoon, videos showed the area surrounding Pike's statue in Washington with a sign that read "Area close. Historic preservation work in progress". "The restoration aligns with federal responsibilities under historic-preservation law and recent executive orders to beautify the nation’s capital and restore pre-existing statues," the National Park Service in a statement. Never thought I'd see the NPS endorse those who fought treasonously to maintain chattel slavery and thus endorse the legacy of it. Of course, such a thing is par for the course for this particular administration. https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/c891ex72nj7t Ceasefire (noun): A state of reduced direct fighting engagement where one side has a free hand to strike against the other as they wish with next to no retaliatory engagement allowed from the other side. ...apparently. Looks like Merriam-Webster, Oxford Publishing et al need to update their dictionaries!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/czdrv8m5v4lo Only 64 countries have submitted new plans to cut carbon, the UN says, despite all being required to do so ahead of next month's COP30 summit. Added together these national pledges would fail to keep the world from warming by more than 1.5C, a key threshold to very dangerous levels of climate change. While the UN review does show progress in curbing carbon emissions over the next decade, the projected fall is not enough to stop temperatures surging past this global target. Not so great news. We really aren't doing the future many favours.

To repeat something said before: "I guess a large part of the debate around NHS reform comes down to whether or not one views the life and health of a human being as more than the proper position of a full stop in an expenses spreadsheet." If you try to make such a system more "efficient", sooner or later you will affect health outcomes and the cost will be felt in both health and lives. Don't get to attribute perfect judgement in such a situation - that's simply not possible with a system of that size. How well that sits clearly is down to the beholder

Exactly so, and a lot can happen in that amount of time.

That's what they got right about Brexit in 2019, and what they got wrong about it still being all about that five years later. Funny how it only takes the Earth flexing its muscles (relatively) namely to really affect the political landscape. Who's to say that won't happen again in the intervening time? That it will happen is a simple matter of inevitability given how short sighted a lot of people are, it's just a question of when, and how big it will be this time.

Guess it depends on where the UK (and the world) is in three and a half years time.

The more stories like this regarding creating ever more unemployed, unsupported and therefore disaffected people, the massive environmental concerns and the simple fact that at the moment you simply cannot train a machine to anticipate nearly as many eventualities as you need, the more it appears the AI bubble will pop, and reasonably soon. There's too many downsides to be ignored. The fact that the powers that be are trying to use it to prop up pretty much the entire market means it will also be ugly when it does.

... but apparently some people had "legitimate concerns"...

... and this one hurricane will release more energy, easily, than the entire nuclear arsenal of every single nation on the planet put together. The Earth is, often, awe-inspiring. And sometimes it's utterly terrifying.

It's like every eighty to one hundred years, these ideas of demographic superiority really come to the fore for whatever reason. Unfortunately, the same history also shows that to disabuse people of those toxic notions, the cost is...rather high.

Agreed. It is an unfortunate fact, however, that the average severity - and therefore cost - of these events is going to simply keep rising year on year.