The real lesson we should be taking from the Luddites is while they did establish a precedent for fighting for worker's rights, they failed in any meaningful way to reverse the march of technology. In fact throughout history we have never managed to put the technology genie back in the bottle, probably going back to the first tools and weapons that were ever created. So we had better figure out real quick how we are going to live with AI, because there is no going back now.
What about as consumers then? Without workers who's going to buy anything? We have some serious logistics to figure out if we automate the majority of jobs away, and yet somehow all these companies are expecting people to still be able to buy their products.
I don't know about justifying their multi-billion dollar valuation but the killer application of this in my mind is for pharmacies. There are a lot of pharmacies offering same day delivery now for both prescription and over the counter drugs, and a lot of people that need drugs that can't otherwise go out and get them on their own. My in-laws get their drugs delivered this way sometimes and it's almost always a driver in their personal car that drops off the delivery. I'm guessing the drivers are only dropping off a few prescriptions per trip, so it's likely not very efficient.
In at least some cases type 1 diabetes is considered an autoimmune disease as are the other diseases listed in the headline. They're using the "vaccine" to turn off the body's overreaction to a specific antigene. This is huge if this makes it through human trials. There are a lot of people suffering from various autoimmune diseases.
From the article:
"A typical vaccine teaches the human immune system to recognize a virus or bacteria as an enemy that should be attacked. The new “inverse vaccine” does just the opposite: it removes the immune system’s memory of one molecule. While such immune memory erasure would be unwanted for infectious diseases, it can stop autoimmune reactions like those seen in multiple sclerosis, type I diabetes, rheumatoid arthritis, or Crohn’s disease, in which the immune system attacks a person’s healthy tissues."
The rest of the article goes into some details of how it works.
It feels like Africa is setting itself up for a lot of suffering. It’s difficult to see the continent being able to support 3-4 billion people while also getting heavily hit by climate change over the next 70 years, with many regions already very susceptible to drought.
But if detected early enough it might not take much more than a DART sized nudge of even a Chicxulub sized asteroid to change it’s course enough to miss the Earth. The whole reason DART targeted a two asteroid system was so we could measure how much we changed Dimorphos orbit around Didymos. If we have to blow these things into rubble shortly before impact we might be in big trouble.
I'm not defending the ban on gas stoves, but a much better reason to ban them is their impact on indoor air quality. Burning natural gas indoors emits all kinds of nasty stuff like carbon monoxide, nitric oxides, formaldehyde...stuff linked to all kinds of diseases from asthma to cancer.
Just have some kids! My adult children are always happy to let us spend money on them. Come to think of it, my wife and I still let our parents pay for stuff as well, even though they really don't need to anymore.
This can be a major cultural issue as well. My wife is asian and her whole family looses their mind if someone tries to pay for a meal at a family get together. It can be a major issue of pride in many asian cultures when people try to pay for things.
I've been a falconer for a couple of decades and in general try to keep up with the research around birds of prey. The general consensus is only about 10% of birds of prey survive the first year. It doesn't surprise me that the survival rate for most other birds is equally as bad. I've been out in the field a number of times in the winter and found wild birds of prey that were so weak they couldn't fly and you could just walk up to them and pick them up. In every one of these cases the birds were skin and bones, starving to death. Nature can be brutal.
Someone on here recommended a book called "Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell" and it goes into detail but at a fairly layman level explaining how stuff like this works at the biochemical level. Basically we have genes that code for pieces of proteins and those pieces can be combined in millions of different ways to form unique proteins. Feedback systems based on proteins turn individual genes on and off to encourage the production of effective proteins. Essentially we have the ability to evolve and adapt at the protein level without any modifications to our genes.
Honestly reading that book really opened my eyes to how complex this stuff really is. Biology is unbelievably robust and flexible well beyond the basic model of evolution that we are taught takes places at the genetic level.
There have been studies on mice and I think rats on the ISS and they’ve shown promising results in preventing a number of health issues humans experience in zero g. Here’s some pictures of the setup they used for mice to generate 1 g on the ISS, it’s not very big and I don’t think the mice experienced any adverse effects:
This is absolutely spot on. Don't forget sailing, tennis, lacrosse, and some Ivy League schools even offer equestrian. Even sports like swimming, hockey, and volleyball are getting to be more and more dominated by well-to-do kids from families that can afford expensive traveling club teams. When Brown tried to eliminate its men's track and field team a few years ago the decision was reversed when it was pointed out that track and field was one of the only sports adding diversity to the campus.
There have been other studies like this done in other parts of the world, they all have come to similar conclusions. Here was one conducted in Germany from 1990-2017:
It's still an anecdote, but I've been driving the same truck for 15 years now. It definitely feels like I don't have to clean my windshield nearly as often as I used to in the summers.
It's more than just supply and demand. There are a lot of companies and private investors buying up multiple residential properties to rent out. There are a significant amount of properties simply being rented out on Airbnb/VRBO and their ilk. This is having a measurable impact on housing prices, and making additional housing unavailable to local residents. We need to increase tax penalties on companies and individuals buying up residential properties that aren't their primary residence and municipalities need to do a better enforcing zoning laws that are probably already on the books that should prevent short term rentals in residential areas.
If you look at the breakdown of the Model Y with the casted front end and back end by Munroe on Youtube it's fairly modular, with a front end cast and back end cast both bolted to the battery pack in the middle, and the top of the car lowered onto the base. If one of these casts were damaged in an accident but the rest of the car was OK, it might make more sense to just replace the entire front end or back end cast with a new one.
Oil changes probably explains the difference. We have 70,000 miles on my wife's Tesla and it's never gone in for any maintenance. We've replaced the tires on it twice now (Tesla's do eat tires) and I've replaced the cabin air filter a couple of times and fill up the windshield washer fluid about once a year.
A compromise is to just have smaller schools. I don’t know who came up with the idea to put over 1,000 teenagers together in a building everyday as so many public high schools do in the US, but there are plenty of studies that show it’s a terrible idea.
Education varies significantly from state to state in the US, even district to district in many areas. Some states compare very well internationally, like Massachusetts, which would be ranked as high as 4th by some international measurements, if it was its own country. We consistently see in the US where regions with better public schools have much better economic outcomes, and lower rates of poverty, crime, drug abuse, and suicide. There are plenty of alternative outcomes to look at in the US as well: high school drop outs for example which on average have a much lower lifetime earning potential, and higher rates of drug abuse, suicide and incarceration.
I just don't think I can agree with Gatto's main premise that schools aren't educating students or that a formal education serves no purpose in the modern world. We have seen world wide that schools are THE most effective tool for lifting people out of poverty. We also see that the countries with the best schools are dominating the world economy. There are also plenty of counter examples we can find: entire countries without well organized compulsory education systems that have incredibly high rates of illiteracy and poverty.
Here we are 25 years after Gatto gave this speech, our society has not "disintegrated" yet, Well-schooled people are far from irrelevant, in fact they have given us nearly every single modern comfort and technological breakthrough in modern history and they have continued to do so over the last 25 years.
What Gatto is proposing would just create even more inequality and social injustice, where only parents with the means to see their children get a good education can do so, either by having the background and time to homeschool or the money to provide private schooling or tutors for their own children.
I can't agree with this at all. We have plenty of modern examples that show this to not be the case: West Germany versus East Germany, South Korea versus North Korea, Taiwan versus China. In all these examples less oppressions results in a stronger economy and a higher standard of living for citizens.
I agree, the term "Western Ideals" doesn't quite fit but it does go beyond democratic ideals which is why I didn't use that term. There are other aspects like a free market economy that extend way beyond a democratically elected government. I'm certainly open to a new term to describe it.
I think many of us would be more supportive of outsourcing manufacturing to developing countries if their government aligned more with Western ideals. The fact is many countries, like Vietnam, are still "developing" because they have authoritarian governments that have been oppressing their population to some extent keeping their labor cheap while stunting their economic potential.
We see the problems with this situation right now with Russia and China, whether it's buying oil from Russia or manufacturing in China, we've given these countries enormous amounts of power and influence by essentially funding their regimes. As we can see with the situation in Ukraine and Taiwan these regimes are not our friends or allies, even though we have allowed ourselves to become attached at the hip to them economically. As a western consumer I would much rather see my money either stay in country or go to a country that is a political ally and shares more western political and economic ideals.
Someone else in another thread on here recommended the book “Wetware: A Computer in Every Living Cell” by Dennis Bray and I really enjoyed it. The idea of looking at complex protein interactions as logical circuits kind of makes sense as we try to map out the complexities of Biochemistry. For anyone looking for an easier introduction to the concept I can recommend the book.
The could use excess wind and solar electricity to power coal gasification plants to generate natural gas that they can then use in the winter, without having to retrofit any boilers. They can even make heating oil from coal:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coal_gasification
This. As someone who has 3 adult children all out of the house now, I would take this a step further and say we have an obligation as parents to teach our young adult children how to be self sufficient. Learning how to find a job and stay employed, pay rent and bills etc are all life skills that we should be teaching our kids as they mature. If they don't have plans to continue with school then they should be working. It is a mistake to let kids stay dependent on you for the long term when they should be starting their own careers and/or finding their place in the world.
I had a neighbor years ago who passed away suddenly and he had two adult kids living with him in their early-mid 20s that weren't working or going to school. After a few months the bank foreclosed on their house and kicked the kids out. They had no money and no place to live, I'm not sure what ended up happening to them. Give your kids a fighting chance in the world people by helping them become functional adults.