This article appeared in my feed just above another article about how China has the world’s first operational thorium reactor. Meanwhile, the US is about to fight a civil war over whether vaccination causes measles and stripping away the last of our social programs in order to get our wealthiest people another 2% subsidy.

Well, it’s only constitutional this one time. Every other time, it isn’t.

More concreatures, please

“accidentally”. Stephen Miller recently came out and directly refuted the idea that it was an accident. https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/5248143-stephen-miller-doj-man-mistakenly-deported/

It’s worth noting that they’re not only innocent, they’ve received no due process at all. They weren’t even charged with a crime. They were just sent to indefinite imprisonment, and they’re not even charged with a crime, nor will they ever get a chance to be heard before a judge or jury. The state didn’t even bother cooking up a crime before depriving them of their liberties. Folks, this is bad, this is it, we’re living the dictatorship right now. If the government wants to deprive you of your liberty, it should always have to prove its case in court, to a jury of peers. It’s not a perfect system, but it’s at least some kind of check to make sure the state isn’t just arbitrarily tossing people in prison for life; which is exactly what’s happening here. Let me say it loud and clear:

WHAT THEY CAN DO TO THEM, THEY CAN DO TO YOU, AND THEY’RE OPENLY DISCUSSING DOING IT TO YOU RIGHT NOW.

The fascists are coming right now. Not in a year, not in six months, they’re talking about stripping citizenship from people who criticize the government now. Lawyers and judges are being flat out lied to and ignored; the justice system is not coming to our rescue. There is no appeasement, no running, no compliance that will keep them from ultimately murdering or imprisoning you and everyone you love. The only choice left to us now is this: do you want to face them as a group, or as an individual?

This is a great point. I know that some pharmas actually do internally funded research, it’s a thing, it happens, but it’s completely dwarfed by shareholder giveaways and government subsidies ofc.

You’re right.

Yes, 100%.

I agree, though I will note that I have often found that there is a non-trivial gap between what is and what ought to be.

That last sentence is it. IP laws are outrageous monstrosities these days, with folks like Disney getting 100-year long exclusive IP rights to characters and stuff like the DMCA.

This is why it’s a mixed bag for me. IP law is kinda important in a capitalist system, which, for better or worse, that’s what we have. If someone comes up with a wonder drug that outright cures addiction or something, you’d want that person to be able to recoup their costs before a bigger organization with more capital swoops in and undercuts them on production costs until they’re the sole supplier of the drug. The hepatitis C cure drug selling for $70,000 is a great example of this quandary; there’s millions of dollars worth of research and clinical trials that went into developing the drug, you’d want the company to be able to recuperate the costs of developing it or else there’s less incentive to do something similar for other diseases down the line. Also, though, $70,000 or go fucking die is an outrageous statement.

Of course, what we have for IP law in practice is a bastardized monster, where corporations exploit the fuck out of it to have monopoly control over important products like insulins and life-saving medications that cost cents to produce and allow them to sell for hundreds a dose. That’s not the intent of IP law, IMO, and that doesn’t really serve anyone.

Tbh this is really frustrating. As many car crashes I ran in my 15 years in EMS, NHTSA has probably saved more lives in the last twenty years than the Dept of Public Health, especially once you consider how for much of America, there really is no alternative to driving.

social losses, private profits

Llama4 don’t say the N word challenge: impossible

A machine can never be held responsible, therefore a machine must ALWAYS make management decisions

Yeah, same with my dude, he wasn’t rich either, but I heard him lay it on thick one time and it was like I was suddenly filming for Nat geo, and I don’t mean that in a gross way. It was more like watching a ritual that was completely foreign to me, like I was bearing witness to lost knowledge. He was a supervisor, and I tell you, I never saw him write anyone up ever, but everyone would bend over backwards for him because he was just a super likable dude.

Only if you’re rich. I doubt these fuck sticks are going after rich people

Straight up, the best living proof of this I’ve ever seen was a fifty-odd year old co-worker whose face looked like if you stuck Don Knotts’ face in a microwave/centrifuge combination for about 45 seconds. Dude had teeth poking out forward at near right angles. He pulled so much fucking tail, it was a constant problem at work. Incels refuse to believe me when I tell them about it, but, just, shit, idk what you want me to say, this quasi modo ass dude had game, so what’s your excuse?

If they corner anyone, tbh. This is a pretty ruinous accusation.

Currently seeing the US climate narrative shift from “why should we stop burning fossils and get our shit together when China won’t? >:(” to “why should we stop burning fossils and get our shit together when Senegal won’t? >:(” Can’t wait for 20 years from now when we’re balls deep in climate disasters, Senegal gets its shit together, and the US narrative moves to honduras El Salvador Uganda comparing itself to the Philippines.

Holy crap you guys, it turns out that the narrative that the developing world is going to burn an ass-ton of fossil fuels is a lot weaker than I thought. It looks like there’s a fuckton of equatorial and global south countries with renewables/hydro power, Honduras is even adding Geothermal. God damn it, USA, get off your ass and fix your shit already.