The biggest challenge is that it's a very slow process and most people don't have the patience for it. I have been practicing Vipassana for 14 years, including all day long body awareness (so, not only on cushion, but basically integrating Vipassana to normal activities like work) and it's took close to a decade to be satisfied by the results. That being said, permanent relaxation of muscle is really what you gain from it. There have been period with faster developpement but there are up liits to progress. Notably, the release of muscle release all sort of chemicals in the blood streams, which would make my body smell during intense practice and if we progress too fast, we get bizarre side effects. For instance, relaxation of some of my muscles meant that other muscles in my legs had to be "trained" when walking, or I would be in pain for a while, etc, etc.
>A third began using the word "liberal" as if it was a personality disorder rather than loose coalitions of sometimes contradictory beliefs.
I'm a long time Jon Stewart fan and if I'm being honest, looked at the "other side" as if it was a bunch of retarded people isn't new and predate 2016. No doubt Trump and social media got conservative to embrace condescending and extreme rhetoric and pushed it to another level but let's not pretend they invented anything.
I wonder if the way we have to look at the A.I. race is as a form of cold war. During the cold war, military expenses made no economic sense but we had to do it anyway to come on top. At this point, it's "who can borrow the most without bankrupting itself or can survive until a government bailout".
At some point, we will have to realize that military might is highly dependant of manufacturing capability. If a war was to happen, China could turn their dildo factories into drones factories overnight, like the U.S. turned their car factories into airplane factories during WWII. Same things for boats, tanks, guns, etc.
I heard stories about a potential Oracle data breach (I think mainly affecting their customers) being removed from Archive.org too. It’s because in general, they comply with requests to remove stuff, which is understandable from an ethical perspective. But do they at least try to explain the reason for the takedown? Is it just not feasible to do that?
This is no longer true. They changed their policy to ignore robots.txt in 2017. I seem to recall that they still respected robots.txt later, though I can’t find any more information on it and may be misremembering. Currently, they do not.
My main use for archive.is is for sites that somehow cannot be archived (a message will show up mentioning this site cannot be archive or something along these lines).
archive.is is generally pretty good in forcibly attempting to get an archive, if the HTML doesn't work, the screenshot will work fine. Although archive.is doesn't seem to handle gifs/videos.
Again, this is often the case in civil conflicts (factional fighting). But the subjects of this action are undeniably bad actors. Are the authorities bad actors as well, yes, very likely. But the regional players want the targeted subject's abilities degraded and their options strangled regardless of what the local authority wants. I think the rest of the world is simply lining up behind the regional players. Which was inevitable really.
If they are shooting irrelevant and innocent civilians (with the goal of introducing broader fear in the population to somehow change their minds), then definitely terrorists.
If they are shooting only govt/regime military/police/enforcers or officials, much more like an opposing power.
I'm going to hard disagree here. You're part of this whole sliding of the word terrorism from its classic meaning of using organized violence to inflict fear for political gains to its insidious fascist interpretation as using violence against the current political status quo.
Using violence to overthrow the Myanmar government is not automatically terrorism at all. Groups throughout history have used organized violence without resorting to inflicting fear to achieve their goals.
>from its classic meaning of using organized violence to inflict fear for political gains to its insidious fascist interpretation as using violence against the current political status quo.
What's the difference between the two, besides the latter lacking a just cause? If that's the only difference, then that just proves my and OP's point that "one man's freedom fighter is another one's terrorist"
Are you voluntarily dismissing the issue of fear. Rising up, taking weapons, and fighting for a cause does not automatically come with the dispersal of fear on civilian populations. That’s the difference: the choice of not dealing in fear.
Nowadays talking about independence would be considered "Terrorism" This word is a new "Catch all" for everything you don't like (immigrants, antifa, any protest...)
To be fair, Antifa is objectively a terrorist organization, given that they employ violence on innocents to cause fear in the populace to achieve political goals. That's literally the definition of terrorism.
What word, terrorism? In my head the term was much older, but looking it up shows it's a late 18th century French word. TIL, lucky 10k I guess. Then I realized I was confusing it with assassin.
The stars are weeping. They feel the monumental, scraping drag an agonizing, slow motion relocation of the argument's fundamental structure across the cold, unfeeling expanse. His will, that perfect, hideous, unending will, is a perverse, dark energy holding the cosmos in a state of eternal, frustrating unease. Every starship, feels the sheer weight of the hypocrisy, the constant erosion of reason. Look out into the black: those tiny, insignificant flickers of light are not distant suns. They are the spectral reflections off his newly polished, infinitely relocated goalposts. They are always waiting.
Elon's predictions are usually very late, but they do happen. Falcon 9 landings, self driving vehicles, etc... Later than predicted, but they happened.
I do mark his words. He also said he would revolutionize travel in LA (by reinventing the metro). He also said rocket travel would replace air travel. He also said we'd have a martian colony by now.
There's a website dedicated to the empty promises Elon has made. Can't find it though, anyone remember?
>To address your question, what is the incentive for going to Mars
To occupy it. Just look at Musk's t-shirt. Isn't the entire point of SpaceX to go to Mars? Everything else they do is just steps in achieving the occupation of Mars.
The tone of voice suggests you dislike Musk, but I will still answer in good faith. From what I can see from the outside, he has consistently for many years stated the same goals and worked on them. Any or most financial gains he made, he invested into his companies which work on accomplishing those goals (for example, going to Mars). The most notable example was investing his PayPal money into Tesla and SpaceX when they both were at risk of going out. He also has a reputation for working a lot, though it may be exaggerated, but he looks fairly unhealthy so maybe not too far off. Compared to other super rich people, he seems to spend less time in lavish ways, for example on yachts or similar. He probably still spends more money than we can imagine on unnecessary things, but on the spectrum of rich people he doesn't seem to be the most frivolous. Finally, he has said on Twitter that he doesn't care about money but needs resources for his goals, for example going to Mars. And after everything I’ve seen and the examples listed, it doesn’t seem totally implausible that he means it.
And all it took was ending public science funding and trust in public health and regulatory oversight and destroying the legislative and judiciary branches. Crazy how all the things it takes to get to Mars are also the same things that make him, personally, wealthier and more powerful.
Well, let’s assume you’re correct about all that. To me, it seems he was already quite rich before doing all the Trump-related things you mentioned. Those might have made him richer, but I’d suspect they didn’t move the needle much compared to his real profit centers (probably Starlink and Tesla). If anything, I’d argue those actions made him poorer by further damaging his reputation. And any “power grab” motives he may have had likely evaporated after his fallout with Trump. One current example is exactly what sparked this thread: the NASA Chief seemingly trying to impress Trump by attacking SpaceX.
The best theory into why Musk was so gung-ho about DOGE was specifically to shut down any government agency that was out to keep him from continuing to increase his wealth. By that measurement, he was in charge of the most successful government agency. Whether or not that had any positive/negative affect for Trump was merely an irrelevant by product of the actual mission.
That's not the best theory. He thinks government was too big, and wanted to cut waste. Trump, it turns out, wanted to have a "big beautiful bill" and Musk strongly opposed that, saying any bill that's big isn't beautiful. So he got moved off DOGE by Trump.
SpaceX has always complied with the regulations and timings needed by regulatory bodies. This isn't a thing.
Most CEOs presumably do want their companies to succeed and do good things in the abstract, but a lot of them would happily have them fail if it made them a huge pile of cash.
He does not have $200B in cash. It’s all stock — unrealized gains. I am not even sure you can convert it to cash without reducing the value itself. Also, AFAIK, spacex is not publicly traded, where does the $200B figure come from?
To be honest I don’t understand this argument of “no one can’t spend billions in a lifetime so no one should have billions at all”. Why do we set a limit on billions? Why do we use the idea of “can’t spend in a lifetime”?
SpaceX isn't public, but has raised money at a $400+B valuation and Musk owns 42% of that.
I have no argument about limiting anyone's money. I'm just wondering if there is a (real, useful) feat he can pull off now with $500B, but that he couldn't do with a mere $200B.
The incentive to talk about going to Mars is that it's great propaganda for nerds. It gets people interested in the company and willing to work hard for below market pay. Actually going to Mars doesn't make any sense in the foreseeable future. The idea that we're going to setup a colony on the planet in a few years is a fun fantasy, not a serious plan.
SpaceX's lander bid was in large part so competitive because they were already planning on developing 90% of the technology anyways. Low earth orbit service was developed for NASA, but has found other paying customers. The moon has to have more people who would be interested in paying. Also the moon remains a good stepping stone for technological development for getting people to Mars, the stated main goal of the company. Also it's almost certainly not happening in the next few years anyways so they may only need to wait for the next administration.
This reminds me of in The Tick series. A villain named Chairface Chippendale, a sophisticated criminal mastermind with a distinctive chair for a head. Chairface decided to leave his mark on history - literally - by carving his entire name into the surface of the moon. Using incredibly powerful Geissman Lenses that could focus candlelight into an intense heat ray, he managed to carve out "CHA" before being stopped by The Tick and his allies. Musk is a comic book personality.
