I work with industrial hydraulics, the forces involved in big gear are truly insane.

Working pressures is around 270bar…on ~1.4m^2 of cylinders. Millions of kg of force.

I legitimately though this was some dig at right win nut jobs and their objectification of women.

AFD…Alternative for Deutschland

This annoyed me also.

If the Avatar universe has physics like ours, which it looks like it does from the way things move etc…

The protoplanetry disk that the planet formed from, must have had the unobtanium, since it is so evenly spread around the later formed planet.

Yes, there are higher concentrations in various places, which could have come from impact events in the past; if this is the case the impactors are likely from the local asteroid belt or equivalent.

The unobtanium must be available, in a much easier to extract form, in asteroids in the soloar system or the moons of Pandora.

Either way, a mineral is a terrible maguffin for a space faring civilization.

In the second movie, the whale brain juice is a much better maguffin, but still kinda stupid for a technologically advanced species.

Assume that to get interstellar travel, with the suspended animation and brain beaming tech we are shown, humans are a good 200 years ahead of where we are now…given that they can also make fully functional alien bodies from scratch, that can breed and pass on genetic material to what look like viable offspring. The level of synthetic biology expertise must be insane, and they can’t make this brain juice…it is just stupid.

Have they tried “thoughts and prayers”?

I get this, after working retail as a teen/early 20’s. I hated the music, the commercial nature of everything, the fakeness of it all. As a special extra, for those in the southern hemisphere “traditional” Christmas food is so dumb here.

But you know what “cured” me of this. My kids, they are what it’s all about, they love the songs and gifts, time with us. Lake days and sun… its all wonderful to them.

Following the teachings of a blue hedgehog

One option…lean in, HARD! Dial the crazy up to 11… One up every point she makes, every single time.

You don’t even need external drivers. Reading Stoic philosophy, and abiding by the teachings will get you there also.

Your argument is circular.

In your view, determinism requires impossible perfect knowledge. It only seems probabilistic, because we can’t do the impossible.

This is also not a technology problem. These are not limits we can overcome.

If you are really interested, look into the uncertainty principle.

At this point in science we are as convinced as is possible to be; that the universe is probabilistic in nature.

But we know for sure that the universe is not deterministic.

From a fundamental level, it is probabilistic.

Simple experiments can show this chaotic action.
Take for example the dripping tap experiment. The time for next drop cannot be predicted by knowing the timing of the previous drops!
This is not a random process, there is a pattern, but it is also clearly not deterministic.

I came here to say this, well played.

I know it may sound callous, but if you have skills. A lot of countries are looking to fill skill shortages, you could emigrate to somewhere with a sensible health system.

Failing that, as someone else pointed out. Grassroots action!
Get involved, change the narrative build up from local level. Shooting CEO’s is not a long term solution, yes it grabbed attention, yes it showed how fucked off the population really is… build on that momentum.

Choose your starting level!

Yep, I never could get past the taste of plastic in my food.

Only microwave in glass and ceramic!

It has gotten worse since trump showed that the truth is optional for politics.

But yes, still better.

Looking from the outside, what the US has lacked is the “strong regulation” part.

In my opinion the US is way too far on the capitalist side of the slider, you are not at “pure capitalism” yet. But sometimes it doesn’t seem like you have far to go.

Private prisons are just a ridiculous, over reach of profit making into what is at its core a social problem that requires social solutions.

The communism / capitalism debate is an interesting one. Each system has its advantages, and I am a strong believer in a strong compromise between the two extremes.

I don’t think that workplaces should be collectivized as a default. I also think that strong regulation and “big” government is a positive thing. The government should set the rules, for the benefit of all, but the game should be open to all players.

I am also a very strong believer that there are some activities that are far too important to leave up to the market.

• Health care
• Education
• Infrastructure
  • Water
  • Waste
  • Roading
  • Public transport
  • Communications
• Social welfare

For everything else, let the market decide. Collective ownership of cafes and hardware stores isn’t really something that needs to happen. But I would also be happy if a collectively owned cafe opened up nearby, I would give them the same weight as all other cafes (how good is your coffee).

Agreed, if you have a billion in cash sitting around, then do something with it.

But in this specific example, and really any example where someone gains their wealth from “doing stuff”. It is not liquid, sitting around in cash to hand out. It is usually in stock of the company they found.

While they are “young” and energetic making the world a better place, then keep on doing what you are doing. Once you “retire” from that then it is the time to donate.

There are different ways to accumulate wealth.

In an example from my country, Sir Peter Beck, is only a billionaire because the stock value of RocketLab has rocketed up (pun intended). His total compensation for the 2023 year was just under $1M. Source

I would rather that he concentrate his efforts to making the best rocket possible; he could in theory split his time and work to reduce poverty…but I believe that the rocket building would suffer.

There are a lot of other people working to reduce poverty.

I agree with your point that in general, most billionaires are shitty people who could do a lot more. But some people are billionaires because they are doing cool shit.

Will Sir Peter become a cunt in the future, who knows. In 10 years will we look back and see the decline to Musk levels of cuntishness?