Diesel555

> You're not allowed to say disparaging things about anyone in your command chain, which goes up to the president. There's also limits on your political speech, in relation to making political statements in favor of candidates.

You are right, there are more restrictions for me. I'll change my evaluation of "you sign away all your citizenship rights" to mostly false. The OP made a rather encompassing assertion. I still retain most of my rights as a US citizen.

For anyone reading this that is curious, we do agree to a new law code. It's the Uniform Code of Military Justice. One aspect is that it ensures service members are held accountable to laws in countries where there may be drastically different laws. It also includes provisions such as article 88 which states:

> Any commissioned officer who uses contemptuous words against the President, the Vice President, Congress, the Secretary of Defense, the Secretary of a military department, the Secretary of Homeland Security, or the Governor or legislature of any State, Commonwealth, or possession in which he is on duty or present shall be punished as a court-martial may direct.

And article 89 also limits speech more than an average citizen.

> not everyone gets the GI bill benefits they are promised

I'd be curious to hear the facts behind this assertion. The regulations are pretty clear on how to qualify. I've never seen someone qualified then denied.

> they tap you for a conflict which you have ideological differences with, YOU ARE GOING irrespective of your convictions

Your statement is not entirely true, it is not irrespective of convictions. A conscientious objector is defined as either:

A member who, by reason of conscientious objection, sincerely objects to participation in military service of any kind in war in any form.

or

A member who, by reason of conscientious objection, sincerely objects to participation as a combatant in war in any form, but whose convictions are such as to permit military service in a noncombatant status. Also referred to as noncombatant duties or noncombatant service.

Yes there is an application which can be denied. Here is a GAO report on the rates of that. In an all volunteer force the numbers requested are pretty small.

Text version: https://www.gao.gov/assets/a267698.html PDF version: https://www.gao.gov/assets/gao-07-1196.pdf

As I read this post I kept thinking you had a rough time in service. This doesn’t match my experience at all. Then I saw at the end you didn’t serve, made assumptions based on stories, and had an axe to grind.

> The most important thing to realize about military service is that you sign away all your citizenship rights (free speech, etc.) when you sign up for the service.

False. I can say the same things as any citizen outside of my uniform. I am a US citizen with rights. I signed away no such rights.

> The other thing to realize is that, at least in the USA, they'll do everything they can to deny you medical benefits for injuries suffered in basic training, and this will persist after you get out

False. I have had access to every medical care I’ve needed, for free, for myself and family. This includes four major surgeries. I can go to an ER for free any time we have an issue. Zero stresses over medical expenses here.

> the 'educational assistance' is barely enough for a two-year vocational training program, certainly nowhere near enough for a full four-year college degree.

False. The military completely paid for my undergrad and masters at a high quality university (50k+/yr). Zero loans. They subsidized a second masters in software engineering. After all this I still have my full GI bill that I can use for myself or pass off to my kids for their undergrad.

> If you're a teenage with zero alternative options and are completely desperate for a way out of an urban slum nightmare or a poverty-stricken rural life, the military is there as an option.

Or if you wanted to serve with every opportunity in the world in front of you, the military is an option.

Pointing out that primary residents get great breaks does not mean that landlords do not also get tax breaks. They just don’t get those. And of course you pay tax on the income left over after expenses.

About the direct revenue tax. Government can impose a tax on a producer or consumer, but that doesn’t matter. The proportion of who pays that tax is purely based on the elasticities of both the demand and supply curve. Because demand is inelastic, that tax probably is paid mostly by the consumer through rent prices. I don’t live in a place where there is a direct revenue tax on rental income.

There are still breaks landlords get like the 20% pass-through deduction, 1031 exchanges, and interest rate deductions (similar to small business loans - which the government also wants to promote). Keep in mind that if some of these tax breaks apply to other types of businesses, they are still tax breaks for landlords incentivizing people to be landlords vs deciding not to enter the market. That is not a normative statement. I kept deductions for depreciation (which is huge), repairs, employee fees, etc out of the list since they are the expenses you mention.

> Where exactly is the difference between those goods and housing?

The first difference is elasticity of demand. Housing is relatively inelastic in the short term due to land availability, time to build, and government regulation. This simply means that as price increases, quantity demanded does not decrease as much as it would for another good. For example, cereal is pretty elastic with good substitutes. If the price of cereal goes up, a good portion of consumers will switch products. In the long term housing is more elastic as people build more.

So, demand isn't changing a lot with price. And the second difference is that housing is a basic need. Let's make the assumption that housing is a truly competitive market without government regulation. The market will settle at different prices for different qualities of housing. It will be incredibly efficient and maximize consumer and producer surplus (economic goodness). But, people will be left out of the market. A perfectly competitive market DOES NOT guarantee that everyone will be able to purchase the product. It will just maximize consumer and producer surplus.

Okay, so we as a society think that we should provide some government assistance for those that cannot afford housing in this market. We have some options. We could implement a rent ceiling. Unfortunately, and this is well proven, price ceilings create shortages and inequities. Most economist do not agree with price ceilings. https://www.factcheck.org/2009/02/when-economists-agree/

We could provide programs as detailed in this article which effects the supply. As this article highlights, all government intervention WILL create market inefficiencies. The pie will get smaller. I'm not saying that the government should not act, I am simply saying that government interaction is a tradeoff between equity and efficiency in a competitive market without market failures.

I am a proponent of a voucher based system to give a credit towards rent for those in need. This reduces the government intervention on the supplier side. To be clear, these vouchers will slightly raise housing prices, likely not be implemented without exploitation, and make the overall economy slightly less efficient due to the tax. But the vouchers will also reduce inequity and provide people in need with a basic good.

I think a lot of the problem is from too much government intervention. For example, people get a lot of tax breaks as a landlord. This makes it more desirable to buy and then rent out a house. This shifts the demand curve right raising prices and removing some people from the market (it reduces home ownership rates). I think those tax breaks should be removed, especially if the house is not your primary residence or is your second or third home. People will make the argument that this hurts the poor because people won't build for them. But then the discussions above about a competitive market and the voucher system are better in my opinion than giving tax breaks to companies that own hundreds of homes.

> I guess if code needs to be gender inclusive there's a few spoken languages in the world that need to get rid of their gender specific grammar. I say that as a monolingual Scot.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latinx

Watching who is using Latinx, Hispanic, or Latino/Latina in political discourse in the United States has been interesting.

> As of 2018 the term Latinx was used nearly exclusively in the United States.

> A 2019 poll (with a 5% margin of error) found that 2% of US residents of Latin American descent in the US use Latinx, including 3% of 18–34-year-olds; the rest preferred other terms. "No respondents over [age] 50 selected the term", while overall "3% of women and 1% of men selected the term as their preferred ethnic identifier".

> Supporters say it promotes greater acceptance of non-binary Latinos by being gender-neutral and thus inclusive of all genders. Critics say the term does not follow traditional grammar, is difficult to pronounce, and is disrespectful toward conventional Spanish; the Royal Spanish Academy style guide does not recognize the suffix -x. Both supporters and opponents have cited linguistic imperialism as a reason for supporting or opposing the use of the term.

For anyone unaware, lichess is an open source website. The source code was leaked by "ornicar" - the maker of lichess.org - and the link to the source code is their GitHub. Pretty good April fools joke!

Yah I'm confused on all the comments on the housing market. Did they read the article? The first three letters of house and housing, "hou", are not even on the website. We can debate on if the market is cooling.... but not based on this article. It mentions the DIY market, but that's still a leap to the overall housing market.

You're right, it's hard to take such a complex topic, whose definition does not always match colloquial use, and boil it down to two paragraphs (I guess asking for a definition was unfair). Like most debates that people take to polarities there is always an in-between. Back to my China example, they move on the scales whose polarities are laissez-faire and command economy. The Western markets would fall closer to a competitive market than market socialism today. But, In the 90s China was almost more hands off than Western countries. Under Xi the government has consolidated more control and influences the market much more. They are still not a command economy, but also not a fully competitive market, they use markets with "Chinese characteristics."

I'd be really interested to hear your definition of capitalism, because I think you are confusing ideals. It appears you are tying capitalism to a tax structure or some other government program to promote equity. Capitalism is simply using a market economy rather than command economy.

China has used capitalistic market principals from the 1970s to greatly benefit the wealth of its population, as opposed to the Mao era command economy which clearly failed. If you look at poverty in the world from the 1970s you will clearly see the China's reopening greatly reduced world poverty (mostly because their population is a major proportion of the world's).

https://ourworldindata.org/extreme-poverty

https://www.zdnet.com/article/study-world-poverty-rates-plum...

Capitalism recognizes that a competitive market driven economy relies on governmental controls to protect against market failures, externalities, and imperfections. These are knowns in American economic academia.

Because the government of America fails to give appropriate, or lack-thereof, government control in the face of some of these issues (such as healthcare) does not mean that the capitalism concept is incorrect. It means that the federalistic, two party, republic has not properly regulated some issues as recognized by standard economic practices.

However, give me concrete examples of other governments that better protect against "when the measure of a man is the depth of his pockets then the world shall be ran by clowns" abuses while not removing blatant freedoms, and give specific changes you propose. Sitting on the side of "capitalism is for pigs" is much easier than actually studying and solving the problem.

From another article https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/24/investing/premarket-stocks-tr...

> The benchmark MOEX index surged by as much as 10% in early trading. The index was up roughly 5% in afternoon trade in Moscow. Here's why: Russia's stock market isn't operating under normal rules. The central bank has blocked foreign investors from selling their shares and banned short selling. Only 33 stocks were allowed to trade on Thursday. Context: Foreign funds held more than 80% of shares trading on the Moscow Exchange in the first half of 2021, according to Reuters.

> "Russia has made clear they are going to pour government resources into artificially propping up the shares of companies that are trading," deputy national security adviser Daleep Singh said in a rare White House statement on another country's financial markets. "This is not a real market and not a sustainable model — which only underscores Russia's isolation from the global financial system," added Singh.

I still use a VPS because my websites present user data and I host a GraphQL backend to store that data (Strapi, KeystoneJS, and NestJS). What is the alternative here? AWS?

My frontends are static and hosted by netflify.

Sitting on a 2019 MBP now, I agree - this computer has been a disappointment. I'm tied to my charger for any days with more than 3 hours of planned use time.

> but it does add to the experience of using a laptop around the house where you also have a car and a 3 year old.

I got a 2019 MBP and my 3 year old spilled water on it. The repair cost more than an M1 Air. My next computer will be a cheap air I think. I won't feel bad upgrading early or if something happens to it.

I also ride Montague Bikes. I'll give my use case. I need a normal, full size bike for most of my riding. However, sometimes I need to put my bike and a few others into the trunk of a car - the Montague folds small enough to make this happen. To have the ability to fold it into vehicles I think there is some added weight compared to other bikes in the frame thickness as it does not have the durable standard diamond frame shape. Also, their flip down bike rack to kick stand is a really cool design.

I just discovered ctrl+[ can be used instead of escape. So now I remapped caps lock to ctrl and avoid both ctrl and escape. I didn't realize escape used to be where tab is today.

> Emacs users often get the credits for inventing this hack. And that hack is about realizing how stupid they caps lock key really is. Well, maybe not stupid, but unless you write SQL all day long, you’re not using it enough for it to deserve such a good position right there on the home row on your keyboard. Replace it with ctrl!

Why didn’t I ever think of this? The location of ctrl has always been awkward to me.

> Sometimes I think this sounds conspiratorial, and surely isn't happening.

People often read these types of articles and think "this can't be right." Without researching the topic they cannot fathom a government would do such a thing. The CCP's "United Front" organization sponsors many of these actions.

However, the fact these things occur is very open source, well published (including in the CCP's 5-year plans), and verified in many academic settings. You just have to read some researched documents or books (if interested, I can recommend plenty), and not rely on your own intuition based on living in a Western society of what the PRC would do. They are taking advantage of democratic principles and using them against us.

The media does not heavily report on it due to the clear externality of spurring, or appearing to support, xenophobia against Chinese citizens. However, everything I read intentionally takes the time to point out that their issue is with the CCP and not the Chinese people, as most authors lived in China and love the Chinese culture. We can point out wrongdoing by the CCP without extending those views towards the Chinese people who live under the one party system.

> Make no mistake, no US citizen outside of the political class benefits from this or other atrocities. The exact same goes for the surveillance programs.

And yet it is worth noting that the US government released this information under their own policies to the detriment of the "political class" and their own credibility worldwide. This is an important aspect of Democracies. I doubt you'd see the PRC releasing documents about the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region which will for sure be received as bad any time soon.

(This is not said to justify the acts in the article to be clear, but to point out a property of Democracies which is important)

For the first quote DIA stated

> ...it may field higher power systems that extend the threat to the structures of non-optical satellites

Just conjecture?

Do you think these findings from the Defense Intelligence Agency are overstating capability?

> Directed Energy Weapons. China likely is pursuing laser weapons to disrupt, degrade, or damage sat- ellites and their sensors and possibly already has a limited capability to employ laser systems against satellite sensors. China likely will field a ground-based laser weapon that can counter low-orbit space-based sensors by 2020, and by the mid-to-late 2020s, it may field higher power systems that extend the threat to the structures of non-optical satellites.

https://aerospace.csis.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/03/201901...

Here is a more academic article discussing the risk from ground based Satellite Laser Ranging systems to optical sensors, specifically when they are imaging the area near the SLR. I'm guessing the power required to damage structure vs optical sensors are probably orders of magnitude different.

> This density is 100 times the damage threshold of 106 J/m2, and will damage the pixel unless the laser light is filtered. In this case both the pixels and the filter may be damaged.

(There is a caveat to the above statement based on timing probability being very low)

https://scienceandglobalsecurity.org/archive/sgs17butt.pdf

One of the major assumptions of market economics is a competitive environment. Here is a study on the policy of non-competes from the Office of Economic Policy in the US treasury.

https://home.treasury.gov/system/files/226/Non_Compete_Contr...

First I had no idea how prolific non-competes are.

> Non-competes are a central labor market institution, with nearly one fifth of all American workers currently bound by such a contract.

After the policy recommendations, here is the conclusion from that paper.

> Though non-compete contracts can have important social benefits, principally related to the protection of trade secrets, a growing body of evidence suggests that they are frequently used in ways that are inimical to the interests of workers and the broader economy. Enhancing the transparency of non-competes, better aligning them with legitimate social purposes like protection of trade secrets, and instituting minimal worker protections can all help to ensure that non-compete contracts contribute to economic growth without unduly burdening workers.

If anyone cares how this is impacting aviation rather than the likely more appropriate debate of if this should impact aviation... It stops an airplane from landing in a 93 foot range of weather, if the clouds are between 107 feet and 200 feet above the runway (okay at one airport for one approach for one runway - but it's likely +- 50' true at most places, see below).

In bad weather certain aircraft rely on their radar altimeter to help guide them to the runway. It gives them an altitude they can use to decide to abort their approach that is more accurate than air pressure combined with their inertial system. This below link shows that within a given distance of 5G they are not allowed to rely on their radar altimeter for those approaches.

http://www.alpa.org/resources/aircraft-operations-radar-alti...

> When operating in U.S. airspace, the following operations requiring radio altimeter are prohibited in the presence of 5G C-Band wireless broadband interference

> Instrument Landing System (ILS) Instrument Approach Procedures (IAP) SA CAT I, SA CAT II, CAT II, and CAT III

Below is the link for the S-ILS RWY 36 for DFW that requires SA CAT II. At the bottom you can see "RA 107/12" which means the airplane can fly down to 107' on RA (Radar Altimeter) without seeing the runway. At 107', if they don't see the runway environment, they must abort the approach. This approach assumes a working Radar Altimeter. The 5G NOTAMS effect this approach.

https://resources.globalair.com/dtpp/globalair_06039I36LSAC2...

Below is the NOTAM for DFW affecting approaches. With this NOTAM an aircraft cannot execute the above approach, so if the weather is between 107' and 200' (the minimum for a regular ILS without RA), then they are not allowed to land at that airport - where before the 5G NOTAM they could.

This is the narrow band of bad weather conditions in which the 5G affects approaches at DFW for that runway, 93 feet.

In the NOTAM you will see the above approach "ILS RWY 36L (SA CAT II)" listed and "PROCEDURE NA [not available] EXC [except] FOR ACFT [aircraft] USING APPROVED ALTERNATIVE METHODS OF COMPLIANCE DUE TO 5G C-BAND INTERFERENCE PLUS SEE AIRWORTHINESS DIRECTIVES"

> FDC 2/3758 (A0495/22) - IAP DALLAS-FORT WORTH INTL, DALLAS-FORT WORTH, TX. ILS RWY 17C (SA CAT I), AMDT 11B ... ILS RWY 17L (SA CAT I), AMDT 7 ... ILS RWY 18R (SA CAT I), AMDT 8A ... ILS RWY 35C (SA CAT I), AMDT 3 ... ILS RWY 35R (SA CAT I), AMDT 4B ... ILS RWY 13R (SA CAT I - II), AMDT 9B ... ILS RWY 17R (SA CAT I - II), AMDT 23D ... ILS RWY 18L (SA CAT I - II), AMDT 3 ... ILS RWY 31R (SA CAT I - II), AMDT 15 ... ILS RWY 17C (CAT II - III), AMDT 11B ... ILS RWY 17L (CAT II - III), AMDT 7 ... ILS RWY 18R (CAT II - III), AMDT 8A ... ILS RWY 35C (CAT II - III), AMDT 3 ... ILS RWY 35R (CAT II - III), AMDT 4B ... ILS RWY 36L (SA CAT II), AMDT 4 ... PROCEDURE NA EXC FOR ACFT USING APPROVED ALTERNATIVE METHODS OF COMPLIANCE DUE TO 5G C-BAND INTERFERENCE PLUS SEE AIRWORTHINESS DIRECTIVES 2021-23-12, 2021-23-13. 19 JAN 05:00 2022 UNTIL 19 JAN 05:04 2024 ESTIMATED. CREATED: 13 JAN 05:05 2022

E) AIRSPACE CLSD WI AREA: 451511N0372130E-451531N0372401E-451354N0372556E-451233N0372838E- 451004N0372607E-451448N0371959E-451511N0372130E. F) SFC G) 600M AMSL

Look for these. This says that the airspace is closed from surface to 60k MSL (the unit is hundreds of feet) with a defining border. You can plot these points by rewriting them then putting them in any map site.

451511N0372130E is the same as “N 45 15 11 E 37 21 30” which plots in Apple Maps and google maps if you paste it as I converted it. The format is degrees minutes seconds.

I made a website that detects, converts, and plots all types of coordinates. However, it cannot identify those as defined in the NOTAM because it is not distinguishable from other formats without spaces or some nonnumerical separators.

> Uh, why are the people you know more valid than the people I know?

I never made such a claim. I explained some subset of the population that is different than yours. I never made an assumption about the population as a whole, which “almost all users” from the original post does. I intentionally did not attempt to take my experience and claim it is representative of the population.

You further prove my original point by stating “tbh, I don’t think anyone does that on their phone.” You feel confident that your experiences represent the population that you can speculate about what they do? That you can speak for users in India, grandma’s in Indiana, and software engineers in Texas?

I see this logic often in policy debates and it affects outcomes which has the potential to hurt groups outside the advocate’s bubble, even with the best of intentions, simply because they think they understand the population, rather than being aware of how much they don’t know. Again, I never claimed you were right or wrong, I just pointed out you don’t have justifiable confidence, in a statistical sense, to make such claims.

Availability Bias. You are assuming "almost all users" mirrors the users you know.

The engine is all that matters to me. Certain sites work differently on different engines. The only reason I leave Safari is for a different engine that often works better on less popular or more niche sites (PKI and some other issues). I can't do that on my iPhone. I wish I could.

I know many people, not technologically inclined, that just try different browsers on their computers when a website doesn't work. They don't know they are trying different engines, they just know it works on their computer. They also don't know that this methodology doesn't work on iOS. They still try.

There are many books published on the topic that layout the evidence. A discussion here cannot begin to explain the depth of the problem, the reasons why our foreign policy has failed, and the evidence that exists. A superficial discussion almost does the topic a disservice and comes off as xenophobic. If you are truly interested in the topic I recommend "The World According to China" by Economy published 2022. I have 8 other book recommendations to cover the breadth of the field and the opinions if you care.

Most of the authors of the books express their love for the Chinese people. Most of them lived there at one point, and separate that view from their issues with the CCP and government. If you do due diligence in the area you may change your viewpoint. Maybe not. No-one on this thread is going to convince you in a few paragraphs to change your mind on a subject this charged and complex.

A more fun book, less academic, was published last year by Desmond Shum detailing his rise to becoming a billionaire as a China native and Hong Kong resident. He wrote the book after his billionaire ex-wife was abducted. She was not heard of for four years. She called him the day before he was to publish the book asking him not to.

> https://www.npr.org/2021/09/06/1034556269/red-roulette-revea...

To answer your question on evidence, when I'm looking for information on politically charged questions I often reference the Congressional Research Service whose purpose it is to take complex issues and boil them down to something digestible and generally apolitical for Congress (I know that's hard to believe, but I've read a lot of them, they are way less political than most other sources I find).

Here is the one on TikTok with references.

https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/R/R46543

I was going to give quotes from the CRS, but there are so many.

If you want to learn about current issues just go to the home page and search with an empty search field.

https://crsreports.congress.gov

I check it daily.

"Be Curious, Not Judgmental" - Ted Lasso, and (not?) Walt Whitman.

To ask why "Does SpaceX not review the data / warnings before launch?" instead of asking "why did Space-X choose to launch when there was a warning" are two drastically different questions. The first has an assumption that checking for the warning is the problem while the second does not make an assumption of the problem.

I think it's a pretty poor assumption that an organization like Space-X would not check the warnings before launch. They likely have an NOAA rep advising their decision. It's silly to assume a highly regulated multi-million dollar discipline that has little tolerance for failure (space flight) would be so haphazard. Even pilots of small airplanes are required to check government notifications before each flight. So I'm curious, why did they launch when that warning existed?

You are right. I just read the bill. I believe 230 needs to be amended and that the damage it provides is real. But, the EARN IT act does not fix that. I do think it's important for people to understand why 230 is bad. But again, this act does not remove the designation as an "interactive computer service." It just provides exemptions for CSAM. I added an edit up top.

When I read in the article:

> the EARN IT Act would, if passed, pare back online service providers’ broad immunity under a federal law called Section 230, exposing them to civil lawsuits and state-level criminal charges for the child sexual abuse material (CSAM) posted by their users.

I assumed it was reclassifying social media companies, which would have broad implications, under the stated purpose of CSAM. I wanted to provide background on why 230 should be changed, not on the content of EARN IT. But I agree it conflates two separate things.

Here is the bill for anyone else that wants to read it.

https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-bill/6544...