Champion of Truth
Mars doesn’t have a magnetic field, so any atmosphere someone tries to terraform will just be blown away by solar winds.
It may make sense to focus on Earth and technological development for now. Better technology will make moving civilization to Mars more possible in the future.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HNgIJqeyDw
“In 2023, the Military Police in Brazil recorded having killed 6,296 people (approximately 17 people per day)—eight times the U.S. police lethality rate—yet evidence points to the actual number being much higher. The overwhelming majority of the victims are black, poor, young, male, uneducated, and living in the urban peripheries.”
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“As Brazil’s militarized policing has continued to expand, so have the gangs’ control and influence. Brazilian authorities seized 72.3 tons of cocaine in 2023. Gangs have bought, threatened, and manipulated elections, politicians, and members of the judiciary. Last year, 3,238 people were found to be enslaved by gangs, and gangs have control of entire cities and the prison system. They have major stakes in real estate, mining, petroleum, casinos, and cryptocurrency, valued at billions of dollars. There have been hundreds of cases of police working directly for organized crime, including as contract killers, creating an incentive against eliminating criminality.”
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“Most of the weapons used by Brazilian police come from U.S. suppliers. This includes the Colt M4 carbine, the Mossberg 590A1 shotgun, the Browning M2 machine gun, various sniper rifles, night vision systems, armored vehicles, and helicopters—all American-made.
The gangs also use American weapons, sold to intermediaries without strong checks by U.S. manufacturers (and very often provided by police officers involved with gangs and militias). These U.S. weapons were once legally sold by the U.S. government to the Brazilian police.”
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“The U.S. State Department, along with the FBI, has provided various training programs and exercises with the Brazilian military police. One of these programs, promoted by both the Trump and Biden administrations, the “Rapid Response to Active Shooters Course,” began in 2019 and is meant to “quickly and effectively respond to attacks involving shooters in public spaces.” In the overwhelming majority of police killings in Brazil, officers and their precincts insist that they “were met with gunfire,” despite many prominent cases showing that the police shot first.”
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“Today’s Military Police is a remnant of Brazil’s military dictatorship, which was also supported by the U.S. State Department, the FBI, and the CIA during the Cold War. Then, the Military Police was used as a political hammer to bludgeon political opponents, union leaders, and any Communist threats. The U.S. government produced local anti-Communist propaganda while funding and arming the state’s death squads. U.S. agencies also trained the Military Police to use some of the most extreme tactics still in use today.
A democratic Brazil has done little to reform the Military Police’s ruthless and repressive practices, with continued U.S. backing. Last year, the U.S. State Department gave $11.7 million to the Brazilian security state, returning to Bush-era numbers despite little progress made. The overwhelming majority of U.S. security assistance went to Brazilian law enforcement, financially rewarding ineffective policing.”
https://reason.com/2024/12/02/u-s-taxpayers-are-funding-police-brutality-in-brazil/
The Department of Energy Misspent Nearly $1 Billion in 2024
https://reason.com/2024/12/04/the-department-of-energy-misspent-nearly-1-billion-in-2024/
“China banned the export of gallium, germanium, antimony, and industrial diamonds to the U.S., in response to U.S. trade and investment restrictions on Chinese technology companies. Though tit-for-tat tariffs occasionally lead to bilateral trade agreements, protectionism is more frequently a response in kind. China’s rare materials ban is the latest such response in the ongoing U.S.–China semiconductor trade war.”
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“The technological trade war reduces the productive and military capacity of both countries, not just China. Technonationalism harms American and Chinese consumers, hinders economic growth, reduces cross-cultural cooperation, and makes aggression more attractive.”
https://reason.com/2024/12/04/china-goes-tit-for-tat-over-u-s-chip-bans/
“As with so many overly punitive or privacy-invading schemes surrounding sex work, policies like the one taking effect in North Carolina have been sold under the guise of stopping human trafficking—despite targeting anyone involved in paid sexual exchange, even when it’s between consenting adults.
Cops, politicians, and antiprostitution activists argue that by targeting anyone who would pay for sex, they’re going to “end demand” for all prostitution—thereby also thwarting forced, coerced, and underage prostitution, aka human trafficking or sex trafficking.
This is absurd, of course. We can’t eradicate the human sex drive, nor can we ensure that everyone can fulfill it without money changing hands. The state is not going to “end demand” for sex, no matter how hard it tries.
Besides, we know from other types of prohibition that increasingly punitive laws don’t have the major deterrent effect that proponents suggest. A certain sort of person will be deterred by something being criminalized at all, but many people willing to risk arrest and punishment aren’t likely to be deterred by the fact that they could potentially receive a longer sentence.
What is likely to happen with increased criminalization of prostitution customers is that customers will actually gain more power and more of an upper hand in sex work negotiations. After all, they’re the ones incurring more risk (at least in North Carolina and Texas; Oklahoma seems to have ramped up penalties on everyone involved). Undoubtedly, this will make customers less likely to submit to screening methods and perhaps less likely to act in other ways that are beneficial to sex workers.
In the end, sex workers will be the real victims of this policy change.
The vast majority of customers will never be caught and never face increased punishment. But the threat exists for everyone, and the ramifications of this increased threat will reverberate throughout the sex work scene in North Carolina, with potential consequences for anyone involved in selling sex.”
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“Ramping up penalties for prostitution customers illustrates one of the many ways in which authorities are repeating the mistakes of the war on drugs in their war on sex trafficking.
As the drug war ramped up, we saw ever-escalating penalties: more prison time, more severe charges, more conditions on those convicted, etc.
As the drug war ramped up, we saw a shift from law enforcement focus on major drug suppliers to anyone selling drugs to anyone buying drugs.
The drug war shift to targeting drug buyers was even sold as an “end demand” strategy, with advocates arguing that we could stamp out drug trafficking (the supply side) by going harder after drug users (the demand side).”
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“Yes, we massively ramped up drug arrests, prosecutions, and convictions. We filled our jails and prisons beyond capacity with people found guilty of drug crimes. We devastated many lower-income communities by putting so many people from them behind bars while simultaneously creating incentives for gang activity to thrive. We threw boatloads of money at enforcement, and enabled all sorts of crazy police-state schemes in service of this. We militarized police and poked a million holes in civil liberties.
We did not, however, end demand for drugs. We did not stamp out drug addiction and drug-related gang activity. We most emphatically did not win the drug war.
And we will not end demand for sex, nor stamp out sexual exploitation and sex-related crime, by repeating all of the drug war’s mistakes. But states like North Carolina seem intent on trying. ”
https://reason.com/2024/12/04/north-carolina-goes-drug-war-on-prostitution/
“The current average credit card interest rate is 21 percent, but it didn’t get there overnight. In 2008, the average rate was 14 percent, at a time when the savings rate was much lower and consumers were overextended. In 2009, a Democratic supermajority in Congress passed the CARD Act, bringing a bevy of new regulations for credit card companies, such as requiring advance notice of any rate increases and limitations on fees for late payments.
Interest rates began rising immediately following the passage of the CARD Act and continued to rise as the risk-free rate—the Federal Reserve’s overnight lending rate, currently about 4.75 percent—fell to 0 percent throughout most of the 2010s. Objectively, credit card interest rates are high today, but they are arguably high as a direct result of legislation passed at the end of the 2000s. Capping credit card interest rates is simply an intervention to correct the results of previous interventions.”
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“There is a reason that credit cards carry a higher average interest rate than mortgages (7 percent) or car loans (8 percent). Mortgages and car loans are secured lending—the bank has collateral in the event of a default which increases recovery rates. Credit card borrowing is unsecured lending—lenders rely on nothing more than trust in the borrower. When losses occur, they are total and catastrophic. Credit card lending is inherently risky.
The vast majority of borrowers are unprofitable at a 10 percent interest rate. If credit card interest rates were capped at 10 percent, it wouldn’t just disrupt individual finances—it could destabilize the entire credit system. Major credit card lenders, such as Capital One Financial, would likely terminate the accounts of millions of their less creditworthy customers, which could mean anyone with a credit score of 780 or lower. To the extent possible, they might introduce new fees to make up for the loss of interest revenue, but the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau is already taking a hard look at late fees, which can be large relative to small credit card balances.
Customers who lose access to credit would have to resort to cash or debit cards—and find that it is hard to function in modern society without a credit card. Even renting a car or getting a hotel room are activities that require a credit card.”
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“Interest rates are prices—the price of money—and all prices are signals. Capping credit card rates might sound like a win for consumers, but in practice, it’s a lesson in unintended consequences. Policymakers must tread carefully, weighing the broader economic impacts before introducing well-intentioned but potentially devastating reforms.”
https://reason.com/2024/12/04/the-hidden-costs-of-capping-credit-card-interest-rates/
“A Republican judge has spent more than two months trying to overturn his narrow defeat for a North Carolina Supreme Court seat by arguing that around 60,000 ballots should be tossed out. But many residents have only recently learned that their votes are in danger of not being counted and say they have done nothing wrong.”
https://www.propublica.org/article/north-carolina-voters-jefferson-griffin-supreme-court-challenge
The U.S. is facing ship-building delay after ship-building delay, and they need these ships soon for China’s expected invasion of Taiwan.
The industry has a conflict of interest between their obligations to the Navy and their shareholders.
Congressmen care more about announcing orders for their reelections rather than making sure they are carried through efficiently.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msGcQT_WJMo
Demographic collapse is a huge threat to economic growth.
As countries urbanize, having kids becomes more of a burden, and as women enter the workforce, having children is detrimental to their careers and they are out of a cultural context where having children is more expected. People don’t have children at all, or women wait till their 30s where they have less time to have children and having children is biologically more difficult.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3KW1xkrk0wE
Why Are South Koreans Going Extinct?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9h9mD8Fdqk