It is too easy to view everything as "nothing new, already done in some way" and ignore the slow boil, especially when they are not directly affected or ideologically opposed to it. That is how we get people clamoring for the government to post pictures of chained people marched into extrajudicial prisons without due process.

All I can say is that while some people will be insulated from the consequences, if the situation keeps escalating, do not bet on you being one of those privileged few.

The scariest thing, and most absurd to me, is that even though I made that joke just 1 minute ago, now that I think about it, it is not completely impossible in this current political climate...

I dread to think about what the US will be 10 years from now. Trump is not the problem. He is a solution, or claimed to be, to the ailments that plague the US. The people here want change, they know something is rotten but they don't even know what is the problem with so many lies and misdirection and days to days burdens they have to bear. So Trump become their cry for help. It is just sad and tragic. Truly something for the history book, if we ever get there.

The art of manipulating the public through social media is a very developed field by now. It is made even easier through the abuse of "volunteer moderators" on social media.

A bit of push here and there, some sowing of ideas, suppression of "disruptive" opinions, promotion i.e. normalization of fringe characters, add in a dash of specific attacks based on the target's internet history, and a small group of folk, with the assistance of technology, can effectively steer public opinion.

It is not easy to defend against this, especially to a populace who consider themselves living in a land "free of propaganda".

It is ironic, that a country who prides itself on its exceptionality, fall into a crisis because it is, in fact, unexceptional.

Spaghetti is the same type of polymer so a pretty good abstraction.

It has only been 2 months. How much further can it go in one year? In 4 years? At what point would there be real consequences? I think these questions are important enough to warrant some serious discussion.

Just that I don't agree this topic fit in any of those categories, so just want to state it first.

Also, say what you will, but the US situation right now, this matter included, is definitely "novel and thought provoking" so if this thread is flagged, I am not convinced the people flagging it are doing it just because of HN rules.

The fact that the components on the asteroid is racemic meant or heavily suggested that they were formed using non-biogenic means. And if so, it also means that Earth could have had the same thing happened a long time ago, leading to the seeds of life.

tl,dr: this discovery weaken the panspermia hypothesis.

It is not possible to scrub every trace of bacteria if the goal is ever to have a living human there. The human itself is the carrier of germs. Remove all the germs from the human and that human will not be very happy or very healthy for long.

Not to mention it is ridiculously hard to fully sterilize everything, especially in places where lots of nooks and tiny crinks exist like a space station. All it take is one bacteria and you will have a thriving and diverse ecosystem in a decade or two, complete with niche subspecies and unique populations[1]

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._coli_long-term_evolution_ex...

It is a vicious feedback loop.

Even that portion is also restricted. The purpose must be strictly academic and some part must be paid to the university, some must be reinvested, and then the final pieces can be used at the professor's discretion according to the rules set when the endowment is established.

So generally, you are looking at 1-2% of the total amount that can be spent annually. Still a lot, but for research, tens of millions would still not be enough for something like Penn.

If not, then this is likely unreliable and likely as good as fiction.

I do not see such effective efforts in the US.

When giants like the US are falling, often there will be signs. These initial signs are never taken seriously and by the time the issue become obvious, the momentum has already built up. At this scale, once events are set to motion, no single entity can change its course. The time and specifics may differ slightly, but the outcome is, imo, inevitable.

People will struggle and attempt drastic measures. Yet I doubt it will help. If anything, the combination of pride and desperation is more likely to hasten a violent end.

I never thought I would live to see the day the US itself is having one of these. Wtf is this "DOGE team lead"? They will have power over newhires and policies at every federal agency?

I literally can't believe it. It is almost unreal. Sometimes I fantasize about what would happen if the world turn upside down tomorrow. I guess I now know how it actually feels...

Nobody raised a concern. Nobody dared to say a single thing about that. And that ratio is unfortunately not rare in that company.

This is a large multinational corp in a highly technical field, as in STEM master and PhD are normal requirements.

That event gave me a shock and made me realize why there is such a huge backlash against the DEI folks these days. It is easy to have a perception of "the pendulum has swung too far" when these things happen often enough.

So instead of training it that way, the network can potentially be trained to "perceive" or "model" the reality beyond the digital world. The only way we know or have enough experience and data to do so is through our own experience. An embodied AI is what I think is required for anything to actually grasp the real concepts, or at least as close as possible to them.

And without that inherent understanding, no matter how useful a model is, it will never be a "general" inteligence.