Obviously things cost money, you patronising jackass, but pining all your hopes on CEOs and the ultra-wealthy to cut in to their own profit margins for the sake of humanity makes you more braindead than I am. It’s scientific innovation that drives discovery, cost reduction, and economic growth, not profit-hoarding conglomerates.

A large portion of our discoveries and inventions in the past fifty years or more are building on top of innovations made during the 60s, 70s, and 80s by NASA’s launches. Electrical engineering, structural engineering, communications and data, materials sciences, all needed to be advanced for space travel. Handing this responsibility off to SpaceX just leads to all the data, discoveries, innovations, and corollaries being patented, trademarked, and locked away to make sure no competitor can take advantage of it.

Shell knew climate change was going to devastate the planet over 50 years ago. Did they capitalise on that opportunity to develop green and renewable energy first and completely dominate that market for the betterment of themselves and the planet? No. They locked down that information, spread misinformation for decades, and made short term profiteering decisions to advance their own individual careers. Now we’re watching the planet slowly burn. So sure, let’s trust the corporate pigs.

This is a horrible take. Absolutely awful, ultra-capitalist drivel. Why does every action or accomplishment have to be viewed through the lense of economic benefit? Not even holistic or utilitarian, just stakeholders and making the ultra-wealthy even wealthier… Who gives a fuck about space tourism? What the hell does that give us as a species?

The original comment about the importance of aerospace and space exploration is absolutely correct, but the idea that the end goal is space tourism is more than enough to make me turn against it also. The end goal is exploration, technological advancements, and a greater understanding of how our universe works. We should be taxing the ever-loving shit out of sociopaths like Musk and Bezos and feeding some of that in to NASA, and ESA, so scientists can make discoveries for us all, rather than businessmen making discoveries so they can exploit, gatekeep, and profit off it.

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It would be massively more simple, and more profitable to government, to simply levy a colossal tax on property owners who leave their rental properties empty for more than six months or so.

It seems like their economy is reliant on a series of short term fixes, and as each one winds down another bigger one needs to take its place.

12% interest is another example of this, it will improve things in the short term but has no effect on the underlying problems, meaning that in a couple of months or so something even more drastic will be needed.

And the rest of the developed world is going to follow close behind as long as the wealth inequality stays as ridiculously broken as it is.

You say that, but some journalist said we were one million years away from flight and then something like a week later the Wright brothers conducted their first flight.

While we may not be quite that close, it may not be as far away as you think.

What could be a more fundamental part of the American Dream than the “tired, poor, huddled masses” trying to give their children a better future through naturalization.

This is just another Republican nail in the coffin of that dream, killing everything that made others envious of America while they shout more and more shrilly that America is still the best country on the planet.

RedHat, CentOS, Debian, Ubuntu.

All are good choices.

Honestly I don’t get why this is so surprising, humans have been drawing graffiti for thousands of years. There’s plenty of Ancient Roman graffiti to attest to that.

While yes, we should discourage it where possible, we also need to acknowledge that it’s just as big a part of human nature, and culture, as the colosseum itself.

-50% ad revenue says otherwise

Although it may very well be caused by Twitter running out of money, which would be corroborated by Twitter’s lack of payment to various other parties. Giving Musk three options: Use more of his own money, admit defeat and massively scale back Twitter’s functionality and availability, or try to scam money out of other people.

Clearly he’s not willing to spend his own money, or admit failure.

Gives real “A QA walks in to a bar and order -26 beers” vibe

Firstly I’d like to mention The Lost Fleet series by John G Hemry. It’s military sci-fi, as a part of the plot it discusses two forms of FTL travel, jump drives allowing you to FTL between adjoining stars, and the later invention of hypernet gates allowing direct travel from one star to another. It talks extensively about how certain star systems fared after hypernet gates made it unnecessary to travel through them to reach higher value systems.

Some star systems were only inhabited as a means of supporting various cargo haulers, transporters, and warships that must pass through those stars. As pass-through travel waned we saw declining economies, civilians abandoned as extraction costs would have affected profit margins, increased societal unrest and rebellion as a result of being cut off from the central authority, and various other legal and illegal activities.

It illustrated how truly huge space is, and how difficult communication, transportation, and protection could be out among the stars.

I’d also like to provide an honorable mention to Malazan - Book of the Fallen, even though it’s high fantasy.

This is because it not only goes in to significant detail regarding the magic system used, but also talks several times about the societal stagnation that comes about as a result of reliance on magic, and the reduced need to invent, discover, and innovate. The lack of science, and the implications of that, being the point here.