The Anti-Targ

There is no need, because the Fermi paradox is not a scientific theory established by rigorous experimentation and confirmation of predictions made based on the paradox. It was just speculative musing made to look sciencey. We can have a conversation about life elsewhere once we've found several thousand planets with more or less identical (or better) habitability potential to Earth and confirmed none of them have any kind of life we could recognise as such. But for now, we haven't even firmly ruled out life arising independently elsewhere in our own solar system. It was only 40 or so years ago that science thought planets around other stars would be rare. No serious scientist thinks that any more.

Unlike the Life of Brian and Dune, in the real world the Messiah always identifies them-self as such and owns their station completely, as do many distinctly non-messianic deluded persons. MLK will never be widely regarded as a Messiah, because he knew he wasn't one and he never claimed to be such. Given there are people who say they think Trump is a Messiah of sorts it's certainly possible, even probable, that some people will come to believe it, or see some advantage in laying such a claim whether or not they believe it. I feel certain that MLK will weep tears of sadness if anyone was to try to make him a Messiah, that people would equate him with his own Lord and Saviour, Jesus, would be a great blasphemy to his spiritual ears. He was a martyr for a great cause (racial equality), but it seems people are not satisfied with such an elevated state for this heroic, but no more than human, figure.

I think a major catastrophe is going to end such selfish and wasteful decision making and behaviour, but it will be one of our own making, not because of aliens. Possibly unlike many my belief is that any Alien civilisation advanced enough to travel the stars and visit other worlds with civilisations capable of putting people into space has already gone through and worked out their bullshit selfishness, aggression and desire to conquer, enslave and colonise. We'll get there eventually too, for the most part we've already realised conquering, enslaving and colonising is bad and not something we should do. I have faith. It just might be a few centuries before we get there.

That is not concern limited only to religion of course your / our / my "kind" can be for anything from left/right handedness, eye colour and skull shape to ethnicity, ideology, language, sport, gender etc. Singling out religion, to me, is putting the blame on a symptom rather than a cause. To be sure not much excites one's passions like religion (even among some anti-religionists curiously enough), though country, racial and ideological identity follow closely behind. The root cause is what appears to be a deep primitive tribal instinct. Some kind of need to identify oneself with a subset of humanity in preference to the rest of humanity instead of recognising humanity as one family and the earth as one home and meaningfully acting upon that recognition. Lots of people accept intellectually that we're one species and the earth is one big ecosystem, but they actively resist these truths having a meaningful influence on their lives, choices and attitudes.

Accidentally posted in the UK thread originally. https://emails.idfa.org/vo/?FileID=ed474941-dec8-491f-aa8b-a2a0967aa534&m=49552ff2-085e-4568-82ef-51844f544028&MailID=6771470&listid=1005940&RecipientID=10536309012 I'm not saying the next pandemic is about to start, but a 'flu virus that successfully jumps species to humans is one of the candidates for the next pandemic. Still worth keeping an eye on the headlines until there stops being any headlines.

You're right must be close to needing glasses if I can't see the difference between US and UK on the browser tabs. Though in terms of culture wars it's almost impossible to distinguish between the two. Jonathan Pie definitely not a fan of the Scottish Law. I don't know enough of the detail to comment, but if what he's saying about the detail of the law is factual that seems like a pendulum swing too far.

IDFA: CDC Confirms H5N1 Avian Influenza in One Person in Texas, Risk to Human Health Remains Low; USDA Confirms Additional HPAI Cases in Dairy Herds in NM and TX, Pasteurized Milk and Dairy Safe for Consumers I'm not saying the next pandemic is about to start, but a 'flu virus that successfully jumps species to humans is one of the candidates for the next pandemic.

Schools run by religious organisations typically include religious education as part of their curriculum.

That doesn't quite make sense. Do you man in state schools in a secular democracy, or are you suggesting all schools run by religious organisations should be banned?

Never heard of a gesture egg. Culture wars is what people do when they have no solutions for the real problems.

Gotta keep the workers at the troll farms busy. The west is doing so much to bring itself to ruin without Russia's help that they need to do a bit of busy work to keep them occupied, and not give them time to think about what Russia is doing to itself.

It's a belief, and it's not science, and some people are even trying to organise it (like having atheism camps for kids), and it has its evangelists and fanatics writing books and giving sermons on the internet. It has a lot of the qualities of a duck, but maybe it's just a decoy, not a real duck.

Can you really read anything into a State House special election with a spectacularly low turnout, almost 1/3 the number of voters who voted in 2022? Seems a bit of a stretch to imagine it signalling some kind of national sea change. But it does possibly suggest that reproductive rights could motivate Democratic voters who might otherwise be pretty apathetic about voting in November. There are 27 Democrats in the State House, so it's not like no Democrats ever get elected to anything in Alabama.

I think when freedom of speech, esp to spread lies, infringes on other people's freedom of speech that's kind of when the govt needs to step in and protect the freedom of speech of those who are not telling lies. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/national/512740/hastings-council-cancels-drag-queens-rainbow-storytime-after-destiny-church-protest

What the USA needs to be saved from is godless Christians. The American right is full of them. Godly Christians are mostly very apolitical about their faith.

Seems like most news network are trying to attract viewers away from Fox, which means hiring someone that identifiably fits within the current level of Fox crazy, since hiring people that left Fox because they lacked the requisite amount of crazy isn't working. It seems to be getting harder to find such people that aren't wholly unsuitable as credible political commentators.

Sympathies to Baltimorians and Baltimore admirers. Indeed, my first thought was not to terrorism, but more this is a tragic example of what is typical in the business and economic paradigm that has been current for generations. Profit maximisation means minimising costs, including on safety and maintenance. Just as national infrastructure is starting to creak under the weight of inadequate maintenance and replacement (whether or not that is part of the reason for the scale of the bridge collapse), so too are the private sector equivalents. It would not surprise if the cause and scale of this disaster comes down to systemic negligence in both the private and public sector. Putting it down to "human error" would be attempting to non-specifically blame the crew on the vessel for the accident and deflect from the real root cause. Unless there was specific criminal intent by an individuals, or several individuals conspiring, industrial accidents pretty much always come down to some kind of systemic failing as the root cause. The question is whether the company and regulatory investigating agency put the effort in to getting to the heart of the problem.

Make Trump a billionaire again.

It's mostly a statistical game. If people ate raw meat and raw shellfish at the rate people drank milk then it would end up being illegal to sell raw meat and raw shellfish because of how many severe illness outbreak there would be. If people drank milk at the rate people currently eat raw meat and raw shellfish there would be very little regulation of milk pasteurisation. I have to say that anyone who eats raw shellfish is playing Russian roulette, if not with their life then with their short and long term health. But having said that there are as many regulations around growing, harvesting and processing of shellfish as there are for milk. People should have a read of the US National Shellfish Sanitation Program (there are similar regulatory programmes in pretty much every other country with a commercial shellfish industry) before they try to make comparisons. And most of the microbiological problems are because of human and animal waste contaminating the growing areas. Raw fin fish meat is basically safe to eat unless you abuse it. And the most dangerous thing about fin fish meat (for some species) is histamine and cooking doesn't get rid of it, nor does it make fish smell or taste bad. The takeaway for fish is that they are so different to people that the bugs they naturally carry in a clean environment are too different to be a risk to human health. And for shellfish especially there are harvesting bans when the environment is [literally] shitty. There is listeria of course, which is also highly regulated. Properly prepared raw meat is just as microbiologically safe to eat as fully cooked meat. I don't know about the US but retailers are not allowed to sell raw meat as intended for raw consumption. As a food safety regulator I would never eat raw shellfish (raw marinated, yes), raw meat unless I knew how it was being prepared though I don't particularly care for it, or raw milk. All good regulation is about managing public safety / public health. The fact is mandatory milk pasteurisation with the ability to allow for well managed exceptions is sound public health policy with a proven public health track record. Mandatory cooking of all meat, fish and shellfish is not good public health policy.

High pathogenicity avian influenza (HPAI) detected in some sick dairy cows in Texas and Kansas, and maybe New Mexico. No evidence that the virus is likely to further jump the species barrier to people. Almost certainly wild birds carrying the virus pooping on the cattle feed as they fly overhead. Pasteurisation kills the virus so as long as you aren't big into drinking raw milk the risk of exposure is very low, even from milk from those farms, so long as you are not working on one of those farms.

Have people watched the brilliant bureaucratic satire Utopia? It seems like our new govt watched it and thought it might have been a documentary https://www.interest.co.nz/public-policy/127001/new-government-agency-30-year-pipeline-and-private-sector-investment-are-key

I thought we had already agreed that European colonialism has no lingering negative effects on Africa and it's all the African's fault now. If you don't agree then you're being racist and paternalistic.

Open and shut case aye? Clearly the evidence was more than enough to convict so the torture was just for shits and giggles.

Are they even the terrorists? Plead guilty and we'll give you a quick death, plead not-guilty and your death (and your family's death) will be slow and painful.

If she doesn't want to appear in public because she feels like shit, why isn't it enough for her PR team to simply say that, and for the public to just move on? Or have those who care about these things gone far enough down the rabbit hole that physical proof of life (with her hooked up to a chemo drip, looking pale and miserable, with tabloid journos and photographers hovering around her snapping pics like vultures on a carcass) is the only thing that will stop them from continuing to speculate that the cancer announcement is false and something much worse is true? Putting out deepfake photos or video doesn't help shut down the conspiracy talk.