rjshae

I don't mind the verification method; I'm just not sure they will be staffed to handle it. Plus if they start shutting down offices, retirees will need to travel a much longer distance to provide verification. I suppose they could make a fun trip out of it.

Per the Howard Lutnick article: As with many things this administration is implementing, they don't seem to have thought through the consequences. They want to: Make significant cuts to the Social Security Administration, including closing offices Make people come in person to verify their identity Alas, there may be nobody around to check the identities. Hmm, problem solved I suppose. I.e. just die old person.

Well it looks like DJT is going ahead with the plans to "dismantle" Department of Education. I wonder what the Democrats would do with that kind of capability (assuming there will still be a constitution)? Get rid of the NRC? Toss ECAP? Eliminate fossil fuel subsidies? Take down the US Customs and Border Protection? Eliminate the DHS? What do you think?

The paper predicts an effect that would last four years, so presumably a very poor agricultural output for a few years. Enough to cause mass starvation? I don't know, But after that, we're back to global warming again.

Wasn't your premise that we'd go to war to prevent Iran from having a nuclear arsenal? We're not at full-blown war with them now, so presumably that would happen once Iran is nuclear armed to some degree? Do we invade Iran at that point? What's the trigger point? When Iran tests a nuclear weapon?

This morning I'm off to the dentist to get a permanent cap put in, and a temporary on a different tooth. Joy. Caps are getting pricey, even with dental insurance.

A regional nuclear exchange could have a world-wide climate impact. It depends on the amount of carbon aerosols thrown up into the upper atmosphere. https://doi.org/10.1029/2020JD033056

Today in stupid: White House press secretary claims French should be ‘grateful’ to US they are ‘not speaking German’ *cough* Well I for one would like to thank the French for making it possible for the US to be an independent nation.

No, the Destiny was an automated ship that humans happened to board. In a setting with stargates, almost nobody is going to use generation ships. Wall-E has an example of (what became) a generation ship, and the Firefly setting population arrived in generation ships.

I guess there is something to be said for the D&D 5e approach of requiring many buffing spells to use concentration. That limits much of the need for pre-combat buffing. Anyway I picked up a couple of Pathfinder books at the local library and have been looking them over.

For now, yes. The current recruiting rise starting last year, before the election. There have been increases in female and racial minority recruits. With an all-white male face though, the army may end up recruiting from a shrinking pool of candidates.

I still have a bunch of old boxed wargames in my closet: 1940, Triplanetary, Trailblazer, Dragon Pass, Third Reich, Greyhawk Wars, WW II, Imperium, Russian Campaign, and Objective: Moscow. There were a bunch of others that I gave away some time ago. I haven't touched any of them for years though, not since wargames appeared on PCs. I subscribed to Strategy & Tactics for many years, but almost never had the time to play them. Eventually I couldn't justify the cost.

Pure idiocy. I'm sure it will do "wonders" for military recruiting. Not.

James Webb Telescope Spots Unprecedented Galaxy Rotation Pattern Things that make you go, hmm...

Is it ever going to be enough?

Judges threatened with impeachment, bombs for ruling against Trump agenda There's your sign.

Paradise on Hulu. Decent thus far. The setting reminds me of the cosy apocalypse genre. It could just as easily be a generation ship. Why hasn't there been a generation ship drama series? It seems a natural for a human experiment drama; a modest population of people trapped on an isolated, self-sufficient ship for the rest of their lives. They could throw in the Fallout-style mad science experiments.

Yep, well that's one of my expectations for this administration: more people are going to die. Culling the herd, I suppose they'll call it.

Since USA military aid is ending, does that mean Ukraine is no longer under the combat constraints required under Biden?

Musk wants to take on 8th dan black belt judo master Vladimir Putin in a physical contest? That should be fun. More likely though, Musk would be slipped a neurotoxin.

I was more or less expecting that at some point we'd be forming a North American economic union, similar to the EU. Seems like we're heading in the opposite direction, but perhaps once this circus level event (CLE, pronounced silly) has passed its course...

It was a pretty good series, but by the final episode it was getting rather confusing, what with all the time travel and overlapping time loops. The motivation for the project director was pretty good though: with the development of true time travel, all bets were off. I.e. true time travel is the ultimate power and there was no saving everything if it fell in the wrong hands. That's a good reason for preventing it from ever being developed. I've got this crazy conjecture that time travel is impossible. It's not that the physics can't make it work, but rather that any civilization that develops time travel ultimately ends up wiping itself from existence. (This also includes any civilization that makes contact with a time travelling civilization, ad infinitum.) That's why we'll never develop a time machine, because doing so would create a paradox that would wipe out the time machine. Have fun with that one...

The Next COVID Vaccine Could Come in Pill Form Pretty cool technology. I'll bet it will be popular with those who dislike injections. That is, if it can get past RFK Jr. Multimillion-dollar Biden-era COVID-19 vax project halted by Trump’s HHS