I’ve always thought it was a horrific decision, but not at all because of the immediate effects or massive death and destruction they caused in Japan….they fucked around and found out and deserved everything they got (and I was unaware the Russian Manchurian offensive timing, but it’s even more reason to not drop a second bomb or even a first if we knew it was coming).

I think it was horrific because we had no idea what the long term effects of even minimal fallout might be, and in fall/winter the jet stream runs from Japan directly to the highly populated West coast (which we knew well thanks to balloon bombs), so some portion of the fallout was guaranteed to fall on millions of US citizens. We lucked out that it wasn’t deadly a year later, and didn’t cause horrible birth defects with near zero exposure…we had no concrete idea at the time though just guesses, and still don’t have a clear idea of how much it contributed to higher cancer rates in the US.

Keep in mind, we had no idea what discussions the Japanese were having amongst themselves , so no idea how effective our bombs nor the Manchurian offensive were at persuading them to surrender. Hindsight is 2020, but at the time we were flying blind.

The uncertain risk there of possibly killing millions of ourselves or gimping or sterilizing or even Cronenberging entire future generations for the comparatively minimal convenience of not using conventional bombs, to me, is no where near worth it. There were just too many unanswered questions about too many factors. I’m sure the soldiers fighting at the time would feel differently.

*promote the history lesson, learned some new stuff!

Smart, bob has been known to post links to spoofed sites that are in fact virus hosts, like an MSNBC.CO/xxxxxx address in Columbia he posted that was not MSNBC in America like he claimed. Good thing I have decent anti virus and vpn, they blocked the site.
Never click a Bob link…or do so at your own elevated risk.

I don’t understate or underestimate the impact or cost of obesity, I only point out that no one else has to directly pay for your care because you got fat by your own choice, but others might and often do foot the bill for the irresponsibility of not wearing a seat belt.
Discounting is a partial fix….by how much? How do they decide how much worse your injuries are because you didn’t wear a belt…and who decides…and what’s the cost of doing that math? I’m perfectly fine with people not being safe as long as they accept 100% of the risk….it should be wear no belt, get no injury recovery (or insurance coverage) period. Anything less makes the case for seatbelt requirements imo.

Perhaps not, but we don’t live in a free society, nor a responsibility free society.

The effects are not low. The difference in cost of a serious car crash with and without seatbelts is in the hundreds of thousands to millions of dollars.

Again, because you can be “at fault” through no fault of your own, and responsible for all injuries the other driver suffers, it’s not just smart but the only responsible move to be forced to wear them and minimize the shared risk.
It’s 100% unfair for the other driver to be allowed to take the high risk of not wearing it but you have to pay for the consequences of their irresponsibility….don’t you think?
The difference here as opposed to, say, obesity is the risk/consequences of the irresponsibly transfer to others regularly and often completely (at least financially).

If not wearing it was an automatic waiver for any and all bodily injury damages, fine, but it isn’t so being forced to wear it is the only sane and rational move. Because that choice can turn a no damage bump into injuries requiring life long care

I'm having a hard time imagining the case where wearing a seat belt is going to make you have better control of your car after a collision.

Your moral case, for wearing a seatbelt, while personally compelling, doesn't mean the government should be controlling that activity for individuals. Being selfish is usually not a crime.

There is shared risk if you look deep enough in all activities that people engage in throughout their lives. Newtboy's assertion that these types of activities should be regulated because of their knock-on effects doesn't seem practical in a "free" society.

The reason I don't understand why this is a law is because the affects to society are so low and are similar to many other unregulated choices people are allowed to make. The inconsistency is painful.

If those people could sign waivers refusing any medical care they don’t pre pay for, waiving any physical damages if they aren’t at fault (I shouldn’t have to pay for your preventable injuries just because we crashed) and hospitals honor those waivers…just a dot on your license that says if your wallet is empty you agree to be a live organ donor…I’d agree.
Since that’s not the case and as often as not the paying public ends up footing the bill in one way or another for the irresponsible behavior like not wearing a seat belt, mandating seat belt usage seems 100% reasonable.
Also, since most learning/teaching is by example, it’s near child abuse to not wear it with kids in the car. Akin to shooting drugs or playing Russian roulette in front of them….taking a deadly risk for no purpose.

IF they really learned enough to justify the enormous cost, good for them and it is a “success”. That remains to be seen, I think even they won’t know until their next shot. If it has 6 motor failures, that’s advancement, but enough?

It’s not a great sign that near 1/4 of the motors failed in 4 minutes…that’s a whole lot of failures to figure out. It’s unlikely one thing caused them to fail, and they need to solve every single issue before they can put people on board. I hope they got enough data. I do want this to work.

This is a different mindset/methodology to designing a vehicle for getting to space, one we aren’t used to. Edit: Rapid Advancement through intentional failure. It will be interesting to see how this gamble pays off. Great risk can bring great rewards…or great failures.

I would say to Hatfield, yes, many airplanes failed their first test flights…but none were 1/10 as expensive or complicated as this rocket. Failures here are many orders of magnitude more expensive, so really NEED to produce major advancements quickly to be a viable method for designing rockets. The Wright bros only lost some cloth and wood when they failed.

Oh snap!!
Tesla employees are claiming that, at least from 2019-2022 they and others routinely accessed and shared private videos from customer car cameras including captured nudes and sex, road rage incidents, speeding through neighborhoods, and footage inside homes and garages including inside Elon Musk’s garage…shared widely between employees for fun.
Of course, Elon/Tesla for years had insisted this COULD never happen and WOULD never happen. Another broken promise from Elon. This one a MASSIVE problem, requiring you to cover your car in a sound proof garage for any privacy.
This sounds like a major privacy issue for Tesla in America especially since the cameras record audio on private property which is usually a crime, and I can’t imagine what China is going to do. They might recall every Tesla in China as a national security risk.

You going to CPAC?
Prepare for Covid.
So many got covid from the last two when they denied it was a thing that now you must sign a waiver waiving your rights to sue them if you get Covid and die, and stating that you 100% accept the risk of exposure, contracting, and spreading covid…and include your children in that waiver so when you bring home covid and they die, CPAC isn’t liable.

CPAC, where cons go to share memes and rant now, is SO important it’s worth your children dying or being severely disabled for life, and yourself, and your wife, and your workplace, and your community. That’s the right for ya. “Our right to party outweighs your right to live”.

You must be proud.

Er mer gerd the Elon move is hilarious. Couldn’t stand that Biden’s tweets were more popular so he rewrote the algorithm to force/push his tweets to everyone, followers or not, by bypassing all the filters that personalize recommendations and raising his ranking by a factor of 1000 artificially….because he’s a little baby who can’t stand that he’s not liked! ROTFLMFAHS!!
This has resulted in #blockelon trending.
So much for caring if Twitter plays favorites, right? Doesn’t matter one bit if they favor right wing stupidity, but call a congressional hearing if they follow their own terms of service in favor of a liberal. You people are not serious people, you’re infants.
🤦‍♂️

Edit: it sounds like Trump was just subpoenaed in criminal court….BY THE PROUD BOYS as a co-conspirator! LOL! Not good for him, they have the pictures and texts from Trump and Co both at the White House Residence (where no one goes without personal invitation from POTUS) and the coup headquarters at the Willard hotel with other administration officials (like Stone, Giuliani, Flynn).

D’oh. Tesla fired dozens of workers who were organizing a union. These were people who code the autopilot system….a system just recalled and badly in need of an update. Multiple deaths and dozens of serious crashes. Not good when unemployment is this low and you’ve already turned off any and all workers by treating them as easily replaceable or worthless.

[1] My kids' primary school: first names all 'round - teachers and students. The principal: yes, we've got all the usual problems here, but we think that respect is earned; it's not about the name we use.

[2] separately (not at my kids' school) beginning to suspect that 'cool' (first names...) male teachers may be more at risk of 'dating' students.

It’s far from just letting others say it with no contradiction for months, it was the same hosts themselves saying the election was stolen that now admit they never believed the big lie, so could never have believed Dominion orchestrated it.

The great part is this essentially makes the case for Dominion, because part of winning their case involves proving malice, and saying these horrible lies day after day when you know they aren’t true, inviting the same conspiracy mongers on day after day to sell the same ever more convoluted lies for months, knowing what they say is nonsense and nodding along and agreeing knowing you are not only ruining a multi billion dollar business with lies but also putting its employee’s lives at risk from your viewers, all because the machines functioned properly and didn’t give the election outcome you wanted is pretty much the definition of malice.
Dominion deserves every penny of the $1.6 billion they request for actual damages then triple it for punitive damages.

So….Mike Pillow for RNC Chair. Endorsed by Trump.
Yes please.
Nothing could possibly end the party faster than putting a bat shit crazy crack head in the top party position and a convict as your presidential candidate with an ignorant crazy Karen as his VP.
Always running to the lowest common denominator, and in your case that’s LOW. Like pedophilic Nazi on meth low.

Wannabe Werewolf Walker saying people under 35 shouldn’t get to vote (because they aren’t voting for him), and anyone (on the left) with any complaint against America should leave and lose their citizenship (not realizing his entire campaign is about complaints he has against America) is pretty much perfectly on brand….this was in response to a question about children being bullied online.

And Elon, by removing misinformation rules and fact checkers and bringing back the crazed right wing nuts spreading misinformation and planning terrorism on Twitter, has violated Apple’s terms of service, prompting them to 1) stop advertising on Twitter (around $200 million per year) and 2) consider removing the app, meaning all apple products can’t download or update the app…essentially killing Twitter.
He tweeted that he carried the sink in to “let this sink in” when he took over, but now it’s clear it was just his intent to “sink” the company from the start. He’s personally lost $100 billion in net worth so far, and still plummeting. That’s making it harder to get funding for his other companies. Tesla is down 55% ytd. “All in” is not looking great these days. It’s always a huge risk. Can’t say you weren’t warned.

Imbecilic ignorant MAGOTS, exactly what you are….actually an insult to maggots. Put your big girl panties on, snowflake. Shouldn’t dish out what you can’t take.

Yes, eliminating the system where, no matter how dangerous or likely to kidnap again or what kind of flight risk, a person can be released if they have cash and stays in jail if they don’t no matter how minor the chance of recidivism or flight, and changing to a system where risk assessments are done and those likely to reoffend are kept while those deemed not dangerous get out without paying exorbitant fees is INTELLIGENT and FAIR. No surprise you’re against it. Also no surprise you completely dishonestly intentionally misrepresent the law.

Clearly Republicans don’t give a shit about reality, you abandoned it in favor of this type of ignorant racist nonsense. Again, you claimed 98% of all crime is black on black crime….because you’re a racist liar who spouts racist lies constantly.

Republicans, frauds who cheat, break the laws, attack democracy itself, steal nuclear secrets and keep them in the magazine rack in the public bathroom, run shit hole states, have higher crime rates, spread anti American values, are horrific sex offenders and child sex traffickers, and are totally fine with 1 million dead Americans, actually said grandma and grandpa would gladly die if it meant they got back to work a few weeks earlier…the party of Death, Debauchery, unDemocratic Despotism, Demonizing, Douchebags, and Dummies.

Edit: to address your inappropriate and dishonest rewrite of my comment-

Joe is pulling real Republicans to the Democrats because they don’t agree with MAGA unDemocratic insanity and are tired of being called RINOS by zealous unDemocratic people who’ve been “Republicans” for 6 years now.…uniting, while MAGA was designed to be divisive from the start, based on an unspoken an insult that Obama had destroyed America and it needed to be made great again….utter nonsense.

Again, look at facts, many deaths at BLM rallies were Trumpsters who committed crimes they tried to pin on BLM. They were prosecuted, there was no evidence BLM committed crimes/murders so no prosecutions. D’oh! Definitely deaths from Jan 6, and a $500000000 price tag from just that one event of many, 100% of which was caused by Trumpsters.

-3.5% gdp…NEGATIVE! Worst unemployment numbers in living history. His judges had often never tried a case, his Supreme Court justice had never heard one. His court packed with unqualified activist “judges” removed reproductive rights from 1/2 the population, which will cost you this election. Every single fraud scheme found, EVERY SINGLE ONE was for Trump’s benefit. With hundreds of millions wasted, not a single real fraud scheme found from Democrats, just Jewish/Italian space lasers changing votes with the help of long dead zombie socialist dictators. 😂 derp. You are so insanely delusional, facts just don’t matter one bit to you.

Trump told people it’s just a cold, don’t take precautions, to not take vaccines, don’t wear masks, don’t social distance, go to work even if you’re sick, inject bleach, take horse dewormer, let grandma die. His fast tracking vaccines actually had nothing to do with the first vaccines available…and his distribution plan was non existent. 9/10 deaths are on his hands…easily preventable by decent leadership.

Caught red handed mishandling highest level top secret stolen documents. About as treasonous as it gets. His lawyers experience, house council for a parking lot. No longer has the DOJ as his personal legal team and shield. He’s fucked. Not every judge is going to destroy their careers for him like his one cherry picked judge has (not the first time he tried hard to have her hear his cases, btw…see his frivolous just dismissed case against Clinton and the scathing teeming the judge gave his team.).

Sure, he likely had hundreds of legally obtained declassified documents, the issue is he also had hundreds of illegally obtained still top level not declassified documents he kept unsecured and lied about having them, likely actively hid them from investigators with warrants. Every part of that is a major felony thanks to Trump strengthening espionage laws trying (and failing) to impugn Clinton.