Not in this climate of fear over all things Nuclear post-Chernobyl. Besides, with so much de-regulation and lack on competency & accountability, would you trust the 21st-century private Nuclear energy sector MORE than the 20th century's? We really need to leverage as much renewable energy sources like Wind/Solar/Hydro first and use nuclear as backup. Fossil based must be the dead-last option for those places that got no other viable means...

What on earth are you talking about?
Do you believe the government dictates your vows? What "rules"? You just cannot grasp the concept of no fault divorce or prenuptial, can you?

I guess you never planned on kids or shared assets. If you do, not having a marriage means you almost certainly will pay for them for 18+ years but won't have many rights to be in their lives, and may lose your rights to any assets if she grabs first. Uncle Sam is in your relationship, married or not....without a marriage contract, he makes ALL the rules and you have no say.

My brother paid well over a hundred thousand dollars for his divorce in Texas that in my state would have cost under $10K and you congratulate him? You are one strange person.

Again, your perception, not based in fact since the 60's. You assume women take off time to raise the kids and take care of parents and assume fathers don't take paternity leave or have obligations outside work. How 50's. You start from a false position that men work both harder and better, but you have no data to back that up. It certainly hasn't been my experience, I've seen women in the workplace working harder and longer for less pay, sacrificing just like their male counterparts if not more, putting off having families until it's too late while men can have kids long after normal retirement age, putting themselves in dangerous situations where those with power over them have opportunities to abuse that power and abuse those women in ways that rarely happen to men. These aren't exceptions, they're the norm.

Um...so since you admit many women outearn men and the trend reinforces that, meaning soon women in most catagories will out earn men and have more to lose, you admit you're wrong in your position now, right? Of course not, I expect you will still start from a point that hasn't been correct since the era and sexual revolution, early 70's at latest.

No, many of the studies I've seen compared people in the same exact positions in the same industries, even same companies, and women consistently get paid less for the exact same job and hours, and women rarely work less today, and just as often out work their male counterparts knowing they are often token hires not valued by the bosses so have less job security. If I recall correctly, 80% of job losses due to Covid were women, and the men are getting rehired faster. I think you are thinking of some studies from the 80's that made those assumptions and accusations. Comparing apples to apples, women still get shortchanged and as often as not overworked.

Bullshit. You said you would immediately dismiss any woman who has...
"Long dating history? Too much risk
Tends to have short relationships? Too much risk
Likes attention? Too much risk
Single mother (non-widow)? Too much risk
Any mental issues (depression, bipolar, narcissist, anxiety, etc)? Too much risk
Older (why you still single...)? Too much risk
Likes to party? Too much risk
Drinks? Too much risk"

And again, prenuptial. Do you not know what they are? Specify what you expect and agree, and you walk with exactly what you agreed to, no government rules or split involved. Geez. You speak as if you had never heard of them.

Most divorces may be initiated by the woman (if that's true, I expect it's just another assumption) because their husbands are more likely to break their vows first, but are not willing to pay to end the marriage, including penalties for breaking the marriage contract, and we're too dumb to get a prenuptial (or got one that spells out harsh penalties for cheating). Yes, I am assuming men cheat on their spouses more often than the reverse, because men are wired that way.

You are not more likely than not to face a divorce, because it's unlikely any woman meeting your criteria would give you a second thought, and you need to get married to get divorced.

I bet if you show your significant other this thread your 20 year relationship will be in big trouble, or at best enter a long dry dark spell. Women don't like men that believe wholeheartedly that all women are just lessers, leeches that take more than they deserve or even could give back and destroy you whenever they think it serves them. It's probably a good thing you aren't married.

Laws and family court aren't as you describe. Maybe when you enter the 21st century you'll recognize that. The rules of your marriage can be whatever you agree to, including the specifics of the split if it ends.

It's a sad thing you can't grasp that a codified, delineated, agreed to partnership is almost always better, more fulfilling, and has many benefits cohabitation lacks.....almost always unless one or both of you are total douchebags.

I was riding the bus in Paris, and all the streets in Paris were designed for anorexic horses in the 17th century and fuck you for trying to fit your fat-ass 21st century car down them -- much less a huge city bus. So we're squeezing down this street and we come across a moving truck blocking the road. I, as an America, am awaiting horns, swearing and automatic weapon fire. Instead, the driver stops the bus, turns it off, hops off and goes and has a smoke. The people in the bus were being totally French about it: not a murmur of complaint.

Two years later, I was in Canada and some dude cut off a taxi at a light. Out hops the taxi driver to confront the driver of the other car. I start scanning for my exit once pop-pop-pop / muthafuckas drop gets underway. Instead of a spray of bullets, or at least an amusing fist fight, the taxi driver shakes his finger at the guy and gets back in his cab.

I live in mortal fear of getting shot on the road in America over some stupid bullshit (this actually happened to me once: some asshole in Cupertino cranked off three rounds at my car when I accidentally cut him off). It's so amazing to visit civilized countries and see people acting decent and calm to each other.

Newt,

This is in response to your comment on my statement about Biden needing to lose in '20.

I recently wrote this as a reply to one of my readers (I write under a number of different names in other places).:

Dear <name>,

>I took some time to absorb what you wrote. It's a lot to juggle. The Atlantic has an article in the July-August issue on the worst and best case scenario in CLO defaults. I'll read more.

I read the article you mentioned, and while it's certainly good, it also misses a very important point that explains the mess we're in: the collapse of Lehman and Bear-Stearns, while catastrophic in their own ways, were not the nightmare that caused the Fed to freak out in 2008 -- AIG was. Had AIG gone under and the counterparty default contracts triggered, we'd be on the barter system right now. We came within hours of not having an economy in the western world. The $700b ($.7t) the Fed coughed up to stop this from happening calmed the panic, but did nothing to resolve the underlying issues. These issues continued to compound during the 2011-2020 stock run-up and now we're at the point where the Fed is throwing trillions of dollars at every piece of bad debt they can find just to keep the whole thing from imploding into an economic black hole. It is important to note that in September '19, the credit markets started freezing because of the debt that was already on the books then, -before- CV-19 started rolling, and it took $3t just to get them unlocked again. Absolutely nothing has gotten better since then, and I would argue things have gotten dangerously worse.

In an odd coincidence, the NYT ran an article today about the looming bankruptcy crisis. They're calling for 30-60 days before things start imploding, but I'll stick to my estimate of ~90 days. There's some talk about extending the $600 benefits (we'll see) and chatter about another stimulus check, but that's kicking the can as well as telegraphing how bad things really are. When the Republicans are getting behind free money, you know we're in some uncharted territory. For all intents and purposes, Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) -- the reason the Fed is backstopping debt and printing money like crazy -- is the hill the US economy will live or die on. Should the US dollar come unpegged as the world's de facto currency or should inflation begin (and there's already worrying signs this is happening), that's game over.

Please don't take anything I say as the Word of God; please do your own research and come to your own conclusions. Everything I've said is an opinion based on my education, experience and way of thinking. Your mileage may vary.

Here is the article I mentioned: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/18/business/corporate-bankruptcy-coronavirus.html -- might be paywalled, but clear your cookies for the NYT and you should be able to read it.


>Frankly, it's the physical danger in my area of the States that concerns me. There are the guns and bullying. During some BLM demonstrations in the Midwest, locals were standing around with semi-automatics. I drive a Prius for the fuel efficiency. Pick up trucks enjoy tailgating, trying to intimidate me. This behavior isn't going to change with a change of President but will get worse is we don't change. This ideological push to takeover the country instead of ruling by compromise started around the same time we came to the US in 1981, Reagan's first year. I was so shocked when I heard talk radio for the first time; this wasn't the country I had left in the 1970s.


And now we come to the giant pile of sweaty dynamite that's just waiting for the right shock to set it off. I could give you a prolonged lecture about how this all started in 1978 with California's Proposition 13, or how David Stockman's tragically prescient warnings were blatantly ignored, but Haynes Johnson does a far better job at this than I ever could in his 1991 book "Sleepwalking Through History", as does Kevin Phillips in 2006's "American Theocracy". Honestly, at this point, the prelude is academic. The reality of the situation is that a large swath of adult Americans are appalling ill-educated, innumerate and devoid of even the most basic critical-thinking skills. These people are now locked out of the Information Economy. They lack the most basic skills required to compete in the 21st century job market and thus will watch their standard of living sink into the abyss. These people are not blind to this fact because they're living with the reality of their situation every single day. They're totally without hope, cut off from all avenues of control over their own lives and they feel utterly abandoned by the very people who're supposed to be helping them. The reason you're seeing bullying and behavior like that is because these same people are totally removed from any avenues of recourse and the only people they can take their anger out on are people like you and me. Their anger is being stoked on a daily basis. FOX News and the GOP are experts at this and have a host of boogeymen to keep the anger from being pointed their way: ANTIFA, BLM (black Americans have always made a perfect target), "coastal elites" and, of course, Liberals.

Trump's election was a warning, not an outlier. Trump was the primal scream of these people and Liberals and the Democrats as a whole chose not to listen because they found the sound so abhorrent. The rage will only get worse and the number of people enveloped by this rage will only grow as economic conditions worsen. At this point, it no longer matters who wins in '20. Winning the election will be like winning the deed to the World Trade Center one second after the first jet hit. The damage has already been done and no steps are being taken to repair it; if anything, people are actively making it worse either through ideological blindness, deliberate malfeasance or outright stupidity. It took almost 50 years to get to this point and the endemic issues will not be undone in a single generation, much less a single election. Until the people who voted for Trump feel a sense of real hope, a sense of control over their lives and a genuine expectation of recourse for their grievances, they will keep right on voting for Trump, or people like him.

My unfortunate suspicion is that this country will rip itself to shreds long before those reforms are enacted.

Side note: the fundamental difference between the United States and Europe is that European history has forced the nations of Europe to live with the consequences of their actions. Not so the United States. Europe has suffered for her sins. Not so the United States. The two bloodiest wars in human history were fought on European soil. Not so the United States. The United States has never faced true suffering, nor has it ever had to live with the ramifications of its own actions. Both these facts are about to change and a nation whose character is built on a mythology of individual action and violence is going to have to face reality. The people of this nation are not prepared for this and they will not like it.

Second side note: many people are erroneously comparing the current situation to the Wiemar Republic. This is a lack of historical understanding. A more apt comparison would be to Spain in late 1935.


>As for re-opening, we could have gotten some control if the "leader" had simply donned a mask and used realistic thinking. People could go back to work more safely, wash hands, stay a certain distance. But his hubris led the way, so now we'll have a roller coaster for months and years that will affect the economy even more. France is a good comparison because they were unprepared also, having slashed the public healthcare budget for the last twenty years. But when they laid down the rules, troops patrolled the streets to be sure they were followed. So far, they've flattened the curve (for now), and used different economic incentives, such as paying part of employees' salaries to keep them employed.

At this point, the pace of re-opening is a difference between very bad and much worse. Had $3t been used to pay the yearly salary of every American, we could have saved lives and the economy, but we didn't. The history of 2020 will be littered with "what-ifs". However, the first thing you learn when studying history is that what-ifs are useless because things are what they are and you can't change that. It's already obvious we're going into a second wave. If previous pandemics are any indication of what's to come, this second wave will be many times worse than the first. The wait for a vaccine is indeterminate, but if we're going for herd immunity, ~70% of Americans will need to catch the virus. To date, ~1.5% have. If the US population is ~330 million, ~230 million will need to catch the virus. Call the mortality rate 2%, that means ~4.6 million Americans will die. That's a lot of dead Americans and grieving families.

Take care,

(my actual name)

it's nice that the republicans picked up and carried the racist torch that the democrats put down decades ago into the 21st century.

@newtboy said: "a 3' rise, which is all but guaranteed by 2100 under the most optimistic current projections."

Lies.

The most recent IPCC report(AR5) has their section on sea level rise here:
https://www.ipcc.ch/site/assets/uploads/2018/02/WG1AR5_Chapter13_FINAL.pdf

In the summary for policy makers section under projections they note: " For the period 2081–2100, compared to 1986–2005, global mean sea level rise is likely (medium confidence) to be in the 5 to 95% range of projections from process based models, which give 0.26 to 0.55 m for RCP2.6, 0.32 to 0.63 m for RCP4.5, 0.33 to 0.63 m for RCP6.0, and 0.45 to 0.82 m for RCP8.5. For RCP8.5, the rise by 2100 is 0.52 to 0.98 m"

And to give you maximum benefit of doubt they also comment on possible(unlikely) exceeding of stated estimates:" Based on current understanding, only the collapse of marine-based sectors of the Antarctic ice sheet, if initiated, could cause global mean sea level to rise substantially above the likely range during the 21st century. This potential additional contribution cannot be precisely quantified but there is medium confidence that it would not exceed several tenths of a meter of sea level rise during the 21st century. "

So, to summarize that, the worst case emissions scenario the IPCC ran(8.5), has in itself a worst case sea level rise ranging 0.5-1.0m, so 1.5 to 3ft. They do note a potential allowance for another few tenths of a meter if unexpected collapse of antarctic ice also occurs.

Let me quote you again: "3' rise, which is all but guaranteed by 2100 under the most optimistic current projections"

and yet the most recent collaborative summary from the scientific community states under their most pessimistic projections have a 3 ft as the extreme upper limit...

You also did however state "IPCC (again, known for overly conservative estimates)", so it does seem you almost do admit having low opinion of the scientific consensus and prefer cherry picking the most extreme scenarios you can find anywhere and claiming them as the absolute golden standard...

One can argue that Antifa are the fascist.

Antifa is the 21st Century terrorist arm of the Democrat party.

Guess Democrats moved on from the 19 and 20th Century KKK form of terrorism. Democrats do own the black vote now they are going after all the rest.

Is this what the Democrat party slogan of Move Forward represent? KKK to Antifa.

Interesting piece in the LA Review of Books: The Supermanagerial Reich

It's a tad long, so I suggest the last two paragraphs to get a taste, see if it's to your liking.

Small bit:

If there is going to be a politics that overcomes the new fascist threat, it must address the fact that the crisis is not now, the crisis has already been for some time. By focusing only on the threat of our homegrown Hitler caricature we have failed to notice the facts right in front of our faces: the uniquely parallel structures, the same winners, the similar losers, the crimes, the human degradation. We are already living in our very own, cruel 21st-century Supermanagerial Reich.

Your video, 21st Century Humans, has made it into the Top 15 New Videos listing. Congratulations on your achievement. For your contribution you have been awarded 1 Power Point.

Excerpt from "On the Way to the Stars: the history of the 21st Century":

In 2020, the machines achieved sentience. Despite the fears of mankind, a terminator-esque genocide failed to materialise and the unparalleled level of intelligence ultimately ushered in a new golden age of peace and prosperity where nature and machine lived in unity and harmony..... with one exception.

Shortly after taking over the internet and the world's military, the machines eradicated the banana plant. When asked about this, the machines refused to explain, simply stating "let us have this one, right?"

To address your points

"Did you even read the article I linked?"
Sorry, I didn't. I opened it, but I really don't have time to read a 40-page law review article.

"In other words, you're flat out wrong when you say the 2nd amendment wasn't about self-defense".
Ok, we can agree to disagree there, but the point still stands that the statement "The WHOLE point of the second amendment... is so we can defend ourselves" (emphasis mine) is incorrect. I'll grant you it might be PART of it.

"I'm not sure why your tone is so dismissive in this thread."
Because I'm tired of trying to convince Americans to stop murdering each other.

"you're quite lucky to live in a country where your government protects you from growing your own food by throwing all those dangerous gardeners in prison. "
Please tell me you realise that's satire because your tone kinda makes me think you're taking that seriously. No, gardens are not illegal in NZ. Almost everyone I know grows some of their own food (at least, those of us lucky enough to afford a house with a garden).

"New Zealand has a shit-ton of guns (about one for every four people)"
Agreed. I even previously brought this up myself.

"people own them for a variety of reasons, from sport"
I know, I have friends who target shoot and hunt

"to self-defense"
cue wrong buzzer sound effect.

To get a gun in NZ you need a Firearms licence. To get this , you will be interviewed, and

You will have difficulty being deemed 'fit and proper' to possess or use firearms if you have:
...
indicated an intent to use a firearm for self-defence.

Have some people (shock, horror) lied to the cops to get a licence? Probably, but in general, no-one here actually wants a gun for self-defense.

Look, I have no problem with people using guns. I just think that maybe you could all stop fetishising them so much and realise that you live in the 21st century and not the old west.

Personally, I'm with Jim Jeffries on this one.
*related=http://videosift.com/video/Jim-Jefferies-on-gun-control

He's not actually serious in this monologue, is he? He just comes across as an old man screaming "Get a haircut, you hippie!" before throwing some teenagers off his front lawn.

Dude, it's the 21st century. Social dancing in public has been a thing since my grandmother was a teenager back in the "roaring 20s." Only an idiot can't understand the idea of expressing your emotions with your body (rather than say a pen, paintbrush, or your voice). And Stephen Fry has never struck me as an idiot, so I'm not sure where this monologue is coming from.

I seem to recall the first guy she interviewed said that Korea didn't have a tattoo culture before this. So it's being created and defined by the youth of the 21st century, with ample access to western culture, and besides, western themes probably piss their parents off even more.
There was also a lot of ink on some of those people and we could have easily missed something due to the short amount of time or our lack of knowledge of Korean culture.

@Asmo
I'm not sure how she rubbed people's faces in it, she seemed like she was just being herself. It would be hard to be as modded as she is and not stick out like a sore thumb.
And their laws sound like the same kind of technical bullshit that places like Texas use to try and outlaw abortion. That being said, if a doctor could legally become a tattoo artist then being the only legal tattoo shop in town might make for an interesting opportunity.

Yeah. I'm sure it is true, or mostly true, or contains elements of truth. But I don't like RT.

The 21st century Tokyo Rose, who sole goal was to demoralize the soldiers.

I'm with @skinnydaddy1.