My crazy prediction is that trump will try to duplicate the burning of the Reichstag. Except, in typical fashion, he will do so in a comically inept fashion. He’ll try to burn down the Reichstag, and he’ll actually succeed! Unfortunately, he’ll burn down the Reichstag…the actual Reichstag, not the US capital, but the present-day German parliament building.
See, fascism gives the appearance of a united front because it rallies around a singular leader, but it’s not. Everyone below that leader is trying to stab each other in the back in order to be in the good graces of the leader.
That Nazis were actually very incompetent at governing. It didn’t stop them from committing the Holocaust.
I stand firmly by this statement: “Politics are never as good as they seem and they are never as bad as they seem.”
That works until it doesn’t. “I assume neither side is actually a Hitler,” is a perfectly good heuristic, until one side actually goes and nominates a Hitler. Then that heuristic failures spectacularly and you end up electing a Hitler.
Ah don’t be such a pessimist.
They’ve also seen the fires of Hell!
Well, it made sense that Reagan was elected in the 1980s. That was the age of the camcorder, the first portable personal miniature TV production studio. With anyone being able to be a TV studio, it was only natural that actors would become presidential candidates!
I would be content seeing him sent to one of RFK Jr’s wellness camps.
Except, like any religion, the rules were ultimately self-contradictory and open to any convenient interpretation.
I mean, plastic surgery is pretty advanced these days. The body mod scene can also get pretty extreme. Musk certainly has the resources for it. Fuck it. Let’s all just try to convince him to get himself surgically altered to have giant Ferengi forehead and ears.
With how good image generators are getting these days…
I work in higher education, and I have to say, I think we probably have been pushing it too hard. I want to see everyone have access to tuition-free university education, but I also expect enrollment to decline. I’m an elder Millennial. We were pushed hard that we had to go to college. It was that or work a retail or fast food job. Where I grew up, in white suburbia, trades weren’t even seriously discussed among my peer group. My parents were college graduates, and unless I showed some really strong self-interest in a trade particularly early, it was just assumed I would be going to college as well.
College turned out well for me. But I know many in my peer group weren’t so lucky. I managed to graduate with a modest amount of debt I was subsequently able to pay off, but I knew many with crippling levels of debt. I work in higher education, and I see many students today with crippling levels of debt.
In my peer group, we were told to go to college, and we did. And some of us found success with our degrees, and some didn’t. But now people in my peer group have had to deal with paying student loans while ALSO paying far higher prices for any kind of trade service than our parents did. We have people with masters degrees working as baristas, but now we have to pay out the nose for any kind of plumbing, electrical, HVAC, or carpentry work. There are millions of people in my generation that probably would have been better served with an apprenticeship in the trades than a university diploma.
So yeah, I have no doubt that the parents of today, people my age, are likely having much more nuanced conversations about potential career paths than we received. Are you a 16 year old that likes electrical stuff, but are terrible at and have little interest in math or physics coursework? Are you considering studying electrical engineering? While you might be able to struggle through an electrical engineering degree by the sheer force of grit, you should seriously consider whether being an electrician is a better option. So go study your options. Go learn quite a bit about what the actual day-to-day work of electricians vs electrical engineers looks like. If you decide you hate working on your feet, have zero interest in outdoor or dirty construction work? Well, maybe an electrical engineering degree is worth struggling through. Does the thought of doing office work fill you with dread? Do you love getting your hands dirty? Maybe an electrician is the path for you.
Repeat that conversation across a thousand disciplines, and I think that’s the kind of thing that’s happening now a lot more than it did for my generation. And I expect it to have a negative impact on college enrollment.
People demanded unity.
Who are these ‘people’ that demanded unity? Centrist Democrats reflexively dash towards the center. It’s just part of their belief system; they’re personally centrist and fundamentally opposed to major transformative policy. No one ‘called’ for Biden to be some big unity candidate. That was his choice, not the peoples.
That’s for the nuclear industry to figure out. But the fact that companies from different companies originating in entirely different countries suggest that it’s a problem with the tech itself.
The hard truth many just don’t want to admit is that there are some technologies that simply aren’t practical, regardless of how objectively cool they might be. The truth is that the nuclear industry just has a very poor track record with being financially viable. It’s only ever really been scaled through massive state-run enterprises that can operate unprofitably. Before solar and wind really took off, the case could be made that we should switch to fission, even if it is more expensive, due to climate concerns. But now that solar + batteries are massively cheaper than nuclear? It’s ridiculous to spend state money building these giant white elephants when we could just slap up some more solar panels instead. We ain’t running out of space to put them any time soon.
Also 10s of billions is still insignificant for any power, transport, or healthcare infrastructure in the scheme of things -
Bullshit. If you can get the same amount of reliable power by just slapping up some solar panels, wind turbines, and batteries, then obviously the cost is not insignificant.
That sentence shows that you really aren’t thinking about this as a practical means of power generation. I’ve found that most fission boosters don’t so much like actual nuclear power, but the idea of nuclear power. It appeals to a certain kind of nerd who admires it from a physics and engineering perspective. And while it is cool technically, this tends to blind people to the actual cold realities of fission power.
There’s also a lot of conspiratorial thinking among the pro-nuclear crowd. They’ll blame nuclear’s failures on the superstitious fear of the unwashed ignorant masses or the evil machinations of groups like Greenpeace. Then, at the same time, they’ll ignore the most bone-headedly obvious cause of nuclear’s failure: it’s just too fucking expensive.
Who cares? We use economics to sort out the relative value of radically different power sources, not cherry-picked criteria. Fission boosters can say that nuclear has a small footprint. Solar boosters can say that solar has no moving parts and is thus more mechanically reliable. Fission boosters can say fission gets more power from the same mass. Solar boosters can point to the mass of the entire fission plant, including the giant concrete dome that needs to be strong enough to survive a jumbo jet flying into it.
In the end, none of this shit matters. We have a way of sorting out these complex multi-variable problems. Both fission and solar have their own relatives strengths and weaknesses that their proponents can cherry pick. But ultimately, all that matters in choosing what to deploy is cost.
And today, in the real world, in the year 2024, if you want to get low-carbon power on the grid, the most cost-effective way, by far, is solar. And you can add batteries as needed for intermittency, and you’re still way ahead of nuclear cost-wise. And as our use of solar continues to climb, we can deploy seasonal storage, which we have many, many options to deploy.
The ultimate problem fission has is that it just can’t survive in a capitalist economy. It can survive in planned economies like the Soviet Union or modern China, or it can run as a state-backed enterprise like modern Russia. But it simply isn’t cost effective enough for fission companies to be able to survive on their own in a capitalist economy.
And frankly, if we’re going to have the government subsidize things, I would much rather the money be spent on healthcare, housing, or education. A lot of fission boosters like fission simply because they think the tech is cool, not necessarily because it actually makes economic sense. I say that if fission boosters want to fund their hobby and subsidize fission plants, let them. But otherwise I am adamantly opposed to any form of subsidies for the fission industry.
Who gives a fuck about energy density beyond some physics nerds? Unless you’re planning on building a flying nuclear-powered airplane, energy density is irrelevant. This is why solar is eating fission’s lunch.
The coal mining industry employs about 38,000 people. Dunkin Donuts alone employs seven times as many people as the whole coal mining industry. There just aren’t that many coal miners anymore. And everyone currently involved with it joined up knowing full well the days of coal were numbered.
It has that low death rate precisely because it is heavily regulated.
The typical nuclear booster argument works on the following circular logic:
“Nuclear is perfectly safe.”
“But that’s not the problem with nuclear. The problem with nuclear is its too expensive.”
“Nuclear is expensive because it’s overly regulated!”
“But nuclear is only safe because of those heavy regulations!”
“We would have everything powered by nuclear by now if it weren’t for Greenpeace.”
Obama proved himself a centrist, but he ran as a progressive. That’s the crucial difference.
Honestly, I at this point wonder if progressives would be better off running as Republicans. Trump has largely, at least on messaging, distanced himself from a lot of traditional Republican economics. His base doesn’t really care much about traditional Republican policies like tax cuts or even deregulation. It’s mostly just driven by grievance and raw rage against vague elites. Mostly that is directed against cultural elites, but that same movement could be directed against wealth inequality. And the Republican Party has proven itself much more receptive to new ideas than the Democratic Party has. The Republican Party can be taken over by charismatic figures, while wealthy donors and special interest groups largely control the DNC. This isn’t likely to change any time soon. The existing Democratic leadership has more to gain by losing as a centrist than seeing a progressive win and force through change in the DNC.
I say progressives should try running as Republicans. Call yourself a “radical Republican,” hearkening back the historical radical Republicans in the post-Civil War era. Say you were going to stick it to the wealthy, give the little guy a shot, and not do any DEI. Hell, repeatedly hammer the nepotism and social advantages the wealthy have as “wealth DEI.” Rail endlessly against big business and elites. Vow to not appoint anyone who went to an Ivy League school to any position in your administration. Promise not to even talk to a single Wall Street Banker.
I also took my husband’s name when I got married. I personally am not a big fan of hyphenated names. For those that like them, fair enough, but they’re not for me. To me, the problem with hyphenated names is that while they seem a way to avoid the “whose name do we give the kids” problem, they just kick the problem down the road a generation. If you have a hyphenated name, and you marry someone who also has one, are you both going to start using a 4-part surname? How about the generations after that, are they going to use an 8, 16, or 32-part name?
Of course not. At some point, now or in the future, someone is going to have their surname dropped. It either happens when you get married, or it happens when your children or grandchildren themselves get married and have to decide which names to drop. Rather than putting that burden on your kids or grandkids, I think it’s better to make those hard decisions yourself. Better to just come up with a shared name for both partners and move forward together.