I mean, sure, they’re the biggest, but really most of the Azhdarchid Pterosaurs would count as some kind of Dragon.

I mean, other than breathing fire, the difference between a particularly large pterosaur and a dragon mostly down to the shape of the head.

There’s a really simple answer. Many countries have done it before. The best example is the UK “Council Housing” system that they used to clean out the tenements and slums in the late 1800s.

First of all, we have to deal with the the fact that a lot of people have their whole life savings wrapped up in their houses. You issue “Canada housing bonds” and buy them out with bonds. This gives them an investment vehicle that can be traded or held until mature to ensure they’re not losing their shirts and we end up with a bunch of old people who can’t take care of themselves. Then you turn around, transfer those to municipal governments along with a bunch of development loans. Cities manage the properties, the already have massive construction and maintenance contracts on public buildings so by economy of scale they can actually build and maintain buildings at a lower cost than private property owners.

The loans back the bonds, the rents pay the loans, and you can still set rents so low, being a private landlord is no longer profitable and get a reasonable return on the bonds. At the height of the program in the UK the average rent was around 10-15% of monthly income and around 40% of the country had lived some part of their lives in council housing. The system was so effective it basically rebuilt Britain after the German Blitz. We have nearly 100 years data on both the positives, the potential hazards, and how to mitigate them.

We know how to fix this, we just won’t. It doesn’t make rich people richer and so there’s no political will to actually go out and do it.

That’s the problem. Here it would be billed as a “Luxury Tiny Home Experience” and they’d charge $3k/month rent. Corpos know plebs don’t have money, so the only market is the luxury market.

I am Sparticus… er… Banksy!

I mean technically the science of it has been settled for over 100 years. That’s why Alexander Graham Bell sunk his fortune into early solar energy. That we are going over the cliff into warming the likes of which haven’t been seen in 250 million years is what has been settled for at least 20.

It’s been settled for 20 years that the world is warming. The efforts at this point are entirely focused on containing and limiting the damage. The fight to stop it is long over, and there’s absolutely nothing that can stop some level of catastrophic damage.

Translation: “We’ve had our fill of screwing you around for today and invite you to cordially go screw yourself.”

When it comes to HP, just say no.

For general consumers? Probably complete industry collapse and regression. Specialized industries and national security use will continue to develop, but broad market access is going to likely stagnate for a decade at least if not more.

I wouldn’t let my family get within a mile of the US these days. Not fit for human habitation.

Judicial priorities are largely set by statute. We’d have to do a lot of revision to a legal framework that nerfs judicial discretion for "efficiency and then provides for too few judges to exercise what discretion is left.

If you want the real answer, it’s probably more that the underfunded justice system didn’t have space to hold him. When it comes right down to it, we deeply underfund our legal system which creates choke points that result in violent offenders being back on the street, while low level, non-violent offenders sit in cells for months waiting to have their case heard. Having a properly funded system that does its job efficiently costs money though, and we have acquired the American allergy to taxes, even when they objectively benefit our health and safety.

The unspoken “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy when it comes to those things makes that hard to screen for.

You have way more faith in humanity than I think we deserve at this point.

Technically speaking, Tariffs only exist on imports. Export taxes are an entirely separate category of tax. You are correct though, the logical thing for China to do is to run at a state-subsidized loss with CXMT until everyone else has left the market before raising prices. You know, basically pulling a Walmart with state help.

It’s always the soldiers isn’t it. Police and soldiers. I wonder if it’s more that a fascist type of person is just naturally attracted to such jobs, or if it’s more a part of the enculturation those institutions condition people with that breeds fascism.

I mean, the US, for all its big guns have never won a war without Britain and/or France riding along to do the hard work. All the US knows how to do is make big explosions real good. That’s not war, that’s just state terrorism.

Totally agree. It’s always important to remember that these tools are means to an end, not an end in themselves, and to make sure we are designing the tool to serve useful and constructive ends. If the tool isn’t serving a beneficial purpose, it’s time to consider another tool, or possibly redesigning it. We invented the tool. We not only have the power, but also the responsibility to use it wisely, and to make it better when it’s not serving its purpose.

Many useful things are entirely made up. Concepts like justice, love, community, hierarchy, nationhood, borders, property, gender, etc. are all social constructs. They exist because we choose to make them exist. In the immortal words of Terry Pratchett, “Take the universe and grind it down to the finest powder and sieve it through the finest sieve and then show me one atom of justice, one molecule of mercy…” Social constructs are the “big lies” we create because we need them to make sense of the world, and ideally make it a better place. Money is just another social construct we created because it serves a useful function.

You get that they’ll just de-professionalize those roles and let untrained, unskilled hacks and quacks loose on the general populace, right? I mean you want to have your kids taught by some goof quoting Grok, and your grandma getting her life saving treatment from Bobby Kennedy approved witch-doctors that’s where you end up if the professionals all decide to quit En Masse.