World is Falling Apart Thread (Locked forever)

[Michi]

From my experience, we Americans go on egg hunts, go to church, eat a bunch and visit family.

I suppose whether you need an extra day off or not depends on how stressful that last activity turns out.

[MrPopo]

Even super atheists like the Dutch take a day off on easter Monday. Greece too. We were too busy yesterday roasing an entire lamb, getting drunk and breaking plates (true story), so we need the day off.

That's how my dad describes his childhood.

[marurun]

As much as some conservatives hate Paul Krugman, this op-ed by him illustrates a great point (and also digs pretty hard against the "all lives matter" crowd with a refrain of "all jobs matter").

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/04/17/opin ... pe=article

tldr: Trump will most likely not do anything that will bring back coal or manufacturing jobs, because there's nothing reasonable he really can do, but by trying to attack federal health care and retirement programs, he is helping to ensure those who do lose their jobs have little to fall back on. And notice nobody is trying to save the jobs lost from Sears and Macy's closings, despite just as many or more jobs being lost.

[Pulsar_t]

The strike on Syria was even less than a slap on the wrist. What an expensive joke.

[marurun]

Well, yeah, we let Russia know and they told Syria, so most people and expensive equipment were gone by the time our millions of dollars exploded on the nearly empty base.

[Sarge]

My understanding is that we notified Russia through standard deconfliction channels. It's basically a "we're coming in, you better get your people out of the airspace" warning. It would have been even worse to have blasted into the airspace without warning, putting both our pilots and Russia's in danger.

As for actual damage done, the point, in my mind, was never to maximize damage. It was to make a point that the United States might not be so willing to sit on the sidelines anymore in this conflict.

[marurun]

My understanding is that we notified Russia through standard deconfliction channels. It's basically a "we're coming in, you better get your people out of the airspace" warning. It would have been even worse to have blasted into the airspace without warning, putting both our pilots and Russia's in danger.

As for actual damage done, the point, in my mind, was never to maximize damage. It was to make a point that the United States might not be so willing to sit on the sidelines anymore in this conflict.

On the one hand, this makes sense. We didn't want any aerial altercations with Russian fighters. On the other hand, we spent a LOT of money on those cruise missiles to do very little damage to the Syrian regime. Syria already knows the position they're in, and I'm sure there were cheaper ways to send that message. I saw it as a wasteful, wasted gesture. I think there were more thoughtful, cheaper options that would have made the point just as clearly. In fact, aside from our willingness to cheap out on care and upkeep of our soldiers (during and after service), our government and military are far too willing to throw away money on non-optimal solutions.

[Sarge]

My primary point is that I don't think it was just about Syria. I think it was a warning to other regimes. Now, whether that warning is effective or not, or whether Pres. Trump is willing to follow through, is another story entirely.

[marurun]

Well, we went and dropped a MOAB on Afghanistan and have essentially threatened North Korea, so yeah, it's definitely part of a larger message (which may or may not be posturing). I just find it a bit intemperate is all.

On a totally different note, however, I think everyone in this thread will love this site:

http://usafacts.org/

Basically, Steve Ballmer (yup, formerly of Microsoft) wanted to know what was up with government, so he created a non-profit to look at government data. Read the About portion to find out more about where they get their data and the methodology for collecting and presenting it. Ballmer basically sets up the US's finances as if it were a business to help business-types such as himself get a better picture of the US government as a financial organization. Note that the site acknowledges government is very different from a business (and should be), but the organization of financial data in a business format is familiar to him and those like him, so that's what he went with to dashboard the data. I think it was borne of himself and others wanting the kind of information necessary when considering charitable action or private lobbying and grew into a public dashboard of essential federal financial data.

[marurun]

Darnit, today is just a fascinating link day. Ars Technica has a summary of some research out of Princeton that talks about why, and how to counter the fact that, AI that crawl public text spaces like the internet become sexist, racist, biased.

Essentially, when you program something to base its own operation off of sources which contain bias, that something will inherit the bias. Language use does indeed shape thought.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2017/04 ... is-racist/