32 thoughts to “Open Thread Non-Petroleum, Nov. 30, 2024”

    1. Thank you Mike B for this link. I miss Carl Sagan greatly, he is one of my mentors, although I have never met him. Many Americans can’t think for themselves and rational thought alludes them. A terrible time indeed.

  4. Loving the king shit of Biden pardoning Hunter on his way out. Burn it all down, Joe. I’m with you!

    Quick, start that shooting war with China. There’s still time to really rock the boat.

    1. Really, what did you expect? The worm has made its way all the way to the core. Let it eat.

      Just wait till you get a load of Trump’s pardons…

      1. Looking forward more to Trump tariffs causing the US to implode before this time next year.

        1. “the 35 cities with the largest declines from the peak, seasonally adjusted. Austin continues to be the worst performing city. However, 18 of the 35 cities with the largest declines are in Florida!

          And 5 of the 35 cities on the list are in Texas.”

    2. One comment one the Biden pardon.
      I hold the idea of Meritocracy in very highest regard.
      In the USA we operate very far from that standard of behavior.
      Hunter Biden should have never had a government position of any sort ( neither should have anyone named Trump).
      Neither should have Bush Jr, or hundreds of other individuals who have been granted political, legal, educational and economic advantage based on family ties or celebrity.
      Advancement should be based entirely on personal achievement regardless of family brand, party affiliation, bribery, loyalty, gender or ethnicity.
      Presidents should have no pardon power.

      1. Yeah, well, now we go mask off and everyone is grabbing their bag as and when they can. Better believe Trumpy will love this.

        It’s all very cool to see the elites just give up on the facade now.

      3. It doesn’t negate your overall point, but Hunter Biden has never held an elected or appointed government position. He worked for the U.S. Department of Commerce from 1998 to 2001 handling e-commerce policy issues. Don’t know that that really qualifies as nepotism.

        1. Thanks for the clarification on that Bob.
          Here is another example that shouldn’t be-
          Jarod Kushners father was pardon by his father in law Trump “after pleading guilty years earlier to tax evasion and making illegal campaign donations”, and now is being appointed ambassador to France.

    3. The electorate has already shown it doesn’t care about anti-corruption norms, so whats a father to do?

      Sacrifice his son on the altar of an already-dead god?

      1. While true, that maybe should have been considered during any number of the “I will totally not pardon my son, I believe in the law” talking points put out by Joe and Jill et al.

        Can’t blame the guy for going nuts after losing and saying “fuck it”. It just rings a tad hollow when this was painted as the expectation of the other side’s behaviour.

        So it’s cool we’re down with seeing both parties as being the elitist failsons/daughters we all knew them to be.

    1. Trump replacing the current myopic view of material reality with his own version. Should be fun.

      The tariffs against BRICS I am gonna stock up on popcorn for, because hoooooboy.

  6. Another issue EVs won’t help much!

    LAND DEGRADATION EXPANDING BY ONE MILLION SQ KM A YEAR

    The degraded area is already 15m sq km, an area greater than Antarctica, the scientific report says, and it calls for an urgent course correction to avoid land abuse “irretrievably compromising Earth’s capacity to support human and environmental wellbeing”.

    https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2024/dec/01/land-degradation-expanding-by-1m-sq-km-a-year-study-shows

    1. Thanks Hickory, a good, maybe even hopeful, article. Hitler pledged allegiance to the German constitution in January 1933. Three months later it (the constitution) was gone. Legally.

  9. “Drones are now responsible for a majority of battlefield losses, overtaking artillery, according to Ukrainian sources…Data from the battlefield suggest that the hit rate for these Al-guided drones is currently above 80%.
    That is higher than the rate of manually piloted drones.”

    https://archive.ph/TTfiW

    1. I find this hard to believe given the universal terror that is artillery that cares not for weather or jamming. Drones have their place, don’t get me wrong, but there’s a reason artillery is the king of the battlefield.

      No one is replacing glided 1000 lb bombs and 155 mm air burst shells with DJI drones carrying an RPG warhead.

    2. Thank you for sharing that one. Extrapolating where AI is headed in these applications is very worrisome.

    3. “I used to be a pacifist, but Russia’s war has stripped me of that privilege.” from the article

  10. To me, more than anything, it’s the relentless nature of the right wing culture in America that gets to me.

    It seems to me that everywhere else, there’s more balance. I mean, almost every other advanced nation has some form of universal healthcare, however functional or dysfunctional. But the fact that this actually politically occurred tells me that the culture of those nations values individual human life more, whatever you want to make of that. That’s just one example of many. Guns, military culture is another. Here, again, the U.S. spends more than almost every other nation with advanced militaries. Elementary school students die from gunfire in America and there’s silence everywhere.

    I just don’t understand it and never will. Why are Americans so insistent on eternal brutality? Can’t they just take a chill pill and relax for awhile? Why do they want this endless violence and barbarism to each other and the world? What did this accomplish in Vietnam, in Iraq?

    If any of my fellow Americans want to chime in, I’m all ears. But remember, understanding this might also mean taking a look inward to yourselves. Are you willing?

    1. “I just don’t understand it and never will. Why are Americans so insistent on eternal brutality?”
      Thanks for putting this on the table.
      Americans are people from other places, mostly Europe. We have been Takers from the very start.
      Take whatever you can grab…from indigenous, from nature, from the ‘others’, and even your neighbor.
      Taking whatever you can by whatever means is celebrated, exulted, and protected by law.
      Brutality is just fine if you grab enough land, capital, power, prestige.
      America just returned to power one of the biggest Takers.
      Musk is lined up to be the biggest Taker ever.

  11. South Korea is imploding. Syria has kicked off again, and the ceasefire in Lebanon is tenuous at best.

    Ukraine is almost at collapse and the EU is steadily deindustrialising and incapable of governing. China has become the biggest economy and leapfrogging the West in terms of tech.

    How could Trump do this to us?

  13. There are no comments by Paul Pukite to respond to in this thread, and so readers can make zero sense of this diatribe. This looks like a random flame and should be deleted, IMO.

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