251–260 of 774 posts
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Yes, it predates trump. But prior to trump, Republican voters would hold their representatives accountable. Today, trump's cult is so brainwashed that they are completely ok with pedophilia, internment camps, destruction of services, destruction of science - literally willing to burn American society to ground so that Trump continues in office. Their priority is Trump and not America. Which is why no one can take rep…
> Republican voters would hold their representatives accountable. I don’t think that’s accurate, unless it was for a crime they just couldn’t forgive. Debacle in the Middle East? Stay the course and re-elect Bush. Find out a senator had a gay experiment once? Out, so to speak. You’ve been able to do what you want within the GOP for decades, so long as it’s Old Testament compliant.
[1] https://news.gallup.com/poll/116500/presidential-approval-ra... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_United_States_presidentia...
NASA has been downsizing a lot. Friend of mine is a contractor for NASA who has been trained as a parts engineer for sourcing and testing electronic components that go into satellites and spacecrafts will be out of a job in a few months as her entire branch is eliminating all contractor positions. Now she has a specialized skillset that isn't very readily transferable to other local companies and industries. Sucks. C…
Well this antecdote kind of gets in the way of the other antecdotes, that NASA is being privatized. Maybe this is just a way of forcing specialized labor into certain outfits (Space X, Costa Mesa, SF.. )
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Is the privatized NC DMV any better than the public one? I was just at the Delaware DMV getting my 2 vehicles inspected and registration renewed, and while not an entirely horrible experience, it did seem like there were a lot of inefficiencies and complacentcy. I've also noticed the difference in the US post offices around me and the FedEx stores and wonder why the post offices aren't nicer customer experiences.
> Is the privatized NC DMV any better than the public one? Nobody knows. But the only things guaranteed are: - service prices will rise because now shareholders will seek a return every year. - AI powered elevator music phone service where you must wait 30 mins before reaching a human. - Fees and costs for every interaction. - Workers will be encouraged to do work fast - by providing less service to people, asking pe…
FedEx blows. They are slower than USPS for domestic, and generally claim I wasn't home, despite living in a bldg with a concierge. UPS and DHL of course out do both, but FedEx is the worst.
I understand wanting to make the organization more efficient, but i don't think this is what's happening here. I think this is the classic republican strat of gutting federal agencies, pointing to the inefficiencies caused by the loss of institutional knowledge, and using that as an excuse to privatize to their friends. The fact that Elon's DOGE suggested these cuts lines up
I’m trying to think how I feel about this. I’ve been obsessed with space for a long time, remember traveling to see my first rocket launch of the shuttle in 2006. Follow the commercial development closely since then. Their science missions are inspiring, but not as inspiring as they ought to be. NASA needs an overhaul. This isn’t how I would do it, but that’s not how things work in the real world. SLS is the elephant…
I’ve worked with a few former NASA employees now.
They all said the same thing: There were some amazing, passionate people at NASA but they were all surrounded by people who were only there to attend meetings and collect paychecks. Getting anything done was impossible because you had to navigate webs of org structure and process that had been designed to make work and jobs for people, not to deliver results.
My one ex-NASA coworker got a lot of mileage out of telling people he worked for NASA, putting it on his LinkedIn, and mentioning it when he introduced himself to new people. People respect the name. It was a stark contrast to how he described his actual time there.
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The problem with those stats for Ireland is that the Gini coefficient measured by the World Bank just looks at household income, not wealth. Much of the inequality in Ireland in the last few decades has been driven by the explosion in property prices and rents. This has created a great deal of inequality between people who benefited from the rapid increase in price of those assets, and the people stuck paying much hi…
Household wealth inequality has also fallen significantly in Ireland. Longer term statistics are more difficult to find compared to income inequality but see Chart 3 here - https://www.centralbank.ie/statistics/statistical-publicatio... - provides a 12 year time series which proves this. Irish property prices are and have risen considerably - but "600%", I think, is a somewhat dramatic way to present the increases -…
But if you count household wealth in houses in Ireland, household wealth in Ireland in 1986 used to be 3 average Irish houses, and now it's 1/3rd. This was, just like anywhere else, deliberate government policy, amongst others to allow banks to invest in housing stock, preferential tax treatment and guarantees for property ownership, government buying of specific (mostly politician owned) housing, non-enforcement of both Irish and non-Irish tax law ... the list goes on.
Ireland prides itself on creating prosperity by lying and cheating other EU countries out of their tax income. Surprise! A government that lies on international treaties (they promised to enforce minimum tax since 2008, then ... didn't, then claimed credit for the "unseen in history prosperity boom"). Surprise! A government that does that ALSO lied to it's constituents and instead of delivering prosperity took 2/3rd of every euro you own.
"Oops, who could have seen this coming"
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> SLS is the elephant in the room and is a complete disaster SLS isn't great but it does.. you know.. work.
It doesn't work, not for Moon missions. It was never designed for Moon missions in the first place, the original plan was unspecified "deep space" missions without any clear plan of what it would actually be doing (because it's actual purpose is to keep money flowing to old Shuttle contractors.) Consequently, it can't do a Moon mission like the Saturn V could, it requires the idiotic nonsense that is the NHRO, which…