To add insult to injury, the mom was flying to her brother’s funeral when, upon deboarding the plane plane, they were stopped by cops and questioned under suspicion of human trafficking. Can’t imagine how rough the whole trip was for her.
NIF’s goal isn’t to produce fusion power for energy production. It’s to validate nuclear weapons. Nuclear fusion electricity is as far away as it has always been.
That’s not true. 20 years ago the consensus was that fusion was impossible to tame. Now the consensus is that we are possibly 30 years away from commercial use of nuclear fusion. We are in a position unthinkable a couple of decades ago
27 years ago I wrote a research paper about the promising, imminent future of fusion powered electricity generation. Wherever you got that 20 years from, you’re extremely wrong.
How could you have studied a field that you’re claiming essentially didn’t exist and nobody thought would exist? The first working Tokamak was build in 1958. There’s no way you studied this in any capacity and came away not knowing this.
Fusion is a boondoggle, and will never be used to generate electricity outside of using the effects of the sun.
I studied fusion as million of people around the world, as it is part of the standard curriculum of physics, theoretical chemistry, many branches of engineering. It is one of the most common topic in science. I did not specialized on nuclear fusion.
Exactly what I said. NIF isn’t testing fusion ignition for some benign or altruistic purpose. They are testing it so they can model and validate the behavior of nuclear weapons.
Thanks! I feel this really hit the point home for me - “NIF also helps address “life-extension” programs—regularly planned refurbishments of weapon systems to ensure long-term reliability.”
Yep, exactly. People that think this news is part of some energy production effort are sorely mistaken. It’s also not the first time an energy positive reaction has happened, since those started happening in the 1970s with tokamaks.
If I’m honest, I’m kinda okay if that happened to me, because if their methods are helping to stop actual human trafficking, then it’s worth it.
I remember me at the beach with my girlfriend once. She was 22 at the time, but looked younger than that - 16 or 17. I looked like, well, the 23 year old dude I was. She fell at some point and I crouched to assist her. A lifeguard walked up to us and the whole time he was addressing her: “are you okay? do you feel safe?” Etc. My girlfriend answered all his questions and then he went away. He probably thought I was some pervert trying to take advantage of the situation. And I was like “I get it.” If she was an actual minor and I was some pervert stranger, I’m glad someone was paying attention to the situation.
I gave this question far more thought than it probably deserves and the answer is no.
The only world in which this is possible is one where you define terrorism by appearance (which already hits pretty damn close to home). So I’d want the same mechanism applied to all people to catch the violent extremists of all appearances.
Fair point, but that’s a different context, and I agree with you with that sentiment.
The 9/11 terrorists didn’t even have beards. They tried to blend in as much as possible. So, you’re right. Harassing people with, say, beards and turbans is bullshit.
You’re talking about formalising the concept of treating an entire demographic of people as 2nd class citizens who experience additional social barriers that others do not have to.
“I racially profiled every Mohammed in the US and 128,000 improper searches and surveillances down the list I discovered a terrorist. Mission accomplished.”
Thank you for providing a ratio. No I would not be okay with that.
I’m sure I wouldn’t be okay with racially profiling based on the real world numbers either. But I would be okay being questioned because I matched a statistically significant group of people who commit a crime that impacts the safety of others.
But I think the point is that race and gender are most often not statistically significant identifiers and shouldn’t be used. And if they are indicative, then it better not be used for any of amount of time longer than needed.
If we had intelligence that suggested we should expect a terrorist attack from a specific country during a specific time period at a specific airport then it might make sense on a temporary basis. I don’t know, I’m not a professional at preventing terrorist attacks.
If there were rules against race on a more permanent basis because of events in the past or something then that would be stupid, ineffective, and would needlessly offend people.
My only real issue with threads like these is the over generalization and trying to say that something should never happen or always happen. I don’t think life is like that.
The TSA can't even prevent weapons from going through security checkpoints, and they have real equipment and guidelines for their security checks and still fail to find contraband over 80-90% of the time when they do internal audits of TSA security checkpoints.
The TSA is a joke as is, and the last thing we need is to give them more of a reason to harass people while failing to do their actual job.
I hope this is a bad attempt at a joke, because I feel like it should be obvious.
But let’s imagine you’re one of those Arabic-looking people. Would you okay with being strip-searched every time you went through airport security if it was in the name of stopping terrorism, while people of other races went through relatively unmolested?
Okay. How about, you, an Arabic-looking person, get pulled aside at the airport, EVERY time you travel. Your whole family does, and your children, by people carrying guns. While a stream of white people walks through unmolested.
Every time, for your whole life, you and everyone else that merely resembles you in some way are singled out for your appearance - regardless of who you are, what you’ve done, the danger you actually pose to society. Just because somewhere, sometime, it might catch a bad person.
And let’s not pretend that random strip searches don’t exist. If you travel a lot, the likelihood of one happening to you increases.
Most of us these days wouldn’t think that kind of racist fascism was okay. Because world history has shown the danger of profiling by race for human rights. But, whatever, I’m not you I guess.
You do not want to cross the bride. Don’t do that. Though, seriously, that’s no good for anyone who it has already gotten very old for and that people are explaining away the feelings of.
I don’t know. That was 20 years ago. We only lasted about a year, and that happened just once. I can see how it could be annoying, but again, it’s not like they’re pulling me over for “driving while brown.” There’s a genuine concern about human trafficking.
If my annoyance helps innocent people from being trafficked, I’m reluctantly okay with it.
Honestly, good for them for doing what they can against human trafficking. It’s worth offending a person here and there to save people from that terrible fate. Unfortunately, differing skin tones/ethnicities are probably the easiest indicator of human trafficking to watch for.
Edit: I assume race isn’t the only thing they consider. If it is the only criteria necessary to confront someone, that’s obviously a problem.
Edit 2: I’m sick and my brain isn’t working right. Maybe I am just being stupid – it wouldn’t be the first time.
Yeah, and they should totally be stopping people in turbans to prevent terrorism! Who cares if a few people are offended if it means saving lives, right?
This is a bad take. There are so many mixed race families in the world. It is not okay to start harassing all of them just because they might be doing something wrong. It’s literally just racism no matter how you try to dress it up.
There are millions, if not billions of dollars in the human trafficking economy. Continuous reports of rich and powerful people all over the planet participating in it. Disgusting human beings willing to treat children like animals for their own gratification.
And you think these people won’t start hiring adults of the same ethnicity as the children they’re trafficking to move them?
It’s such a reductive argument. “Just question any group of people if the children are a different ethnicity than the adults they’re with! Let’s not look at the kids body language, or the way they interact. Race is clearly the indicator!”
Yeah. How much human trafficking is actually going on at airports with a “parent” flying “their” child somewhere?
If some sicko is a billionaire with a private jet and is THAT dedicated to getting a kid to them, they’ll fly them on their private jet. You know, like Epstein.
And if they’re the “usual” human chattel that is treated like cattle, they’re probably being transported in some slower, cheaper method than a plane that (1) costs way more and (2) has a dozen security mechanisms designed to catch you.
This is just racism and people buying into Qanon propaganda.
differing skin tones/ethnicities are probably the laziest indicator of human trafficking to watch for.
FTFY.
This is the same attitude that gets minorities killed all the time, for “looking suspicious” while occupying their skin in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Yes, easiest and laziest are basically synonyms in this instance. I assume they have other criteria before confronting people, and if not, that’s obviously problematic.
Edit: Or maybe I’m being stupid. I don’t know, and my head is too foggy to think it through right now.
That’s the basis of every argument against free speech, Save the Children is more and more a dogwhistle excuse to harass a group someone doesn’t like. Drag queens, lgbtq folks, adults creating and consuming adult content.
It’s a way to intrude on privacy and free speech in a way that is unconscionable.
Exactly, it’s the same thing as how it felt like trains kept derailing after the Norfolk Southern incident. In truth it’s always been happening, even though it’s rare. It’s just that news conglomerates decided it was a problem for a bit.
Lauro: At the end, he asked Mr Pence to pause the voting for 10 days, allow the state legislatures to weigh in and then they could make a determination to audit or reaudit or recertify. But what he didn’t do is, you know, send in the tanks…
Think about that for a minute… Trump and his lawyers believe we should be thanking him because Trump didn’t turn American streets into blood-soaked war zones.
IMO if Trump had his way we would have had an American versions of Tienanmen Square all across the country instead of the insurrection he was able to incite.
Dude Trump has literally broadcast his crimes on Fox TV. It doesn’t take a lawyer admitting it.
I still have plenty of doubts the indictments will put him away for any amount of time that he actually deserves. I’d say 3 month suspended sentence at best. I’ll believe he’s going to jail when he’s in jail.
Wait, if Trump committed crimes in several states (as he did) - wouldn’t then the RICO Act come into effect and this could be treated as “organized crime”?
The Pentagon long studied the potential impacts — it calls climate change ” a critical national security threat and threat multiplier” — and has produced a growing body of research about the challenges, the potential solutions and increasingly specific plans to adapt.
Shit, man, wait until DeSantis realizes that the US Military has acknowledged climate change! They’ve gone woke! Shouldn’t they be banned from Florida?
Maybe that’s why he’s making his own personal army in Florida, he needs soldiers who will believe in the things he tells them to believe in…
But in their pitches to challenge Trump for the 2024 nomination, it was as if his indictment Tuesday on federal charges accusing him of working to overturn the 2020 election results had never happened, even from the candidate who has suggested the former president quit the race.
Instead, former Arkansas Gov. Asa Hutchinson, who has been a vocal Trump critic, touched only on the related Republican outrage with the Department of Justice, which many conservative activists allege has been politically biased in its investigation of Trump. The former president is also facing federal charges filed in June accusing him of improperly keeping sensitive documents in his Florida home and obstructing efforts to recover them.
Well yeah. All the people that were screaming his name and how he was cheated, not the other way around, can’t admit they were wrong. That’d be almost like, well, admitting they were wrong! Better to just become the next Trump for the ravenous masses to cling on to
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