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We can't let Canada beat us. We need to step up our disease spreading game. I propose we look into the feasibility of developing reverse vaccines to overfit the immune system to specific measles variants that it's unlikely to encounter, thus reducing immunity to real infections in people who are already vaccinated.

Alternatively, we could ban the sale or posession of contraceptive devices, because condoms are murder. And then watch the HIV infection rate spike, weakening immune responses and paving the way for measles to flourish.


Copper is expensive. If I were looking for a plastic alternative, I would follow the beaten path and start with aluminum.

When I see a text screenshot in Teams, it's typically a snippet of a conversation in a different Teams chat.

The article's mission was to summarize the most important and most interesting information in the video so I don't have to spend an hour and 45 minutes watching it. Since it failed to do so, it has no purpose.

Hardly. Its actual mission seems to be: ”A no-noise email roundup of all the must-read Nintendo news”. I’m sure it did exactly that for its reader. It might not the best article to submit to HN though.

(2020)

> It’s fair to say that few of us now marvel at moving walkways, those standard infrastructural elements of such utilitarian spaces as airport terminals, subway stations, and big-box stores.

You've gotta be referring to escalators here. Never seen a moving walkway in a big-box store, or a subway station for that matter.


There are at least some in the Paris subway, including one that went at 12 km/h but was decommissioned in 2011:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moving_walkway#Trottoir_roulan...


That one was in activity about the same period I took the Montparnasse station somewhat regularly, and over those years I couldn't ever take it as it was always either broken or running opposite to my direction.

I do think a concept with parallel tracks moving at different speeds would have been easier to use and more reliable though. But it might not have been revolutionary/over-engineered enough to attract attention and subsidies.


Man, they should've designed it similarly to the video, with parallel tracks with differing speeds. But people's lack of attention would probably lead them to park a foot on each track and causing a tumble.

Speaking of speed, in the Stockholm main station the escalators go faster than others I've experienced... But I don't know if they've adjusted the speed since my experience years ago.


Decomissioned but still rolling, just slower.


> You've gotta be referring to escalators here. Never seen a moving walkway in a big-box store

I have seen some occasionally in stores, in or around Paris. They usually are on an incline to allow trolleys to be taken up or down a level. Or similarly outside malls to get trolleys to the upper level of a car park. That’s in places where you have to stack car parks instead of just having them sprawl all over the place, of course.

> or a subway station for that matter.

There are a few of them in Paris métro stations. Some of them in the London Underground, as well.


There's one in a Target in the LA area. I forget exactly where it is.


There's one in Sydney, from a carpark to near the city centre, of 207m.

Quoting wikipedia:

> The walkway has been the longest continuous moving walkway in the world since its construction in 1961.


Notwithstanding the people responding, yes, it is extremely uncommon in "big box stores".


Not in the US, but in Europe it's more common. Shopping malls in Eastern Europe they're not uncommon.


only those that carry the shopping trolleys up/downstairs, designed so the wheels get locked into place.

I have never seen a flat one in anything else but airports or connections between other mass transit transports such as metros and trains. Definitely not in big box stores as they would be inconvenient and slower than pushing the trolley in the flat.


I've seen them in airports.


i've seen them in a few metro systems, there's definitely one for transfers in barcelona somewhere


Passed in August 2002, how very Patriot Act of them.


To be fair, the Rome Statute entered into force in July 2002.


Because the US government is no longer even pretending to care about human rights.


The US Government has never cared about human rights. It's always been used as a weapon to flog enemies. Allies like Israel can do whatever they like.


> Allies like Israel can do whatever they like.

US has always looked the other way when Israel killed innocent civilians. But there were some limits on how far they could go. The difference now is that those limits have been removed.


That's what's interesting about this move (and all the other moves). We've stopped pretending we're good, signaling instead the prospect of violence to enemies foreign and domestic.


> The US Government has never cared about human rights.

This is a blatant lie. /s

They do care, and have always cared, about human rights. The human rights of the US Government and their sponsors.


Perception is reality. If there is at least a pretense of caring about human rights, then there is some modicum of shame upon leadership in not living up to them. And even if the desire was fake, creating a website to "tell us when we are being evil" is real. Pulling off the mask and showing the "true self", which is what the Trump administration is doing (and far more than that, I should add. It is only showing the "true self" of a subset of the population), is removing not only the potential for shame, but also accountability. I don't have to believe that America is/was a flawless champion of human rights to believe that it is much, much worse now.


And it was always purely a pretense.

One must laud the transparency this administration has introduced.


> One must laud the transparency this administration has introduced.

What transparency? What is transparent about running a meme coin that anyone in the world can bribe- sorry, "invest" in with no trace of who they are while you're President?

As for the topic at hand: Trump truly has no vision for anything we do on the world stage so I don't believe it's a deliberate effort at "transparency"


It is more transparent than getting out of government then getting "book deals", doing "speaking engagements" and sitting on boards.

"Here's my hat, put some coin in" is transparency.


Transparently corrupt, sure. Who is influencing him still isn't transparent though. Book deals, board positions, and speeches all have organizers, company names, etc.. that can be investigated.

How can you trace a block chain transaction back to someone without some sort of OPSEC slip up?


> Trump truly has no vision for anything we do on the world stage

It confuses me how anyone could look at what's happening in the world and see a lack of a plan. Trump administration seems to actually be unusually focused on foreign policy in this term and using geopolitical statecraft to upend the arrangements that were not working in favor of the US. The tariffs to force countries to choose US or China, putting the fear of Russia in Europe to pump up their defense spending, and the peacemaker strategy in the Middle East to force oil prices down to reduce inflation. It seems to be a very comprehensive strategy.


There is a plan, but it is rather half baked and naive.

>putting the fear of Russia in Europe to pump up their defense spending

At the same time as refusing weapons sales to US allies and restricting intelligence sharing. Thereby forcing those countries to spend on European weapons rather than the US ones they have bought for the last 70 years. Doesn't sound great for the US tbh


> Trump administration seems to actually be unusually focused on foreign policy..

You left out threatening to invade Canada if they did not join the US. And stealing Greenland. And asking Ukraine to give in to Putin's demands. Illegal tariffs that are a tax on common people. Yes, it may come as a shock to you that other countries do not pay the tariffs. We do. And unlike regular taxes, tariffs are not a progressive tax. So rich people love it.

By almost all accounts, the US has lost ground globally. We have lost soft power and respect. Global surveys now show that the rest of world now sees us the baddies.


Tariffing the entire world, changing his position on Ukraine every week, and hinting at invasion of our allies is not coherent. On the Ukraine conflict, he didn't seem to understand that Putin is untrustworthy until recently.


He's got a very comprehensive plan and he knows exactly what he's doing. He's also consolidated his base so he has people who are as committed as he is to carrying out his vision. He's doing everything he said he would do successfully. All his opponents are desperate for him to fail but that simply is not happening, i wonder why? This website runs opposite to his vision of MAGA, it's basically make america criminals, no surprises it's been axed.


> He's doing everything he said he would do successfully.

He said he would not touch the existing Whitehouse when building his new gilded $300m ballroom. I could go on and on and on...

The dude thinks like a toddler. Unfortunately a large part of this country also thinks this way.


> He's doing everything he said he would do successfully.

I seem to remember him promising that he would release the Epstein Files the moment they were available.

That one's been taking a loooong time. All the ties that Ghislaine and Robert Maxwell have to Israel probably isn't super great for PR either.


Upending the arrangements that were not working in favor of Trump!


One really mustn't. There are plenty of people who work in government that actually care about human rights - this 'tear it down' mentality relies on the fantasy that it will be rebuilt in some better form. And this kind of 'both sides' bullshit from the article highlights it perfectly:

> Blaha had already voiced frustration that despite the HRG passing its pilot phase, the Biden administration had not done enough to publicise it, meaning the provision to "facilitate receipt" of information was still not being fully honoured before the Trump administration deleted the channel entirely.

One side didn't publicize it as much as we would have preferred, and the other one deleted it entirely. Both sides are bad!


> There are plenty of people who work in government that actually care about human rights

Hopefully most do! All should.

However, most employees don’t pick what they work on. So it’s always at the discretion of the boss to determine what’s practically considered, regardless of ideals or desires.


"Didn't publicize it as much as we would have preferred" is very polite speech for killing millions in "wars on terror" and through arming our great friends, the house of Saud, in their campaign against Yemen.

Not going to get into the rich history of overthrowing local rulers and installing puppets through the most gruesome proxies to create "banana republics," the mass murder on a massive scale committed in the previous century, or the genocide that preceded to enable the founding of this state.

This place is built on murder and theft. "Both sides" are guilty. One is less shy.


The ‘tear it down’ mentality is about tearing down the covers and exposing America for what it is. That is how I understood your parent at least.

The USA has been doing human rights abuses for a long time, without any repercussions. The Iraq war and the Patriot Act is but a few of many many many more examples. For a while now the entire political spectrum in Europe has given this impunity to the USA, with the covers gone, maybe it will be harder—at least for the left of center parties—to give this impunity to the USA.


[flagged]


This is a dangerous fallacy - "it has always been bad, so it can't get worse".


Do you mind helping my understand how you interpreted my comment in that manner? Such a sentiment was never my intention, and I would like to know how I could have worded my comment better to avoid confusion.

I was merely try to express that things were bad and some progress has been made, however, that does not mean that things cannot get bad again. Both progress and regress are rarely a straight line.


The US has had many opportunities to care a lot less!

Just look at what Russia is up to these days.


> Slaves were freed and the civil rights act wasn't passed for almost 100 years after the war.

That's progress though, even if its progress on something that never should have existed to begin with, and the progress is far too slow.

And yes, our progress has been far too slow and way too uneven, but for the first 40 years of my life I felt like we were still progressing (yes -- too slow, and too unevenly).

But in the most recent ~decade of my life I feel like we've switched from too-slow progress to regression.

Shitty progress isn't enough, but its better than no progress (or, much worse, regression).


Progress sure but Lincoln didn't free the slaves in the Northern states.

He only freed the slaves in the South with the emancipation proclamation [1]. The 13th amendment wasn't until 2 years later. Lincoln did it as an economic weapon against the south as well as a military recruitment tool; not out of the goodness of his heart.

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emancipation_Proclamation


Which is why all of this recent mess is interesting because the only thing that’s different in terms of action now is that they are doing all the dirt in public rather in private

Even total deportation numbers are lower (given administration length) than every previous administration as reported by Jacobin in the latest issue - yall remember Elian Gonzalez?


> When did the US government ever care about human rights?

July 4 1776


Educate me.

How cruel was the treatment from the British truly? My understanding was things like "no taxation without representation" was unrealistic due to the sheer distance and amount of time required to travel between the US and the UK. We're talking somewhere around 2-4 months one way. To send a rep back and forth with a message like:

US sends rep -> Uk and rep interact -> rep goes back to US with UK decision -> the US give their answer and the rep goes back to UK -> then rep goes back to the US with the UK's decision.

Such an interaction could take well over a year.

I also thought the US was the lowest taxed colony under British control? Not to mention it's not like the British didn't provide military protection to the colonies as well.

I am not saying the revolution was purely unjustified, but I am not really aware of how bad things truly were. My history classes kind of glossed over that part.


The United States' way of government was revolutionary for its time, based on the cutting edge of human philosophy in many ways. The Bills of (negative) Rights in particular.

It is a shame that it is being destroyed at lightspeed the last year, and worse that many don't seem to care.


Fwiw I believe the comment you are replying to was being sarcastic. Thus, you don't need educating. You're making their point.


The colonial grievances that led to war are explicitly stated in the Declaration of Independence.

It can be assumed that the British occupation forces were just as brutal as any other occupying military force in history. The only restraint in those situations is morals and a boss that was across an ocean.


We didn't want to be ruled by wankers!


I'm sorry that didn't work out for you.


At that point “human” really only meant the white man who owns property though eh?


Baby steps


That does seem to be the trend these days. See: AI proliferation, cryptocurrency.


> That does seem to be the trend these days

These days? The space race was 50 years ago.


Burning money is the trend these days.

The first time around, the space race was expensive, but not entirely unnecessary. There were real strategic advantages at play.


I used to run Office in Wine back in the day. Is that not a thing anymore?


You can still run older versions, but anything from 2019 onwards will struggle - and you can completely forget about the latest M365 versions.

Luckily OnlyOffice is a pretty decent alternative with excellent compatibility with MSO formats. And there's also the web versions of office, which is now a decent alternative (unless you're a power user who needs macros/VBA etc).


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