[News] Post a Political News Story

Ongoing discussion of the political news of the day. This thread is for 'smaller' stories that don't call for their own thread. If a story blows up, please start a new thread for it.

Anecdotal evidence and all that, but Arizonan here and everyone I know who ever voted for her only did it because they're the "vote blue no matter who" crowd and vote straight-ticket Democrat.

NATO’s secretary general warns that a ‘full blown war’ with Russia is ‘a real possibility.’

NATO’s secretary general warned on Friday that Russia’s war in Ukraine could expand into a wider war with the Atlantic alliance.

The official, Jens Stoltenberg, repeatedly cautioned in media interviews this week against underestimating the situation in Ukraine and emphasized the wider threat President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia could pose to Europe.

“If things go wrong, they can go horribly wrong,” Mr. Stoltenberg said in an interview released on Friday with the Norwegian journalist Anne Lindmo, in which he added that there was “no doubt” a full-blown war against NATO was a “real possibility.”

“I understand everyone who is tired of supporting Ukraine. I understand everyone who thinks that food prices and the electricity bills are far too high,” he said. “But we have to pay a much higher price if our freedom and peace are threatened through Putin winning in Ukraine.”

Mr. Stoltenberg’s comments came two days after he said that Russia was intentionally stalling the war in order to prepare a renewed onslaught against Ukrainian forces next year.

“What we see now is that Russia is actually attempting to have some kind of ‘freeze' of this war, at least for a short period of time, so they can regroup, repair, recover, and then try to launch a bigger offensive next spring,” he told The Financial Times on Wednesday.

The NATO chief emphasized the importance of continued military support for Ukraine, saying that Russia had shown no sign of willingness to engage in peace talks that would respect Ukraine’s sovereignty. But he declined to answer when pressed on whether NATO’s member nations should agree to provide more advanced, long-range offensive weaponry — something NATO allies, including the United States, have avoided to keep from inviting a direct confrontation with Russia.

The U.S. State Department reiterated after drone strikes hit Russian military bases this week that it was neither enabling nor encouraging Ukraine to strike beyond its borders.

The Pentagon has continued providing other forms of security assistance to Kyiv, and on Friday announced a new aid package valued up to $275 million that includes additional HIMARS ammunition, air defense equipment and approximately 150 generators for Ukraine’s worsening winter.

OG_slinger wrote:
Stealthpizza wrote:

I think they underestimate how much she is hated by the Dems. Now she might split some Republicans votes.

Pretty much every voter demographic doesn't like her. Old. Young. White. Hispanic. Democrat. Independent. Republican. No one likes her.

Any chance that Arizona will consider switching to rank-choice voting in time for Sinema's presumed attempt to run as a third-party/independent? It seems to me that RCV would prevent any splitting of either Republican or Democratic voters.

Parable of the Sower getting closer every day. I have to get my family out of here.

Prederick wrote:

Trump administration was ‘not prepared’ for or ‘not interested in’ wrongful detentions: Paul Whelan’s brother

Not that the people yawping about the Griner release would care.

He was a dishonorable discharge, so if he were brought home instead of Griner, they would be falling over themselves to say Biden was bringing home a traitor instead of a sports hero, or whatever. It would be Bergdahl again. You can't win with these assholes.

The federal judge who appointed Trump's special master just threw out his lawsuit against the FBI's raid of Mar-a-Lago

A US federal judge in Florida who appointed the special master for former President Donald Trump just tossed his lawsuit against the FBI's raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Judge Aileen Cannon wrote in a Monday one-page order that she was dismissing the case because of a "lack of jurisdiction."

The ruling comes after a three-judge federal appeals court on December 1 wrote a scathing opinion overturning Cannon's initial decision to side with Trump and grant him a special master to review documents taken in the FBI's search. Less than week later, a federal appeals court in Atlanta formally ended the review.

farley3k wrote:

The federal judge who appointed Trump's special master just threw out his lawsuit against the FBI's raid of Mar-a-Lago

A US federal judge in Florida who appointed the special master for former President Donald Trump just tossed his lawsuit against the FBI's raid of his Mar-a-Lago estate.

Judge Aileen Cannon wrote in a Monday one-page order that she was dismissing the case because of a "lack of jurisdiction."

The ruling comes after a three-judge federal appeals court on December 1 wrote a scathing opinion overturning Cannon's initial decision to side with Trump and grant him a special master to review documents taken in the FBI's search. Less than week later, a federal appeals court in Atlanta formally ended the review.

Yeah, the appeals court pretty much said that her claim of equitable jurisdiction was a steaming pile of excrement and that she needed to question the efficacy of her law school education. Her withdrawing the suit was mostly a formality. It was pretty much made invalid by the appeals court opinion. It was basically saying "you can't fire me. I quit".

Because it has incredible political implications.

Livermore has achieved fusion ignition

If these results can be replicated, we are likely 30 years away from fusion power plants. This gives me hope for a post petrol world.

Paleocon wrote:

Because it has incredible political implications.

Livermore has achieved fusion ignition

If these results can be replicated, we are likely 30 years away from fusion power plants. This gives me hope for a post petrol world.

It's a long fricking road from today - "can successfully generate enough energy to boil 10 kettles of water" to "industrialized technology that can meaningfully supply energy on a national scale".

Don't get me wrong, I'm English - my benchmark for successful technology is whether it can make tea, so this is great, but it's functionally the worlds most expensive teakettle, not a power station.

Getting from one to the other is a big ask.

But the fundamental thing is we are no longer asking whether it is even possible because now it is.

The research changes to how do we make it better and cheaper rather than trying to get closer to making it happen without knowing how much further we have to go.

fangblackbone wrote:

But the fundamental thing is we are no longer asking whether it is even possible because now it is.

The research changes to how do we make it better and cheaper rather than trying to get closer to making it happen without knowing how much further we have to go.

exactly.

The time between the first human powered flight and landing a man on the moon was only 66 years.

It was 16 years between first flight to first transatlantic flight.

Once thresholds are crossed, things have the tendency to move fairly quickly.

Actually the first human powered flight came after we landed on the moon by about a decade ;P
IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/88/Gossamer_Albatross_II_in_flight.jpg)

Fusion energy is always only 20 years away.

The biggest problem with a major clean energy breakthrough is that I fear far too many people -- including the world's governing bodies -- will take this as proof that we will "tech" our way out of all our problems, and use that as an excuse to continue otherwise grossly exceeding the Earth's carrying capacity in all other regards.

Even if we manage to avoid the worst consequences of global warming, there are many other problems that are contributing to the greatest danger of all: the collapse of our biosphere.

Farscry wrote:

The biggest problem with a major clean energy breakthrough is that I fear far too many people -- including the world's governing bodies -- will take this as proof that we will "tech" our way out of all our problems, and use that as an excuse to continue otherwise grossly exceeding the Earth's carrying capacity in all other regards.

Even if we manage to avoid the worst consequences of global warming, there are many other problems that are contributing to the greatest danger of all: the collapse of our biosphere.

Absolutely. The collapse of our biosphere is less than 20 years away on our current trajectory and we appear to be accelerating toward that rather than {ableist slur}ing its progress.

I am primarily interested in a post petrochemical world from the standpoint of being able to tell the Russians and Saudis to GFT.

My fear is that we will turn everything into Vegas or Times Square.
People will start driving even more obnoxious land yachts because they can afford it.

fangblackbone wrote:

But the fundamental thing is we are no longer asking whether it is even possible because now it is.

The research changes to how do we make it better and cheaper rather than trying to get closer to making it happen without knowing how much further we have to go.

We have proven that we can make a very expensive kettle.

Let's math this out.
Takes 0.2 kWH of energy to boil a kettle
So Livermore produced ~2kWH

An average power station produces 138,000 MWH.

You're handwaving away 4-5 orders of magnitude. It's very much an open question whether this technology can even be scaled up to that degree. There's a very real chance that the materials science to achieve this does not exist.

And then this future fusion reactor needs to run continuously, 24/7, instead of once for a fraction of a second like Livermore.

AND it needs to do it more economically than existing technologies.

These are not trivial problems to solve.

Lawmakers announces bipartisan legislation that would ban TikTok in the US

A handful of American lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, announced bipartisan legislation on Tuesday that would ban China's social media app TikTok in the U.S.

The move adds pressure on the video-sharing app's owner, ByteDance, amid fears among some in the U.S. that the app could be used to spy on Americans or censor content.

According to a news release from Rubio's office, the legislation would block all transactions from any social media company in or under the influence of a "country of concern," like China and Russia.

“The federal government has yet to take a single meaningful action to protect American users from the threat of TikTok," the Florida senator released in a statement. "This isn’t about creative videos – this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day.”

Meta must have worked VERY hard on that legislation.

"We want AMERICANS to be the ones misusing your personal data that they've shadily harvested"

farley3k wrote:

Lawmakers announces bipartisan legislation that would ban TikTok in the US

A handful of American lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, announced bipartisan legislation on Tuesday that would ban China's social media app TikTok in the U.S.

The move adds pressure on the video-sharing app's owner, ByteDance, amid fears among some in the U.S. that the app could be used to spy on Americans or censor content.

According to a news release from Rubio's office, the legislation would block all transactions from any social media company in or under the influence of a "country of concern," like China and Russia.

“The federal government has yet to take a single meaningful action to protect American users from the threat of TikTok," the Florida senator released in a statement. "This isn’t about creative videos – this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day.”

I support it

Jonman wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

But the fundamental thing is we are no longer asking whether it is even possible because now it is.

The research changes to how do we make it better and cheaper rather than trying to get closer to making it happen without knowing how much further we have to go.

We have proven that we can make a very expensive kettle.

Let's math this out.
Takes 0.2 kWH of energy to boil a kettle
So Livermore produced ~2kWH

An average power station produces 138,000 MWH.

You're handwaving away 4-5 orders of magnitude. It's very much an open question whether this technology can even be scaled up to that degree. There's a very real chance that the materials science to achieve this does not exist.

And then this future fusion reactor needs to run continuously, 24/7, instead of once for a fraction of a second like Livermore.

AND it needs to do it more economically than existing technologies.

These are not trivial problems to solve.

No one is saying they are, but now they can actually start trying to solve them since the first hurdle has been cleared.
Edit - it's also worth noting that by achieving this, it may get the research program separated from the weapons testing facility it's currently part of. The NIF was basically a way to continue nuclear weapons research despite signing treaties that prevented it, but this provides a justification to focus more seriously on fusion for electrical generation rather than merely using it for a cover story.

SallyNasty wrote:
farley3k wrote:

Lawmakers announces bipartisan legislation that would ban TikTok in the US

A handful of American lawmakers, including Republican Sen. Marco Rubio, announced bipartisan legislation on Tuesday that would ban China's social media app TikTok in the U.S.

The move adds pressure on the video-sharing app's owner, ByteDance, amid fears among some in the U.S. that the app could be used to spy on Americans or censor content.

According to a news release from Rubio's office, the legislation would block all transactions from any social media company in or under the influence of a "country of concern," like China and Russia.

“The federal government has yet to take a single meaningful action to protect American users from the threat of TikTok," the Florida senator released in a statement. "This isn’t about creative videos – this is about an app that is collecting data on tens of millions of American children and adults every day.”

I support it

Me too, let's expand it to include domestic data collection as well.

Is the name of this TikTok bill the “Make Everyone Under the Age of 30 Not Want to Vote in the Next Election” bill?

Implying they need a bill to do that.

I would hope that taking away something they want without their consent would make them want to vote more.

farley3k wrote:

I would hope that taking away something they want without their consent would make them want to vote more.

Well, it’s a bipartisan bill in a Democratic Administration, so if it makes them want to vote more it likely wouldn’t be for Democrats. If anything I think it would only depress the youth vote after we just had a midterm with a record high youth vote.

Stengah wrote:

No one is saying they are, but now they can actually start trying to solve them since the first hurdle has been cleared.

Has it though?

A bit of deeper reading shows that this is only ignition if you fudge the numbers like Livermore did.

2 Megajoules in, 3 Megajoules out. Ignition, right?

Well, only if you don't count the other 298 Megajoules of energy that went into the lasers but didn't hit the fuel pellet.

This is a science success, not an engineering success.

So great, you've got ignition, but in a device that's only 0.6% efficient.

Jonman wrote:
fangblackbone wrote:

But the fundamental thing is we are no longer asking whether it is even possible because now it is.

The research changes to how do we make it better and cheaper rather than trying to get closer to making it happen without knowing how much further we have to go.

We have proven that we can make a very expensive kettle.

Let's math this out.
Takes 0.2 kWH of energy to boil a kettle
So Livermore produced ~2kWH

An average power station produces 138,000 MWH.

You're handwaving away 4-5 orders of magnitude. It's very much an open question whether this technology can even be scaled up to that degree. There's a very real chance that the materials science to achieve this does not exist.

And then this future fusion reactor needs to run continuously, 24/7, instead of once for a fraction of a second like Livermore.

AND it needs to do it more economically than existing technologies.

These are not trivial problems to solve.

Not to mention the lasers used to provide the energy are only 1% efficient. So, while the reaction itself was a net gain on energy, the entire system still consumes almost 100 times the energy produced.