> Starlink was sold to investors as being politically neutral and almost immediately became a US military asset.
I just asked Google AI about this and it says: "There is no evidence in the search results that Starlink was explicitly sold to investors as being politically neutral." Also, SpaceX is a private company. The number of investors is tiny, and they are incredibly sophisticated and well-advised. Any half-wit could see that a global constellation of communication satellites would be immediately useful to the world's best funded military and the NATO alliance.
> And of those countries who would like to have a system free of influence from other countries
Yes, just like GPS before it, Russia, China, EU, and even Japan built their own. I can see the same happening for Starlink (at least for the military side) for those same regions.
> Fifty three percent of Americans now read below the sixth grade level.
I don't know what to think when I see these quotes. Are you writing a local newspaper opinion piece about the "decline of America"? How is it meaningful to this discussion? It's like a poison blowdart shot from behind the stage curtain that kills the messenger.
By the way, I Googled for the equivalent stat about Canada: "48-49% having skills below a high school level". I'm not here to bad mouth the Canadian education system, but I think you will find fairly similar stats in most highly developed nations.
I've been reading this topic for years. It is very common with a certain party that the other side votes against their interest, or is too dumb to vote (literacy).
You can also see it in race voting, where people will say a certain race is voting against their interest just to vote for someone with the same skin color.
It's actually a talking point that actively pushes people away from their cause.
Does this type of voting happen? Sure, but not enough to push elections. IMO it's people who are confused on why others don't think the same way as they do and try to justify why anyway they can, usually through derogatory remarks.
datsci_est_2015 explains it better than I would just a few comments down, but this isn't what I mean. I mean that people who are semi-literate or illiterate are terrible thinkers. They are, in fact, fundamentally incapable of understanding the modern world they find themselves in and are CONSTANTLY taken advantage of.
Bad thinkers make bad decisions, and are vulnerable to being manipulated in ways that good thinkers aren't. Try getting a mortgage or a car loan when you can't read complete paragraphs. Try investing your retirement properly. Try doing just about anything that modern adults are required to do. You're definitely going to pay a "stupid tax" throughout your entire adult life if you lack the ability to read critically.
People bemoan the death of journalism, but it's not the journalists fault. Did you know that USA Today was intentionally invented to be an alternative news source for people who couldn't read well? At the time it was bemoaned as the end of western civilization. Now it requires more of it's reader than the places people actually get their news from (Tik-Tok and Bathroom wall graffiti presumably).
FWIW - One side is objectively worse than the other, but it's not by a wide margin (a few basis points if I remember correctly) and it's probably just because one side lives in states that love to take the education budget and blow it on "more important" things.
> people who are semi-literate or illiterate are terrible thinkers. They are, in fact, fundamentally incapable of understanding the modern world they find themselves in
It is always funny to me that the people making this argument are usually also the people who would view a voting literacy test as abhorrent (not you, necessarily). To me, if we're assuming a large amount of people are too stupid to understand information or know what is good, then it follows that we oughtn't let them decide the direction of the country.
I am genuinely in favor of a brief standardized test in the voting booth, but I think most aren't, especially those who are the most vocal about voter illiteracy/ignorance/stupidity. Follow through with your beliefs, readers. Pick one: are they too stupid to vote, or aren't they? If they are, support a literacy test. If they aren't, stop the ugly rhetoric.
The problem with a test is whoever writes/grades the test can ensure people they don't like fail. Elections are often close enough that they only need to fail a few borderline (and pass on their sides) to control an election.
as such I'm forced to oppose all tests even though the idea isn't bad.
The problem (like with voter ID laws in the US) is that it's a very slippery slope to voter suppression, and in the US we have a very creative history when it comes to voter suppression. You'd have poll workers who would present incredibly hard passages to read to voters based on a personal judgement call (read: black voters).
I (not OP) agree that dumb people voting is a problem but the alternative is to have arbitrary suppression of votes, which IMO is worse.
I don't know why objections to voting tests usually pretend we're in 1850. We have standardized tests, already, nationwide. It's a solvable problem. We wouldn't contingent a vote on a random poll worker's choice of passage to read.
And voting is legislated by individual states, that would theoretically implement their own standards though this may be intervened upon by the federal government). Heck, even standardized testing for students is done at a state level. The SATs/ACTs are privately administered. What example of a nationwide standardized test for literacy do you have?
A solvable problem, but someone chooses and implements the solution. Now imagine that person is from a party that you disagree with, and is highly motivated to find a way to tilt the playing field.
This talking point never contains international comparison nor historical comparison. Most people using it do not even know what "sixth grade level" actually is. They just know it means "a little".
Who cares how they're doing it in Albania? It used to be better in America, now it's worse and it's taken our entire society with it.*
I DO know exactly what sixth grade level is. It means they can read simple paragraphs, but not critically. These people lack the ability to think critically because they never learned it. They're the ones that open phishing emails and get taken by shady real estate con-men and Nigerian prince scammers.
You can be semi-literate and be a good person. You can't be semi-literate and make good decisions. Not in the modern world.
* To clarify - Reading levels in the United States have been declining at an alarming rate for a long time. They peaked in 1992 and have been steadily decaying since. You'll also note that 1992 was the year Dan Quayle was disqualified from the presidency because he couldn't spell potato. Imagine applying those standards to a modern politician.
It would be interesting comparison, actually. As interesting as French, Germany or whatever.
> It used to be better in America, now it's worse and it's taken our entire society with it. [...] They peaked in 1992 and have been steadily decaying since.
So, yeah, this would be an interesting historical comparison. It was worst most of the time.
> These people lack the ability to think critically because they never learned it. They're the ones that open phishing emails and get taken by shady real estate con-men and Nigerian prince scammers.
You are confusing two different things here. First off, highly educated people are in fact vulnerable to scammers ... frequently because of their own confidence.
> You can be semi-literate and be a good person. You can't be semi-literate and make good decisions. Not in the modern world.
But issue in modern world are not people just dont make good decisions. It is people who make immoral decisions. Vance have good reading skills, but he is still a fascist.
> You'll also note that 1992 was the year Dan Quayle was disqualified from the presidency because he couldn't spell potato.
This is not an example of mass of people using critical thinking and acting rationally. This is an example of blown up reaction ala Twitter mob latching on something trivial and making a big deal out of it. This is example of what happen when soundbite wins over substance.
By this logic, then we should also create a rule for regular, non-self-driving that says, if you have a car accident that kills someone, all your wealth is taken away and given to the victim's family. If we had a rule like this, then "you'd probably see much safer driving". Are you willing to drive under those circumstances? I am sure you will say yes, but it does not make your suggestion any less ridiculous.
> Because we have governments anemic to running anything or regulating any business.
This comment is weird to me. The US has one of the most effective environmental regulators in the world (EPA). The FAA and FDA are also excellent. The securities markets in the US are the global gold standard of regulation (SEC, etc.).
Certainly. These are institutions that have mostly been created during the progressive era of the US. The EPA (I believe) is the latest of these organizations.
Since roughly Reagan, the US has been either fully dismantling, defunding, or privatizing these institutions.
We've seen the FAA start to rely too heavily on the likes of Boeing to set regulation standards. The FDA has relied heavily on fees from private institutions to function and it's weakening due to that improper mixing has resulted in the likes of the Vioxx scandal.
Medicare is a good example of this. Under Clinton, rather than expanding or reforming medicare he introduced a plan to allow private insurance companies to get government dollars (medicare part c).
> These are institutions that have mostly been created during the progressive era of the US. The EPA (I believe) is the latest of these organizations.
Wiki tells me that the EPA was created by Richard Nixon in 1970. Also, it matters little when a regulatory body was created. It matters much more how it changes over time -- it is continously adapting to changes in our society and economy. For example, after the 2008 global financial crisis, securites markets regulators changes significantly to strengthen the financial system.
> Since roughly Reagan, the US has been either fully dismantling, defunding, or privatizing these institutions.
Clinton, Obama, and Biden were doing this? If so, please provide examples.
> Clinton, Obama, and Biden were doing this? If so, please provide examples.
Yup. Primarily on the 3rd prong but, especially under Clinton, there was also significant defunding that went one. "The era of big government is over".
Clinton did welfare reform, which added much stricter means testing and work requirements to welfare. The "reinventing government" program was literally a hack and slash on government agencies not unlike DOGE. The student loan reform reduced subsidies for students. He signed in the crime bill which enabled the building of private prisons and ramped up the US incarceration rates. And he created Medicare part C which created a route to send government funds to private insurers.
Obama's signature bill, the ACA, was a giant handout to insurance companies in pretty much every way. By trying to force people into buying insurance and also subsidizing insurance purchases, it was a major gift to health insurers. Even the Medicaid expansion mostly resulted in private insurers getting more wealthy as most states implement Medicaid via a private insurance contractor. After the first midterm Obama got very little done mainly due to the republican's continuing the Newt Gingrich "we oppose everything you support" strategy and the filibuster.
Biden was mostly business as usual, however both the infrastructure bill and the chips act can't be seen as anything other than just massive giveaways to private industry. The build back better act would have been the same had it passed.
> It's sad that Ubuntu still has issues waking up from sleep mode in 2025.
This has little to do with Ubuntu and probably much more to do with proprietary hardware that makes it difficult to a write a bug-free driver for Linux kernel sleep mode.
What device is giving you the most trouble with sleep mode?
Yes, I agree. The UC system is large and has many different campuses, but for undergraduate degrees it is by far Berkeley then LA. For grad schools, it is a toss up because different UCs specialise in different areas. Example: LA grad for film will be way better than Berkeley. And Berkeley physics or compsci will be much better than LA (but LA is still OK those). And don't forget there are some UCs that are grad schools only, like SF. They have excellent life sciences and medical school
As I understand, the easiest way to get into a very good UC (Berkeley, LA, etc.) is to first study at a junior college (JC). It is easy to get a perfect grade point average (4.0). There are a number of reserves spots at UCs for JC transfers.
It’s actually easier than that. Depending on the UC many just require completing a dedicated set of courses with a 2.0 or higher with no class lower than a C and will provide guaranteed admissions as long as the criteria is met.
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