The Doomsday Clock really strains credulity; I'd love to see a case for how we're closer to (as defined in this article) total nuclear annihilation or even a limited exchange than we were at any point in the cold war. The case is not convincingly made by any of the subjects in the article.

Nuclear proliferation is still something to be taken with deadly seriousness but the Bulletin of Atomic Sciences needs to cut the hyperbole and present their case more convincingly.

Absolutely true. I could certainly see an argument that we're closer now than 10 or 20 years ago. But closer than 1980? 1970? It's ludicrous to think so. It makes itself a measure that is obviously untrustworthy.

By what standard? You basically had side A and B. Now you have a dozen countries that can kick off a nuclear exchange.

There’s alot more factors now. The order we have today is really fragile. Especially as Ukraine has bared that the Russians are tiger with rotten teeth.

In the universe of the Butlerian Jihad are you SURE that replacing "program" with "pogrom" was a mistake?

I think there is no real doubt that the fact is true. What you perhaps refer to is the rate of change, and I'd agree with you that the US is doing far worse in that regard.

Yeah, but it's going to require a lot of thoughtcrime persecution before the rest of the US comes to that conclusion.

"Former" CIA

Lived in SE Asia fora few years and my understanding is that tan skin = outdoor labor = lower caste.

My spouse is asian and I'm N Euro - I would kill to have skin that just tans no matter how much sun you get. I think I've seen her get burns twice in over a decade and we do a lot of beach time.

The West used to have the same association. Now it's reversed, only people with lots of leisure time get to have a tan.

I love the threat of displacing billionaires out of our economy whenever taxing the wealthy comes up like the monied class aren't already incredibly sophisticated tax cheats

That firewall isn't going away anytime soon. Americans are inundated with a deluge of foreign influence campaigns from a variety of foreign powers and no way China wants that pain revisited upon themselves.

Seems like Onlyfans-like content also exists in China. They banned "erotic eating of bananas on livestreams" 1), so if they're fire-fighting, there must be a fire...

1) https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/china-is-banning-eroti...

Chinese people who get out have to face the reality of a very racist Western world who will never appreciate them.

As China develops and becomes richer eventually the idea of moving from Shanghai to New York no longer looks as attractive.

Huh? If there's one place (outside of China) that doesn't discriminate against the Chinese, it'd have to be New York.

Id also argue if China was open to the world we would see the level of Chinese racism against foreigners is very high indeed. Likely higher given their closed media systems unable to tolerate foreign opinion.

I'd pick Vancouver.

It's hard to imagine what could even constitute a modern Sputnik moment, but it's an interesting thought experiment. I just don't think that Americans care enough, and both countries are way more dependent on each other than the US and USSR ever were.

Caveat I've been wrong on pretty much every political prognostication I've ever made, so buy some defense industry stocks.

Maybe US gets really good at maglev trains and in reprisal China goes full throttle on inventing teleportation/hyperdrive tech?

A fully functional moon base? Mars colony?

Full AGI is a pretty trivial example

Same admin that opposes any real reporting on what they're doing except for entities that report glowingly on them. Trump Admin has loudly clashed with any and all legit journalistic entities (bad news: Newsnation and Zero Hedge are conservative hacks) so no reporting can be believed except ones approved by the state/Trump admin.