Can confirm.

I've been saying this for years. It's fun to dream about, and it's fun to talk about, and while exploring the surface of Mars will probably happen at some point, there will never ever be permanent human habitation of Mars.

... or more like "Mars Direct". Thank goodness. I may not be a huge fan of the idea of permanent settlement on Mars, or this "terraforming" nonsense, but basic exploration has to solve these problems and Bob was writing about the solutions a long time ago. He gets dismissed as a crank from time to time, but it's nice to see something he laid out getting a little push.

Having just escaped from job-hunting hell, I can say that the keyword-matching tricks you have to jump through are a real pain in the ass. There were several jobs that I knew I could do where my keyword-match score probably excluded me. The flip side is that many role descriptions are written by hiring managers (or the hiring manager from years back) and they are frequently not relevant to the role. I am a hiring manager and I write my own job descriptions fresh for each role that I'm hiring for and I validate my assumptions and tech skills with my team before I submit. The interview (first phone, then in-person) is where the best fit can be ascertained. Surrendering the filtering to a bot at the front end seems counterproductive. I've made great hires that were not an exact match on paper but were the best fit when talking and discussing experiences and approaches to problems and solutions.

For my part, I found if I copied the entire text of the job description into my resume (at the end) and changed the font color to invisible, I had a much better chance of matching.

Had I the points, I would mod this insightful.

The humanities teaches nothing accept discrimination and indoctrination because it has now relegated itself to an "in crowd" echo chamber and is becoming more and more anti-science as time has gone by.

To be fair, the humanities could have taught you things like "what words mean" and "how to arrange words into coherent sentences", but you've made it abundantly clear that you opted to not show up on those days.

It's a pity. You could have been worth listening to, but now there's just no point, is there?

Had I the mod points, I would grant all of them to you. Thank you for saying this.

Yesterday I hacked my lentil soup by drinking it straight from the bowl. I saved water resources and time by being able to consume the soup faster and not having to wash a spoon. Haxx0rRulz.

... of reference phone options at Project Fi. At one time, the HTC One was the Fi reference phone, and I had one, and it was pretty good, but not nearly as good as what they put together with the Motorola Nexus... my current handset. I'm actually pretty happy to get this news. I hope they're able to evolve the Pixel line forward and continue to demonstrate what pure Android can do.

Well, everyone likes having choices, but the problem I see is that when there's something on hulu that I want to see, then something on Amazon, and then something on RedTube, then something on Netflix and then something on (insert streaming service name here), I end up having to buy $15 subscriptions to each one and suddenly I'm paying the going rate for cable all over again.

Your waters are muddy, but since I'm not sure if it's intentional, I'll assume the best of intentions. You left out the cost of service on the national debt, which is something like 200 Billion this year (I think I'm close), and that comes out of the general fund. SocSec and Medicare do not come out of the general fund, and are (in essence, and occasionally adjusted) paid by separately-funded income streams. Your fixation on the word "entitlement" is interesting, because these are the social safety net programs that see that those people who cannot provide sufficiently for themselves (or at all) are not burdening the earning power of their families or costing us all more by addressing that poverty in other ways... crime, unpaid bills, etc.

If you want to see the sick, old and severely disabled also suffer the indignities of absolute, irrevocable suffering, abject poverty and starvation, then by all means fight these "entitlements", but you'll be fighting the working people by encouraging unhealthy living conditions, and less social and economic mobility as they have to shoulder those costs by themselves in an environment where wages have been stagnant for 30 years.

I'll grant you that there must absolutely be people who are on SocSec disability who can and should be working, and any number of crooked ways that medicaid and medicare money is mis-spent or scammed away, but we also have a lot of old people in the country and a lot of them spent their money on their kids and their homes and cars and college all along the way through their earning years, and it's that long-term contribution to the economy in general that "entitles" them to the reassurance that the safety net brings.

So, yeah, "entitlements" account for a lot of spending, but that spending comes into being because of our social contract and because of the economic investment that citizens have made, more than the actual value of the specific payroll deductions that feed or have fed those funding streams.

Thank you for making this point.

Those same people in that 40% still pay social security and medicare taxes and all the regular fees of banking (if they have enough money for a bank account) are not discounted for them. Many in that same group have higher cost of capital in the event they need to borrow, and in the event that they don't have access to banking services, they have to use check-cashing or payday lending that takes away even more money in fees.

The people in that group frequently work for hourly wages at or slightly above the minimum wage, making something like an illness or injury even more costly in terms of lost income. Practically speaking, there is a tax on poverty. It helps sustain the cycle of poverty by reducing the ability to save money, develop assets and endure the economic effects of adversities that everyone experiences.

What's more, that same 40% is likely to have taxes withheld even if they are totally refunded, but they are also denied access to that capital throughout the year until they get their refund. Lack of access to their earned money denies that 40% the ability to use that money in more productive ways.

If the social fabric of the country could moderate the effects of these other economic factors, then perhaps something like a "fair tax" would be a lot more fair than it is. For example, re-opening the postal banking system such that cheap-or-no-fee accounts and low-interest (or subsidized interest) lending for postal accounts, and mandatory paid sick days for all wage-earners might be low-cost ways of growing services, reducing earning risk and the cost of capital.

Also, this notion that the very wealthy are more avid consumers the more they make just doesn't bear out. There are only so many houses, cars, boats and planes one can buy. Unused assets like houses, cars, boats and planes cost money simply to keep, and consumption hits a ceiling because one only has one ass to park in any one of those categories at a time. Wealthy households have fewer children, so there are fewer people in the family to spend asset money on in the first place. The relative utility of multiple physical assets drops away, which reduces the inclination to spend further. After that desire to spend goes away, the money sits in the bank or in semi-liquid securities where it does nothing for the economy. Philanthropy can take the place of traditional consumption spending, but it's not at the same scale as you see in the day-to-day consumption of a middle-class household. While wealthy households may demand more in services than poor households, they don't tend to buy services of increasing cost when their income grows. Proportionally, from an income-to-taxable-spending standpoint, the rich spend less than households at the poverty line, incur less risk and have an incredibly low cost of capital when they need to borrow. My point is that even if we were to strengthen the social fabric for those at the poverty line, the very wealthy would still not shoulder the same proportional burden as the lower income-earners under a "fair tax" scheme.

Tart, technical, and terse. I think you won the internet, today. Well-done!

Had I the points, I would mod you up.