Cost is more of a spoiler than radioactivity. At "one quadrillion dollars per ounce" you might as well do isotope separation and only collect stable gold 197. The additional cost of the separation would probably be just a rounding error in the whole thing.
Probably Planetary Resources, this has been talked about for years. Several companies were looking at doing it but the time lines are always like 30 years out or something. Here's and article from 2015 talking about it
The person who wrote this should probably talk to a therapist about his obsession with hunting people down online instead of blaming a social network site.
You're exactly right and I think it's important to consider that the LA Times' position as a sort of authority figure when it comes to speech (being a major news source/ media entity) may be an underlying interest in how the arguments made in this article are put forward. I imagine a whole lot of editors of the last few newspapers that are independently owned had some very interesting thoughts when the workers at New York Times pushed out some of it's leadership over an article Tom Cotton could have just as easily put on his website.
I agree that it's about cultural norms but I think the cultural norms are the cost and limiting factors of free expression being greatly reduced. I imagine an entity like the LA Times has an interest in defining how free speech works in the news room and subsequently the readers of that news source. I also imagine that idea of free speech would protect leadership in the newsroom from subordinates if everything published has to go through said leadership.
> idea of free speech would protect leadership in the newsroom from subordinates
If protecting the management from the workers is your goal, typically you invoke the right of the owners to dictate how work is organised, I'm not sure how you make that into a "free speech" issue.
As the work of the editor is explicitly to direct and reshape the speech of the employees under them, why would "free speech" protect the ones doing the censoring?
That's the point it wouldn't. It's not a question of free speech but rather the assurance that periodical's leadership can be protected from their workers or general criticism about poor direction that their periodicals are taking or are being forced to take due to changes in the media landscape.
Put more succinctly, imagine someone blaming the failure of their news organization on their readers opinions of free speech as opposed to their own shoddy workmanship, or an inability to compete with more modern forms of media.
And I was specifically referring to the ideas of free speech that the news outlet is striving to defend or at least define.
A few years ago I read about a Japanese firm that wanted to cover massive areas on the moon with solar panels and use a similar beaming technique to send the electricity back to Earth. Hopefully they are still moving forward with that.
I don't know, I think you'll wind up with a bunch of journalists charging independently to produce media, such as the author of the piece does or something like the kickstarters that produce long form docs.
Most jobs in the world aren't going to require their employees to represent a company that is presenting itself as the arbiter or defining absolute of free speech. Hell, most jobs it matters very little who you vote for or what you believe, even in the government. If these employees are uncomfortable with the position their employer is putting them in they may want to reevaluate their life choices.
I appreciate Mr. Paul's sentiment and agree with him. I would like to see him go further though and end the drug war that the US gov has waged against the American people. I think these no-knock warrants and other systemic, organized violence committed by a militarized civilian law enforcement is largely enabled by this war.
https://www.makeuseof.com/tag/social-network-set-mastodon-in...
Or of course there is always 4chan if you are so concerned about censorship.