The gun nuts have convinced so many people there is only one way to read the 2nd amendment.
"Despite the Supreme Court’s rulings in Heller and McDonald, many constitutional historians disagreed with the court that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to “keep and bear Arms” for the purpose of self-defense in the home. Indeed, for more than two centuries there had been a consensus among judges as well as scholars that the Second Amendment guaranteed only the right of individuals to defend their liberties by participating in a state militia. However, by the late 20th century the “self-defense” interpretation of the amendment had been adopted by a significant minority of judges. The self-defense view also seemed to be taken for granted by large segments of the American public, especially those who consistently opposed gun control."
They've done that because other readings require some pretty significant twists and turns to get there. Some are more reasonable than others, but take "guns" out of the equation and the individual right becomes obvious. Consider the following text:
"A well educated electorate, being necessary to the proper functioning of a democratic state, the right of the people to keep and read books, shall not be infringed."
A reading of the 2nd amendment that doesn't see it as an individual right means we must read the forgoing as protecting the right to keep and read books only for the class of people that are eligible to vote, and only in the service of educating them. And realistically, if you put that text on a multiple choice SAT with the question "Who has the right to keep and read books?" I don't think you're going to get many people answering "only people eligible to vote".
Beyond that, to read the 2nd amendment as not protecting an individual right would also require an interpretation of a right of "the people" to mean something other than every other reading of "the people" throughout the rest of the document:
* The right of "the people" to peaceably assemble as outlined in the first amendment is not limited to members of religious orders or members of "the press".
* The right of "the people" to be "secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects" is certainly not limited to some government defined collection of people who only have that right while they are collectively acting.
* The "person" whose rights are protected by the fifth amendment has been time and again ruled to be an individual.
* The tenth amendment clearly distinguishes between the federal government, the states and "the people". If "the people" are supposed to be the militia, how then are they distinct from the federal government or the state?
* The fourteenth amendment refers to "persons" and their privileges, immunities, life, liberties and property. But how could the state infringe on the rights of those people if the people are the militia and the militia is an arm of the state?
It seems strange that in a collection of amendments specifically in place to outline some hard limits on government power and particularly with respect to individuals under that government, that one and only one of those limits was to restrict the government from limiting another arm of the government, but in terms that referred to individuals in every other case it was used.
They also have a ever so slightly finer grained control over telling it that you don't like the song or (one of, I forget which) the album/artist that is playing.
Tidal pays more for the artist and has a higher quality streaming option if that matters to you. Qobuz is another good artist friendly stream that historically paid the most to artists but it has a bit smaller catalog than Tidal.
Tidal is great for selection and quality, but not usability like Spotify where I can control it from any device. Tidal works on my receiver and Amazon devices.
Like many home/IoT services, Spotify uses mDNS to enumerate and announce its peers when they are L3 local but they are also controllable remotely by dialing-home to their API albeit with a slightly longer delay. Spotify is hilarious when playing from the Everywhere group (all devices) where desktops, tablets, phones, the thermostat, stereo receiver, and Amazon Echo devices all insist on playing out of time like a crowd of teenagers singing a song.
On a slight tangent, mDNS had turned into an absolute nightmare for me. I must have tried 5 different FOSS Raspberry Pi streaming OSs, none of which did the Spotify cast integration actually work on, until I finally figured out it's because it's using mDNS and my router (despite being purchased in 2023 for $200) didn't support mDNS. There's also a bunch of other services (like Home Assistant) that just assume you have working mDNS and point everything to <appname>.local
I finally figured out where the service file was, and changed it to IP, and now it works.
I would be more accurate to say parts of the planet will become hostile to human life that currently are not. India, for example, will have human shattering heat waves. And it is hard to live in a city when it is underwater.
However, by the middle of the 16th century supplies of wood were beginning to fail in Britain and the use of coal as a domestic fuel rapidly expanded.[10]: 22
The reality is economies of scale have kicked in for solar and wind energy in a way they never can for nuclear. We are at the point where it makes sense, at times, to overprovision renewals to ensure enough supply.
The issue with renewables is storage, of course. But that problem looks to be more solvable than cost effective nuclear, a problem which we have not solved in over 50 years. One can say if we were only smarter we could make nuclear more cost effective, which is probably true. But we built a nuclear power plant where a tsunami occurred in the past, only to find it occurred again, so we aren't that smart. The issue with nuclear is everything has to be right for it to be cost effective and safe, and nuclear is too complex for humans to consistently do this.
Safe nuclear power that is also cost effective is not a problem we have solved.
SMRs are an opportunity for economies of scale to kick in for nuclear. If you can start building reactors in factories, and interate on designs, then you can see economies of scale kick in.*
That said, I am not super bullish on nuclear, and agree with your position. Solar and wind are just getting too cheap for nuclear to get the investment needed to catch-up. If we see someone crack the code on cheap storage of electiciy, solar and wind will runaway with the prize. Not coincidentally, storage is has vastly more investment of money and brains on looking for ways to scale vs nuclear.
*Safety concerns with nuclear will make iterative design difficult to pull off!
There was scarcely any financial incentive to address the grid scale energy storage problem until like two or three years ago. There are a half dozen startups working on it now.
My vote is to rapidly install renewables while we have the natural gas backstop, and give the storage startups a few years to make it happen. Energy Dome, Hydrostor, and Form Energy all look promising.
And if new nuclear turns out to be less expensive than expected, great.
This does signal what type of person you are dealing with if they don't go along with the word change. For example, if I heard someone using the negro word I would think that there was an excellent chance that person was racist. The renaming also signals to everyone racism isn't acceptable (in a very minor way). It is hard to change a culture but the words we use in one of the ways we do it.
When the world stops being racist this renaming will stop.
I believe nuclear can be cost effective. I believe nuclear can be safe. I just don't believe nuclear can be safe and cost effective. We have been trying to solve this nuclear energy problem for over 50 years and we still aren't there.
The issue of renewable energy storage is significant, but look to be easier to solve than how to make nuclear energy cost effective and safe.
Yeah, I can believe that humans can safely operate a nuclear power plant for fifty years, maybe even one hundred, but when your plan is for humans to run the plant indefinitely, you sort of have to take into account that people will eventually get sloppy, take shortcuts, say 'hey, this always worked out before, relax', etc. and meanwhile you run into various blackswan low probability events…
Nuclear: a good bridge technology; a terrible long term strategy!
While I agree with the idea that removing a quick and accessible means of suicide can reduce suicide rates, there's a huge caveat on that article.
> we did not have the ability to control for differences between the two countries including poverty, unemployment, health systems, cultural, or other differences
The authors go on to suggest that they may in fact be underestimating the amount of suicides that could be averted with reduced gun ownership, but there are an awful lot of confounding factors that are simply not addressed in this paper.
"Despite the Supreme Court’s rulings in Heller and McDonald, many constitutional historians disagreed with the court that the Second Amendment protected an individual right to “keep and bear Arms” for the purpose of self-defense in the home. Indeed, for more than two centuries there had been a consensus among judges as well as scholars that the Second Amendment guaranteed only the right of individuals to defend their liberties by participating in a state militia. However, by the late 20th century the “self-defense” interpretation of the amendment had been adopted by a significant minority of judges. The self-defense view also seemed to be taken for granted by large segments of the American public, especially those who consistently opposed gun control."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Second-Amendment