"Pay attention, I'll only do this one time!"

That's interesting, I've had a lot of thought on the same line.

However, the biggest problem isn't technology, it's social organization. As you said, civilizations collapse. They collapse regardless of their technological advancement. We know the Roman empire collapsed, as well as the Bronze Age civilization did. We also know the Maya civilization collapsed, apparently more than once as the archeological records seem to indicate.

Historians do not agree on what caused such collapses. They mention events like wars, earthquakes and droughts, but that doesn't explain how many civilizations suffer from the same events without collapsing. What are the factors that make a civilization fragile enough to collapse under stress? Nobody knows.

Unless the social sciences, like economics, sociology, psychology and anthropology improve their models a lot we have only some vague ideas of how to build a stable society.

The deepest part of the graph is in the 400s, when Rome was sacked, that's when the Dark Ages started. There's a very clear gap in this graph, from the year 200 to 1200. You can't say that this is simply because the average tourist isn't interested in this period. Just look at how many books, films and video games have medieval themes.

Another clear gap is at the Bronze Age collapse, around 1000 BCE. Historians have several different explanations for this collapse, none of them very satisfactory. It is a fact that civilizations collapse from time to time and historians don't have any consistent theory to explain why.

Then explain the gap. Are you saying no self-respecting historian works at the Louvre?

The economy is much better now than when Lula was in power. Brazil has had a lower inflation rate than the European Union this year, the first time in history that this has happened. Plus the economy is expected to grow up to 3% this year, which is not bad considering the recent years: covid and war in Ukraine. There were more than 4 million new businesses started up in Brazil during Bolsonaro's government.

Besides, violent crime has dropped drastically. The homicide rate is at its lowest in the last 40 years.

All in all, Bolsonaro's government has been much better than Lula's. That's the reason why more than 50% of the congress elected a month ago are "right wing" parties. The only reason Lula has got so many votes is because of his personality cult, there are people who think of him almost as a prophet, it's quasi-religious, especially among people with lower education levels. College educated people overwhelmingly vote for Bolsonaro.

What if something the Canadian government deems as critical isn't available in Canada?

For instance, manganese, vanadium, niobium are essential for high strength steel but Canada has no mines for these minerals. They are under control of foreign entities, no matter what the Canadian government says or does.

> foreign entities, whether private or government, shouldn't be allowed to own industries or resources in Canada.

Why not? This hasn't worked well anywhere it has been tried. Look at Cuba or North Korea for some examples.

It's not foreign private ownership, there's the difference. A private company invests for profit, a government invest for strategic purposes.

> They should just nationalize it.

How would that get investments? Who would want to invest in a country that does that?

This is not about foreign ownership, but foreign government ownership.

Canada is in a peculiar situation, because it's a mineral-rich country that doesn't have any really big mining company. If they want investment in mining they must allow foreign companies to own the mines.

> 1880 and 1920 seem like entire universes apart

That's because of the huge changes brought by the invention of processes to mass produce steel in the 1860s. Henry Bessemer created the modern age. When cheap steel became available there was a whole new way of manufacturing everything.

Besides that, there were many important scientific discoveries. For instance, the concept of sanitation started by Florence Nightingale increased life expectation by twenty years during that period.

That's like putting a group of toy soldiers in a perfect straight line and hitting all of them with one bullet.

> Orbital mechanics are so much harder than what science fiction makes it out to be. Hence why countries are still failing to reach orbit at all.

Apart from one country that still uses medieval measurement units, I've never heard of a spacecraft failing due to wrong orbital calculations. They aren't done on a blackboard like the guy in Don't Look Up did, but they aren't particularly hard to do.

I do this professionally, I work in a company that controls satellites in geostationary orbit, the error in orbit determination calculations is in the order of magnitude of ten centimeters or so. You can think of it as an "inverse GPS": it's possible to determine the position of a satellite in orbit from ground measurements the same way GPS allows us to determine the position of something on the earth surface.

> isn't a job search journey

What if his job is to collect balls at the golf course?

They must adapt to the political situation, but every one of them would prefer less government, if you asked them.

> capitalism strongly encourages economic powers to influence political powers.

That's not how capitalism works. Everyone who actually manages a company would prefer to keep the government at a distance.

> those of us at the bottom are kind of stuck being pushed further and further down.

People at the bottom can join each other and work together. They can form a cooperative or any other organization they want.

> markets are heavily regulated by the state

Yes, markets aren't totally free, but that's not a shortcoming of the free market. The free market is an abstract model that we should try to pursue as much as possible.

> They hoard wealth in terms of general wealth, power, value, influence. They have a need to perpetually obtain more and more market share. They have an obsession to do whatever it takes to be on top of everyone around them.

There are people like that, yes, but it would be even worse without a free market. Look at Russia, North Korea, Cuba, China, etc. Economic power and political power should be separate entities, kept as far away from each other as possible.

But, of course, there are people who love power, they will work to achieve power, be it through political or economic ways, whatever is available.

The free market works so well because it's distributed intelligence. Every person makes their own choices. You can shop at Amazon or Walmart or at your favorite local shop, the decision is yours. I, for one, wouldn't want an AI making such decisions for me.

Where AI could make a big improvement would be in government. There are systems where we have no choice. The government is in charge of fixing the potholes in my street, if an AI took care of that it would be a welcome improvement.

> hoarding generations of income

That word "hoarding" shows exactly where you stand and why you're looking at things from the wrong perspective.

Rich people don't "hoard" wealth. They invest. When someone says "Jeff Bezos has $200 billion" this doesn't mean he's sitting in a money bin with 200 billion dollar banknotes. He isn't sitting on a pile of things money can buy either.

I've heard people say "$200 billion is too much, let him keep one billion and give the rest to the poor". How does that sound to you? Each person in the world would get $25 worth of Amazon shares. Many people would opt to sell their shares, meaning the price would plunge. Amazon would become a penny stock, rich people would buy those shares at a bargain price and the situation would be back exactly like it was at the beginning.

Okay, that wouldn't work, so let's make those shares non-negotiable. Every person would keep his share. This would make Amazon a political organization. People would run for the office of CEO, promising to the people whatever they wanted in order to get elected. The end result, no more Amazon, the corporation would be destroyed and other organizations, like AliExpress, would take their place.

TL; DR: the situation is as it is because it works. The free market is the most effective way we know to run an economy.

The fine is calculated on past sales. If that value seems small it's because Apple doesn't sell many phones in Brazil, they are too expensive.

This doesn't mean Apple can pay that fine and keep selling phones without a charger, that would be contempt of court, a criminal case instead of the civil case it's now.

An angle grinder will do it. At the precision level required in a 3d printer it's OK to use the grinder. Just be careful not to bend it and use soft jaws to hold it in a vise.

That's a very interesting point. I, for one, would welcome more skepticism in the general public.

> "Replacing gasoline with ethanol has changed landscapes across the globe."

Article mentions nothing but the USA.

Downvoted, misleading and editorialized headline.

To be fair, the problems you mention are caused by the confusion between the two systems, not by the use of the medieval system by itself. To avoid this type of confusion, airplanes everywhere still have their altitude measured in feet and speed measured in knots. This is true even for airplanes made by Airbus and Embraer.

However, the medieval system does have shortcomings even without the confusion caused by conversion. For instance, adding fractions is much more likely to cause error than adding decimal numbers. That's the reason why machinists in the US have abandoned fractions long ago, using exclusively decimal inches in their measurements.

Computers started beating human chess masters in the 1990s. People still play chess.

The best alternate universe would be one where Hitler had enough artistic talent to make a living painting movie posters and magazine advertisements.